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Microsoft Ex-Chief to Launch Web-Based Software
prostoalex writes "Search for Paul Maritz and you're most likely to find Microsoft references. However, next month his new venture, PiCorp will start distributing Web-based software applications that might compete directly with Microsoft offerings. Former Microsoft exec also has an opinion on the future of software industry: '"The strength of the PC is also its weakness," Maritz says. "People don't want a single dedicated computer. They don't want their whole lives bound up in one piece of hardware. People want to get access wherever they are, from whatever device they're using."'"
. . . I might not want my life "bound up" in one piece of hardware, but I sure don't want it depending on paying some "service provider" every month while they share my files with every three letter agency, investigator, advertiser, and anyone else under the sun who will pay, either. I'll stick with open source software running on my desktop for my personal files, thank-you-very-much. If I need to not be "bound up," I'll VNC in over SSH.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
I have only one piece of hardware, you insensitive clod.
I agree with not wanting my data on-line.
But with the price of USB drives so low now, why not just encrypt your important data on one of those? That's what I do.
That way, I have a copy on my home machine and a copy with me if I need it.
This guy have a daughter ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
PI (pronounced "pi," like the number) has 50 employees and is headquartered in Bangalore, India. Its 15 founding executives
15 executives to 50 workers! I wonder how many qualify as managers? 40? I don't expect to see much coming out of this company.
No Windows in the vista. All of those that are going to be sold, have been sold. Microsoft should stick to xBoxes.
This, of course, is why people own iPods, PDAs, cell phones that store dialing lists, etc. They can decide on the type of machine that's best suited to storing particular data.
At least to me, his service doesn't seem like much of an improvement on that. In fact, it seems to do rather the opposite: while I suppose with his service, my data might be spread across a bunch of machines in a web server farm (plus back end servers, etc.) it all looks and acts like it's on one centralized computer.
I have a small number of devices, each with a particular purpose. He probably has more devices, but they all seem to have the same purpose: taking my money, while reducing functionality.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
Does anyone actually think the "net cafe" is going to be a mainstay of our society?
I already carry a usb drive on my keyring. So do a lot of other people. My iPod can also store files, etc. Isn't it more plausible that people will soon run virtual machines off their (possibly wireless) portable storage devices?
Needing net to access your files, what a great idea.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Weeeeee!!!!!!!! the wheel goes round and round.
Actually, I like having all of my stuff in one place...
I predict that when they release their "office suite" that it will be exactly the same as Google's offerings. And I predict that credulous reporters will pass on the claim that they have 99% of the core functionality that Office users need, while eliminating all the worthless features.
You know, things like a decent set of formulas in your spreadsheet and style sheets in your word processor.
I find Alexis Smirnov.
What a great opportunity for a "In Soviet Russia..." post.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
People also want security and privacy for their data, two things you put seriously at risk when you entrust your data to others. No thanks.
Read, the article, saw the hype. I hope he succeeds, but he's got a very big uphill battle ahead of him -- the author of that article didnt even visit that issue...
From TFA:
;-)
People don't want a single dedicated computer. They don't want their whole lives bound up in one piece of hardware.
Also, people generally tend not to care about their sensitive data? Web-based software delivers even more ways to hijack it, as not only it is insecure while being transfered between two computers (that is a problem that can be fixed with, say, GPG), but also while being edited. Ok, your may encrypt it, but never the less the crackers will get quite more samples of your encrypted data than they could get if you only sent a single file. Do you really want this?
People want to get access wherever they are, from whatever device they're using.
But keep in mind that it will impact the performance of their main device.
I think we are in one of those major generational changes. And it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
If it doesn't play out the "web-is-our-OS" way, the result will actually be far better for both you and your users. Unless you intended to spy on em.
I don't think he really understands "the battle". A web app can run on any system but being closed-source can hinder the sharing and accessing information if the developer isn't thoughtful. Google seemed to care about the client machine when they ported Picassa to linux http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/26/031022 9 and also managed to aid the open-source community by adding to WINE http://code.google.com/wine.html even when developing their own proprietary software.
My question is, what kind of services qualify for government snooping? Sure, if you use a service that involves storing your files on, say, Google's servers, well then government agencies can just demand that Google provide your info to them. But what if a company just provides a service to connect you to your own storage servers? Would that change things?
We need to undertstand where the boundaries lie on personal property. Take the brick-and-mortar analogy: if you own your home, nobody is supposed to be able to just come in a rifle through your stuff (I think the PATRIOT Act changes that, actually, but be that as it may), whereas if you rent an apartment you have far less protection. Even if you own an apartment inside a building, I doubt you get the same protections as if you own the land as well. The parallels to owning/renting/leasing servers are obvious. Are there any folks out there who know about the legality involved?
So, should we all be running file servers off our home PCs and just using service providers to access our own actual server via whatever device we're using, or is it enough to own one that's running at your web hosting company?
A-Bomb
Normal people don't do weekly off-site backups or verify that the backup media is readable on some other computer. (if you don't do this, quit being so damn smug) Normal people don't do any backups at all.
Normal people buy a new PC when the old one is bogged down with spyware, useless toolbars, and a spamming engine. They buy what is on sale at Walmart. This new PC does not include the user's old data files! The old PC may be kept around for access to these files, which could be printed on the $20 inkjet using $60 ink cartrages.
whole lives bound up
I'd very much more prefer my whole life bound up to pieces of hardware that are mine, than "trusting" it to some company whom I cannot influence, can change policies and terms as they see fit, have usually some obscure and ignorant thinking about "Security" and "privacy" as such, and have no control over, thankyouverymuch. Especially if that company has a leader with such a long term "education" in MS's way to see and do things.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
"People want to get access wherever they are, from whatever device they're using."
He's right, and that's why web based software will continue to fail. You can't use it in places without internet access.
"People want to get access wherever they are, from whatever device they're using."
People don't want to just access information, they want to use it, modify it, create it, etc. The best platform for doing that is the PC. The fact that a web application is running in a browser doesn't make it any less PC-bound.
Sure you can run a browser on a cell phone, but in practice it's not very useful. In fact, the browser is usually the least effective "application" that a cell phone has. The problem is that devices with restricted resources don't work well with generic solutions. An application that must run on a platform with a tiny screen, a limited keyboard, and no mouse should be designed from the ground up specifically for that class of platform.
I don't mind having a "single dedicated computer" or having "my whole life bound up in one piece of hardware" (is he saying that people don't make backups??). Why? Because it's MY machine, under MY control. Nobody else has access to it, nobody else can see anything on it unless I specifically allow them to, and that's the way I like it.
This way, if I forget to pay my internet bill, or my wireless bill, etc., I don't lose my files. They're still on my computer, and I can still use them. All I have to do is be at the machine.
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
"People don't want a single dedicated computer. They don't want their whole lives bound up in one piece of hardware.
No, I don't want my information "bound up" in a single, non-networked device. However, this statement shows just how out of touch this guy is. The Net, in it's current form, has been around since the 90s. Non-tech people have been doing remote connections since the mid 80s. Is "I left the data in my work computer" really still a viable excuse? Do computers still exist that can't be remote accessed (excluding systems designed that way for security reasons)? And no, I'm not talking about systems that just need some switch turned on, I mean they completely lack the ability. I ask because that is the only type of system I can think of where your life might be "bound up in one piece of hardware."
One thing I can say, I don't want my whole life bound up in a single dedicated pay service. Not when it's so easy to remote access my own systems or even just take the data with me (via USB drive or some such). Why pay someone else to keep my data for me when I can keep it myself for free? On top of that, I feel much safer securing my own data. I don't want to worry about someone snooping without a warrant.
People want to get access wherever they are, from whatever device they're using."
I already have this ability without this service. Of course, this service will probably sell. I keep seeing ads for a remote access service on TV. It amazes me every time I see it. I think to myself, people really pay for a service that lets your computer do something it could already do? Wow. I wonder if I could sell a service that changes your wallpaper for you once a month? Of course you would have to supply your own wallpaper.
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
From the article
the software will let people share and access their information without having to know where a certain e-mail or photo is stored
from that, and from the diagram here I'm guessing that they are developing an API for 'peer to peer' web applications, i.e the applications are distributed over multiple servers and hosting companies but to each other and to the programmer they're part of the same environment.
Also, they seem to depend on search a lot, and want to use it instead of traditional databases. This makes sense since a distributed application wouldn't be written to connect to a hardcoded address but to request some piece of information "wherever it is".
Whether in practice that's a good or bad idea remains to be seen, but it is interesting.
What about putting knoppix on a usb drive along with your data, and when you want to use a machine just reset it, alter its bios options (if necessary) to allow booting from a usb device, plug the bugger in and off you go? If windows is the weak link allowing virii and other nasties to get onto your usb drive, then why not just avoid it? Sure, not every site will allow you to do stuff like that, but if you set your device to read only before plugging it into a windows machine, email any changes you make to your docs there to yourself and update your docs when you're next at a machine you can reboot to knoppix, you should (more or less) be in the clear
Companies tell YOU what you want! ....oh wait, nevermind.
I think this is a fantastic idea, and frankly, I'm surprised there have been so many negative reactions posted so far. There are certainly a few downsides to this approach, but for the most part I think people just have an over-inflated fear that third-parties have the time & desire to snoop through their saved files. Any document of mine that is absolutely unfit for public consumption is encrypted.. and I could care less if anybody wants to look through the rest of my stuff - have fun wasting your time. They're all stored in my gmail account.. have a blast.
Either way, ensuring privacy is a very easy problem to work around. For any documents that contain trade secrets or corporate financial data, it's almost trivial to add a layer of encryption (even at the point of user interaction) to eliminate unauthorized access. If PI is planning to market their services to large corporations, some form of user-controlled encryption will need to be built-in to comply with Sarbanes-Oxely/HIPAA/etc, so I doubt this will even be an issue.
A couple people have pointed out that Internet access is required for this model to work, and that's absolutely correct. Even today, my electricity goes out more than my Internet access does, and when that happens, I just use my cell phone & laptop. I would argue that most of their target customers are already in the same situation I am, and if not, they'll be there in time for the release.
Plan 9 from Bell Labs.
Yeah! Why would we want to buy Coca-Cola, Nike, or Mattel? Oh hey, perhaps we shouldn't use any IBM or Sun products because they're made by an American company. And Boeing, Ford, GM and Chrysler can go to hell too!
...), and that's what you need to get into the market. And an Indian can write just as good LAMP or .NET code as anyone else.
An Indian.
*****
Grow the hell up. Web-services can be anywhere and cater to anyone (speed of light/latency permitting). And who's to say none of the 'founding executives' are Indian? And you think only the blessed United States is in need of web-services?
And when you're starting your own company, you may find you can provide services at a lower cost if you base yourself out of India (or China, or
And when you do realize this, I hope you remember to get some equity and a piece of the *rich cronies'* pie! And yeah, life's pretty good even in our part of the world.
Have fun!
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
If a facility is useful, a very large proportion of people seem to not give a stuff about security e.g. Outlook.
I use different computers at work, at home on holiday, when I am out and about. They are all different systems and I don't own them myself necessarily. I have a powerful PDA phone but I don't always carry it with me and it has limited capacity anyhow.
The more "devices" that we end up using, the more desirable is will become to be able access one's information without having to be involved in the mechanics of how it moves around. I think so because I appreciate simplicity and I think that other people do too unless they are hooked on "messing around with gadgets."
I find Gmail useful because I can get to all my messages from anywhere and I don't need to stuff my pockets with devices or manage the disc space on them them or find a charger that works in country X or put up with the sometimes rubbishy software.
Gmail is like a worldwide clipboard too - you can be anywhere and put new links, travel details, addresses and phone numbers etc into it (a draft message) and can search through later on to find something - much better than post-it notes.
So - good for Paul Maritz and his efforts. I had better declare 2 reasons for bias, though:
1) He was born in Zimbabwe like me although he was brought up in South Africa.
2) He has flown a Hawker Hunter at Thunder City (a place in Cape Town where you can fly old British combat jets) and in some odd way I admire him for doing what I would like to do. I want to fly in the awesome BAC Lightning, though.
http://www.thundercity.com/tiger_paul.htm
This is all just my personal opinion.
Just curious, is anyone else in the Slashdot community really not that interested in web-based software? I find that pretty much any machine I use "on the go" has MS Office or similar installed, and when I need portability I prefer to just email myself my document(s), which as well as removing the reliance on a third party service I trust less than my mail provider, it also means I have a stored backup online if the worst happens. I really couldn't be less interested in doing office-type editing through my browser - am I alone in this?
Grow the hell up....when you're starting your own company, you may find you can provide services at a lower cost if you base yourself out of India (or China, or ...), and that's what you need to get into the market. And an Indian can write just as good LAMP or .NET code as anyone else.
.NET programmers.
And when you do realize this, I hope you remember to get some equity and a piece of the *rich cronies'* pie! And yeah, life's pretty good even in our part of the world.
If "your part of the world" is India, then yeah, I guess that life is pretty good for the few percent of you who happen to be in the highest social castes. And as long as we ignore your atrocious public health system, your incredibly high infant mortality rate, and your massive problems with pollution and poverty, then yeah, life in India is just peachy.
Skilled labor in is expensive in the US because we have a high standard of living. If we allowed our infant mortality to skyrocket, if we allowed hundreds of thousands of our citizens to suffer and die from malaria, tuberculosis, dysentery and other wasting diseases due to poor sanitation, and we allowed thousands more to suffer and die from diseases that we have been all but eradicated in the first world (such as polio), then yeah, we might be able to compete with Bangalore on price. But then, we also might have to give up on our university system, shit in our water supply, and otherwise pollute the hell out of our land, water and air. Sounds like a good deal to me!
If India spent half as much money caring for their poor and suffering as they do trying to suck white-collar jobs from the US, I might believe you when you tell me that people in your part of the world need "web services." But from my perspective, you need doctors and mosquito nets a hell of a lot more than you need
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Looky at the flood of negative comments. In software design don't get prematurely caught up in implementation. Look at the big picture and you can see the future from here on most days.
h tml
Security is just part of the design.
Will they have a place to tie up my donkey when I get to the spaceport?
Let's do the splash screen first!
Besides, this idea has been around for decade.
http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/freeman/lifestreams.
Wow Tim, that was quite a little rant. Have you ever been to India? (If not, I have some travel photos at http://flickr.com/photos/mark_watson/sets/1622965/ - enjoy :-)
Seriously, India has been investing heavily in education for decades, and they are justifiably reaping some well deserved benefits from that policy. Overall, I had a very positive feeling about India and the people there.
Stop telling me what I want and listen to what I actually want. To the case at hand, actually, I'd much rather have all my data on my PC than somebody elses network.
Do you see what I did there?
I find myself hoping that Microsoft kicks a startup's ass in the marketplace....
Don't worry, they will
-a.d.-
I'm Erwin Schrodinger and I approve of this message, and I do not approve of this message!
But from my perspective, you need doctors and mosquito nets a hell of a lot more than you need .NET programmers.
.NET programmers to pay taxes so we can pay doctors and buy mosquito nets.
And we need
And yes, Let's try not to let fact interfere with our rant here, OK?
Actually, I like having all of my stuff in one place...
Me too, I also like being able to get to it easily. I have a mail archive behind a firewall for stuff I don't need to access often. Current mail is done through my school's IMAP, which also makes archiving as easy as drag and drop. The rest of my PIM stuff has been moving toward my cable box, thanks to KDE's solid sftp PIM hooks.
KDE's awesome Kontact has really presented an easy way to share your stuff with yourself and others. The version currently in Etch atomizes everything, so you can join resources from multiple places coherently. This makes atomizing your own resources much easier. I'm moving to smaller calendars and address books, which are easier to maintain and put on different devices or get via network. Yes, I keep a local copy on my laptop, just in case I don't have a network connection, but the master copy sits on the cable box. This way, all of my machines have the same, up to date information without sync hassles whenever they are on a network, all via ssh. If I want to share with someone else, Kontact will export it's formats or html on demand. If, for some reason, you have something private mark it that way and it won't be exported by accident. It makes me cringe to remember Outlook's horrible old single file for everything format.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The problem is that all it takes is one screw-up, and you're hosed big time (depending on what kinds of data were involved). I hope people really start to think about four key words here: "out of your control". Once you've lost control, you're susceptible to whatever policies, or changes in policy, the company controlling your data wishes to exercise. I'd rather either endure the alleged inconvenience, or run my own server (which probably will not be an option).
Wow Tim, that was quite a little rant. Have you ever been to India? (If not, I have some travel photos at...enjoy :-)
Those are great snapshots, Mark. They really change the substance of my argument. After all, a few vacation photos tell the whole story of India better than the many, many, many, resources that tell us that India is a third-world country.
India has one of the worst infant mortality rates on the planet, they have a sickening gap between rich and poor, they have high rates of diseases that are all but eradicated in the first world, and they have...suburbs in Bangalore.
The reality of the situation is very simple: labor in India is cheap because it is a very poor country. They have abysmal standards for public health, medicine and sanitation, and tens of thousands of people die every year from diseases that are completely preventable. International aid organizations funnel billions of dollars a year into the country to fight things like polio and malaria, and meanwhile, the Indian goverment spends massive amounts of money on technical education that benefits only a relative few members of the highest castes.
It would be easy for the USA to compete on cost of labor, if we allowed our infrastructure to degrade to match that of a third-world country. If we stopped filtering our water, treating our sewage, and housing our homeless (just in the poor regions, of course), we could save billions on taxes. Then, we could deny higher education to 2/3rds of our students, label them as "laborers" or "merchants" and tell them that they could never aspire to a higher standard of living, due to birthright. Think of the savings!
Yessir, we could make those changes, and we would almost certainly become internationally "competitive"...I wonder why we don't?
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
If the file is encrypted by me (i.e., user-controlled encryption), then I am in control of the contents. With regard to the file itself- this isn't a discussion about the operational "what-ifs" of running a service like this - it's about the idea. The day-to-day operation of this service will be built to address the concerns that others have mentioned. For example, there will be uptime & data availability SLAs, multiple off-site backups, redundant power, etc.
There is no doubt in my mind that my data would be safer stored with them than it would be stored on my own PC. Sure, I could build out a mini-datacenter with 99.999% uptime, and then build an identical DR site.. but why go through all that trouble?
I find it funny that most people who disagree with this idea are mentioning MS Office. So the single point of failure chosen to store "mission critical" documents is an Internet-connected PC running Windows. I think a few posters in this thread could benefit from a brief overview of risk analysis.
Just out of curiousity - what are your views on safe deposit boxes? Do you trust the bank not to look through your stuff? They obviously have a key (and if they say they don't, why take the risk?). I wonder how that idea ever took off.. I won't even get into public storage rentals..!
Sun's old motto
"The Network IS the computer"
Rick B.
Sure Tom. Of *course* India is a third-world country. India is *also* a first-world country in some areas. And India NEEDS to have first-world technology.
You seem to believe that we chose to forgo health, education, housing, and infrastructure *just* so that we could compete better with the first-world countries. I wish that were true. Then we'd just shoot those idiots and chose health, education, housing, and infrastructure and be ready for our first-world experience.
Get a grip. The only way that India is going to get out of the mess that the British left behind (we didn't help much by closing out economy for 40 years, but that's a tale for another day, and hind-sight is 20/20), is with education for the masses, and jobs for those who are capable.
How do we bootstrap this? We can either get investments from outside (we're not getting as much as China though), or we can 'steal your jobs' and make money out of that. How can some of us 'steal your jobs' if we don't have sufficient education? For that matter, a country of a billion people needs a lot of high-tech equipment, just to run the place. You think 1000MW power plants get created on their own? Or perhaps you suggest we just import those? With what money?
There's a Govt. owned telecom manufacturer called CDoT. Before they started making telecom switches, the private MNC's were charging an arm and a leg - India could not afford that cost. Once CDoT started making the switches here - prices dropped dramatically, overnight.
High-tech is needed for things to be more efficient, for us to be able to afford it. Think about governance and the problem of distributing information to all the people. E-governance web services and high-tech networking infrastructure, will hopefully make this cheaper, easier, and better. Who's going to set this up for us? Perhaps we need to get IBM to do it for us with American workers?
You seem to believe that we have made a conscious choice to stay poor and keep our labor costs low. We *will* improve the quality of life of all our 1 billion people - it's not something that can happen overnight. It's not something that'll happen in a decade.
Tom, you can stay with your opinion that we're in a hell-hole we dug out of choice. Nothing I say can lead you out of that. All I can say is that's absolutely not the truth, and about as far from the truth as one can imagine.
But we will get out. And if getting out requires a few jobs lost, a reduction in the standard of living, higher prices for oil/energy, for some first-world countries with a few tenths of our population - then we're not going to cry over it.
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
First off, it's Tim, not Tom. If you want me to take your opinion seriously, do me the courtesy of not misspelling my name.
.NET programmers...are they building new power plants with their American CS training? Are they curing malaria? Buying mosquito nets for the Untouchables?
Now...
You seem to believe that we chose to forgo health, education, housing, and infrastructure *just* so that we could compete better with the first-world countries.
No, that's not what I said at all. I said that your labor is cheap because your nation doesn't invest nearly the amount of money that first-world nations do on annoying little things like sanitation and public health. Did you, personally, choose this state of affairs? Of course not. But that doesn't change the fact that you can undercut our labor costs because you undercut our standard of living...and you mostly do this on the backs of your poor citizens.
How do we bootstrap this? We can either get investments from outside...or we can 'steal your jobs' and make money out of that.
I never used the word "steal"...that's your wording. My feeling is that US politicians are to blame for this mess. Our country should have the foresight to regulate the kind of intellectual labor that goes overseas.
As far as "bootstrapping" India, however, I don't accept your premise. It isn't the US white-collar worker's responsibility to bring Indian quality of life up to first-world standards. India has one of the largest populations of any nation on the earth. I'm sure, if you tried, you could find a way to build an economy on the backs of your own people. You know why you aren't? It's quicker and easier for you to undercut the costs of American workers.
a country of a billion people needs a lot of high-tech equipment, just to run the place. You think 1000MW power plants get created on their own? Or perhaps you suggest we just import those? With what money?
So...those "technology parks" popping up all over Bangalore are making electricity for you now? How about the nice new condominiums for all of those white-collar Indian workers? And the
I didn't just fall off of the turnip truck. The vast majority of the newly-created wealth in India is concentrated amongst the citizens who are already well-off. In this respect, you are no different than the US. Our politicians have created a very efficient wealth transfer machine -- it moves money from the US middle-class, to the US upper class, with a small amount of that diverted to you, the Indian upper-class. But don't delude yourselves: when you become too expensive for our executives, our money will go elsewhere.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Sorry Tim, before my morning tea.
...' Now, when we are finally reaping some of those benefits, and we actually have the intellectual and financial capital to take on your work, individuals are being affected in the US, and you who have a voice, make a noise.
.NET programmers don't bring health or education or shelter, so there's no need for them. You refuse to see the ripple effects of this wealth and education. My grandmother stitched clothes for a living. My grandfather couldn't finish school, joined the railways, and worked his way up. Today, I personally know of an engineer who is the first educated member of his family - he probably supports an extended family of 10 - he'll make sure his family gets educated.
At no point of time in recent Indian history has there been a fiscal position in the central government where Indian health/education/shelter issues could be wiped out simply by the government allocating the resources correctly. I think you may be underestimating the level of poverty in India.
You must understand that the resources available to the government are quite small in comparison to the number of things to do. One choice was to lead in education - hoping that technological advances would help alleviate poverty and bring the standard of living up. That's happening - but it'll take generations.
Building out of our own resources - now that's quite funny. What do you think America and the West built their fortunes out of in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries? Colonialism and trade. Buying Indian raw materials, processing them and selling them back at huge profits, while using the army and laws to prevent factories in India. While the USA was not a participant in India, it did take over the lands of the native population - colonialism of a different kind.
We did try for a very long time, ~40 years, to bootstrap ourselves without outside resources. Didn't work. We realised it when we were very close to being bankrupt. We had to change and we did. We followed what the West said - 'Free trade, remove barriers,
Thing is you seem to be looking for dichotomies -
Are inequities increasing? Sure, it's not all good. Is there a better way of increasing the standard of living for more people? Answer that, and you'll be God for a billion people.
And we are using this advanced tech to build better things for ourselves - when our local market really takes off, it's in the infant stages so far - YOUR companies will be fighting for access to our markets. I hope that you'll be able to make money off of that.
We will depend on the American and other first-world markets to bootstrap. Once we do, we will have enough of a local market that we will be able to scale more rapidly. See telecom in Japan or South Korea for an example.
Have fun!
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
I want my information easily accessible wherever I am, using whatever app. But that doesn't mean I want web apps.
So really I want universal formats and global easy to use syncing to any device, any os.
None of which we have, simply because business don't like or care about anything but themselves. Which is fine for making money, and some customers happy...it is never going to make everyone happy.
----- I refuse to have an argument with an unarmed person
Just out of curiousity - what are your views on safe deposit boxes?
I don't use one. I am under the impression that banks do (or at least used to) respect the confidentiality of their customers- that's precisely one of the reasons for a safe deposit box. Oddly, most business used to exercise a certain degree of discretion when it came to customer data...but the whole scene is now suffering from a tragedy of the commons - once one company decided it was ok to pimp data associated with their customers, everyone joined in.
This suffers from the same issue that everything else related to technology- if all you have is one single point of failure, and it fails, you are screwed.
I just don't see the point in splitting hairs over where something is stored, when how you store it is the important thing. Always assume that everything you write down or save on a disk is going to be read by everyone. If that's not acceptable, encrypt it. By making an informed decision on which encryption algorithm to use, you can be 100% sure that your saved data will never be read by any civilian (number stations are a good example of this in practice). If the government wants to have a look, it will cost them a substantial amount of time & money, almost certainly several orders of magnitude greater than the actual value of the data.