Sorry, I was unclear. The uptime is fine. You'll be able to access S3. They just don't promise your data will be there. It may be gone, deleted forever.

Oh I see, the picture on wikipedia shows the future. That is not actually the situation in the present. There is no connection from Amazon to Google to Salesforce. There is no "The Cloud" until OGF finishes the OCCI http://www.occi-wg.org/ and everyone starts using the same open standard. Until then, these various "cloud providers" really are no better than any other remote storage/compute providers. They may internally use cloud software to manage their "heterogeous compute locations". But the only reason that matters to the end user is it helps reduce Amazon's operating costs, and thus prices.

Also, a distributed p2p network is a cloud. As stated in your link actually, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing#Application. Oh and another confusion, cloud computing is basically the same as grid computing. The difference for them all is really in the marketing.

Unfortunately, Amazon's S3 isn't really a great backup system. Its service agreement does not make any guarantees your data will actually be there when you want it. Of course, it isn't that good example of a cloud in the first place. Amazon is still the sole provider, making it just another remote storage company.

Maybe if other providers were supplying storage with S3 as middleware. Especially little guys, I mean just regular desktop users. Even the cheapest desktop is barely using its capacity most the time. Someone could be running an S3 backend, like seti@home. You use my computer as one of the computer's torrenting your data or for running your process. This could be a service among friends, or (if the security difficulties can get worked out) as a payed service for everyone.

Yours is not the only group of concerned gamers. I was all set to go buy Spore, excited even to hand over my money in support of what sounded like a cool game. Then I heard about the DRM problems. So I still haven't bought it. I usually buy games so I haven't pirated it either though -after I get over my disappointment- I suppose I will.