coming down from the cloud

With the collective resources that google provides, also with amazon's cloud service being more and more popular. we now storing our documents up there in the cloud, somewhere. Where? No one really 100 percent sure, but with those companies promises, we know that our files ARE SAFE. OR are they?
With the convinience of internet, massive information are throwing on the internet. Recently I read about an article saying Facebook may share our info to other sites, and believe it or not, IT IS in the default privacy declaration. Just people dont really read it, that all.
Personally, I don't really mind that my photos or date of birth are exposed to other people; somehow, I can't help but wonder, what if those files that we store on the internet are somehow shared to other people? true that with cloud computing, we can get access to our documents everywhere with the connection of the internet, but call me old fashioned, I still a littlbe but hold back from this whole cloud computing thing. Still, I believe in hard drives, human intalelligence rather than computer.

further reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Computing
http://singularityhub.com/2010/03/21/forget-iq-collective-intelligence-is-the-new-measure-of-smart-video

NU media

Ever since internet has dramatically grown its popularity, heaps of communication tunnels are created due to its openness feature, sites like facebook, twitter...etc. 20 years later, people begin to debate whether we should let it wide open as it mostly is now, countries such as China, always has this censorship issue with all kinds of media. From my perspective, I think the internet could be the major headache for the Chinese government.
Came to Australia from Taiwan, the land of free access to everything, I was a bit not used to the limited bendwith here. Apparently, this country does something to "protect" its citizens, or shall I say, netizens.
We all came from the era with modem till now, I sort of witness the changing of the whole media evironment. It's interesting that only lately, the Australian news has exposed this new news source fact, which is lots of journalism are now from those online social websites. Whillist, it's nothing new in Taiwan anymore.
In terms of internet gonvornance, I can't help but wonder, if this is the trend that journalists start to dig their news from those none-professional[in most cases] online social network sites, how much credits left on the news??
Should we all set a rule or a watchdog for those online exchanging information?

the censorship in china

Chains of stories been covered the issue, that after the cyber attach last year end, Google has been thinking about giving up its market in China. Before I came here, I've known that China is quite strict about all the information flow. Also, what I use to be taught is that Chinese people have almost no right to say whatever is on their mind. Couple of years later, with some of my friends working and visiting China, I thought the situation has changed. Apparently, I was wrong.
After reading all those stories, I am still surprised that how conservative this country is, and how restricted the informtaion flow is. I can understand that the govornment would certainly make some laws or ristriction to protect its own company, but I also think that there's a fine line between protective and over-protective. After I read those news, what I see is like the late Ching Dynesty that I read from the history book. Ironicaly enough, it happens at the exact same place with the exact same race.
I knew there are some sites are banned in China, such as Facebook. And I talked to one of my Chinese classmates while I am here in Sydney. To me, it's totally unacceptable that govornment is allowed to ban any of the website, since the internet should be connect to "everything", provide all sorts of information around the world. However, when I asked her about the censorship that the govornment placed on their internet, she just said, well, we are used to it. HOW PASSIVE!!!
Being the biggest market, I guess, it gives the privilage, but what about the people??