5 ms·

This is one of my biggest fears of cloud computing. With abandonware, you can still run it locally, years after the death of the company that produced it. Not

by sudont 16y ago

This is one of my biggest fears of cloud computing. With abandonware, you can still run it locally, years after the death of the company that produced it. Not so with a thin client or SaaS. EDIT: This isn't about exporting data, I actually like certain software tools, and would miss them if I no longer had access to an install.

jdludlow 16y ago
Choose services that clearly and easily allow you to export all of your data whenever you want. delicious makes export trivial, so there's not much lock-in. Look at how many competitors already support importing delicious files.
kmfrk 16y ago
I don't know if there is much to fear; if the service doesn't have an export service, treat it like you expect to lose your data at some point, as you would your data stored on a hard drive with no backup copy. Any hacker with his salt can not be blind-sided by losing all his data to a service, because it didn't let him export the data safely. Of course, sometimes you reach a grey area where some parts are exportable, but not others. Take Bloglines, the RSS reader, which allowed me to export my subscriptions as XML/OPML, but didn't save my starred entries. Of course, you could argue that this wasn't their fault, seeing as there probably wasn't any standard to support the export. Nevertheless, it turned out to be something that would bite me in the ass, when Bloglines (initially) went belly up. I think we've reach a point long ago where we found out that there's a tangible chance of losing our data stored in the cloud. This is not a new "cause for alarm" or anything of the sort. We're basically at "fool me thrice" at this point.
- sudont 16y ago
  What about losing the tool itself, never mind the data?
  - jdludlow 16y ago
    Any tool that's worth your money will have competitors. Sooner or later. A vacuum of users who suddenly need a new service to shovel their money at will be quickly filled by the market.
    - sudont 16y ago
      I'm not sure anyone who's spent their entire life programming in Emacs would take that well. "Oh, yeah. Just get used to it. Notepad++ is so much more modern."
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - sp4rki 16y ago
        They'll move the Vim and then have the epiphany of realizing they where wrong all this time. Hopefully before their left hand becomes this unusable and RSI ridden extension of the rest of thier arm. Being serious, I think it's insulting to mention Notepad++ as a replacement for Emacs instead of a more capable editor! ;)
        Groxx 16y ago
        Maybe it's just me, but N++ seems to have far fewer abilities, extensions, etc than Vim or Emacs; and what's there is buggier and hasn't been fixed in years. It seems to be dying slowly and reluctantly. It's a very basic text editor with a few neat tricks and a lower learning curve, and that's about it. Try a modern editor. Like vim, emacs, or textmate/e-texteditor, and look into what people have built for them. Then tell me you think N++ is more capable. edit: bah! misreading sucks. delete that last line. Now I need a time machine :\
        sp4rki 16y ago
        That's what I said bro. I'm a Vim user myself (and have been for a year too many) and I think it's the best thing since hot chocolate bread. I just used a semi complicated macro to edit 800 lines of a CVS document, which took me around 3 minutes to record, but saved me hours of work I would have had to spend manually doing most of it in Textmate (which I think is a really good editor, just not in the same league as Vim or Emacs) or any other modern editor for that matter. As a Vim user I feel compelled to mix a shameless plug for my editor of choice in a conversation every time the topic shows it's head. Anyway, I think you misread my comment. I love Vim and I don't even run Windows (to run Notepad++).
joe_the_user 16y ago
The only solution is using cloud-sites which open their source and so allow instant duplication.

by sudont 16y ago

jdludlow 16y ago

Choose services that clearly and easily allow you to export all of your data whenever you want. delicious makes export trivial, so there's not much lock-in. Look at how many competitors already support importing delicious files.

kmfrk 16y ago

I don't know if there is much to fear; if the service doesn't have an export service, treat it like you expect to lose your data at some point, as you would your data stored on a hard drive with no backup copy. Any hacker with his salt can not be blind-sided by losing all his data to a service, because it didn't let him export the data safely. Of course, sometimes you reach a grey area where some parts are exportable, but not others. Take Bloglines, the RSS reader, which allowed me to export my subscriptions as XML/OPML, but didn't save my starred entries. Of course, you could argue that this wasn't their fault, seeing as there probably wasn't any standard to support the export. Nevertheless, it turned out to be something that would bite me in the ass, when Bloglines (initially) went belly up. I think we've reach a point long ago where we found out that there's a tangible chance of losing our data stored in the cloud. This is not a new "cause for alarm" or anything of the sort. We're basically at "fool me thrice" at this point.

sudont 16y ago
What about losing the tool itself, never mind the data?
- jdludlow 16y ago
  Any tool that's worth your money will have competitors. Sooner or later. A vacuum of users who suddenly need a new service to shovel their money at will be quickly filled by the market.
  - sudont 16y ago
    I'm not sure anyone who's spent their entire life programming in Emacs would take that well. "Oh, yeah. Just get used to it. Notepad++ is so much more modern."
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - sp4rki 16y ago
      They'll move the Vim and then have the epiphany of realizing they where wrong all this time. Hopefully before their left hand becomes this unusable and RSI ridden extension of the rest of thier arm. Being serious, I think it's insulting to mention Notepad++ as a replacement for Emacs instead of a more capable editor! ;)
      - Groxx 16y ago
        Maybe it's just me, but N++ seems to have far fewer abilities, extensions, etc than Vim or Emacs; and what's there is buggier and hasn't been fixed in years. It seems to be dying slowly and reluctantly. It's a very basic text editor with a few neat tricks and a lower learning curve, and that's about it. Try a modern editor. Like vim, emacs, or textmate/e-texteditor, and look into what people have built for them. Then tell me you think N++ is more capable. edit: bah! misreading sucks. delete that last line. Now I need a time machine :\
        sp4rki 16y ago
        That's what I said bro. I'm a Vim user myself (and have been for a year too many) and I think it's the best thing since hot chocolate bread. I just used a semi complicated macro to edit 800 lines of a CVS document, which took me around 3 minutes to record, but saved me hours of work I would have had to spend manually doing most of it in Textmate (which I think is a really good editor, just not in the same league as Vim or Emacs) or any other modern editor for that matter. As a Vim user I feel compelled to mix a shameless plug for my editor of choice in a conversation every time the topic shows it's head. Anyway, I think you misread my comment. I love Vim and I don't even run Windows (to run Notepad++).

joe_the_user 16y ago

The only solution is using cloud-sites which open their source and so allow instant duplication.