“The Cloud”

Outside of networking (and even within networking to a certain extent), the buzzword of the day is “The cloud”.  All of your data will be in “the cloud”.  Think Skynet.  Cloud computing is how much of our data is handled today.  
What is that, you ask?  
Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computersand other devices on demand, like the electricity grid.”  –According to wikipedia.  
Why is this even remotely interesting?  Well, as of now, much of what I do has been moved into “the cloud”. My contacts are stored within google’s massive cloud, as are my emails, calendar, and now this blog text.  
I have an Android based phone now, even the config that my phone is built from is in the cloud.  I’ve moved my photos into flickr.  My mail is a Google Apps domain.  Why would I do such a thing, you ask?  Because it’s REALLY freakin’ convenient.  I don’t have to run a server anymore.  I don’t need to keep up spamassassin signatures or maintain any postgres or mysql databases.  
Its also scary.  All of my data is not under my control anymore.  Once it hits the internet, it’s never possible to know for sure it’s gone should I want it removed.  This is a frightening thing when one considers the privacy ramifications.  I’ve been slowly moving to this model over the last 5 or 6 years.  I was an early beta tester for the google apps and moved my mail around 2005.  Other data has been slowly migrating since then.  



Security is not convenient, and convenient is not often secure.  Lets hope our cloud overlords take pity on us when they take over the world.