I've just started reading Heinlein's "starship troopers" probably read some time ago but still a good read.
I don't get the cloud thing for data storage. flash drives and portable HDs sizes make your files portable. Sharing maybe? what?, please enlighten.
Online storage makes sense for many things such as a copy which can't be harmed even if something happens to your home/office/computer. It can also function as a sync point for files for others as well as yourself. You can carry your OS and all its customizations on a stick and load it into a virtual environment on another computer and work with your files while traveling without carrying a computer with you. That goes for those working on a project with you. Time, space and location are bridged that way.
Say you wanted to make a collaborative skin with 2of3. He's on an ocean liner and you're traveling and doing your day job or on vacation. You work on a number of files and store them when you can, and he accesses and modifies them when he can, adding notes. That way, you gain speed, agility and accessibility among other things.
When Po' was doing Roan, he uploaded graphics to WC. He also had a number of "Piece by piece" threads where skinners could add comments and he could ask questions. In effect, WC was his online storage.
In fact, all our Galleries and Forums are online storage...they're just accessible to many more people.
*As for "Starship Troopers"...while many called him a war monger for it, he wasn't any such thing. He was a genius of speculative fiction. That book was one of my all time favorites, as so many of his novels, collections and short stories are.
Another sad loss - Frederick Pohl has died at 93. His novels are classics...if you get a chance do read his work.
