Dropbox, Google Docs, and other web services

[Richard Pieri]

Just a note for Ian (and anyone else who cares): Dropbox is also an Amazon S3 front-end.  So is Ubuntu One, for that matter.

My users are widely varied in their usage requirements and needs.  Most of them are served quite well via our AFS cell.  I've suggested Drobox, Box.com and Google Docs to several of them, for different reasons and different requirements.  I myself use Dropbox rather extensively, but what my users use is largely at their own discretion.

We have no prohibitions per se.  MIT's network is wide open.  Confidential materials don't go on unsecured networks in unsecured manner.  That's pretty much our only restriction.

Given the environment there'd be no point in taking them away.  In fact, in Dropbox's case it's actually more secure than man other options.  The network links are encrypted and files stored in the S3 cloud are also encrypted w/ AES behind the scenes.

I'm actually not sure how big the Lab is.  I have some 1500 accounts in my LDAP database but I couldn't say off-hand how many are active.

The U.S. Department of Energy. :)

--Rich P.