Quoting Gary Johnson <[log in to unmask]>:

> Yep,
>
>   The big-bearded, no-holds-barred GNU man says cloud computing is
>   "worse than stupidity."  Check it.
>
>     
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.computing.richard.stallman
>
>   ~Gary
>

He's right on one point but wrong on the conclusion.

"The 55-year-old New Yorker said that computer users should be keen to  
keep their information in their own hands, rather than hand it over to  
a third party." This is true, and is why I host my own website and  
email (actually, have a legal contract specifying the relevant  
important things) and don't use services like facebook.

But there's nothing about cloud computing that fundamentally requires  
you to give someone else control over the main copy of your data. It's  
perfectly possible to, e.g., host your own photographs but let flickr  
display them, and make sure you back up people's comments on them.  
It's possible to use google apps for word processing, but make sure  
you retain a copy of the document at all times, not relying on google  
for hosting.

Unfortunately the software is not available to make this *easy*, but  
it's not fundamentally against cloud computing.