Why I switched from Dropbox to Windows Live Mesh | Hacker News Reader

Why I switched from Dropbox to Windows Live Mesh

zdnet.com

30 pointsGarbage63 comments

"Author of more than 25 books on Microsoft Windows and Office, including the recently released Windows 7 Inside Out"(from his bio) suggests a Microsoft solution.

[edit: removed "tldr" tag because this was clearly not a summary but a mere snark.]

Ad hominem

<blush> It's true, it is.

This is a tangent, but an honest question. The biases and agenda of an argument's author are often essential to evaluating the argument. In the human world, a person would be pretty naive to not "consider the source".

Is it always invalid in written discourse to raise the issue of the author's background, or is there a way to do it that isn't ad hominem?

Of course it's valid to consider the source, but you need to back it up, show that it's influencing his opinion unfairly. You may be right, maybe he is just favouring MS products, but then show why his comparison is wrong, or why he is ignoring better alternatives, something at least.

Ad hominem only describes the logical fallacy of saying "the argument X put forward by person P is wrong because of some property of person P"

You didn't make that sort of claim, therefore it really isn't an ad hominem attack

This might not be fair in dialectic, but I assure you that attacking the ethos of an opponent in rhetoric is fair game. It can be tricky if you only focus on that though because it does not make the audience believe more in your point... But of course, forget about this silly rhetoric thing, Hacker News is all about pure logic :-)

So, if you read an article saying "Hire an SEO consultant today to improve your site visibility x100" and the author happens to be an SEO consultant, it would be an ad hominem to point this fact out ?

It would be ad hominem if you called it a shit or untrue article just because you dislike SEO consultants. It may be a shit or untrue article, but then say why.

ad hominem: his argument is invalid because he is a SEO consultant.

not ad hominem: his argument is invalid because [reason]. he ignores [reason] because he is a SEO consultant.

Ideally, sure.

But suppose I don't know anything about SEO. How would I judge if the article is bullshit or not ?

If, however, I see "x is an SEO consultant" then I would at least suspect that the author is trying to sell me something rather than inform me.

Sure. But it is still ad hominem regardless.

Is this high school debate class? Ad hominem might get you docked points in a competition but purposely blinding yourself to someone's motivations is retarded. The author took the time to type up some scarcely camouflaged ad copy and I think asking Why is legitimate and it should certainly color the interpretation of the information he is presenting.

So? Motivation matters and it shows in his content.

I can trust that someone who profits directly from the Microsoft ecosystem will tell me to use Microsoft products.

This article is really two parts.

1) Why he is switching away from DropBox. Fair points, but none of it is new information that we haven't seen posted here 20 times the week the security vulnerability occurred.

2) Why he is switching to Live Mesh. This is an advertisement. It is not informative, it does not compare other syncing products, it does not add anything beyond the Live Mesh marketing information.

It isn't even a review of Live Mesh

At least you're arguing the points of the article :) I haven't used either product so I don't have an opinion on whether he's talking BS or not...

I guess? It was a waste of my time, but you seem to be defending ad copy because pointing out the guy is a microsoft evangelist is somehow not useful information

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott in fact, if you read his posting history I think who he is severely tarnishes anything he writes.

I'm def not saying people shouldn't point it out, I just think people shouldn't base their entire opinion on the fact that he's an MS evangelist.

No.

A fair summary would be: Dropbox has had embarrassing security failures, plus Live Mesh has a few extra technical features and comes with more free space.

To me, going to Microsoft for security is like going to the desert for ice-cream. The article seems quite biased, since "embarassing security failures" tend to happen more often at Microsoft.

There tends to be a lot of myths about Microsoft security particularly in the non-Windows using community. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft tends to be very good about security updates, disclosure of bugs and holes, and remains vigilant about finding and patching up unknown flaws. Additionally, Microsoft hasn't had to answer before Congress on the matter of the securing their user's data. So trying to compare Microsoft's apparently "embarassing security failures" to Dropbox having to testify to Congress is like comparing your post to a PG essay.

I happen to use 7 / archlinux / Os X almost equally. Of course my comment was trollesque, but an affirmation like "Microsoft ... tends to be very good about security updates" is not realistic. Time elapsed between exploit discovery and patch proposal to the user is everything but short. And If every website with a security issue was to answer to the congress, well it would not do much else. Plus, given the money Microsoft spend lobbying, I doubt very much that in a similar situation they would have to answer to the congress. Dropbox just seems to be a marked man.

Yes there is a time between discovery and patching but if you look at their competitors, Windows is much farther ahead in the security realm. Microsoft's whole security cycle is better defined and IT managers have a much easier time managing security updates from Microsoft than anyone else.

Dropbox isn't a marked man because it doesn't have the capital of Microsoft, they've had to testify because they have a serious security and privacy problem.

"if you look at their competitors, Windows is much farther ahead in the security realm" and that of course is not heresay but solid facts. If you exclude linux, bsd distros, and solaris of the "competitors", then you may be right. So far most of the securty / pen tests reports I have read (and my personal experience demonstrate) that it is way more easy to penetrate a Windows system than a unix / linux one. I like this sentence "There tends to be a lot of myths about Microsoft security particularly in the non-Windows using community" because the symetry is interesting: most non-unix/linux fail to see that these systems are usually more secure. I have used both kinds for 10 years and had much more security problems with Microsoft (which does not mean that I have stopped using it). I do not believe I am the exception.

You are of course free to disagree with the author, but I hardly think that makes it biased. Logging in with any password is objectively a pretty embarrassing security lapse. I'm not aware of any problems like that with Live Mesh. Or even, really, with any online Microsoft products.

I do agree on the fact that it is totally embarassing for Dropbox, and I do not either recall a similar issue with Microsoft, which does not make it safe. DEP / ASLR mechanism have been "easily" bypass several times this year, which to me is also embarassing. But the fact that this issue happened with Dropbox does not mean that it will again, and I'm pretty sure that it will make security one of their top priority. I do believe that going to Microsoft for better security is an odd move.

Again, you're making this point based on heresay. Of all the Dropbox competitors and cloud storage solutions, I'd tend to trust Microsoft the most because they will likely have the security experts employed to audit their products. Or simply that because they are Microsoft, 3rd-party security firms will investigate the security of Live Mesh.

And yet there are a lot of active exploits targetting Windows. If your logic was sound, given that Windows is by far the most used system it should also be the most secure: then again I invite you to research the subject, security reports often show that it is more vulnerable than most linux/unixes. I find 7 to be an acceptable OS (and I still use it everyday) but blindly beliving that Microsoft ecosystem is secure because it is Microsoft's is a mistake.

It's not blindly believing Microsoft to be a better ecosystem. This has nothing to do with the OS. This is about the fact that they have a whole network of professionals who are more likely than a startup to audit their systems and keep it safe.

The author's familiarity with Windows doesn't make his argument that Microsoft is likely to provide better security weaker. Indeed if his story is to be believed, the fact that he initially used Dropbox might be seen as indication that he is aware of and in a position to evaluate Microsoft's security or lack thereof and that his decision to switch was based on knowledge rather than self-promotion.

In theory, yes. The recent news about Dropbox are not encouraging. The thing is, here is a list of things I need from a syncing service:

* Reliability. No fucking up my files, please.

* Low Maintenance. It should just work, basically.

* Cross Platform. I need to work reliably on Win, Lin, OSX. And at the same time, too.

Anything else is just bonus. If you know a syncing service besides Dropbox that satisfies all three of these, please let me know!

Oh, and bonus points for iOS/Android integration.

SpiderOak?

How is it better than Dropbox?

(This is not a snarky remark, I am really interested! How long have you used it? For what?)

I installed SpiderOak on my Mac when the Dropbox security failures came to light a couple weeks ago. SpiderOak is just plain confusing and hard to use. I think I setup a folder to sync but with all of the options and "features" it has, I really don't know what is being synced or not. I'm a software developer by trade, and if I find it this confusing, I would definitely not recommend it to regular people. I'm going to give Live Mesh a shot and see how it works.

http://www.wuala.com/ hits all 3 and much better security. Or wait for iOS5 and apps to add all types of file sync on iCloud.

My two biggest complaints about Wuala is that its client is written Java and occasionally eats up all my memory (even with -Xmx256m, though I believe this is Java's fault rather than Wuala), the interface is a bit hard to understand and there's no background mode like how Dropbox stays on menu bar in OSX. Apart from these two complaint, I'm pretty happy with the service enough to delete my (paid) Dropbox account for equivalent package on Wuala.

Would you consider requiring a password for access to your files a bonus? For me, this "feature" is a deal-breaker.

I would not mind to enter my password once after starting my computer. In fact, I do that right now with Espoinage (a somewhat TrueCrypt-like software).

I don't want to enter my password every time I want to access one of my files. I am usually always working inside my Dropbox, so that would be a deal-breaker.

I used Live Mesh once. Then, out of the blue, after a reboot reboot it started deleting all my files. I got in touch with the Live Mesh team and was told that I should remove files with unsupported extensions (WTF?) from my synced folders and see if my files came back. I think they were eventually able to recover some, but not all, of the stuff that was lost. This was early 2009, so maybe the client has improved since then, but I can't bring myself to trust it.

I used Live Mesh from launch up until about a year ago and had similar experiences. Lots of sync errors, lots of pain upgrading when MS decided to shuffle Live Mesh over to the Windows Live team.

On the other hand, Dropbox has been incredibly reliable and easy to use, plus it works on Android and Linux.

He makes one very good suggestion:

At the very minimum, Dropbox needs to have a thorough security audit from an independent group to ensure that it has the processes in place to back up those promises.

Call it security theatre, a waste of time and resources, or whatever you want, but I would find this very reassuring as a Dropbox user, and it would help me to trust the service again. That, and an independent verification of their claims about the number of users possibly affected by the no-password security bug.

I would bet on this being one of the outcomes of the class action lawsuit against them.

So I'm trying out LiveMesh on my Mac right now. Installation was easy and so was setting up the sync folder. I copied about 100MB of source code into the folder and it started syncing right away. However, it's just killing my CPU. I have a Core i5 MBP and CPU utilization is 100%-130%. Memory usage is quite low at ~70MB. I don't recall Dropbox killing my CPU like this when doing a simple sync. I wonder if it's doing some sort of encryption?

It's interesting that my "emotional" reaction is to favor Dropbox to Windows... I like the brand, the entrepreneur in me is naturally inclined to cheer for the startup versus the corporate giant and I've been telling people about Dropbox making me somewhat more vested in it. That said, security issues _are_ affecting your image Dropbox. Please fix these and I'll keep loving you and have no reason to switch.

As an alternative I have never seen Powerfolder (http://www.powerfolder.com) mentioned here, and that's a pity. Powerfolder surely is not a nice and shiny start up (German private company, since 2003), but it has worked for us for over 3 or 4 years now. As I understand Powerfolder originally was a client to just sync files and folders across computers but they added "cloud storage" a few years ago, so your devices need not be connected at the same time. The Java client works an Windows, Mac and Linux, it's "functionally" designed, to say it politely (no shiny icons) You can sync backup or share any file or folder on your computer. I've tested nearly all sync and backup services but none of them made me switch, Powerfolder's sync speed and reliability is just superior (they can LAN sync too). And heck if you don't trust "the cloud" you can just buy their server software and set it up on your own hardware.

I still use Dropbox for easy private file sharing, just not professionally.

[Edit: ,just NOT professionally]

More technical people like us can just use Tarsnap.

Basically yes, but it would still require a lot of customization to have a similar experience to that of Dropbox.

The thing is, Tarsnap in and of itself is only a backup, but does not sync. And sync really is what makes Dropbox so great.

As suggested recently by 'How To Geek' I have installed Boxcryptor in my dropbox folder.

Boxcryptor was obviously inspired by Dropbox's limitations and as far as I can see solves them perfectly with encryption of every file at the client end.

Dropbox simply stores and syncs these encrypted files.

The linked article says : 'Ultimately, I’ve come to the conclusion that scale matters in the cloud. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have the experience and the engineering depth to get operational and security issues right.'

Until a little while ago I wonder if the author would have objected to Sony being added to that list?

I don't think of Sony when I think of "the cloud".

However - Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are major players and most people do think of these guys when it comes to cloud storage. Amazon is of course the gold standard and Google is trusted. Microsoft is kinda sort there.

It really kind of blows my mind that anyone is willing to use these kinds of cloud-storage tools without their own personal layer of encryption in-between. I've used Dropbox with encfs in the past, and didn't bat an eye when their usage terms changed, because although they were storing my data, they do not have my data. Without something like encfs, you're just literally giving other people your personal files--I don't understand that on any level.

Don't you lose the key features of Dropbox as a service: de-dup, sync, share, etc.? In that case, why not just store your stuff directly in S3 and cut out the middle man?

You don't understand Google docs then either. Or people emailing passwords. Basically, these things are not risky anymore than flying a plan is risky.

I have used both Dropbox and Live Mesh, both work fine for me.

Advantages for Live Mesh: * Free quota is 5 Gb * I can choose the folder I want to sync, so my existing folder structure need not be tweaked

Advantages for Dropbox: * It is more popular so it is easier to set up a shared folder with someone.

Why do people split articles into multiple pages like this? Does this increase ad revenue somehow?

Yes.

Shame Windows Live Mesh doesn't work on Lion. I would have liked to try it.

He just spent a whole page talking about security issues and then never mentioned what security he is benefiting from by moving to Windows...

Simply put, I am not aware of any heavily publicised security breaches with Live Mesh like there have been Dropbox.

The impression I've had in recent times (something presumably shared by the article's author) is that security is something that Microsoft takes very seriously these days. That has happened out of necessity, originally precipitated by security flaws in the Windows line of OS. But at least they've already learnt that security is a serious issue and tightened things up - something dropbox (and other players from recent hacking scandals) are only just learning.

That's not true. He mentioned that for sensitive documents you can use Windows Live Mesh without Skydrive and have the equivalent of Dropbox's LAN sync without having your sensitive documents in the cloud.

Is it just me, or is this a killer feature? I had no idea this was baked into Live Mesh. I use rsync for this today but I am definitely going to check out Live Mesh.

Run it on my XP/Linux desktop.

"Why I switched from Dropbox to Windows Live Mesh"

Because I am a Microsoft shill.

So you think his other reasons for swapping aren't valid? Or do you think that there is a compelling reason not to use Live Mesh if you want to switch from Dropbox?

I got in dropbox very early and they initially gave out 5GB of space, so I have that. His other points are not very interesting.

LAN syncing and multiple folder support is fairly compelling. 25 GB web storage sounds pretty good too considering it's free. Although personally I wouldn't use the web storage and would stick to the 5 GB.

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