> That said, I doubt I'll ever see this S3 glitch again -- I got a phone call from Amazon providing some additional details about what caused this and it was clear that they were taking it very seriously.

They'd better.

I'm as surprised as you are (well, probably not because I'm not using S3, but I know a bit about how it is put together and I can't believe the Amazon people are happy about having this happen to them, it's the exact opposite of what should happen in a 'cloud' storage situation).

I think there will be some pretty high level meetings on this glitch, the one thing you don't want is customer data going absent-without-leave, even if only on a holiday instead of a permanent departure.

Isn't it against your instinct to have data from different customers live in what amounts to be the same file? I understand you've got it encrypted to the hilt but that seems 'un-Colinish' ;)