(This post was last modified: 08/09/2009 04:57 PM by Mickey.)

I think the idea of cloud computing would turn "laptops" more into terminals - ie you wirelessly connect to your computer in the cloud.

I used to have RAID0, but I got tired of the software RAID solution, and since it really doesn't help with speed, I just stuck to a single HDD.
RAID1 can improve read performance, but otherwise, it just provides redundancy.  Actually, for personal home use, it probably isn't that practical.  RAID1 only protects against drive failures.  For example, a power surge is most likely going to take out both drives, not just one.  Or some malicious thing hitting your computer will obviously affect both drives as well.
For personal data safety, I'd recommend periodic backups.
Redundancy makes a lot more sense when you have a lot of drives.

Ultimately, online/remote backup is probably more secure than anything you can do at home.  They consider stuff like physical security too - if your house gets robbed or blown up, you've lost the data, whereas they put measure in place to stop these things (at least, a good provider should be doing this).

Privacy seems to be a big issue, though, observing trends, people seem to be caring less and less about it.  Google being one of the most obvious - disregarding the fact that they know pretty much everything you've searched for, they will also know a lot about what sites you visit, considering the number of sites making use of Google Analytics or Adsense, every email if you use GMail (heh, they even say they scan every email), browsing activity if you use Chrome and a whole heap of other stuff.  Windows XP came with the Alexa spyware, and WGA can also be considered spyware.  Windows Vista (and I assume 7 as well) has craploads of spyware built in (including WGA and other activation poo poo).
People increasingly use online storage systems to store stuff, such as email, bookmarking, friends & contacts (and other social networking poo poo) and I've seen people even store primary copies of videos on places like Youtube.  Some do also backup data to the web (if you're really concerned about privacy, encrypt the data).  And of course, due to the nature of the internet, if you're not using SSL, everything you send usually passes multiple routers, thus, if the people running those really cared, they could log everything you do from there too.  Your ISP probably knows most of your online activity too.
It's really frightening how little privacy you actually have these days (at least, online, with offline activity, you're probably better off, as long as you don't use Windows or have a trojan installed).  And I think it's really only a matter of time before social values change...

On the other hand, there _may_ be a way to ensure data is kept private (ie some form of encryption where the cloud providers can't get your key), but that's to be worked out later.


But thanks for the interesting opinions :P
To be honest, I'm a little cautious of the privacy too.

(This post was last modified: 08/09/2009 07:32 PM by ZiNgA BuRgA.)