goodgracious's comments

True, but he's admitting he doesn't access ("use") the data in the same month he downloads it. So downloading from his VPS IP address to the VPS's secondary storage, outside Canada, won't count toward his monthly Canada ISP's cap. It's only when he decides to download data from the VPS's secondary storage to his "local system" he'll begin using his monthly allowance.

Solution: VPS outside Canada to do your downloads from.

But what you describe is a networking problem (transit costs of your ISP passed on to you). Not a storage problem.

A "cloud storage" provider is just going to keep the data you store in a datacenter near to you anyway, not halfway around the world. But it's not like keeping your physical stuff with a storage company. You can easily store the data yourself with many more advantages. The marketing teams for "cloud storage" services will no doubt try to convince people otherwise.

My point was that I agree with what you said. Nothing more.

"if they chose to"

Precisely.

I know Kismet exists. I know I can install and run it. I know I can even break wi-fi encryption in some cases. But that doesn't mean I'm going to do this, for commercial purposes, for a company like Google.

In the wrong hands, deep knowledge of Wi-Fi can be far more destructive than the conventional methods of a non-technical journalist. It's a new level of power in snooping.

It's a good thing journalists generally do no have Milner's level of knowledge, as surely they too would abuse it. Maybe even worse than Google. Milner's comment reflects the power of the knowledge he has. He has to take some responsibility for it.

Both Google engineers and NYT journalists do snooping on others for a living.

They are just at odds with each other, for various reasons; engineers for companies like Google generally do not like journalists and generally the same is true vice versa.

Google has a genuine PR problem. And journalists are watching their careers disintegrate with the advance of communications technology. It's an amusing little spat to watch.

Who needs to imagine it? It's here.

Cat is out of the bag.

What is the Alexa list good for? Answer: Filtering out the boring, money-grubbing commercial sites. A truly GREAT idea.

A return to the good 'ole days. The non-commercial web.

Many young people who love today's www never got to experience it as it was before it became overrun with Google-ization and auto-generated garbage.

Take the ball and run with it. We ca reclaim the web. This is only the beginning.

Nonsense.

True, companies will encourage voluntarily uploading your stuff to their computers. Why shouldn't they? Just like they solicit your email address, track your movements, snarf your smartphone address book and other neat tricks. There's value in getting that info.

That doesn't mean everyone is going to fall for it. Some will, no doubt.

But GB's are getting cheaper every day. And not just for "cloud providers". How many terbaytes does one person need? You can fit your whole life's worth of data onto today's capacities of consumer digital storage.

Are we to imagine a future where consumers cannot purchase storage media? What drugs are you on?

The web is brittle. It's but one of many things that can be run over IP. You web-fanatics crack me up.