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Main Entry: nephophobia
Definition: a fear of clouds
Etymology: Greek nephos 'cloud'
A person with some level of computer literacy (and all IT specialists) should limit usage of cloud providers such as Yahoo, Google, Microsoft to minimum. No important email should ever be send or received on accounts opened on those providers.
Basic ISP account for approximatly $5 a month provides you with multiple email accounts, free website and free blog. That means that you can say Facebook good by.
Typical offer from low cost sites such as HostGator, Bluehost.com and other reputable providers (see Guide for selecting Web hosting provider with SSH access ) includes
- Unlimited Disk Space, and Email accounts
- Free Forums and blog software
- Free web site creation software.
- 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
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November 4, 2013 | The Register
Just because you are paying companies like Google, Apple or Microsoft you might feel they are, some how, beholden to you.
The companies are actually beholden only to their stockholders whose interests may or may not be aligned with your own, so will change services accordingly.
Start up are sometimes more reliable, but only sometimes, given nearly every startup is angling for a big payday that almost always results in shutting down the service. LaLa anybody?
In other words, don't expect your paid service from a big provider or a start up will still be there in five years' time.
Even if the service doesn't get yanked you run the risk that one day you'll lose something critical thanks to a systems outage or hard-drive crash.
The closure of Google Reader earlier this year offers a salutary lesson in the dangers of investing too heavily in services you don't control. I always knew I was too heavily invested – it was the cornerstone or my research and helped me stay up with tech news for a very long time. I didn't really know just how badly I was exposed to Google's whims until the company decided to shut down it down. No more Reader doesn't so much as put a crimp in my workflow, it eliminates my workflow.
I'm not the only one. Millions of reasonably savvy web users lost years' worth of data – yes, you could export your feeds, but not much else.
The question is, did I learn from this? Detach from the cloud and build your own cloud – that would seem to be the takeaway.
Sometimes it makes sense to go with a service. Facebook is Facebook, trying to run your own Facebook isn't just silly - it's impossible. The value of Facebook is the network, not the service it provides.
But for personal tools like email, file sharing/syncing or - in my case - an RSS reader, relying on anything not in my control doesn't make sense.
Not that I didn't start with the idea of moving to another service. In fact, I evaluated dozens of options, but while Feedly is interesting and Feedbin works with numerous third-party apps, I couldn't escape the nagging feeling that I was just setting myself up for another failure down the road.
In the end I decided to bite the bullet and set up a self-hosted RSS reader on my own server because I wanted to be in control. More than I wanted the convenience of a hosted service like Feedly, more than I wanted a seamless transition from Google Reader, I wanted control.
At the end of the day, this is the only way to ensure your data is yours, remains free for whomever you'd like to have access to it and isn't sold off to the highest bidder is ... to own your own tools.
It used to be that running your own file-sharing server, self-hosting an address book, email server or photo sharing application was a Herculean task. In fact, many a bookmarking service, email provider and photo sharing web site started life just because one person figured out how to do it and then their friends wanted in, and then friends of friends. Next thing you know you're running del.icio.us.
Fortunately these days it's not that hard to get a private server up and running with the latest version of Ubuntu installed and every bit of software you might need only an apt-get away.
... ... ...
Everything on the internet is a series of trade-offs, so the more you're willing to do yourself, the more you're willing to assume responsibility for, the more you'll be able to ensure your data is under your control.
The good news for individuals is that you're not alone, there's a whole fellowship of like-minded, self-hosting people on the web offering tutorials, hacks and even GitHub repos full of software. Thanks to some recent efforts from larger businesses and organizations like NASA with the OpenStack cloud architecture in 2010, many of which are just starting to realize the dangers of being dependent on third-parties for key infrastructure components like email or file sharing, there's a lot of fantastic software out there...
Society
Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers : Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy
Quotes
War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes : Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce : Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes
Bulletin:
Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law
History:
Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds : Larry Wall : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS : Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development : Scripting Languages : Perl history : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history
Classic books:
The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month : How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite
Most popular humor pages:
Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor
The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D
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Last modified: March, 12, 2019
