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Bob
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Post subject: QuickBooks and Intuit Outage
 Posted: Jun 17, 2010 - 06:56 PM
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Member
Joined: Feb 18, 2001
Posts: 5357
Location: S.E. PA
Status: Offline
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...OR Why you will never see my data in the cloud...
Intuit got whacked at 7 PM Tuesday evening (June 15, 2010). They say a maintenance upgrade did the damage.
Yeah. Ok. They ought to be firing a whole department pretty soon.
It took down all their websites. Yeah, you can get the "front" pages, but there's an awful lot you can't actually do there.
You can't get on their forums.
You can't register product.
...and if you call them, they can't even generate a validation code to manually register product.
...two of my clients have data online with Intuit and can't get to their data.
...and all this still at whack-time plus 43 hours.
The website notice:
"We're beginning to restore all affected Intuit websites and services. Customers already have access to some sites and we're continuing to work toward full restoration.
Our preliminary investigation indicates the outage occurred during a routine maintenance procedure Tuesday night. An accidental power failure during that procedure affected both our primary and backup systems, taking a number of Intuit websites and services offline. While power was quickly restored, we're working diligently to validate our systems and bring them back into full operation.
We apologize for disruptions we've caused and understand the importance of our services to our customers. We will continue working nonstop until all affected websites and services are fully restored. "
Apparently, they haven't heard about fail-safe, fail-over, redundancy and isolation. 43 hours??? ...from a power outage??? Good thing they aren't deep-well drilling for oil.
--- more --- ...and ya really ought to read some of the comments...  |
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hubtones
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Post subject: RE: QuickBooks and Intuit Outage
Posted: Jun 18, 2010 - 05:00 AM
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Member
Joined: Feb 28, 2001
Posts: 1035
Location: Philadelphia, PA USA
Status: Offline
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I often wonder if cloud computing is really a good idea. It might be a good backup idea, but businesses should always keep at least one version where they can get to it even if the entire internet goes down.
I've already seen college students using google docs run into a major headache when their internet access dies. |
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Alpha1
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Post subject: RE: QuickBooks and Intuit Outage
Posted: Jun 19, 2010 - 03:05 AM
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Member
Joined: Jan 19, 2007
Posts: 262
Location: Edgewater Park, NJ
Status: Offline
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I use cloud computing, only as a way of backup and duplications.
Anything important, papers, etc, goes on google docs. If my paper copy gets lost, flash drive dies, I have google docs access.
I backup and sync all notes, code snippets and other goodies via dropbox.
Dropbox gives you 2 gig of storage and supports linux mac and windows. You can earn extra storage for free. I do not depend on them for the storage, but rather Use their software to make multiple copies of everything i have, including one note notebook, which uses save as you write style saving.
Anytime i edit a note, Its copied to usually at least 3 of my 4 connected computers, their server, and their servers have 30 undelete 'features'.
You may call it a privacy issue, but when you use it frequently with many copies of documents, its a good layer of security.
I think thats the way cloud should be, backups, and only backups.
Google docs fixed one nice thng, the ability to backup all your documents are a zip file. I do that every semester at midterms and final, and those zips then go into dropbox 
2 years using this system and it has yet to fail me.
Now financial data, i don't think should EVER be stored in the cloud, you never know who has access.
School papers, notes and junk like that, upload away! |
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NoClue
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Post subject: RE: QuickBooks and Intuit Outage
Posted: Jun 19, 2010 - 09:17 PM
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Site Admin
Joined: Jan 17, 2001
Posts: 10454
Location: Blackwood, NJ USA
Status: Offline
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I always thought of Intuit as one of those 'necessary evils'. I got bitten a few times by the changing of their proprietary file format. They just give me a bad feeling.
That said, I still use Quicken2000 under Wine.
The cloud? I dunno. I've never been a fan of letting somebody else hold my data. My mail comes to either my own server, or a local mail client. I've got enough server space, between my provider and various websites. I've got enough DVD burners. I can take care of my own data, thank you very much.
I can see the appeal though. Let's say a company needs email. They've got a choice...they can put up an in-house server, or they can farm it out.
If they put up a server, they might, from time to time, need the help of an expert...either on-staff or consultant.
If they farm it out, setup is easy. An idiot can do it. Unfortunately, when you make something so simple that an idiot can do it, idiots will do it.
In addition, they are now subject to the whims of the internet. Outages. Hacks. DoS attacks. Etc.
So...if somebody else's stuff dies, you are at their mercy. If my stuff dies, I have some control over when it will be back up.
To a business owner, financial data is much like email data. In-house? On-line? Which is cheaper? Which is easier?
I dunno. I can't really see how running Quickbooks in the cloud could be any easier than running Quickbooks locally. I'm probably missing something.  |
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hubtones
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Post subject: Re: RE: QuickBooks and Intuit Outage
Posted: Jun 19, 2010 - 10:44 PM
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Member
Joined: Feb 28, 2001
Posts: 1035
Location: Philadelphia, PA USA
Status: Offline
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Alpha1 wrote:
Now financial data, i don't think should EVER be stored in the cloud, you never know who has access.
School papers, notes and junk like that, upload away!
The son of a close friend had a real problem, one of his older papers was copied and used at another university. Unfortunately it was submitted to the same adjunct professor who had seen the student's paper originally. The student's graduation was delayed while an investigation occurred. Fortunately, there was no evidence that he had been involved in the usage of his paper, and the paper had apparently been distributed by one of the paper writing services after grabbing it from his cloud storage. I'ld suggest encryption of stored papers too at least until after graduation. I wouldn't worry as much about family members at home doing the unthinkable but the cloud has downsides. Zip with encryption would have prevented the almost fiasco. |
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Alpha1
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Post subject: RE: Re: RE: QuickBooks and Intuit Outage
Posted: Jun 20, 2010 - 06:45 PM
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Member
Joined: Jan 19, 2007
Posts: 262
Location: Edgewater Park, NJ
Status: Offline
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That may not have been his fault. There are several sites, that professors force students to upload their papers to, which search for plagiarism, but surrender the rights of the student to that paper. It also puts in into the public to be copied or used as a source for other papers. It also prevents a student from ever using parts of an old paper again, which is wrong, because after all it is their paper.
Thats just a big mess many colleges put students in and situations like that are not too uncommon. |
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Bob
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Post subject: Re: RE: Re: RE: QuickBooks and Intuit Outage
Posted: Jun 25, 2010 - 11:59 PM
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Member
Joined: Feb 18, 2001
Posts: 5357
Location: S.E. PA
Status: Offline
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I don't have more than 4 gb of critical data.
I can get a 4 GB USB memory stick for less than $10.
Three of them ought to do me for backup.
...and then there's all the old hard drives I have laying around.
Ok, let's say I think the music I ripped to MP3's off my CD's is "critical" -- That's not more than 4 GB either.
...and I have my spouse's data backed up to my machine and she has mine backed up to hers. ...and those are backed up to my server.
And then there's the CD and DVD writers...
Data in the cloud? Nah.
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Attaining information by any means should not be discouraged. Incorrect usage and failure to cite sources should be discouraged. On the other hand, assignments shouldn't require students to regurgitate information. Teachers should assign problems to solve. Most students below their 15th year in school are not going to be coming up with a description of their original research or their own original conclusions. Those very few who are performing original research have had the parameters of valid research explained and are rigorously documenting every step of their research, some large amount of them with the rules laid out by legal counsel. Just about every paper turned in, by those other many students not performing original research, includes a large body of information they just attained recently... ...from somewhere other than their own heads. Half of their formal papers should be footnotes, quotations, citations, and bibliography.
Students usually don't suddenly improve, intellectually, in a short period of time.
Stand and deliver.
That said, a teacher who needs a service to ensure that the papers turned in are the work of the student, is not a teacher who has been communicating with the student. |
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