I have what he's having... same here. I don't trust someone else with MY data, let alone would I pay someone else for use of their server to store MY data.

At the end of the day, "the cloud" is just a marketing term. It's really just another way of saying "someone else's server"... no thanks.

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That's been talked about. Our ancestors printed on paper, and we have documents that are 500 years old. We have HenryVIII's handwriting.

What will our descendants know about us in 100 years? Unless all of the databases and forums are backup up and kept.

Which leads to an observation for this thread.

When I back up movies, I use x264 vid and aac audio. It's a common standard right now. How long will that last? Will there be hardware and codes that play that 20 years from now? Remember wma wmv?

Maybe one should use a more "entrenched" standard. ATSC TV is mpeg2 and ac3. So is a DVD, it's what ATSC is based on. No guarantee that will last either.

The old movies/tv shows are either film, which can be encoded into digital however one wishes. Or made on the old NTSC video tape 480i standard. And they look awful when they are digitized. Because the original is awful. If the standards change, they can pull out the originals and reencode them into the new standard. That would be an argument for streaming. The providers will have to take care of that. Whereas if you have a pile of x264 vids, you'll be out of luck in time.

The newer movies that were recorded on a digital camera. The originals are fixed into a audio/video standard. If you reencode that, you'll loose quality.
I would think that they would have to keep that, so that the originals will play.

So, for a long term backup of videos, something to think about.

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Agreed.
As sure as the sun will come up tomorrow, sooner or later, there will be a major "disaster" with one of the cloud services. IMHO, using a cloud service is like storing your private files in your neighbor's garage and one night it burns down or the neighbor disappears with your files, etc., etc., etc. It will happen. It is just a matter of time and then the cloud mania will subside.

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I heard some years ago about a place in America where they can read old data formats which aren't readable anywhere else, stuff that was recorded in the 1950s and 1960s.

Amazing things can be done with film. You know how really ancient film usually looks weird and jerky because it was recorded at a different speed. Someone rerecorded a whole lot of World War One footage at the correct speed, colorised it, got a lipreading specialist to reconstruct what those men were saying and added it in as a sound track. It was an amazing effect, as if they were still alive.

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Agreed.
Most of the stuff, especially from Netflix and Amazon, is dark, deviant garbage!!!

OTOH, as Teckk said, the British have put out some good TV series. I liked "Doc Martin." I could live in Cornwall, if the weather is nice more than three months a year.
"Foley's War" was, except for one or two episodes, very good. I really liked Honeysuckle Rose, which is the "real" name of the female lead.
"Hustle" was, again, except for one or two episodes, very good. "The Man from Uncle" had a supporting role.
"New Tricks" was OK for the first few seasons. The last couple of seasons were a waste of time and electricity. Don't even think I finished the last season.
The trouble, IMHO, is the seasons are too short. Maybe 10 or 12 or so episodes. Most U.S. TV series run 20 plus episodes. Back in the early days of television some of them did over 30 episodes a season.

There might be more than one.
Off and on for years, and again recently, I've heard an advertisment on the radio for an outfit that claims they can convert your old movies, photos, etc., to a digital format and send you a DVD or thumb drive, and your originals, of course.

Going back to the original question, I think a lot of average users (and, remember, the persons who frequent this forum are not "average users" by any measure) are not aware of the pros and, especially, the cons, of entrusting their data to the cloud (which is merely a marketing term for "somebody else's server"). They are enticed by the convenience, and not deterred by the hazards, because they have not troubled to acquaint themselves with them.

They do not realize that the motives of those who promote the IoT and digital "assistants" are not wholly altruistic.

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Many companies feel that they simply have to store data online. The online places that I refer to have multiple copies stored miles and miles apart. If you had some legal reason to keep data and a hurricane or even large scale power outage or flood you'd be out of luck locally.

While it is possible to encrypt data that would seem secure we all know that at some point some crook or nation sponsored organization will find a way to access it. But from a corporate point of view it is a valid solution. (as in did their due diligence)

The above comment was not meant to be xenophobic. It's a generally recognized notion.

Locally may or may not be cost effective.

On one system we used to make backup tapes every night. Then put them in fireproof box and sent to neighbor site miles away. Suppose it was as good a plan as any.

"ancient film usually looks weird and jerky because it was recorded at a different speed." I was floating a notion to a few places to improve the existing video and audio. It was to take multiple copies of the resource and digitize it to take the weighted values of best and then re-create it. It would work for 3D reading of phonographic media too.

+1 @berndbausch
Selling Freedom for Convenience

Sometimes a 8GB dvd and k3b is used.

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Indeed!

And if your neighbor takes that into account they just might encourage you to store all your valuable stuff in their "safe" and "convenient" garage, and even help you move it over there.

That last scenario is IMO the reason one company with a history of abuse of Free software positioned itself to own the most prominent repo of said Free software - the most valuable product of the labor of untold thousands of intelligent people! When the inevtable day comes all those marbles will be in their bag, as it were when the music stops.

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Yeah, I don't get why people give their data to online storage sites either....

I keep backups on an external 3.5" disk, (secondary on 2.5") - whilst I use 2.5" disks & pendrives for daily storage. The most I've ever had was about 120GB data, I regularly clear out old stuff.

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You must not have kids or grandkids. They'll re-watch the same movie endlessly and the younger they are, the more they want to see the same movie over and over again!

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Remember when Amazon's east coast sites went down hard? It sure sucked to be any of their customers who didn't have site redundancy built into their contracted services. "Well, boss, all of our eggs are in just one basket but we're saving money! And, as a bonus, we don't have to keep hearing from those internal IT people telling us what a bad idea this is... since, as you know, they're all gone now. More savings!"

I'm not sure if there's even the remotest of possibilities of it ever taking place but, occasionally, the chilling scenario in this blog post/article wanders from the back of my mind to the front. (Scroll down to the "featured article" or down to the 9/11/21 paragraph if that's TL;DR for ya.)

[cringe]

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I'm just going to leave this here:
https://idlewords.com/talks/website_...tm#heavyclouds
and more talks.

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