It's probably an established law of computer use - sooner or later you're going to have a data loss. Sometimes it's a power failure that surprises us before we have a chance to click on save, sometimes it's saving over something when you'd intended a "save as", and sometimes it's an entire hard drive that simply goes poof. And though they may not happen simultaneously, most of us probably encounter all of these, and more. Sadly, but perhaps wisely, we've learned to accept these as facts of computer-age life. It's thus comforting to know that sites where we store our information take backup very seriously.

And that being the case, the report that the highly respected social bookmarking site ma.gnolia suffered a very extensive data loss (a report that got into this edition just before the buzzer) is especially discouraging. Other online services will no doubt claim that their backup is safer and more secure, but most users are probably saying to themselves "if it could happen to them ...". So while we may now be ready for the cloud, the cloud may not be truly ready for us.