Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Plans Gdrive Competitor
gambit3 writes "From Microsoft Watch: The MSN team is working on a new Windows Live service, code-named Live Drive, that will provide users with a virtual hard drive for storing hosted personal data. From early accounts, it sounds an awful lot like Gdrive, the still-as-yet-publicly-unannounced storage service from Google."
.Mac anyone?
I would say it's more like Apple's iDisk. But that's my weakness--I tend to compare things to products and features rather than rumors.
---gralem
Apple's iDisk
Amazon (!) has a "simple storage service".
http://aws.amazon.com/s3
Didn't Creative Labs have a Live! Drive brand breakout box for its sound cards that fit in a 5.25" drive slot?
So, wait, Microsoft are copying a product Google *might* announce soon? Enough with the grandstanding! It's not like these haven't existed for YEARS.
MS uses custom Ajax calls to cause a blue screen of death on the client machine if gdrive fails for any reason ensuring data integrity. This is the first time MS has offered BSODs as a web service and promises a new world in software delivery.
How free will this be, I meen both in speach and beer... I would like to see exactly what they would do with each file I upload (i might be paranoid and not having anything too important anyway)... I am also a little concerned about what might happen if the US govt. asks for all my data on their drives (again probably too paranoid)... also I like cheap things
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
As computer-literate individuals, it is our duty to talk to our less computer-savvy friends and relatives about these types of services.
While it may seem very obvious to us, they might not stop to consider the privacy aspects of these services, be they from Google, Apple, or Microsoft.
First of all, we need to make it clear that no financial data should be stored in such a way. That includes spreadsheets and archived tax filings.
Second of all, any personal documentation should not be placed on such remote drives. This is especially important for the employees of businesses.
Third of all, it must be realized that nothing will ever truly be deleted from such remote drives. One may think they have deleted their files, but it's quite likely that those files still exist on some server somewhere at Google or Microsoft, if not on backup tapes.
We need to have these dicussions now, before many people make costly mistakes. It will save us time and effort in the long run, if we can wake up enough people to the potential issues that arise when using these services.
I don't care how good they claim their "safeguards" are, they're not going to be as good as they claim, and in any case the companies that host these services are not to be trusted. They do only that which is in their best interests, not yours. Those may be the same thing for a time, but I promise you that's temporary at best.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
"still-as-yet-publicly-unannounced"
it's been publicly unnanounced, how the fuck do you pull that off?
I need that skill.
-pyrrho
A "virtual hard drive" is worthless because:
1 - most Internet Service Providers severely cripple your upload speed, so getting large amounts of data to the virtual hard drive is impractical
B - If yuo share you files with too many people, i.e. use too much bandwidth, they'll surely shut you down.
not a chance, no thanks
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
It's a V-drive!
shut down peer-to-peer (or simply make people too afraid to use it), I predict that file-sharing will continue unabated as social networks form around these vast online storage facilities. Rather than having to download my music piecemeal, I can just grab someone's entire "g" or "i" or "m" or whatever drive full of gigabytes of tunes. A couple of online swaps and that 60 Gb iPod is going to seem a tad cramped.
Cool.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Why the hell do people yell "OMG it's been done before..." everytime someone comes out with something. More competition is always good. If Microsoft screws it up, well that's too bad, but if it doesn't, hey, we will have another nice service to choose between.
So in other words, it's actually like Xdrive, the company that started it in the dot-bomb boom.
f edrive/
http://www.xdrive.com/
Also, I can't wait for Palm to take them to court because Live Drive sounds an awful lot like LifeDrive.
http://www.palm.com/us/products/mobilemanagers/li
So could I mount a virtual RAID disk that stripes across Gmail and LiveMail?
Would my information be more secure if the police have to subpoena two companies instead of one?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
If I were google I'd start getting openoffice as much publicity as possible, and other things that compete directly with Microsofts bread and butter. Find microsofts worst nightmare for each niche, opensource it and heavily support and distribute it.
LetterRip
This would provide the most amazing trolling database ever. Can you imagine the glee within the govt at being able to freely scan every file "owned" by every member of the public.
... hell just give me it all!
And dont think it wont happen because the Patriot act permits data trolling without telling the user (go and talk to you public library - they have to hand over data about you and they are not allowed to tell you).
Can you imagine the conversation...
GW: I need access you your Live Drive for anyone named 'ahmed' or 'abbus' or 'abdul' or
BillG: sure - if you can call off your anti-trust watchdogs
GW: consider it done. What is anti-trust anyway??
Local Live, Live Drive ... ActiveX, Active Desktop,
... everything had to be "Microsoft [blank]." I liked that, gives strong brand identity. But the Live and Active monkiers are a bit confusing, as they don't contribute a consistent, useful meaning.
I keep noticing the trend: Microsoft gives their product names a prefix or suffix that adds a sporty/jaunty sense, without changing the name's meaning.
Pure marketing. In the 80s they prefixed their software with "Microsoft"
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
Microsoft's big secret Web 2.0 push is to copy everything Google does?
OIC!
Execute? [Y/N] _
mounting a drive over the Internet (do we still capitalize that?) involves much OS overhead as well, and that is very slow. during my brief, free, usage of .Mac and its iDrive I was frustrated more than anything else. perhaps if the OS is modified to strip out some of what it does when you mount a drive they can speed it up, but for now FTP serves me better.
If you can't wait or don't want to subscribe, here's the next Googledot story:
"Ford plans to unveil a new seven-passenger full-size sports utility vehicle at the 2006 International Auto Show. This vehicle sounds awfully similar to Google's as-yet-publicly-unannounced GoogleUV that the blogosphere has been abuzz about for awhile now. What will Google think of next?"
For more information, click here.
I'm all for MS entering this field... if they (and Google) can drive down the price of online storage through increased competition, the better for everyone. And there's no reason to have to trust their security... rather than syncing your files directly, encrypt the hell out of them and just upload / sync the resulting files.
-R
personal and private data held on an internet accessible drive?
Can you say oxymoron?
If Google promised their Inet drive would be encrypted so only I could get the clear contents at my client end, I might believe them. If Microsoft tells me that, I certainly won't.
--
make install -not war
Will we have wonderful java based BSOD's as well?
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
How can it sound like something that hasn't even been announced?
You may as well say that Duke Nukem Forever will be like the yet-to-be-announced Half-Life 3.
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
The only problem I'm seeing is that many of these things are already covered by existing, specialized services.
An FTP account all dolled up and made easy for mouth-breathers! Hooray!
I wonder if Unca Bush helped prop up this technology to make it easier to wiretap all those 'terrorists' sharing their battle plans to topple his regime!
First, erase any reference to the announcement from the internet (Google can do anything, right?)
Second, utilize your Jedi to complete the 'unannouncement'
(hand wave)This is not the announcement you are looking for.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I wonder how much space they would give users ?
Considering that hotmail only has 250mb storage, I don't think they'll give us much more for free. If we "compare" with the google product, their Gdrive might have something more than 2000mb, considering we have well over 2000mb of storage on Gmail.
I didn't found something funny to put here.
a virtual hard drive for storing hosted personal data is worse than useless. A 'small' personal drive, full of personal data, that you can no longer control.
Too small for much music or video. Not secure enough for really personal data. Too slow for everything.
Ok...maybe...if you frequently access from a public machine or something...maybe you'd keep your current links there or something. But other than that, what are you REALLY gonna use it for? What personal data will YOU put up there?
It seems like every new service Google provides is shortly later also provided by Microsoft. Story after story, Google does something then Microsoft follows. Why do they feel the need to play catchup all the time? Why can't they instead try and be a little innovative? Also, why do they feel the need to follow Google all the time when they're primarily (this is subjective) in the OS business? Stop playing catchup and release Vista on time. Had to get that off my chest.
I have a Live Drive already, its called the bay device that comes w/ the high-end SoundBlaster Live cards, and its specifically called the Live Drive. So, does this mean Creative Labs gets to sue Microsoft over the name?
will it be Linux mountable? for instance, if I boot to a system using PuppyLinux on a USB key drive, can I automatically mount my Gdrive/livedrive?
Some people are like slinkys. They're useless, but it puts a smile on your face to push them down the stairs.
I use RoamDrive. It's free and works with Hotmail and Gmail.
Eventually they promise a "pro" version that allows you to link as many hotmail and gmail accounts as your want (equating to essentially unlimited storage).
Microsoft copies someone and brands it with it's latest snappy code-name.
This isn't close to news anymore...
If it is anything like Active [things], it will be a DeadDrive.
Reminds me of that AT&T deal where they routed and monitored all the internet traffic they could and gave it to the CIA.
:)
:/
What's to stop them from doing the same thing here, having the CIA go through their online files to check for stuff that can incriminate people... I'de just prefer to store stuff as a second but much much bigger online USB key
Only hope my school doesn't block it out with their proxy.... I hate that
Why can't you innovate... do something different, every now and then? And by different I don't mean taking someone elses idea and changing it so that it doesn't work.
http://www.truecrypt.org/
Problem solved.
So wait, we're talking about a rumour of Google coming up with a product... Microsoft quickly responds with a rumour of a product too.
Go Microsoft, go!
To anyone worried about privacy (and, actually - anyone who ends up using these type of services), may I suggest Truecrypt? I won't use a USB drive without it - and I won't use Gdrive or Livedrive without it either.
Open Truecrypt, create a new volume as a file (using a strong password), plunk it up on the remote drive, mount the encrypted volume it as a local drive letter. And you have an encrypted drive that you can access remotely without Microsoft (or Google) knowing what you have in there. Without the password it looks like nothing more than random data.
I use AES-Twofish-Serpent (yes, Truecrypt can do multiple layers of encryption) on my USB drive, giving a key size of 768 bits. I'd consider that fairly inpregnable to any known codebreaking organisation.
... and all the chairs stopped, for Ballmer saw that it was good.
I'm thinking upload speeds are going to need to increase at least tenfold for things like this to be useful for anything but small documents. Realistically, a hundredfold increase would still be painfully slow compared to your hard drive unless you've got some crazy-fast connection to which you could compare it (I've got 384Kbps = 48KBps up, a good thousandth of a typical 7,200RPM drive's sustained transfer rates).
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Why the hell do people yell "OMG it's been done before..." everytime someone comes out with something.
If a company thinks that something is interesting enough that they talk to it before they even have a demonstration working, much less public availability, presumably they think there's something special about it. In the case of [a-zA-Z]drives, it's really, really been done before.
What is with Microsoft and their TERRIBLE, self-destructive habit of talking endlessly about something that might come some time soon? The general public has zero faith in Microsoft anymore, they've seriously tarnished their image, yet still they let these idiots go ranting on about how amazing and awesome the next iteration will be.
Learn, Microsofties. You will be a lot more credible, and your products will be received much better, if the first we ever see the product is a working, kick-ass, released product. Not some low level product wank talking up the best it could possibly be, guaranteeing the market will be underwhelmed when something eventually pops out 5 years later.
A virtual drive (something that goes onto a home PC and shares data from that would be great) that can be accessed 100% over HTTPS.
So you would be able to both download AND upload files over bog standard HTTPS.
The ideal program would let me share different bits of my drive under different passwords (e.g. one password for all of the drive, another for certain "shared files" etc) and would let me manipulate everything (creating folders, deleting files, downloading files, uploading files) over bog-standard almost-impossible-to-block-or-monitor HTTPS. HTTPS is used by so many things its impossible to block without making lots of people annoyed plus its pretty much impossible for man in the middle attacks (either eavesdropping or tampering) to happen as long as you check the certificates to see that they match up.
Although not created by google, and not guaranteed to work if google decides to block it, you can use your gmail account as a gdrive using this handy little shell extension found at http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm
I've been using it for a while now, to make easy backups of my backups (in encrypted zip files of course)
Uh...so why will these services necessarily be too small for music or video? I can't think of any reason why that would be true - at least in the medium term. Storage is closing in on "free" (as in beer). A decent PC comes with 500 GB of hard disc space. Why can't MSFT or Google afford to offer a TB of storage for any user? The cost to them over time will be very low.
You would be reasonably safe if you encrypt all your files stored using this type of service.
So just encrypt the data silly.
You can say that about "real" M$ products as well as their vapor ware!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
scanned with
http://www.virusbuster.hu/en/
contains:
Trojan.DL.Istbar.Gen.1
so tread with extreme caution
Sources close to Microsoft described that service as one where Microsoft would back up users' personal files on CD and/or DVD. Users also would be able to back up financial files, legal documents, digital photos, online music and home videos, and even put their most important files into a "digital safe-deposit box," hosted by Microsoft, sources said.
At this point, Steve Baller, who has forbidden his children's use of IPod for the same thing, is probably imagining a real "safe-deposit" box reached by mailing your CD to Microsoft. "That's some nice data you got there, it'd be a shame if the OS you are using messed it up. Why don't you mail me what you think is important sose I can protect it for you? For a low monthly fee, I'll make sure nothing happens."
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Very succinct. Nobody really believes any of this stuff about barriers to entry. You're talking solid free substitute product vs. costly market leader. Back in the days of the govt. vs. MS lawsuit, it was argued that dominance in desktop productivity software constituted a monopoly. So now that the settlement is in place, we are supposed to believe that dominance in every segement of mainstream corporate/business computing (OS, DB, web server, app server, and the list goes on) does not constitute a monopoly? Looks like big brother has found a reliable little brother in Microsoft!
The repetition is coming from M$. It's called vaporware. Their slavish devotion to anything Google is matched only their hatred of the company.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'm still sore from years of Microsoft's chincy 2MB email accounts. I think that's reason enough not to buy into any storage solution they offer.
...I thought this was announcing one of the already-existing third-party Gmail-based drives, like GSpace or GMail Drive, both of which I use. They work fine, why do I need another one? Long live GMail! (And a fiery death to Google Earth...but that's a different discussion.)
You all have Oo.o and Firefox, so get World Wind.
BEGIN
cp google_ideas.html microsoft_innovations.html
sed 's/Google/Microsoft/g' microsoft_innovations.html >microsoft_greatestinnovations.html
PUBLISH microsoft_greatestinnovations.html
END
Microsoft motto:
Copy the leader....
Actually I would have thought the gov't already had secret deals with the big antivirus companies, forcing them to scan every "private" file for terrorism-related key words.
But then the IRS nailed Symantec with a $1B bill for back taxes, which wouldn't have happened in the world of corrupt secret gov't/bizness collusion that I have nightmares about when I go to bed on a full stomach. So maybe that hasn't happened yet.
Does anybody else find it strange that Microsoft is bothering with things like this without worrying about spending more effort/time into getting Vista out?
anything other than data that you have absolutely no problem with becoming completely public.
Nonsense. You can put an encrypted disk image on a network volume just as easily as any other place.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Maybe Symantec failed to cooperate and the government is giving the something to think about in the form of a USD 1 Billion "fine" ;-)
]{
Actually, MSN paying subscribers already have their MSN storage space appear in Window's "Network Neighborhood" as a virtual network volume (well this was the case a few years ago, at least; I think it's still the case).
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
I've personally found the "GMail Drive" (http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm) quite useful for sending files to myself between work and home. Effectively this program just provides a nice filesystem-like interface for emailing a file to yourself using GMail.
There seem to be a lot of naysayers and negativity towards the idea of an online file system, and I wonder whether it is really warranted.
To those who say that an online file system is "worthless" because bandwidth is too low, or because of privacy issues, I ask you if you have ever emailed yourself a file so that you could pick it up somewhere else. The argument that I am making here is that if you are using a mail server as a file server, then you already using an online file system.
Sure, no online file system is going to have the bandwidth of a local hard drive. That's why you don't email yourself 700 MB mpeg movie files. Does that mean it's worthless to ever be able to email yourself a file? I don't think so. There are lots of files that are small enough to send over email yet big enough to contain interesting information. By extension, there are lots of files that are small enough to store on an online file system and still be useful.
Sure, no online file system is going to ever be able to guarantee complete security. That's why you don't email your tax documents and your credit card number to yourself. Does that mean it's worthless to be able email yourself files? Not at all. It just means that you always have to take into account the possibility that your information may get into the wrong hands. This is true for any file system. If instead of storing your files on an online file system you bring a USB key around everywhere you go, you still have to think about what will happen if you leave it in the wrong place and someone else finds it. Just ask the guys selling the USB keys in the bazaar in Afghanistan about that. So, if you can trust the security of your email provider for certain kinds of information, should you not be able to trust the security of on online filesystem provider?
In my opinion, it's a good thing that services like this are being offered, just as it is a good thing that there are free web mail services. But anytime you leave your data with someone else, you need to ask yourself how much you trust them to take care of it, and you need to balance the convenience of easy access against the risk of the data falling into the wrong hands.
Is a Microsoft online file service trustworthy enough to store your data on? Judging by their past security record on Hotmail, I would say don't put too much trust in them. You also have consider that they are a likely target for hackers just because they are a big target. But I would have no qualms about storing, say, photos from my vacation on a hotmail account... or, by extension, on an online file system that was connected to my Hotmail account. So, my point is that even a not-so-trustworthy MSN Live Drive from Microsoft is not worthless.
Microsoft: All your data are belong to us.
Yah, I wonder exactly WHY Ballmer doesn't let his kids use Google.
Yeesh!
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
Openomy is a free 1 Gb online file system, mountable under Linux using FUSE.
Do you think that if all the senior management at Google jumped off a cliff, Microsoft would do it too? I mean, it's be a worthwhile sacrifice, wouldn't it?
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
From early accounts, it sounds an awful lot like Gdrive, the still-as-yet-publicly-unannounced storage service from Google.
Is Gdrive even planned for sure?
Funny to compare with a rumored service in the title if not.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Of course for the mainstream bo bo this is all chinese and that's why some ISP's offer the service, in Europe, XS4all has it:
http://www.xs4all.nl/allediensten/experimenteel/w
birdy num num? peter sellers in "the party"
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
Microsoft offers something strikingly similar to this already, as a result of aquiring the "Foldershare" product back in November of 2005. It's a nifty service that allows you to sync folder contents across disparate Macs or PCs, and then access those files over the web.
I reviewed it a couple days ago; it's an impressive producet, but no linux client right now, which is a bummer. ~jeff
Now I finaly have place to store all those borrowed Windows and Office CD images.
No more dragging around dozens of CD-R's!
I suppose a clued up Linux user would just create a loopback filesystem on top of that and protect the whole thing cryptographically. All the provider sees is a big blob of data. They can't mine it for advertising or consumer info, and it's harder for people to snoop on its contents.
Could a clued up Windows user do the same with something like PGP Disk?
On a different note - when I first read the name "Live Drive" I wondered how long before Creative sue them for trademark infringement. Live Drive is an addon for the SoundBlaster sound cards.
I am not interested until some of these will have some basic free access over WebNFS (NFSv4).
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
if the eula is like the msn-messengers eula, then microsoft is allowed to look through your stuff, download it, copy it somewhere, broadcast it worldwide
even sell it and sue you because you've got a copy of it, without paying 100$ license fee to them...
NO THANKS!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
You just subscribe to the FBI e-mailing list.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
A valid concern with Microsoft's LiveDrive, but at least with the GDrive we wouldn't have to assume Google would hand such information over. Disturbing to think of Abdul's private family vacation snapshots being bored over in the hunt for Terrorist Activities (TM), but if history's anything to go by, the US government would have to do some work to prove that Weapons of Mass Destruction (R) were being stored in digital form. Maybe now that Google has set the path, other companies (even Microsoft) will think twice before handing over data lest they should end up with publicity like this.
This idea of online storage was pretty big in the .com days, with Xdrive and such. And yes, there were plenty of drives with warez on them and the passwords sent around via Hotline or whatever.
.Mac too.
The companies had to spend a lot of time policing accounts. Certainly Apple does with
There are a bunch of companies right now that are largely used to pirate files, like megaupload.com or rapidshare.de.
So very good prediction, but you're actually predicting the past, it turns out.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
"From early accounts, it sounds an awful lot like Gdrive, the still-as-yet-publicly-unannounced storage service from Google."
So wait, you're comparing Microsoft's only-barely-announced product with Google's as-yet-unannounced product? How about we wait for actual implemented features before we get all excited?
Nevermind, I can't help myself.
Personally, the GDrive would be more helpful to me, because I'm storing so much of my information with Google anyway. The more I have invested in a system, the more that system is worth to me, and all that. Of course, someone who's using Hotmail and all the other Microsoft services would most likely be better served with their offering, if they're integrated.
(but if you just haven't gotten an invitation, that's no excuse. email me and I'll send one to you.)
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Jester and gesture both come from the Latin gestus-a-um, fourth principal part of gero, to carry(the former comes from a French corruption)
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
That's interesting, as I host a discussion list (based from the main website) that has a lot of foreign-sounding names asking engineering-related questions.
OK, no! There is no way I would use a MSDrive. I am willing to trust Google to a certain point, but not MS. If I do decide to use Gdrive, Im going to encrypt it with blowfish. While being one of the Apple faithful, I dont see much use for .Mac for me. I have delicious for my bookmarks, not that it matters anyway, I carry my powerbook with me about everywhere I go.
Scarey, but that is exactly what happened in NZ. Ahmed Zaoui (actually a peaceful algerian cleric/polition overthrown by a military junta) has been chased around the world by the French govt who backed the junta. He was convicted in abstenita in Belgium and France in what have been labelled 'unsafe trials', and therefore labelled a 'Terrorist' (TM). Proof of this included his family holiday photos of his wife and kids which sometimes had famous buildings in the background - our (idiotic) secret service saw those as proving he was casing them in preperation for blowing them up.