Or just use the Web Services APIs to get your data out... Google, Amazon, and Salesforce all offer APIs that make it relatively easy to move data in and out.

There's Klingons on the starboard bow!

And hacking into a computer is a good reason to fire somebody. Checking their email on an unlocked workstation, however, is a good reason to lock your screen.

"In physics, a quantum (plural: quanta) is an indivisible entity of a quantity that has the same units as the Planck constant and is related to both energy and momentum of elementary particles of matter (called fermions) and of photons and other bosons." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum

What makes you think something has to spin both ways at once to be quantum?

Why didn't you just lock your screen when you left for the day?

So call it a phased roll-out? We went through pretty much the same process at place where I work. We used Exchange when I started there. Then there was the option of switching over to Gmail. Then, when things seemed to be going smoothly, there was a forced deadline for when everybody had to switch.

The service agreement specifies 99.9% uptime, with service credits being paid if they fail to meet that mark: "AWS will use commercially reasonable efforts to make Amazon S3 available with a Monthly Uptime Percentage (defined below) of at least 99.9% during any monthly billing cycle (the âoeService Commitmentâ). In the event Amazon S3 does not meet the Service Commitment, you will be eligible to receive a Service Credit as described below."

It's not perfect, but I'm not aware of any companies offering any better uptime guarantees

I think you're confusing cloud computing with a distributed p2p network. I'm not knocking p2p, but the major players in cloud computing are pretty well accepted to be Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

But I don't *store* anything on google maps.. or the search engine. If it were to fail.. to fold.. or whatever, I'd still have basic service. I wouldn't have lost 10 years of documents..

Google Docs allows you to export to a pretty wide variety of formats, so you can always keep a local backup of your documents. I use Google Docs pretty extensively at work because it allows multiple people to collaborate on documents without having to email the documents around, and it includes versioning so I can see who made what change to any given document. I make regular local exported backups of the files that I'm working on. They're till missing some features, when compared with Microsoft or Open Office, but overall, it actually works pretty darn well.

You're probably already doing it. Do you use Gmail or do you have a single server somewhere? Ever use Google Docs for collaborative authoring of documents? Ever use an online backup service (that probably uses Amazon S3 in the background)? Ever use one of the iPhone apps that broke when S3 went down a year or so ago?

The data connection in downtown Chicago is pretty spotty. In the suburbs it's much better. Haven't had any troubles with voice or SMS.

I wonder why they didn't just drill down?

Sadly, the average Obama lemming-uhhh-supporter doesn't realize that, so they voted for Obama based on his promises.

It's not possible that we voted for him based on the fact that we generally agree with his position on most issues, and we had serious concerns about the sanity of the other guy's VP choice? I like McCain. I think had he been president over the past 8 years, the country would be in a much better position right now, but overall, I don't see much in the Republican party worth voting for. I don't care much about guns...I'm not against them, they're just not an issue for me. I don't have one, I don't want one. If you want one, great. It can be an issue for you. The abortion thing... It's never going to be illegal. It's just a wedge issue, and I guess it always will be. Even if it were illegal, it wouldn't stop people from getting abortions. Poor people would DIY it, and others would just go to Canada or Europe. Backing programs to reduce the overall number of abortions seems like a better route to me. Plenty of us "lemmings" are plenty well educated, and understand the issues. He made some overly optimistic promises before the election, but all politicians do that. It's part of the process. I think he's doing pretty well so far, considering all of the problems he inherited.

Nobody forced you to click on it...

"Ex-DJ", and while I think the guy is a clear moron, wired speakers are (by definition) not wireless. While I've seen wireless microphones plenty, I've never seen wireless speakers in a professional setting. And the sound coming out of them depends on pressure waves, not electromagnetic waves.

Yeah, I know what it is. I was saying I don't know how the expression got to be so commonplace.