I guess I had become so used to NAT it just seemed the natural order of things. I do think the security is still a major issue but then I like building my servers as if they are alone on the Internet so it makes sense
And yes, a good point about the reliability of cloud services - but still at 50 bucks for 2 TB and iCloud costing me 20 bucks a month I think Shared infrastructure savings have a long way to go !