2015-02-15

@google warns rely only on printers

2.15: news.cyb/net/@google warns rely only on printers:
. Google is the king of cloud computing
but Google's vice-president Vint Cerf warned:
"If there are photos you really care about,
print them out."
. I have all my photos on Google Drive;
is he worried WWIII destroys Google servers?

"We are nonchalantly throwing all of our data into
what could become an information black hole.
Piles of digitised material – from blogs, tweets,
pictures and videos, to official documents
such as court rulings and emails
– may be lost forever because
the programs needed to view them
will become defunct,
We digitise things because we think we will preserve them,
but what we don’t understand is that
unless we take other steps, those digital versions
may not be any better, and may even be worse,
than the artefacts that we digitised,
If there are photos you really care about, print them out."
[ Vint Cerf, @iansample 2015.2.13 ]

what could that mean?
. I was thinking this myself about wwIII;
what if they blanketed the earth with nukes
and took out all the cloud servers:
then only the paper would survive .
. even if the nukes didn't vaporize servers
they would have an EMP effect
that would shock all the electronics
and hard drives might still be recoverable
by replacing the electronic part,
but that depends upon the drive makers;
so, who knows what massive destruction will mean .
. on the bright side maybe Google was only
reminding us that they use open standards
and that they let you archive all your data
whereas other social sites like twitter do not .
. maybe your photos are safe on Google Drive
but if you need documents after a war
it could take years for Google to get back online .
. ready.gov says print all your essential legal documents
and keep them in a bank deposit box .
  

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