I like many others are finding the file system for DAZ and Poser to be a real drawback and has not got anything to do with the art we want to create.  If someone would stctloud service that would be able to take our files bought, free, or made (correctly) and file them in a way that allows us accesses to either update and download after install or even use on the web it would allow a lot more people to this world and they would spend money for the service either by paying per install or paying by the month for access to this information already correctly installed in the cloud.

It would take money and brain power to set up but it would be a constant income for many many years.  Think of the retirement income and a way to put money in the bank.

You could set up cost in many ways to make sure you get even the smallest user charge by the access,  or monthly, or added file or both.   

sorry missing part is   start a cloud

I know I am dreaming but even this is comming to your computer in the near future!

**"take our files bought, free, or made (correctly) and file them in a way that allows us accesses to either update and download after install or even use on the web it would allow a lot more people to this world and they would spend money for the service either by paying per install or paying by the month for access to this information already correctly installed in the cloud.....make sure you get even the smallest user charge by the access, **"

Hi
I just spent my First Full Day with My new tablet Computer the "Kindle Fire"
"Cloud" based computing( which is really a revival of the old "mainframe" systems used within larger Corporations  in the bygone past),

is designed for mobile users who need access to all or most of their DATA& Content new & Old across a variety of "smart" Devices.
the poser user typically only needs his /her content on ONE device.
their home computer where they will be rendering their image/animations etc.

Your post seems to indicate you thing poser user should somehow pay everytime they load an outfit from their poser library  in "the cloud"
I dont think such system would be accepted by this user base.

Cheers

im absolutely repulsed by cloud computing.

Quote - im absolutely repulsed by cloud computing.

Ehh it has it's place - not really for Poser though.  How'd you get around the licensing for e.g

We can just save our files in the cloud as a private archive and pull down for installation to local machine, but that would need a change in the licensing for some archives.  I would love to have backup in the cloud but the uploading time alone would drive me nuts, not to mention organising my stuff in the cloud.  

If we're talking about runtimes installed and run off the cloud, thee are issues such as lagging, licensing, and security to resolve.  Early days yet.

"im absolutely repulsed by cloud computing."

For Production& Creative software it is a major restriction of your Commercial freedom as it turns everyone into a "renter" dependent on having a broadband connection to use his creative tools.
This would be a nightmare for us who do deadline oriented Client work.

For Disposable mass media entertainment
(movies& music etc) I can see why it is being attempted as a "new" Distribution model.
Unfortunately IMHO they are too late as the "cloud"
for these two areas has existed for years in the form of file sharing and internet  so called "piracy" communities.

Cheers

I am actually being paid to solve some of these problems right now. I am developing a new product to enhance cloud storage security, and remove barriers to its adoption.

One of the barriers is ease of use - it has to be dead simple and transparent, as if you were not using cloud anything. That means that when you are not online, but you want your files, they are their locally. Not a problem. And if you modify/add/delete said files while offline, they should sync up later, when you reconnect, without you doing anything at all.

All of this is currently available right now from dropbox and box.net, just to name two examples. Box.net doesn't offer the transparent access unless you pay. Dropbox offers it even in the free service. But you only get 2 GB free with DB.

Anyway, what I'm concerned with has more to do with security and publication, hackers and thieves. In essence, the stores should be publishing in the cloud - the vendor does the installing. Then, instead of you downloading an item, you would just buy the right to access it where it is already installed. The tricky thing is to merge the appearance of that one item (and all the others you have "bought") into your personal view of the cloud. This is not insurmountable, but it is unheard of as yet. Once merged into your view, local copies will appear in your computer(s) without any effort on your part.

This is why I'm not posting very much about Poser.

Quote - im absolutely repulsed by cloud computing.

Don't equate cloud computing with cloud storage. Not saying you were, but the subject of this thread is storage, not computing. We'll be doing the rendering (computing) locally, from local copies of files, even if the runtime is replicated in the cloud.

Personally, I have already had the satisfaction of a dead computer replaced in minutes because all my important files were in DropBox. It took me zero effort to recreate "My Documents" when I got my new machine. All I did was install DropBox, enter my user id and password, and all my files re-appeared. Poof.

That's great, BB.

One point as a content user: when merchants move away from stores or drop out from selling content altogether, their products are taken down.  With traditional purchase, download-and-install content, we still have access locally to on our computers.  If we shift completely to the cloud, that's a different scenario.

In my scenario you if you have 3 computers with cloud storage, there are 4 copies of the file. One on each computer, local, and the extra copy in the cloud.

If you lose a computer and replace with a new one, there are now 5 copies, one of which is no longer tracking changes. (The dead computer)

In the event that a vendor would "revoke" a file, then I suppose there is the possibility of losing access to it (all copies would disappear) but in the case of purchased content, I suppose the right approach would be to say that a vendor simply is not legally allowed to revoke a file. Or - we make the system work in such a way that the original published copy is not required to maintain the shadow (local) copies for people who bought the right to have that content. Either way, the bias against cloud storage has more to do with the fact that this is new and unrefined, rather than it is new and sucks.

Cloud storage has it's pros and cons.  I'm generally against it, or more specifically being forced into it.  If the only option for a product would be something in the cloud, then I'd be pretty mad and likely not buy the thing.

Tell me what you think the difference is between your account presented at Rendo today, versus one based on cloud storage. Specifically, what's the difference between a web site with downloadable files granted to you over time due to purchases, versus "the cloud". How is having a file show up on your machine after you buy it, through no action on your part, a bad thing?

I suspect since "the cloud" is not actually well defined, we're talking past each other.

Why not dream really big? Poser/DS as a service over the web. I believe that Adobe is already doing this with Photoshop Express. The application and the assets would live in the cloud. You'ld have auromatic access to a renderfarm. You wouldn't have to buy any content, you'ld rent whatever you needed for a scene from a huge selection etc. Getting DAZ etc. to come up with a profitable and afordable pricing scheme would be difficult no doubt, but hey, it's a dream :-)

Folks, BB may be under an NDA, so I don't think he can actually talk in specifics.

Bill, I'm thinking more along the lines of, it's on your computer (so long as the computer is working) vs it's never on your PC if there's a problem with internet, the site is down, the servers are buggy, as well as bandwidth issues (not so much a problem in the US but a problem in other countries) which include having to download (have streamed) several large files every time you want to do a render, etc. Then you've got to consider as cloud computing becomes more popular, you've got to realize that malware targeted at the weakest link (end user) will start showing up.

Plus I'm thinking the federal government is going to probably get involved sooner or later and just make everything in the cloud a legal nightmare.  Take the stop online piracy act.  A pirate stores something pirated in your provider's cloud then that entire cloud goes bye-bye.  Or if he has a pirated copy of V4, then no one can use V4 until the whole piracy mess is cleaned up.

Finally, we all know that 90% cloud storage will eventually be used to hide people's porn collection.  :blink:

Quote - > Quote - im absolutely repulsed by cloud computing.

Don't equate cloud computing with cloud storage. Not saying you were, but the subject of this thread is storage, not computing. We'll be doing the rendering (computing) locally, from local copies of files, even if the runtime is replicated in the cloud.

Personally, I have already had the satisfaction of a dead computer replaced in minutes because all my important files were in DropBox. It took me zero effort to recreate "My Documents" when I got my new machine. All I did was install DropBox, enter my user id and password, and all my files re-appeared. Poof.

its both, actually.  cloud computing repulses me due to ideological, privacy, freedom and security reasons.

but my main issue with cloud storage is the fact that not everyone has unlimited bandwidth.  by 2012, theres no reason we shouldnt - yet as each year goes by, bandwidth caps/restrictions/fair use policies get more and more restrictive, and overages more and more ridiculous.  all i see are attempts by ISPs to charge more and more for b/w each year. in fact the Canadian govt just quashed a bill that was almost passed that would have made unlimited internet a thing of the past here.

my latest product has over 10 gigs of (compressed) WIP files. what should i do with that? upload it to a cloud? i can just burn it to a couple DVDs or a BD for $1 - by the time i need to worry about disc rot, the data on it will be obsolete.  my only concern is if my house burns down - which is why i keep some copies of important data such as family photos, documents, etc in a safety deposit box offsite (which came free with my bank account).

contacts, small files/documents, etc i need to access from elsewhere can be stored in the GMAIL 'cloud' - which is about as far as i personally want to go with cloud computing.

right now im on mobile broadband with a very low monthly cap and extremely high overages. now i dont intend to be in this situation forever, and am eager to get back onto unlimited internet - there are still many areas where this is not a possibility.  also keep in mind that many of you are in the US, but Poser users are international - so when considering cloud runtimes we are talking about the entire world. not everyone has access to inexpensive, unlimited internet.  internet access is cheap in some countries, astronomically expensive in others.

i just went through my runtime and deleted all of the bloat - anything i havent used in years, or default content i didnt need, etc i deleted. i have it trimmed down to 3 gigs and over 10k files. thats still a lot of data to access remotely.  many people have runtimes over 10 gigs.

when im traveling im not going to be rendering on a smartphone. a laptop? well, i can just copy the runtime over in a couple minutes, or even put it on a USB stick or drive.
so what benefit would a cloud runtime have for me? none, really.  but it would open the door for more ridiculous licensing/profiteering schemes from content providers.  im not a renter/leaser. i prefer to buy things outright, and own them unconditionally and be in full control of them.  when i buy something its mine, and you have no right to take it back, change the conditions of the agreement, the prices, the terms of use, etc - or have any say in how/when/where i use that product.  cloud runtimes would put you in a position where you would lose this control/absolute ownership.

"Getting DAZ to come up with a profitable and afordable pricing scheme would be difficult no doubt, but hey, it's a dream :-)"

HAAAHA

"so what benefit would a cloud runtime have for me? none, really.  but it would open the door for more ridiculous licensing/profiteering schemes from content providers.  im not a renter/leaser. i prefer to buy things outright,"

Agreed!!
a Cloud based runtime would only be relevant  if you needed to access it from some mobile location
and who would need to do that as your runtime is literally part of your poser software set up.

I personally think that companies Like Adobe would be foolish to think that CG pro's will fully embrace the idea of  depending on remote software for deadline oriented client production work.
But perhaps they are targeting the casual user who may only need a decent graphics editing program without any long term need to "own " a local copy.

IMO the Companies that will likely prevail with this "cloud" scheme are the ones that offer some form of hardware that is closely tied to their cloud based "ecosystems" of Content.

I Just bought the new tablet from Amazon, the android based "kindle Fire" to sort of celebrate My completion and final delivery of the finished Character animation for a Film client.

While it is pre linked to my Amazon account it has two options for content -"CLOUD" or "DEVICE"
and while gives me great mobile access to the  Massive Amazon ecosystem
I am glad it works as nice stand alone device when I am not in a wi fi hot spot. meaning I can read my own PDF books & Documents  or watch my own local Video content in HD MP4 format that I load on it Via its USB port from my Mac or run my own local android apps .

Cheers

well thats where computing is heading, and the future looks pretty grim to me.

the average user will just rent a box like a cable box that allows them access to the cloud.  telecom cos will sell tiered application 'packages' for office/productivity apps, games, media access, etc.  this will likely also allow them to charge for home networking since each 'computer' will require its own box and subscription.

the casual user will rejoice at no more worrying about viruses, malware, identity theft, stability issues, freezes, hardware failure, data loss, updates, installation, being scammed and gouged by comp stores/repairmen etc.  most of them dont care about the finer points of computing freedom and just want things to be easy to use, and work - fast and trouble free. 

the powerusers and internet 'purists' will suffer, and likely hang onto hardware as long as they can despite the fact that itll likely become more and more prohibitively expensive as it leaves the mainstream.

either way, small local comp stores days are numbered. 

"While it is pre linked to my Amazon account it has two options for content -"CLOUD" or "DEVICE"
and while gives me great mobile access to the  Massive Amazon ecosystem
I am glad it works as nice stand alone device when I am not in a wi fi hot spot. meaning I can read my own PDF books & Documents  or watch my own local Video content in HD MP4 format that I load on it Via its USB port from my Mac or run my own local android apps ."

the amount of software and games that are shipping recently that require uninterrupted internet access to run their DRM is alarming.  perhaps im just more sensitive to it since i have to closely monitor my bandwidth usage, but DRM schemes are getting quite oppressive.  cloud computing is DRM's wet dream.  a situation where vendors control the content, distribution and hardware can be a particularly disadvantageous one for the consumer. ie: running only vendor approved software on vendor approved hardware over a vendor approved distribution network.

look at the iphone as just one small example of how a company with a closed system can take advantage of its customers. it is an overpriced device with oppressive limitations on its usability and interaction with other devices, deliberately designed hardware upgradeability limitations (no user replaceable battery, no microSD slot, etc), etc.  (unless you jailbreak and/or use unapproved 3rd party apps), its intentionally designed so that simple operations like putting a photo album on your phone has to go through an apple approved application. look at how apple abuses the closed platform and you will see where cloud computing is headed.

"well thats where computing is heading, and the future looks pretty grim to me."

My personal prediction is that it wont happen as quickly and smoothly as some of the "cloud Dreamers" may think or hope.

Take for example the home video market.
After a short lived format war between HDDVD and Blue-ray BR emerged victorious which seemed to portend the end of the Standard DVD market for both content and hardware.
Bill gates asserted that it did not matter who won the aforementioned format war because the physical disc as a delivery format for home movies, was "Doomed".

But what do we see today
in any official home release of a major hollywood
Film??

The "combo pack"
A Blue Ray Disc +Standard DVD, and a "Digital Copy" in the cloud

They realized that unlike VCR's that World is still Flooded perfectly functional and low cost Standard DVD players and large numbers of people who Do not understand or just dont care about seeing everything in glorious 1080pi.

So they still offer the DVD's for them the BR for the "cutting edgers" and the
Digital "cloud copy" for the uber tech savvy,mobile "bleeding edgers'.
Now considering the number of laptops and Desktop PC's and Macs still
in that hands of people who desire to have their applications installed locally
it does not seem like to me that such market will be completely obsolete for some time in favor of some Empty box that is useless without a broadband feed tube

"the amount of software and games that are shipping recently that require uninterrupted internet access to run their DRM is alarming."

Indeed it is however sometimes it has the unintended effect of creating a vibrant alternative market for Slightly Older hardware and user community home brewed software& content to run on it

this is Exactly what has occurred with the Sony PSP hand held gaming system
as they moved from UMD media Disc based games to Download only version of all their content.
The " PSP home brew" community created their own alternative firmware for the PSP
Along with Content that is in many way far more versatile than the officially supported releases from sony.
this has also caused the resale value of older  PSP's to remain abnormally high.

"look at how apple abuses the closed platform and you will see where cloud computing is headed."

Consider ,however that if this Cloud Model Take soff as expected  then  Draconian Closed systems Like Apple will be in Peril Due to competing ecosystems that offer similar quality
Content.
Particularly considering hardware costs
Understand this:
I am a long time Mac user
but the android market is a viable competitor to the Apple IOS
at this point and,according to business tech reports, right now the number two selling tablet after the Ipad is My new" kindle fire"at $200 USD verses $499 for an Ipad.
and most of the android based "smart phones" can be had for less than the Iphone.

So I do wonder how long apple will be able to justify the cost of its IOS hardware devices.

Cheers

Quote - the amount of software and games that are shipping recently that require uninterrupted internet access to run their DRM is alarming.  perhaps im just more sensitive to it since i have to closely monitor my bandwidth usage, but DRM schemes are getting quite oppressive.  cloud computing is DRM's wet dream.  a situation where vendors control the content, distribution and hardware can be a particularly disadvantageous one for the consumer. ie: running only vendor approved software on vendor approved hardware over a vendor approved distribution network.

look at the iphone as just one small example of how a company with a closed system can take advantage of its customers. it is an overpriced device with oppressive limitations on its usability and interaction with other devices, deliberately designed hardware upgradeability limitations (no user replaceable battery, no microSD slot, etc), etc.  (unless you jailbreak and/or use unapproved 3rd party apps), its intentionally designed so that simple operations like putting a photo album on your phone has to go through an apple approved application. look at how apple abuses the closed platform and you will see where cloud computing is headed.

Yeah, things like this are my biggest pet peeves when it comes to modern computing;  clouds, DRM, and things big companies do to screw the end user.

The only way I can see any form cloud stuff working is if theres a good countrywide web infrastructure offering safe, secure and fast access. Thats not just any form of online-poser, but downloads or even just basic email.  

Which at present isn't avaliable, well certainly not in the UK, indeed having to travel regularly I find the choices are ..

Dongles. Overpriced, unreliable and with incredibly limited bandwith.

Hotspots - free ones are normally insecure. Even in safe places like hotels and business centres theres time limits or data caps. Some companies also have content restrictions when using their networks.

All of which assumes you can figure which out network is safe to login onto. At one northern airport I use, theres 7 hotspots all claimng to be the aiport!

Scrounging - asking a friend if you can use theirs, which as well as being anti-social might impact their bandwith.

Smartphones - OKISH for basic stuff like maps and email, but can be pricey and often slow on 3G.

BTFON - a service which allows customers of one phone company/ISP to logon quickly and safely. Service is reasonably fast and works well, but only if you use that company.

...Bascally there nothing thats totally 100% on tap and safe like it is at home.

Though if there is a good reliable infrastructure in place it can work....Like the situ here..
http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/news/Royal_wedding_photographers_Behind_the_scenes_news_307258.html
...having trialled one of those cards at another event, it's amazing tech. But only when theres a good network and then we're back to the 1st point.

The sad part about a lot of this is that you don't own any of your software to begin with (Unless you wrote it). Almost all software rights are retained by the creator. Including the right to make you delete it from your system is you are found in violation of the EULA associated with it. Cloud storage violates almost every EULA out there.

That in itself is the biggest drawback of cloud storage.

All a software creator would have to do is notify the cloud storage service that you forfited your rights to the program based on the EULA, and the next time you connect you loose it.

Cloud storage for information that is not bound by a EULA is fine, but as soon as a EULA is involved, the lawyers will step in.

I personally would not use a cloud storage service simply because I have my own servers that already do the same thing they do on my home network. My servers also keep far more information than most cloud systems would.

If one of my systems dies, I can do a complete system restore to within a day of the failure, and certain directories are mirrored on every write event. If I add something to a Runtime, it appears on multiple machines here etc.

I don't know if the clouds can do complete system backups, but I doubt that they are anywhere near as capable as my own personal setup

Security is a huge problem with any storage system. If someone gets in, they will get synced. Meaning that they get your info, and you get theirs next time you connect. That can be a really bad thing if if you have a lot of systems linked to the cloud, and they inserted something mailcious into you data.

Sooner or later someone will come up with a security system that will stop most of the problem.

From personal experience, I will say later, much later.

All you have to do is look at the news, and you will quickly see that the best security systems are cracked all the time.

If you can write it, someone can crack it. The cracking part is only a matter of time.

The best security systems are not cracked all the time. It's the not-best ones that are cracked all the time.

Quote - The sad part about a lot of this is that you don't own any of your software to begin with (Unless you wrote it). Almost all software rights are retained by the creator. Including the right to make you delete it from your system is you are found in violation of the EULA associated with it. Cloud storage violates almost every EULA out there.

in THEORY.  putting it into practice is another thing entirely.
good luck enforcing it while your users are running their own local machines.

a small example of this is way back when one of the major content providers tried to enforce a 'special' altered EULA after the fact for a character based on a minor celebrity.  in addition to the standard license there were other stipulations that it not be used in certain types of renders - offensive, pornographic, violent, endorsing a product, unflattering (lol), etc.  the userbase told them to go pound sand, the company took huge amounts of flak over it, and IIRC soon after they claimed the added restrictions had simply been a 'request'.

had those users been on a cloud, theyd have been completely at the mercy of the company and yanking their rights from under them would have been a trivial affair.  in fact, it would have been a simple matter for the company to say 'we have noticed that you have posted an image that violates the EULA for this product. your digital rights to the product have been revoked and your account has been closed'.

cloud computing tips 100% of the control over to the publisher. this is not a good situation for the customer to be in.

Quote - How is having a file show up on your machine after you buy it, through no action on your part, a bad thing?

Scenario #1: Someone hacks your cloud and replaces one of your "trusted" files with a rabid virus. Your PC automagically grabs it and WHAM! Your back ups are screwed. Your computer is screwed. You're screwed!

I'll stick to having my backups on media that cannot be hacked thank you very much!

Quote - > Quote - How is having a file show up on your machine after you buy it, through no action on your part, a bad thing?

 

Scenario #1: Someone hacks your cloud and replaces one of your "trusted" files with a rabid virus. Your PC automagically grabs it and WHAM! Your back ups are screwed. Your computer is screwed. You're screwed!

I'll stick to having my backups on media that cannot be hacked thank you very much!

This assumes you have bad security - i.e. you are not using client side encryption. You are more likely to be hit by an asteroid than to have a file replaced without your awareness of it. A modified file simply won't make any sense when you bring it down to your computer. It will be recognizable nonsense.

..This assumes you have bad security

By that do you mean blame the end user or are you saying there are totally 100% unbeatable security systems out there?

Either way is bull. Nothing is ever totally unbeatable. Look at how many times DRM is regularly walked around or it bugs the customers so much they either opt out or make a big fuss.

Theres also plently of examples of how if users are annoyed too much, they'll take actions which can become counter productive to security. Like jailbreaking their mobiles. 

What you need are simple transparent systems that don't adversely impact the user. Either by EULA or operation. Give them things like the opportunity to back up to hard media, or allow other ways of authentication say ones that don't need the internet.

Quote - They realized that unlike VCR's that World is still Flooded perfectly functional and low cost Standard DVD players and large numbers of people who Do not understand or just don't care about seeing everything in glorious 1080pi.

Not just that, but there are plenty of people (myself included) who don't own a TV set that are capable of "hi-def" viewing, and so buying Blu-ray format movies is pointless.

Until all the TVs that can't handle HD resolution have been replaced you'll continue to see people wanting DVD media.

I’m an old fashioned – don’t need no steenkin’ cloud type and I will never store my pr0n in the cloud as long as I have a working HD ÷) I do also see the way things are going though. While there are advantages to having your own water well, electrical generator etc., it simply makes more sense to have those things as centrally maintained utilities and in the long term, I can imagine computing going in the same direction. The problems of universal high speed access and security are difficult but probably not intractable. Outages will be inevitable, but a well designed global infrastructure should minimize them and people will accept that they occasionally happen, just as they do with other utilities. Privacy seems to be a concept that is fading with each new generation. It is a concern for me but if trends continue, I suppose that in 50 years everyone will be content to have a camera shoved up their bums to continually broadcast their intestinal status to the world – and monitored by the gov’t. It does make sense to me though that web hosted 3D applications and content may someday come to pass. Downloading and managing gigabytes of content locally, along with installing and updating applications may make sense today… but if it could be done online, then I can see future users of Adobe ‘Poser Studio 2020’ happily creating scenes with Victoria 12 on their ‘pads while sitting in the park and having them rendered in seconds with the spare cycles of MicroGoogle’s global server farm. Rather than go back and forth in forum messages, you could have someone instantly log onto your scene and show you tweaks etc. Who knows what people would come up with in terms of group collaboration etc. Even as a ‘pry my Vickie from my cold dead hands’ luddite, I can see enormous potential. Remember, you heard it here first ÷)

Now they just have to design the hardware for that....

Code the basic security and keep it working...

Lay out the multi-billion dollar investment to actually =create= the kind of high speed net to handle that traffic load....

Create new laws to avoid unresolved issues like creator's rights vs end user's right, ownership concepts and how they will change...or simply become irrelevant, how much control does the cloud hardware owner(s) actually have over digital information that they never had any true involvement in, the whole structure of contractual law that will get tossed in to rape the sheeple and grow the bottom line......

Tweak existing laws to fit into a framework they were never designed for (I give you the RIAA and MPAA as shining examples of how -that- problem is being addressed)...

Improve the power grid and power production systems overall to handle  the load....

Yep.

Gonna be worth it.

Now where is my 'You'll get my data when you pry my hard drive out of my cold, dead hand' bumper sticker.......? 

I use online storage for backups, I encrypt my files with a good password, using an up-to-date encryption too. It may not be unbeatable, but I think that it's safe enough for my files. Even a bank safe isn't "unbeatable", it's just safe enough so that a serious try to rob it isn't worth it. Too complicated, too expensive, not enough benefit.

But I like to have my files here as well, a "Cloud only" solution would not exactly be that what I want. 

Quote -
had those users been on a cloud, theyd have been completely at the mercy of the company and yanking their rights from under them would have been a trivial affair.  in fact, it would have been a simple matter for the company to say 'we have noticed that you have posted an image that violates the EULA for this product. your digital rights to the product have been revoked and your account has been closed'.

cloud computing tips 100% of the control over to the publisher. this is not a good situation for the customer to be in.

This has actually already happened a couple of times, even w/ only a semi-cloud rig, 

I know it's going to be pooh-poohed, but consider the following rather not-uncommon bork-ups by remote control:

• Paid-for books pulled from Kindle
• There has already been a massive data loss due to DRM+cloud, though only to certain phone owners.
• Ever seen what happens when your dumbassed management relies too much on WAN to do things, and some CALTRANS worker decides to cut the fiber? It was fun to watch, but the cleanup is lousy.

These aren't hypotheticals - these have actually happened. The third one happened at my former employer's remote production site, costing a few hundred thousand bucks in downtime before the connection was restored (because an incredibly dumbassed Head of IT forcefully told me to "stop worrying" about the realtime production BI system over a WAN, because "we have an SLA for that". All it would've taken on my part was to forward that little recorded IM conversation to the CEO, and he would've been fired that day.)

Anecdote aside, I fully expect these things to happen more often.

Personally, 'the cloud' has its uses. A quickie webhost, some temporary DB expansion,  maybe  a cool place for your mobile folks to use and grab computing power.

But... woe to the fool who depends on it for storage, or uses any with DRM ("Digital Rights Management") in it. That last part is what has (justifiably) kept me well away from the Kindle. If I don't have locally stored and sync'ed copies under my exclusive control, I don't want it, period. 

I own my data and applications, EULAs be damned. I don't (and won't) rent either.

To that end, I use rsync to my home server (runs any everything), and always keep a spare 2TB HDD full of encrypted backups at my Mother-in-law's house. The price of UPS Ground for that is way cheaper overall.

 (edited to remove the pre-coffee typos)

Quote - The best security systems are not cracked all the time. It's the not-best ones that are cracked all the time.

The ones that are cracked are the ones that have information the hacker can gain the most from. It doesn't have anything to do with the systems in place, it is what is behind it that attracts the hackers.

Anything that contains information someone wants badly enough will get cracked sooner or later.

If you think otherwise, you are sadly mistaken. (No offence, but there is no such thing as hack proof)

Just ask Sony, Steam, any big bank, any government, etc. Servers like that get attacked all the time. Sony has been hacked at least two times since the first one, and that is just what they told reporters. Keep in mind, that was after increasing and changing the security from the first attack. So we know of three different security setups the were cracked in a row. Obviously, they probably were not the best security systems out there. One of them was cracked within hours of going live.

Anonymous (a hacker group) was able to pull over 10 gigabytes of info off of one government server, then corrupt the data before the security in place even noticed it. And they have done it more than once, to different servers with different security setups.

When it comes to encyption, some of it can be cracked in real time, no need to guess what the key is and risk sending a bad one to the server that would trigger a security action.

There is hardware to do 40bit all but instantly, 56 bit takes about an hour or so, 256 takes about a day, etc...

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/resource_files/documentation/hacking-dict.html

Just read the first section of what I linked if you doubt it.

I am not going to explain how to do it, but it can be done, and it is done all the time. There are laws in place to ensure they can be cracked. Sounds strange, but that is unfortunetly the way it is. Open up Internet Explorer and hit about, 256 bit encryption support is the best it will do (US release, releases in some countries have lower bit support.). That is governed by a law as a balance of safe, but still easily crackable. There are ways to do connections beyond 256 bit, they just take longer to crack the encryption.

If you make something more hack proof, you will just attract a better hacker than the system you put in place. The more locks you put on it, the more they will want to know what is behind it.

Its a sad truth, and it happens all the time.

Maybe someday there will be a way to make something hack proof, but those days are far off into the future. And it will all but require scrapping the current TCP/IP way of doing internet connections to pull it off. TCP/IP is just too limited. Syn cookies, TCPCT, and other tricks help, but also point right at how part of the security is set up.

"When it comes to encyption, some of it can be cracked in real time, no need to guess what the key is and risk sending a bad one to the server that would trigger a security action.

There is hardware to do 40bit all but instantly, 56 bit takes about an hour or so, 256 takes about a day, etc..."

"I am not going to explain how to do it, but it can be done, and it is done all the time. There are laws in place to ensure they can be cracked. Sounds strange, but that is unfortunetly the way it is. Open up Internet Explorer and hit about, 256 bit encryption support is the best it will do (US release, releases in some countries have lower bit support.). That is governed by a law as a balance of safe, but still easily crackable."

where is the facepalm smiley*?

how about we make a deal:

i will send you a compressed 7-zip file.  in this *.7z file will be a document, and that document will contain a phrase.
i will not use anything stronger than 256 bit encryption.
if you tell me what that phrase is, i will cut you a cheque for $1000.

im not going to hold you to your 'easily crackable in one day' statement. how about a year? you can have an entire year to provide me with the phrase. if in that time you dont provide the phrase, you send me a cheque for $100.

do we have a deal?

Quote - where is the facepalm smiley*?

lol... I didn't say I have the machines, but they are out there...

Just as an example of what can be done if you have the resources.

There was an article published about all the stuff the seal team 6 took in the raid in Pakistan. The article was on May 5th 3 days after the raid. There was another article about a week later disclosing that a lot of it was AES-256 bit encrypted and would take some time to decypher using the "brute force" method.

On June 8th they announced 95% of it was decyphered.

Didn't take them too long did it....

If you choose "pickle" as your password, behind which you have your 256-bit key hidden, then it will be cracked in 30 seconds. This has absolutely nothing to do with 256-bit keys.

On the other hand, you will not crack my password in millions of years, because it looks like this:

1603478w3bcefe8g7rtf7wfe88rg8r7g

There's a lot of people talking here who don't actually represent the considered opinion and knowledge of a cryptographer. Caveat emptor.

Meanwhile, read this and explain to me again what you actually know and have evidence of versus what you would like to believe because it tickles you to think that really smart people are baffled and you're not.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/28/brazil_banker_crypto_lock_out/

Or how about this bit of "ground breaking news"

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/19/aes_crypto_attack/

A weakness has been found!!! AES can be cracked in only 20 trillion years instead of 100 trillion years. Yay.

Who here knows the difference between:

no chance

one chance in a billion

?

Where did I ever say crypto was unbreakable? I also have said many times that it is very unlikely to die in a plane crash. You can't refute that by saying it's not impossible. Nobody said it's impossible to die in a plane crash, so that refutation is pointless.

Similarly, it is incredibly unlikely that all the computers in the world working together can credibly break into a properly assembled crypto system. Far easier is to just beat it out of an administrator.

But if you hold the keys, and the cloud admins do not, then you only have to fear that you will give up the keys.

Saying that there is no crypto that is unbreakable is not saying anything at all. We know there is no unbreakable crypto. If you can survive past the age of the universe, you can indeed crack any crypto. If ...

http://www.webcitation.org/5rocpRxhN

Quote - Ah, but what about the dreaded massively distributed cracking brute force method for attacking something like 128 bit RC5 encryption?  There are massive zombie farms of infected computers throughout the world and some may have gotten as big as 1 million infected computers.  What if that entire army was unleashed upon the commonly used 128 bit RC5 encryption?  Surprisingly, the answer is not much.  For the sake of argument, let’s say we unleash 4.3 billion computers for the purpose of distributed cracking.  This means that it would be 4.3 billion or 2 to the 32 times faster than a single computer.  This means we could simply take 2 to the 128 combinations for 128-bit encryption and divide it by 2 to the 32 which means that 2 to the 96 bits are left.  With 96 bits left, it’s still 4.3 billion times stronger than 64 bit encryption.  64 bit encryption happens to be the world record for the biggest RC5 bit key cracked in 2002 which took nearly 5 years to achieve for a massive distributed attack. Now that we know that the distributed attacks will only shave off a few bits, what about Moore’s law which historically meant that computers roughly doubled in speed every 18 months?  That means in 48 years we can shave another 32 bits off the encryption armor which means 5 trillion future computers might get lucky in 5 years to find the key for RC5 128-bit encryption.  But with 256-bit AES encryption, that moves the date out another 192 years before computers are predicted to be fast enough to even attempt a massively distributed attack.  To give you an idea how big 256 bits is, it’s roughly equal to the number of atoms in the universe!

I think to be successful, a cloud service must provide some real benefits over a local installation (i think that was the OP's intention, too). If all one would gain, is to save oneself from unpacking a zipfile or execute an installer there would be very little benefit, because the major work is not the unpacking, but rather for example the very common "missing texture" or "missing obj"-errors. If a solution for these would be included, perhaps someone would actually pay for it. Otherwise everything one would gain would be a slightly better ftp service. But that would require to make all this content available to actually work together and i have my doubts if this could be accomplished by unleashing all those 100s of content vendors into, e.g. one big cloud filesystem and letting them install their things (given the fact that a significant amount of content vendors are incapable of installing just one or two of their own packages without producing any errors).

personally with regards to installers, i would like to see poser be able to handle simple compressed containers which hold ALL of the associated files for a product, rather than each product littering your runtime with hundreds of files and folders.

a poser user should be able to just buy a product .ZIP and place that .ZIP file into a 'Runtime' folder which they could organize how they like.  INSIDE the .zip we have the same runtime structure as our product zips have now (or you could have Poser search for required files automatically within the zip) - however the end user would not have to unzip, they could just leave it in the 'container'.  similar to how compressed .ROMs are handled by emulators.

the application (poser) would read the files in this runtime folder (a cache could be created to speed up startup). decompressing textures, geometries, etc on the fly with modern processors would be a trivial task.

since OBJ, CR2, TIFF, etc files often compress to 10% their uncompressed size, this would immediately shrink runtimes to a fraction of their size. in addition, it would improve drive performance - especially for NTFS and flash based drives.

installing, uninstalling, reinstalling, archiving, etc would simply be a matter of moving a ~10 meg .ZIP container around. UPDATING a product would be a breeze since you would simply need to overwrite the .ZIP.

im not a software engineer - in fact im not a technical brain at all. but i dont see why this would not be possible?

Quote - ... A weakness has been found!!! AES can be cracked in only 20 trillion years instead of 100 trillion years. Yay.

Oh, what a pity :-( In this case i would rather wait until until my hacking victim makes a mistake. Usually happens much faster than that...

lol, you make a good point BB.

Most people do not use passwords like you posted, and if they did, it would make cracking harder to do. Brute force cracking is a last resort, and does take a long time simply because of the shear number of possibilities. I would asume that the stuff that was cracked so fast was cracked by the dictionary method, or the key was found within the information obtained. Who knows, they may have beaten it out of someone as well.

For what you are doing, I would assume that it is going to use RSA, which is far superior to ASE. Cracking RSA would require much more time, and many governments have tried to pass legislation to limit its use. Or to make the keys available to other agencies.

Thankfully that hasn't happened, but they are at it again.

People are pushing the SOPA thing again, and you can bet that they will sneak other things in it later. The base idea ot SOPA is a great idea. It will help our economy, cut down on piracy etc. But giving the Justice Department complete control over it might not be. Considering that they are one of the the ones that wanted access to the encryption keys to begin with.

And just to get you thinking....

As far as times for cracking ASE? The record for 40 bit is .0002 seconds. and that was set years ago by a team bent on proving the flaws in DES.

These people that did it are here: https://www.eff.org/

TSWG has had software for cracking 256 bit for years, with this http://www.tswg.gov/subgroups/isf/electronic-evidence/products.html (with their Counter-Encryption Tool)  I have no idea why they even posted info on it. At least they took some of the info off of the site that really should not have been there to begin with.

How long do you think your password would hold up to a system like that?

I would guess "not long" would be the correct answer.

Do you actually think they would still get funding if none of it worked? I think not.

And if it didn't work, no one would use it.

For a tool that the Department of Defense funds, and most branches of the US government now use because it works, anyone that thinks it doesn't work is misinformed.

"TSWG has had software for cracking 256 bit for years, with this http://www.tswg.gov/subgroups/isf/electronic-evidence/products.html (with their Counter-Encryption Tool)  I have no idea why they even posted info on it. At least they took some of the info off of the site that really should not have been there to begin with.

How long do you think your password would hold up to a system like that?"

did you not read my post?

"I would guess "not long" would be the correct answer."

only if your definition of 'not long' is measured in centuries, even accounting for moore's law.  i suppose if you look at human evolution as a whole, a couple centuries is 'not long' at all.

Poser content in a cloud? what a funny idea! absurd, but funny. :lol:

It's not absurd and I've actually been thinking about how I might set it up for distributing my own stuff.

I am always tweaking and improving things. People are always trying to stay up to date with my shaders. Thousands upon thousands of people experience one or more of the following:

1. They don't know how to install shaders

2. They don't know how to update shaders

3. They don't know or have troubling unzipping shaders

4. They are unaware that I updated a shader and published new versions

5. They get confused when I post useful variations and then they mix them up and think they're using a particular variant but they're still using the first one they got.

Etc.

Now imagine a different world:

You install "Ted's Magic Cloud Runtime" software.

You activate it to synchronize to my "Bagginsbill-Freebie" runtime - everything I have ever published, already installed properly. Further, as I make new things, I put them in there.

The Magic Cloud software keeps your local copy local, but synchronized so that updates and additions that I put in my runtime show up in your copy automatically.

All you have to do is join the network once in a while and your copy will be updated and instantly ready to work in Poser because it is a full runtime - just like the ones you have now. It's local, not cloud based. The cloud part has to do with distribution, not storage.

I think people would absolutely love this.