Every day there are posts here about how great the Cloud is, and how we should just dump our data there and not have worry about data centers ourselves. Isn't that exactly what was done here - individual handheld users put their personal data into "the Cloud" (in this case, Microsoft's cloud) and then got hosed when the Cloud busted, as happens in traditional Cloud-computing applications. Should we now say that everyone who loses data when EC2 crashes deserves what they get as well?
As for your second point about where users knowing where their data is located, I call BS on that. The majority of people out there over the age of 40 have no concept of the abstract notion of "data", or that it has a location. For them, data is located where they physically access it. Technology is (should be?) about making life simpler and abstracting away bits that people don't need to know about or have the knowledge to make decisions about - for 95% of people, this includes where the contacts on their mobile phone are stored.
If you think people should know where their individual bits of data are, try explaining to my mom how her contacts could live on her SIM card, in her device's memory, and on her desktop computer, and then ask her what the best place is for them.
1. I'm sorry but any admin who trusts their data solely to the cloud is foolish. It's just that simple. You really think an admin in a company is going to keep their job if they trust all their data to the cloud and then the cloud company screws up and loses it. No, because they were the one responsible for the data and they should have made backups.
Same here. Sidekick screwed up. No question. But that doesn't make it ok for the users not to have this data backed up.
2. How about you read my post before commenting on it. I didn't say they did know where their data is I said they had a responsibility to and if they weren't they were being irresponsible.
Every day there are posts here about how great the Cloud is, and how we should just dump our data there and not have worry about data centers ourselves. Isn't that exactly what was done here - individual handheld users put their personal data into "the Cloud" (in this case, Microsoft's cloud) and then got hosed when the Cloud busted, as happens in traditional Cloud-computing applications. Should we now say that everyone who loses data when EC2 crashes deserves what they get as well?
As for your second point about where users knowing where their data is located, I call BS on that. The majority of people out there over the age of 40 have no concept of the abstract notion of "data", or that it has a location. For them, data is located where they physically access it. Technology is (should be?) about making life simpler and abstracting away bits that people don't need to know about or have the knowledge to make decisions about - for 95% of people, this includes where the contacts on their mobile phone are stored.
If you think people should know where their individual bits of data are, try explaining to my mom how her contacts could live on her SIM card, in her device's memory, and on her desktop computer, and then ask her what the best place is for them.