End-of-life in the Cloud

The Register reports on the demise of Nirvanix, an enterprise cloud storage startup. Nirvanix customers were told on Sept. 18:

Customers had to get all their data out by the end of September or, in effect, face losing it.

They had 13 days to do it. Below the fold I ask what would happen if Amazon made a similar announcement about S3 - not because I think that is possible but to show how impossible it is.

Panel at Library of Congress Storage Architectures meeting

Henry Newman and I ran a panel at the Library of Congress' Storage Architectures meeting entitled Cloud Challenges. Below the fold is the text of my brief presentation, entitled Cloud Services: Caveat Emptor, with links to the sources.

Worth reading

Below the fold, quick comments on two good reads.

Becoming a better scientist

I'm really interested in the work the Force11 group and many others are doing to apply the techniques of software engineering and digital preservation to making science more reproducible and re-usable. Unfortunately, work for our recent Mellon Foundation grant and for the TRAC audit of the CLOCKSS Archive has meant I've been too busy to contribute or even pay much attention. But a discussion that broke out on the Force11 mailing list sparked by Paul Groth pointing to a post on his blog called Becoming a better scientist (reproducibility edition) really grabbed my attention. Follow me below the fold for the details.

"Preservation at Scale" at iPRES2013

I took part in the Preservation at Scale (PDF) workshop at iPRES2013. Below the fold is an edited text of my presentation, entitled Diversity and Risk at Scale, with links to the sources.

Noteworthy papers at iPRES2013

Below the fold I discuss some papers from iPres2013 that I found particularly interesting.

Talk for "RDF Vocabulary Preservation" at iPres2013

The group planning a session on "RDF Vocabulary Preservation" at iPRES2013 asked me to give a brief presentation on the principles behind the LOCKSS technology. Below the fold is an edited text with links to the sources.