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Stallman Says Cloud Computing Is a Trap
stevedcc writes in to tell us about an interview with RMS in The Guardian, in which he gives his views on cloud computing, with a particular focus on user access to data and the sacrifices made for convenience. "'It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign,' he told The Guardian. 'Somebody is saying this is inevitable — and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.'" Computerworld has a summary of some of the blogosphere's reaction to RMS's position.
We love you, we really do. But your delusional and increasingly demented ravings give all supporters of free software a bad name.
And if you're going to represent the opinions of a large group of users like you do, would it kill you to buy a nice shirt and a razor?
Yours
The free software community.
I am in disbelief over anyones the acceptance of the idea. Relinquishing control over your data to an outside source seems unfathomably retarded, no matter what kind of spin is put on it.
Latency can be a problem. Speed of light and all that.
You also lose control and confidentiality.
It's a trap!
None of RMS's concerns are related to the concept of "cloud" computing. His issues are with proprietary computing.
It's stupidity.
I'm not a big fan of black and white formats.
Nor am I a big fan of people who paint reality to be only black or white.
There are shades of gray.
For anyone to stand up and pronounce this as either 100% good or 100% bad is laughable. I'm certain Google & Amazon will/have found a completely viable and useful application for cloud computing--I mean unless I'm mistaken I think it's already working with Open Social. I'm sure it will have at the very least a niche application in computing. It might be very small, it might be very big. But to call it complete stupidity is quite ignorant.
'Somebody is saying this is inevitable -- and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.'
Uh oh, look at this! Oh no! Stupid stupid stupid! Just because businesses and proponents want it, doesn't necessarily make it evil or stupid. That's being shoved down my throat and self fulfilled prophecy and ... bad stuff ...
... we may have a candidate for cloud computing! Why not let some other company/people provide the cycles? Surely one could dream up some application even if it is merely a trivial/novel concept.
Furthermore, if the source code is GPL and the application is public and the data is not sensitive
My work here is dung.
If you dont like cloud computing dont participate in it. Theres no reason for us to argue about the matter.
The loss of control and privicy should put anyone off cloud computing.
RMS however adds the usual over the top extra paranoia we all love.
I would be up for cloud computing using remote power if it was my remote power. Hopefully soon out desktops will become our clouds for our portable machines. That would be nice, control and power for all!
+----------------- | What is the question!
Then dey get yer sugar, then dey get yer women, then dey get yer money!!! DONT DO IT!!!
It's very very rare that I'd agree with Richard Stallman since his "user community" agenda is rarely in line with real freedom for developers (unfortunately Stallman favors users over developers), but this time I'd have to agree with him about cloud computing and the dependencies it creates for people, projects and companies "hosted" in the cloud.
Cloud computing is web hosting gone wild on steroids... however every company or software system that you rely on is another dependency that could cause problems for you down the road. Be careful which systems you use in your magical web app built upon cloud computing systems... a house is only as solid as the strength of the cards (infrastructure) it rests on...
He is right that cloud computing is a potential threat to the progress we have made on free software, open standards, etc. However, he's wrong that it's marketing hype. Being able to move noisy, power-hungry hardware somewhere else and have other people deal with repairing and replacing it is a big win.
Fortunately, since a lot of cloud computing uses virtual machines, you do get full control and it ends up being not so much of a threat to free software. If anything, FOSS is a natural match to virtual machines, in the cloud or elsewhere.
doesn't mean they're not after you. Just sayin.
a gnu/trap?
load "$",8,1
For most users, the loss of control of there data and the other privacy issues that concern us arent really all that important. What matters to them is how easy the software is to use. Compare creating a gmail account to downloading and installing a normal mail client, setting up the pop / smtp servers and so on. In setting up a gmail account the hardest part is deciding on what your address should be (or reading the captcha). The trouble with most technical people is that they assume everyone else to be technical, when this is rarely the case. Hell I'm a programmer by trade and I cant even be bothered finding out how to put line breaks in my post!
From the "paranoid" RMS:
"cloud computing [is] simply a trap aimed at forcing more people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that would cost them more and more over time"
From the "enterprising" Ballmer on a "free" cloud:
"I was joking actually with Tim Lyons, who's here from Morgan Stanley, 'Sure, we'll give you everything for free as long as we get to watch what every investment banker does all day on their PC, where they go, what their mail says, and we'll give them real relevant ads.' I think we can probably get 100 bucks a year out of them instead of inflicting that experience. So, I don't think advertising is for everything."
Imagine paying your monthly internet bill. And your monthly cloud OS bill. And your monthly email app/storage bill. And your online office application bill. Etc. Etc.
RMS again: ... this is inevitable ... it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true."
"whenever you hear somebody saying
Naaahhh... we've never heard of any giant marketing campaigns trying to convince us that some new product or idea is inevitable or that we can't or won't be able to live without it... right?
Paranoid?
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
Businesses want to make money. The trend is business thinking is "why sell them something when we can rent it to them and keep charging them indefinitely."
RMS hits it right on when he says web-based applications are really an effort to change the market so that every computing function is on a pay per use or subscription basis. Look at itunes DRM if you want to see the future of "cloud computing"
It's all marketing.
As an aside, from TFA:
I was amused that the writer of an article about how "cloud computing" is hype used another one of those hype buzzwords that have no concrete meaning whatsoever..."web 2.0"...
Thank you Dave Raggett
The vast majority of computer users are not system administrators. For them, having someone -- whether it's the company administrator down the hall, or Google somewhere out there -- shepherd their data is a great reassurance.
99% of people don't host their own websites, so they depend on someone else to do it. Would Stallman say it's bad for those people to give that person or hosting company control over their data?
I've never been much of a fan for the idea. Although I can recognize some of the potential benefits, I don't see an overall advantage. How much data are we really willing to give over to Google, Microsoft, etc. Much like the DRM fiasco of interest as of late, what happens if Google decides to discontinue Google Docs? It's not just a "control" or "free software" issue. Cloud Computing isn't the answer; Competent Computing is the answer. IMO, the origin of this entire discussion is a fundamental underappreciation for the immense computing potential even the average computer user (with a computer that may be several years old) has these days. No one needs Cloud Computing. A bargain basement Dell these days is still a very good machine.
Congratulations on the hat trick of alarmist attention whoring.
gg nextmap
I usually agree with what RMS says. However, this time he's overreacting.
Gmail, for example, has a terms of service and a privacy policy detailing exactly what they can and cannot do with your information. Most other companies do as well (by law?) and it's usually pretty easy to access.
Ultimately you are giving your data to a third party, but I think it's paranoia to say that you should make sure your data never gets stored on the internet. That's like keeping your money under your mattress instead of putting it in a bank -- the bank could, theoretically, take your money and disappear, but it's not at all likely.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I'm actually giving a presentation on this in a couple weeks at an academic conference on innovation. "Cloud Computing" had another name in the 1970's, Time Share. Ask folks how well that worked back in the day. Two years ago I did a consulting gig at a Medical Supply company that was still running their inventory and billing off a 486 with DOS, I kid you not. Fortunately their software vender was still around and did offer an upgrade route, but they were pushing to use their new online based system. We shopped around at a few other medical software companies who were pushing the same thing.
The owners of the business were in their 50's and 60's. They were savvy enough with the computers, but everything kept coming back to what would happen to their data. End of the day, they would not trust their business data to an outside vender, period. And for good reason dealing with HIPPA and other privacy considerations. The only way out for the data is a modem that is used to connect to the state's electronic billing system for public aid & medicare and that's it. Not internet connection to the server or the workstations that connect to it.
I work around a college town with several folks who are on the cutting edge. I just built online ordering system for another company that is hosted off a dedicated server. Every day the interns came in, the first thing out of their mouths were, "Why don't you just use Amazon?"
My short answer was, "I know how this will scale. If it gets hammered, add more servers, load balance it out, and cluster the database when it comes time. I've done it before and it will work. And until something better comes along and is proven, stick with what you know."
Most smaller businesses I chat with are not comfortable with the idea of other people hosting their critical data. Basically my conference topic is that we'll see something close to the Adobe Air model where applications can run either online or from the web in some type of VM and enable users to still save their work locally. Whether that be a hard drive or USB thumb drive. No matter how cool a web app is, if I can't run it while I'm not connected and can't save data to my local machine, it is not going to replace traditional desktop apps anytime soon.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
This is just the mainframe era all over again. Everything old is new again.
Except this time, just wait until one of your "cloud" providers goes out of business, taking all of your company's data with it. Who will look foolish then?
If there's one person in this industry who has been consistent over the years it's Richard Stallman. You may not agree with his views: that personal freedoms are more important than technical merit or convenience but you have to admit that he has never drifted from his what he believes in. He's also proven that he is willing to use real hard work (e.g., in the form of code) to promote the principles of his beliefs.
I think few people would realize how much different the computing world would be without the positive influence he's had on our industry.
Also, the record for many of his writings are pretty right on track. Just as an example: A decade ago the idea that you might need special "rights" in order to read a book might have been perceived as .. oh, what are the words people are using now? "raving" or "lunacy". Yet today Digital Restrictions Management embedded in eBooks, games and multi-media are a real thing -- and a real threat to personal freedoms.
Now, I'm just speaking for myself, but when RMS speaks, I will stop and read -- or listen (and be grateful I still have the freedoms to chose to do so) :-)
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
He says "Oracle's Ellison is selling cloud computing products and poking fun at his own marketing. Stallman is opposed to the cloud because he thinks it locks users into proprietary, non-open source software. Guess which one is a billionaire?"
Regardless of the merits of Stallman's views, that's just a fucking stupid statement. Like someone defending Rush Limbaugh's factual accuracy by pointing to his ratings.
Like someone rebutting concerns over monopolies by pointing out the existence of robber-barons.
This space available.
Our common sense can't repel convenience of that magnitude!
Ignoring the fear mongering diatribe by RMS he does have a point. Who owns your data (forget privacy laws they aren't worth the paper they are printed on now) and does the cloud service provider have the right to force you to access the data you own through a costly proprietary channel ? Think about it, Im Google, we now have 8 years of your email on our servers, you will now have to pay for a very expensive application to access it, what you dont want to pay, sorry we will delete your precious data then.
Please stop using this phrase.
Please?
Don't forget a shower!
If you do rely solely on the "cloud" and only use one provider, then yes, it is bad and controlling.
If, on the other hand, you do not do that, it isn't.
I'm sure someone in the near future will create a multi-cloud library that, much like the libraries that allow you to swap relational DBs or CPUs without coding for each as long as you don't use DB-specific or chip-specific features, will allow you to run on whichever service is cheapest/less controlling/etc. Once this is done, you are as free or more free as anyone who leases hardware directly.
Possibly as free or more free than if you owned the hardware yourself.
And I've known him for over 30 years. But just as a stopped clock is right twice a day, sometimes RMS is spot-on.
This is such a case.
For the cloud computing providers, the impetus behind the mad rush to cloud computing is first and foremost to lock users into a single provider. A secondary impetus is to give the provider unfettered access to all users' data.
What RMS doesn't mention, but of equal concern, are the disconnects between what the various players say, and what other players hear.
For example, cloud providers say "use our cloud, and you don't need to have an expensive IT department." IT department heads hear "use their cloud, and we don't need to have expensive IT engineers."
Cloud computing is potentially far worse than proprietary software since the cloud has much greater reach. Once anything is in the cloud, it is difficult to do things unless everything is in the cloud.
A company which is annoyed with Windows can add a Linux box to the mix, and gradually move stuff from Windows to Linux. With the cloud, it is all or none.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dddAi8FF3F4
And smells
If you want to distribute public domain information to as many people as possible and achieve robust storage through massive redundancy, then "cloud computing" is a great idea (think bittorrent). If you want to store your own private data, then storing it on servers that may wind up controlled by your competitors is a stupid idea (do you trust Microsoft with your data). Of course, for the former, all we really need is P2P, not paid-for servers. I think the idea of using a 'net service to store sensitive data is an inherently flawed business model because you will always have better bandwidth and access times to your onsite computers than you will to any service provider.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
It's to distract us from the impending dust cloud that will puff up the letters "w.a.l.l. s.t.r.e.e.t. w.a.s. h.e.r.e."
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
One of the reasons I dont buy games on Steam, the freedom to buy a game at a store and install it anytome, is more important than the convince of one-click buys. (And normally the same price to boot)
Same goes with music thats DRM enabled, email, rss reader, etc. Online might be quicker, but they lock you in, its hard to export and make a backup. Sometimes its easy, but what about converting to other formats, other providers?
Its lock in, and if you dont think its lock in, you are not paying attention. Companies stop churn by making it hard to leave. Its business after all.
Hes spot on. Lock in, just like microsoft, apple does, and even google does to degrees.
Freedom to walk away with your data, anytime.
Cloud computing has a penis? Damn. It looked so sexy, too... :(
Anybody want my mod points?
Cloud computing sounds like some pie-in-the-sky bullshit if you ask me. Trust a third party with all my data? They go down and I'm screwed. Not to mention when they steal my data and then use it to compete against me, what then?
i have always disliked Stallman, and the GNU in general. but that is my personal opinion... this time though, he has litterally just allowed himself to take a shit out of his mouth.
portfolio
I've lived through decades of IT buzzwords. At some level, even the internet, they all turned out to be just tools. Like any tool they are refined over the years, do some things really well and are appropriate in some situations. Where I think we get sideways in IT are the crusaders, either community or paid, who try to make the latest tool the one that solves all problems. Like web services. Remember when those came out? They were going to be the end all of computing. Software as a service, web 2.0...
So now it's "the cloud". It's just recycled software as a service delivered over the internet. Some are good and useful tools, some aren't. We use Gmail and I'm pretty comfortable with it. Would I use it to store confidential patient data? Not a chance. Neither would I outsource client confidential data to an outsource provider, especially an offshore provider. Although I'm certain there are many companies doing that without giving it a second thought, we're not going to. We'll keep the data here, encrypted at rest, and strictly limit who has access to the data and the hardware. It's not bullet proof, but it's not dumping people's medical records on an outsource "cloud" data storage system. Which might be good but might not. Which might be running their data storage or backups somewhere offshore. Maybe that data is secure, maybe not. Some things it makes sense to cloud out and some things it doesn't.
One thing that makes me crazy are vendors and partners all using different types of systems. One vendor has some outsource phone conference thing, another one uses some off-site thing to manage his contacts that sends ME email wanting me to update my contact information for HIM, another has some subscription project management something that buries me with pages of project updates with the current entry all the way at the bottom. It's a service mess.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Ackbar was sayin' it a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away.
I record my sleeptalking
RMS isn't protesting against cloud computing technology, but to it being marketed as a panacea.
Cloud computing can have its use, like for instance within a business where segment A doesn't have to know the details about the grid, but just request a service and hopefully get it -- I'm pretty darn sure that this isn't what RMS objects to.
However, when you don't control or even know anything about what's going on with the other participants, it becomes lunacy to buy into it. It's the 2008 version of the corporate car pooling fad of the 80s, where companies in the same location would, instead of leasing 10 cars each, would lease a pool of 15 cars in total and share them. Guess what, you don't find that model much anymore, because you have no control over the other companies. Sooner or later, both companies are going to need ten cars at the same time.
Cloud computing is planning based on averages, and not on peaks. Unless you can anticipate and prepare for the peaks, that is a bad idea.
Then there's the whole question about who runs the show. You ask for a "magic box" service, where you don't know the details in the other end. That's very dangerous seen from an openness perspective. How do you know you can trust the service provided, if you can't see under the hood? This isn't much different from buying a sealed PES voting dispenser. Yes, it's lunacy, unless you get to see what's going on in the other end. And once you do, it's not cloud computing anymore -- just grid computing or thin client.
Stallman still has my vote of confidence, especially compared to the hallelujah choir who will embrace every new business fad without going "hey now, wait a minute..."
I wonder what RMS' reaction would be to Facebook. Its ammunition for a potential employer to use, yes. But I moved quite a few times and since university graduation, most of my friends are on Facebook. FB has really made it easier to communicate with people you might not otherwise be able to reach. And they might even be in the same city I am in.
I do admit I haven't used FB yet because of the privacy concerns. I don't have anything to hide from employers and my friends aren't freaks. Any thoughts?
I'd seriously like to have an ask RMS here on Slashdot and get some modded questions for him to answer. Even if you don't agree, I always find its good to see totally opposite views of your own.
The cloud metaphor seems to consist of a relatively small number of very big and very powerful systems and a large number of idiot boxes. I don't see how this is much different from the old Big Blue mainframe relationship.
Computer technology exploded when it went mass market. The cloud approach would reverse this (so the big companies can make big money). Why put a choke on the economic power of the computer business?
Stallman may be hyperbolic here, but he's not wrong. May rapid technological invention kill the cloud!
I think there is some validity to the fear of storing your data on a big company's public cloud.
If there are problems, the potential for a loss of data or productivity could affect companies on a global scale. This could even be detrimental to the economy.
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
How fucking dare anyone out there make fun of RMS after all he has been through.!
That about sums it up.
"Cloud computing" is such an ill-defined term. RMS is talking about services like GMail, where users give up privacy and reliability for convenience. Network accessible services that store your personal data have huge ramifications for privacy abuse as well as a very real possibility that they shutdown the service (and if the service doesn't have any data portability, how can you back it up?), or start charging money for the service (maybe a greater amount than you're willing to pay).
This doesn't mean you should give up network services entirely, but you should consider the aspects of the particular service and see whether it's worth it to sacrifice some freedoms for convenience.
The Franklin Street Statement by the FSF represents a good set of guidelines for users and developers of network services.
There's also a developer side to "cloud computing", which are on-demand virtualized web hosting services like Amazon's EC2. I don't think RMS would have a problem with that. As long as the developer retains control over the software and data, there's no difference between that and co-located web-hosting. Except of course if you are using EC2 to build some service like GMail.
As for developers, I've seen many applications that could very well have been desktop software, but the developer decided to make it web-only so they could make it an ad-supported or a subscription service. It's very enticing for developers. They don't have to worry about piracy, their users are locked into the service due to the data being stored there, and you're profiting based on the continued use of the service, rather than a one-time fee. On the other hand, users face substantial risks. As a developers, we have to think twice before we develop such an application that could possibly restrict the freedoms of users.
Cloud computing is much overhyped and has a basic misunderstanding of computer hardware and networks. I remember when "terminal PC's" were all the rage, much in the way a virtual PC is all the rage today (and I remember before that when mainframes "could never" be de-thoned!). I knew they would never dominate the market for a super simple reason. Once you invest in a basic "dumbish" terminal, an improved CPU, Memory and Hard drive just doesn't cost that much more. Simply compare the cost of 100 true workstations vs. 100 "dumbed down" workstations backed up with server and network resources to make them all work as well as a true workstation. Processor cycles are NOT the most expensive thing about PCs. Plus you have more points of failure now. In real world terms, it is almost the same effort to make a "dumb" workstation as an "average" one. (of course "cutting edge" costs extra!)
Don't get confused about "modern processors can handle all the applications". It doesn't change the above equation at all since the worstation and server processors will become cheaper and more powerful at the same time (and people will always want to do more anyway). If anything cheap processors push computing to the terminal, not the server.
Support costs can be reduced in some cases, but how hard is it to reimage a PC today anyway? (and with virtual machines on local terminals...how much then?) Users can presumibly mess up their virtual sesion as well as their local terminal now.
Cloud computing will be a useful tool, the true future has to do with seemless applications between servers and workstations optimising available resources of each. Easier said than done but given time it will happen.
And of course, yes, for the most part companies pushing these solutions pretty much want you to be locked in to their services. It is your data, but so long as the cost of migration is high... I guess if you could get an agreement to keep the cost of migration to a nominal amount in the contract you are better off.
So move to "cloud" computing where it makes sense, all things will flourish on the internet. But it will always be a mix.
Dictionary.com:
libertarianism
noun
an ideological belief in freedom of thought and speech
Ask yourself: There is a service (like GMail) which is both free and very convenient. Enough so that the users just flock to it. You're not hesitating? You willingly trust your email to the single most data-collecting entity in the known universe without thinking twice? A free lunch, isn't it?
I've seen whole companies transferring their email to GMail, all over the world. It's just insane. I mean, for more or less irrelevant personal online stuff, no problem. If you like to hand all that over to Google, do it.
But if email is important for you and you may receive confidential stuff, don't do that. You'll never know where it ends up and who may read and index and search it, you have no real support, you have no way to even expect the thing to be continued or to work flawlessly -- you get what you pay for and you pay nothing.
GMail and the like are the Soylent Green of the Internet. Free, convenient and ultimately made from human flesh. Have a happy free lunch! You have just to sell your freedom and your privacy and your dignity and all will be easy then.
Here's mine complete cry:
How fucking dare anyone out there make fun of RMS after all he has been through.! He lost his aunt, he went through a divorce. He had two fuckin kids. His husband turned out to be a user, a cheater, and now he's going through a custody battle. All you people care about is... readers and making money off of him. HE'S A HUMAN! (ah! ooh!) What you don't realize is that RMS is making you all this money and all you do is write a bunch of crap about him. He hasn't performed on stage in years. His song is called "give me more" for a reason because all you people want is MORE! MORE-MORE, MORE: MORE!. LEAVE HIM ALONE! You are lucky he even performed for you BASTARDS! LEAVE RMS ALONE!...Please. ESR talked about professionalism and said if RMS was a professional he would've pulled it off no matter what. Speaking of professionalism, when is it professional to publicly bash someone who is going through a hard time. Leave RMS Alone Please... ! Leave RMS Spears alone!...right now!...I mean it.! Anyone that has a problem with him you deal with me, because he is not well right now. LEAVE HIM ALONE!
It's simple. Most businesses and personal users don't want their data on someone else's servers. This is for a number of reasons privacy, legal etc...
Yep. Totally. Even before they called it "could computing", and people were talking about network applications I always used to come back with "I can't use my word processor, the network is down". If such a statement doesn't sound silly to you, you've misunderstood what's needed to do word processing. Networks are great for getting information. You could say that they're a good way to provide patches too; but if there was no network accesss there'd be no need for network security patches! Heck, if all I had to do was create PDFs and play solitary games; I'd be inclined not to put the computer on the network at all. My Commodore 64 was never networked, and it was a blast. To be sure, there was the threat of floppy viruses; but even the damage these can do is limited when your whole system is in ROM. If anything, a good number of the systems out there should be taken off the network, or air-gapped from the Internet. That's right. When you think security, instead of moving further out into the network, move further away from it. Go one step further, and move away from sneakernet too. Put the system files in ROM and the attacker can't modify your system files. It would solve a lot of problems if it was done right. Obviously, I'm not advocating that all the machines be taken off the network, but... another example. A friend of mine is a lawyer, and for a good number of years he used DOS, WordPerfect, and a laser printer to create documents. No network. Worked great. Absolutely no reason to do anything to that system until the hardware broke. Putting it on the network? Total foolishness.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If you have not got the in-house skills or time to run your own IT department, then storing all your data in a clod can make a lot of sense.
CloudBiz does all your back ups, web hosting, ...
You, and your associates/sales reps/... can access your data on the road with no need to set up your own VPN servers etc.
Small business people want to focus on their businesses, not on setting up and maintaining IT. They don't service their own cars & delivery vans, so why should they run their own inhouse IT?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Of complaining about cloud computing by saying this:
'It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign
By saying this:
Computerworld has a summary of some of the blogosphere's reaction to RMS's position.
Emphasis mine.
Using one media driven piece of hype to denigrate another media driven piece of hype seems...well, silly to me.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
In reference with this article, which has just been published, I want you to take notice that I submitted an article today with the same subject, my submission was done at 13:33:35, and to my surprise I see that the story was published, submitted by another person. My submitted story is still pending to be published. *???* I really don't understand your policies. So I would kindly ask you to cancel my subscription to your site. My user name is i_frame. Thanks in advance.
why does it cost so damned much.
There are two and only two use cases for the current market of cloud computing. You either a) have highly elastic demands on some kind of periodic basis and you dont want to deploy/manage enough hardware to meet these infrequent spikes or b) you are not rich enough or competent enough to put together a team to handle your own operations.
The first one is a valid use case. The second one basically means your architects dont know enough to scale horizontally, and should be handed their pink slip.
http://www.linux.com/articles/35369
And the article is, how about that, marketing for GNU. RMS is right again!
GNU/Cloud computing, god freaking damnit!
Software as a service is not just about charging per month. In fact gmail, flickr, facebook, etc don't even charge anything! It's also about:
a) Providing services that a user can't easily achieve on their own, like redundancy/backup, or keeping 100 friends' contact info up to date, or accessing webmail when you're away from home.
b) Making it easy to upgrade software for all users. Anyone who's had to support multiple versions of software knows it's a huge pain - and also knows that there will always be users who don't upgrade to new major versions (for perfectly legitimate versions, like "the old version works and I don't want to risk screwing my business by running your new code"). Software as a service lets you control the environment where your code runs precisely, choose which code to deploy, and generally focus more on developing features than on supporting stuff, which ultimately leads to a better product that's out sooner.
And I meant to mention that the article is calling Java a trap too.
It may not be inevitable, but it sure as hell is useful. I have saved literally thousand of dollars and tons of man hours using EC2 and S3. The ease by which one can have a reasonably powerful server with one's application up is fantastic. EC2+S3+CentOS is a life saver.
I personally am fairly excited about some of the "cloud" hosting services like mor.ph (completely managed RoR and J2EE hosting, sits on Amazon EC2), the Google AppEngine and the like. There are also more than a handful of hosts now that aren't as locked down, but at least let you scale quite flexibly -- toss a new VM image up there and launch a new instance, and it's all more or less automatic. It's good to be pushing towards a model of app design that's scalable by default, and it's all still pretty rough for now, but I feel these kinds of services are pushing people to think the right way. Why waste all the energy and money for dedicated servers you may never need when you could launch with a little VPN that you kick up into a full cluster when (if) the crowd hits? I love that idea. I want to have 4-5 little projects kicking along that are super-cheap to run, but they won't just vanish if they get some attention.
I know that all fits *somewhere* into cloud computing. Is that IaaS vs. SaaS?
Whatever, but it's clear Stallman is talking about the software-as-a-service stuff. Which I half-agree on -- I'm a paranoid kinda person, so I run my own mail server instead of letting Google mine my email... but damn, sometimes I would love to be able to give up all the responsibility that entails. There's a tradeoff, *especially* when your provider tells you specifically they they're going through your personal data with a fine-toothed comb so they can better "target" you. It's not like you might find they've been sniffing through your private data and you can sue them... they told you up front.
That's completely unreconcilable with basic privacy and just... what? Psychological security? As parent mentioned, and I worked on a project a few years back with an insurance company implementing HIPAA guidelines (related situation, maybe), and they're probably going to be tied to their AS/400s for a long time to come... and they're sure as hell not moving their data "into the cloud".
One dazzling new possibility that I don't think Stallman has foreseen... as Infrastructure-as-a-Service develops (that first thing I was talking about, unless I'm misusing the buzzword...), we get the possibility of PRIVATE software-as-a-service.
Like, you can use the free Google Apps if you want, *or* if you have the cash and the need (and the standardized, auto-scaling infrastructure -- see above), you can deploy Google Apps privately.
That's pretty pie-in-the-sky, but we all gotta dream.
He picks on Gmail specifically. Gmail has actually opened their system up more since they started, providing first POP and now IMAP access. I'm perfectly free to load up fetchmail, grab all my data, and go somewhere else if I think they're trying to lock me in. Or I can just forward a copy of all my mail to a box I own, the option is there in their settings.
Privacy is a separate issue, but just like security it's a trade off between trustworthiness and convenience/features. You can't really let Google make your mail searchable without letting them "read" it on some level. Is it worth it to you? It's worth it to me, because the ability to find what I'm looking for among the dozens/hundreds of legitimate mails I've received every day for the last 15 years is a pretty big deal compared to my fears that something in those emails is going to get in front of the wrong person.
On the other hand, am I going to go handing my medical records over to some hypothetical service so it can send me an e-card when it's time for a colonoscopy? Nah, that's probably not worth it to me. Draw the line wherever you want, but it seems like you'd have to be kind of a kook to disqualify "cloud computing" altogether based solely on privacy concerns. Not all your information is that sensitive. If it is, I hope you don't have a mailbox, use public trash services, or use a credit card... anywhere.
Game... blouses.
"Upload all files to google apps."
"May the force be with us."
"We have to be able to get some kind of access to our files up or down."
"Well how could they slip that in the EULA if they're required to ... to notify us of changes? Break off the upload! The EULA still gives them full access!"
"I don't see that in the EULA, are you sure?"
"CANCEL UPLOAD! ALL USERS CANCEL UPLOAD!"
"Take evasive action. Green group, stay close and re-check section 57."
"Admiral, we have additional insane EULA requirements in section 47."
"IT'S A TRAP!"
Cloud computing is a buzzword. It comes in different flavors and will evolve over time.
Amazon is just a server you can turn on and off...largely used for large processing needs, not real time apps.
Google's app engine is more of a step in the right direction, but it is probably overly "Googlish".
What we really need is a LAMP like setup for rent from the likes of Rackspace or some smaller hosting firm...something where we can just add PHP servers, Ruby servers, Python servers, etc to the mix. The database server is "yours" albeit it hosted offsite. Once this techs get really easy to add an configure via web apps it'll give them more appeal. IMHO getting an Amazon server up is a bit overly compilcated.
As far as things like Gmail I totally agree that using this for corporate email is a bad idea. For personal email I don't see a problem with it....just hook it up to Outlook or some other email client vai IMAP so you have a local database....but at least you can get to it anywhere from any computer which is an advantage that really does trump the priavacy thing. Of course using OWA(outlook web access) on an Exchange is a way to get the best of both worlds...internet access...and an Exchange server in your local server space. Replace Exchange and OWA with your favorite email server and Web access layer.
If you really do have privacy concerns you're probably already using a different solution...the rest of us can take advantage of the convienance. If I do something wrong I do have faith in the FBI to get enough evidence regardless :)
But I would have just a bit of an easier time hearing what Stallman has to say about anything related to the internet if he actually used the internet, as in with a browser.
he's right... this is yet another attempt to get us into a subscription service.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Took the words out of my mouth, compadre.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
yes he was a pioneer, yes "the cloud" is a terrible buzzword i hate (they used "blogsphere" as well, ack), but ultimately what RMS never gets is that people use software because it does something not because of what it represents. so if MS or google can create the best online apps and some gpl version isn't as good, well google/MS win.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
When did 'blogosphere' transfer from being a humourous result of Randall Munroe's warped mind, and turn into a bona fide word?
FGD 135
I know! We'll publish a summary of the comments to a reaction piece of an interview about a topic - it's top-notch reporting!
I agree that cloud computing can be a very bad idea. I don't agree, though, that GMail is an example of a bad use. Fact is, all my email comes through the "cloud" anyway. Email's not very good if it only works on my own machine. So what difference does it make if I have my email on Gmail as opposed to my ISPs mail server, or a third party mail server I'm paying for?
1. When was the last time Stallman wrote a line of code?
2. Has Stallman used any software, free or otherwise, written in this century?
Extra credit essay question: Taking the answers to the above two questions into account, explain why anybody should listen to what this Random Hippie On The Internet says.
I use google apps, I don't care if the real backend is Microsoft 2003 Server interpreting all my code into VBScript, I write in the Python on my end, the whole Python culture is very shared knowledge kind of place, and that is good e_f_ckin_nuff for me. Its a free server. It interprets Python. Python has EVERY quality that GNU has that I like. Where they differ I know and could write a paper on, and don't care. I rock on.
Did anyone bother to read far down enough to notice that Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, had echoed Stallman's comments days before? Before laying into the guy for being a half-baked retard, consider that equally if not more credible individuals are laying their reputations on the line as well by critiquing the cloud computing concept. I personally think that it is, beyond being a question of convenience, is a question of intrusiveness. The use of cloud computing basically opens the door for such technologies to find their way into ever more mundane facets of our lives. I don't want to stroll into the local supermarket and be reading my email at the check-out counter while using Paypal to pay for groceries. There is a big problem with the idea of data following people around like that. And an even bigger problem with mega corporations who have the ability to advertise through and manipulate the ways in which such information and software is accessed. The bottom line is that it is about control. The idea of cloud computing decreases the amount of *control* excercised by the individual, pure and simple. Anything that centralizes access to information creates such a conundrum. It's the reason why we have a federal government. The framers had an extreme aversion to the centralization of power in *any* form. As cliched an argument as that is. Generally speaking, these things affect us in ways that are too subtle to register until many years down the line and this is why preemptive suspicion from someone like Richard Stallman, admittedly a visionary in his day, seems to me justifiable. Naturally it is billed as a matter of convenience, but personally, that is the kind of convenience I can do without, like having someone to brush your teeth for you when you wake up in the morning.
Amazon (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/) and Google (http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/whatisgoogleappengine.html) both offer great cloud environments for a startup to get going with very little money.
Eventually a startup will want to move to a colo
or managed server to save money. But, to get started and prove a concept cloud offerings cant be beat.
Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the computer operating system GNU, said [something unimportant...]
There's a new OS on teh intarnets? Sweet!
WHOAH, hang on a minute: Does it run Emacs?
There's a time to make jest about RMS and his theological ruminations (even though I don't think there's anyone here on Slashdot that would deny the man's contributions, regardless whether they dislike his personality), and a time to do other things. What does this have to do with Bill Gates? You sound like those clumsy people with no social skills who can't argue a point intelligently and "strike back" with non-sequiturs that only they think are funny or offensive in any way.
And what the hell, rotten.com?
you assholes
Chill out man, seriously. If you take the internet personally you'll die young and angry.
Fact is, cloud computing is enabled by free software. If it weren't for free software, I doubt it would exist! All those virtual machines running in the cloud are free operating systems. Proprietary operating systems have no licensing model that can handle it -- they are only now starting to provide something compatible (and yet still cumbersome) due to the financial success of cloud computing. But that's putting the horse before the cart: were it not for free operating systems, cloud computing would never had taken off.
Also, there are plenty of cloud computing initiatives out there based entirely on free software. Hadoop, for example, is running some amazing stuff.
The issue of freedom here, as I understand it, is not the software, but the hardware running it. Because you're renting machine time and storage from, say, Amazon, you might be concerned about how well Amazon takes care of your data. But, I see no problem in having a solution involving backing up your data on your own machines. In fact, there are quite a few startups based around this idea -- of using cloud computing just to scale up "locally" running grids.
Otherwise, it seems like RMS is ranting about online services, from a user's perspective. But... I really don't see how this has anything to do with cloud computing, per se. I agree with him that there are severe issues here with ownership of information, but... they would still hold if Gmail were running a grid, a single server, or whatever. Cloud computing is about the technical management of serving the application, not the application itself.
Oh, well. He himself admits that he doesn't even know what cloud computing is.
"There has to be a real trust relationship with users, built around privacy and security and change," he says. If people don't trust Google, they won't use its apps. So "this company really does want to do the right thing".
There mere act of owning an email address already ties you up to whoever provides it, unless you own the domain, embracing Cloud Computing doesn't mean giving up your rights as an user, it's simply a paradigm shift, I don't understand how RMS doesn't see an implied benefit on freeing up users from the Microsoft monopoly.
...but it is speculation. Any evidence, anyone?
Still. You know Google DOES record your searches. Trust us, they said. The two most dreaded words in the English language.
Trustworthly people never ask you to trust them. They just earn it.
>>
It's a trap! AHHH!
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
I would love to see exactly this!
Make it work like synching with an Exchange (or similar) server.
"Found new mail... synching..."
The Cloud can cover for you when you either reformat (or fubar) your comp, and your local can cover you when Cloud, Inc. takes a nose dive.
What RMS is getting at is 100% reliance on the cloud is a dangerous sense of trust. "Gee, we don't feel like offering our service anymore, So Long and Thanks for All the Mail". The smart 30% would do a backup. The other 70% would be hosed. With data as its own weird value measure, it would be like a Data Recession.
I test some free hosts, and one of them melted just like that. "I lost your data, so sorry. Good Luck."
If you try to play the Big Corp card, look at the stunning meltdowns of Big Corps this month in the finance sector, arguably the toughest regulated field in the world.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
"'It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign,' he told The Guardian. 'Somebody is saying this is inevitable â" and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.'"
It sounds like he's talking about the bailout legislation.
Right now all the "cloud computing" I do is free: I use windows Live services, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Notebook.
Absolutely none of that is Free.
You have the source for nothing. If they go away, you cannot continue to use them on your own server. If they lack a feature you would like you cannot improve on them.
"Cloud Computing" is simply commercial software delivered on-demand, with the same benefits and drawbacks.
In fact you're a little worse off because you can't even disassemble the server source to see how it works (possibly offset by the benefit of being able to more easily examine some of the UI code in browser based systems).
RMS is right about what happens if no-one truly owns software they use... I don't know that he's right about cloud computing in general because you can run your own truly Free software in the cloud... but software as services, he is right to issue warnings.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In the larger sense I feel RMS is right. By doing backups with one of those hybrid Offline/Online variants of the app, do a Master/Slave with the Cloud. You can fiddle with the direction to your heart's content.
I would prefer a model like those early days where you composed offline and "burst-sent" (and synched) with the Cloud.
Y'Know guys, my ISP has been thunderously atrocious lately, crashing the signal some 4 times a day. I really don't understand why, but it brings the message to me home early. I don't care if it's "temporary"; if I were doing something time sensitive I can't handle 15 minute interruptions to my line. The same issue applies to laptops & spotty wireless.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
RMS took his arguments a bit far by singling out consumer apps, but "cloud computing" in general is the most overhyped technology. First off, its not even a new concept, and secondly its really just another spin on outsourcing. Like any form of outsourcing, there are big costs associated with cloud computing, that the pushers tend to glare over. Sure, its great for some poor web 2.0 startup, but its not an option for companies that actually depend on latency and uptime, or happen to truely care about their data.
he confused convenience for freedom.
The problem with this whole line of reasoning is this idea that one can't exist without the other -- or that by increasing one you must decrease the other. This kind of either-or, black-and-white thinking isn't constructive at all.
It's really about risk management. Do the gains provided by "X" outweigh the risk of some random "bad Y".
Can Google hold the data for ransom? Theoretically yes. Is it likely to happen? NOT AT ALL. Is Gmail likely to disappear tomorrow? NOT AT ALL. The risk that the OP's game codes are going to away are very, very remote. The odds that his hard drive with his game code file will crap itself and his backup just one awesome game too old is several orders of magnitude higher. For him, a risk analysis showed that Google is the better bet. Who are you to question him on how best to control his data?
We can come up with Doomsday scenarios all day long as a reason to stay in our bunkers (which, btw, is exactly what Stallman is proposing). However, such an absolutist attitude is just as foolhardy as those things he rants about.
The reality that is everyone needs to do a basic risk analysis and determine if the gains outweigh the risks and make their OWN decision on what's best for them. THAT is true freedom. Making blanket black-and-white statements and attempting to apply them to everyone and everyone's situation claiming that one way is the ONLY way is Stallman's "freedom", and not true freedom at all.
Thank you, Admiral Ackbar.
I respect a lot Stallman and he is a great contributor to the human kind but this is just nuts.
Cloud Computing it is just a buzzword a hype.
If you don't like GMail service ok move to Yahoo mail, Simple as that, There is freedom.
Finally, while many people admire and respect Mr. Stallman, he's never claimed to represent anyone.
While I seriously doubt that (that he's never claimed to represent anyone), it's possible. His MO when writing code is to create a giant steaming pile of crap and then depend on others to fix the problems and maintain it.
I know from personal experience that he is a control freak. All "official sanctioned" GNU code is owned by him, by copyright assignment. It is not enough for software to be under the GPL. My only direct experience was a phone call right after I had taken over the job of Mr. XEmacs and he told me how he must "wage war" (direct quote) against me and XEmacs because even though we were true blue GPL, he must have FSF copyright assignment.
The Emacs source code which we inherited and forked is littered with 1000+ line functions, 6+ levels of nested if-else and assorted other crap that looks like it was being written to violate as many rules of good programming style as possible. The amount of time it took to get the code in a state where we could display CJK fonts in Emacs (and in a stable state) was staggering, especially considering that we were basing our work off the good folks' at ETL Mule.
I have no respect for the man, no respect for his (programming) work. I find the names Linux/GNU and worse GNU/Linux to be as childish and offensive as the children who like to write Micro$oft and M$ and similar crap. (You might as well also write "you can't spell gOatse without the Gates and a big O". It's equally as witty.) Anyone can develop userland tools. Only a handful of people, of which Richard is NOT one, can develop a successful kernel.
On the other hand, he wrote one of the most insightful and brilliant papers in ACM history describing the architecture of Emacs and he does deserve credit for initiating the GNU project, thus inspiring many folks including myself to publish our work and help out on other projects.
Of course, even you write insightful things from time to time. No one is completely good or bad.
This is a very complex issue. We moved from time-sharing and mainframes to PCs, even though the PCs were slower and with clunky software because they were under our control. They had one super powerful attribute: Nobody could tell you "no" when you wanted to do something on them.
People will put up with a lot, in order to not have somebody who can tell you no.
That's why, even when the timesharing has had many technological advantages, such as greater efficiency, ability to roam, and having somebody else maintain things for you, the "inferior" PC has always won.
However, it's possible that this new wave of cloud computing/web 2.0 might be the first real incursion. That's because you can choose from a variety of different places to host your web apps, and also because we've made maintaining the software on your own computer harder and harder and harder.
But it's dangerous. The courts ruled that the 4th amendment doesn't apply to your data in the hands of 3rd parties. It really means your data in your house. Cloud computing runs the risk of erasing the 4th amendment as we store all our lives in the hands of 3rd parties. No small feat.
And now there's a movement afoot under the name "data portability" which sounds nice but really means "bulk export of your personal data made easy." What can be shared, will be shared. What you make easy to do will be done.
I've written some essays on these topics you may find of interest, including:
http://ideas.4brad.com/tags/openid
And these on a proposal to reverse could computing that I call "data hosting." In such a system, you have a server (or pay for one) which holds your data, and applications come to your data and run in sandboxes on it, sending output to your browser.
http://ideas.4brad.com/tags/data-hosting
There is no easy answer. People will love the positive features of cloud computing, and it will be a tall order to get them to switch to something that keeps those and doesn't have the negatives.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
RMS is right. Cloud computing is big business' push to turn what was a previously unacceptably democratic computing paradigm into one that can be controlled by only those players with enough funding to set up "clouds".
The migration away from mainframes in the 80s was supposed to avoid just the problem with massively centralized computing: I.e., the problem that centralized computing forces everyone to be doing the same thing or at very least, conforming to the same design parameters.
Personally, I like my PC. I don't want to be constrained to only doing things that can be done in "cloud space". Having an OS that I can do whatever I want on, in absolute privacy and not having to rely on corporate policy to be at least partially friendly to me is something that I value. I don't want Google, Yahoo or Facebook letting the government look over my shoulder, or their big corporate buddies using their data to shove ads down my throat. It also means that I can't just buy a computer and use it as much as I want for no extra cost. Now I have to pay Internet bills, plus whatever software service charges will be applicable in this new forthcoming cloud.
On another note, cloud computing makes it *impossible* for the masses to implement proper privacy policies or cryptography. You think it's hard at the moment to get people to use secure email? Try implementing privacy when everyone's using Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo.
So called SaaS/cloud computing is just a way to ensure that the big end of town gets to watch and control what everyone else is doing, and bill them by the month.
Thanks, but no thanks.
I hate printers.
Stallman is right that it's a bunch of evil-doing corporations campaigning to make it true: cloud computing, as it's called, is a scheme to further legitimize and sell consumers on the notion of "web apps" and paying not once for a software license but rather paying every month, as if software is no different than a cable TV subscription.
Software publishers have had this goal for years now; they've been envious of the consistent cash flow and healthy balance sheets of "content" publishers, and so have been eager to re-brand software as content and sell it as such to consumers. Attempts to do this directly have repeatedly failed, perhaps because of people like me who saw the ulterior motive and made it public. Since attempts to sell software directly by subscription have failed, the latest plan is to use the concept of "web apps" to sell people on software as content; once people habituate to web apps, they'll habituate to the notion of paying every month for software as well.
Well Larry is correct that the term is so broad that it's useless. A quick scan across the slashdot responses I see an awful lot defending Google Apps and Gmail.
I'd never have considered using gmail as "Cloud computing" possibly "using a service built on cloud computing" but only if "cloud computing" now means any kind of farmed solution and not a generic kind of clustered processing. Otherwise then there's no reason to even call gmail "Cloud Computing".
The other thing, and perhaps it's just that I generally think of all manner of press (and that goes double for the blogosphere) to be ridiculously under informed but did anyone else see the difference between the actually quotes or references to Stallman and the other article text?
For example:
"But Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the computer operating system GNU, said that cloud computing was simply a trap aimed at forcing more people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that would cost them more and more over time."
I could agree to this, currently there is no universal cloud computing platform or API so it could be argued that this is just one proprietary platform being replaced with another. Worse you're replacing something that you used (and this is changing somewhat) to pay once for and own for as long as you wanted to maintain it. To something that you are continually paying for.
Now does that idea extend to any and all web based applications? Of course not but weird thing I see here is that only place you see Gmail mentioned is in the first sentence.
"The concept of using web-based programs like Google's Gmail.."
Then the author goes and talks about cloud computing. Gmail is never used in the rest of the article and nowhere in quotes by Stallman.
I'm perfectly willing to believe that Stallman has gone nuts and/or hates Gmail. Recent things I've read by Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak and Linus Torvalis. Not to mention older things by Theo de Radt convince me that an awful lot of people from the computing world have gone around the bend.
But I'm equally willing to believe that the press is as ill equipped as usual to talk about the things they cover.
You should know that "GNUChop" is the same person you replied to. twitter has fourteen Slashdot accounts.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
Cloud Computing says that Stallman is a trap.
i could take him more seriously if he'd take a bath and wash his greasy hair.
twitter, I don't think you realize who you're talking to.
Will they, though?
Email's popular at the moment, but I suspect that all you'd really need to replace email is for a service to come along that's sufficiently popular but with a closed protocol. Like Myspace or Facebook, but without the emphasis on informal and perhaps a way to supress things people hate (like spam) through being proprietary and generally obnoxious and overrulling. It'd probably have the backing of one or two major ISPs.
Throw in three or four telco mega-corps willing to pay each other equal amounts for access to each other's protocols, then on-sell access at reasonable rates to ISPs and to businesses/governments who have requirements to properly archive their communications. It might not be long before regular ISPs stop offering SMTP servers to their regular customers because most people don't use them anyway, and are sick of things like spam.
Obviously you can still use SMTP email and it'll be free, or you could use a free webmail service that doesn't have access to "the network", in the same way you can use Usenet or a Fax machine or a gramaphone, but a lot of people you want to communicate with (friends, family, prospective employers) might not support it any more.
For many, if not most, Mom & Pops there is zero effective backup. A crashed server is the end of that data.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I got a pretty rude awakening on just this a few weeks ago.
When I tried to log in to my gmail account, I just got "Sorry, your account have been disabled."
No explanation, and absolutely impossible to get a hold of a human or to find the reason why they decided to close my account.
Luckily I had backups of all my data, but it still meant new email address, new daily routines, new blog place, +++. And especially annoying was that a group of us was just starting a hosted project on google code, and me falling out there effectively killed google code for that job.
So all be wary, and the wise man's his warning. For he is right, and this could happen to you. I am not aware of breaking any ToS, and getting someone to at least explain why it was locked have proved impossible. Or to get any hint of the existance of human support at all, for that matter.
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
The very essence of lockin is the fact you cannot freely move your data. See MS Office/OOXML standard as an example. If your data is locked in someone's "cloud" then it is captured and you are at their mercy. The of course you have to factor in backups, uptime, accessibility etc. etc.
In fact, if it is on a specific site I hesitate to call it a "cloud". I would call it remote application hosting. A cloud implies a much more uniform and distributed situation. Google and the new MS initiative is effort to store data in centralized locations. Not exactly a cloud.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Wait a second folks.
In 1995, Larry Ellison made an analogy, paraphrased:
"We don't keep our money under our rugs, we keep it in a bank. So why would we keep our data at home?"
This was back when he thought all applications and all data should be available via the web.
So WTF is with Ellison bashing cloud computing when he was pushing for it just a decade ago?
In any case, it's hard to reconcile your praise of RMS's ACM Emacs brilliance with saying, "His MO when writing code is to create a giant steaming pile of crap and then depend on others to fix the problems and maintain it."
I know you are also twitter, but that does not matter.
The paper was brilliant. Full featured computer programming languages as extension languages for applications *are* a brilliant invention and how many billions of dollars has Microsoft made from copying it? Give me a couple of weeks to get my references down and some spare time and I think I'll write in my journal about that. The world needs to know.
I was terrified of the implications of Gnus 5 accidentally executing code, especially after finding stack overrun errors in the XEmacs 19.14 base code I inherited and kept a careful watch over what larsi was doing, though being the sharp guy he is, did his usual brilliant job.
If you cannot find a link with regards to Richard asking someone else to finish a crop coding job, feel free to contact me offline and I can put you in contact with someone who knows where the links are. It's like a multiple offense, but Richard naturally does development behind closed doors so it's not as easy to find the dirt as it with other Open Source software projects and people.
Oh, and the dirtiest thing I did in XEmacs development was to unilaterally decide that all the comments in XEmacs calling Richard Stallman an idiot and worse should be removed and did so without telling anyone. The changes were captured in posted diffs and CVS so I got "caught".
I regret doing that in a way, but not really. Personal attacks in source code just do not have a place.
No one owns GPL'd software. Assigning it to the FSF simply gives the FSF the ability to fight on your behalf.
And if we don't want or need anyone to fight "on our behalf"? Or about how Richard decided that manual changes could not move from Emacs to XEmacs, or XEmacs changes to Emacs without copyright assignment ...
For the first time (I've experienced divorce, hence war since then :-() someone declared war on me personally if I would not follow his dictation.
Stallman: It's a trap!
Lando: Fighters comming in!
Make SELinux enforcing again!
don't trust them at all.
"Businesses want to make money. The trend is business thinking is "why sell them something when we can rent it to them and keep charging them indefinitely.""
Gosh darn it. Were are my free electrons?
Cloud computing is only a return to the computing world of old by having clients act as terminals and use services offered remotely by a mainframe computer. Cloud computing = computer terminals of old. Nothing new!
I wrote more about it here: http://dpru.blogspot.com/
I am ready to leave, but only if RMS GOES FIRST !!
Yes, well, but the GP post was along the lines of, "yay for Gmail because it would be more inconvenient to backup that data locally." Your argument that you can back it up locally is completely defeating that reasoning. If you're going to back it up locally, you can just write the serial numbers in a text file and back that up with a lot less fuss.
So, no, it's not a strawman at all. _You_ learn to read.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Thats RMS, unbiased from all the hype that shadows over the real thing. To be honest he has got a good point.
Well, yes, but that's a silly example, because basically you're talking about data with very little worth. You probably don't play most of those 5 year old games, and even if you did, the worst that can happen is that you have to look inside the DVD case of the serial number or look for the manual (which is usually also inside the DVD case.)
So basically you're saying that even an unreliable storage is good enough if it's free... for silly data that's not worth that much.
I think RMS's argument isn't about that kind of data. E.g.,
- When a bank's computer goes nuts, the costs can be in the range of millions per hour. (See the guys who tried to repair a broken database without taking it down.)
- When a major manufacturer's data goes missing, whole factories can end up not working and again the costs are hideous.
Etc.
Stuff that _has_ happened, like Amazon's cloud (or a chunk thereof) going missing for a day or two, it won't affect you much for your serial numbers, but it can be deadly for a company. You want to have your own servers as backup, and your own guys you can call on a Saturday and tell them to fucking switch to the other server or otherwise fix it _now_. You don't want to just twiddle your thumbs until Amazon or Google come and say, "heh, oops, we did a booboo. But now it's back online, so quit acting as if we owe you anything."
Second, let's talk about privacy. Especially Google's track record is pretty scary there, and they've been known expose various bits and pieces of other people's data and act like they don't even see what's wrong.
If your list of serial numbers gets leaked, what's the worst that can happen? That some other kid can play a 5 year old game too? You're not going to lose much sleep over that, are you?
But if someone's research were to be leaked to a competitor, the consequences can be a _lot_ worse. Think of even just the fact that someone, seeing that you're working on coupling a gizmotron with a whirlygig to solve problem X, can just go and preemptively patent using a gizmondotron with a whirlygig, or even some blanket patent like solving problem X at all. You can end up paying _big_ royalties to use your own damned invention.
But even lists of customers, contract data, etc, can be deadly if leaked to a competitor. Heck, even the plan for your upcoming ad campaign can give your competitors a narrow time window to come up with something that steals your thunder.
We're talking about a dog-eat-dog world, where whole market segments scrape by on a couple of percent profit margin. It doesn't take all that much extra burden on one competitor to sink it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'd have been SCREWED if I followed RMS's advice and just kept stuff locally. Oh yes, it's a fine idea in theory, but in Gmail, if I need to find serial numbes (something I've need to do several times in the last year) I can just search for the game name voila! There's my serial number.
To replicate that functionality I would have to backup my entire email pretty much every time I got any, which is completely impractical. Not to mention tedious. Yeah, shell scripts and all that crap, but why bother when Gmail does it all for me, and really, all they're going to learn is I'm signed up on several very dull mailing lists, have bought several games, get spammed by Apple on a regular basis, and apparently am going to be given a load of money by various Nigerian princes, priests, nuns etc...
Yes, people give up too much privacy online these days, but there is a happy medium between that and locking ourselves into a life of self sufficient tedium.
What are you talking about? you know it's not either gmail or PINE anymore. All emails I get from all of my email accounts are copied onto all the computers on which I use them, for easy access, and all can be searched very easily. And I didn't write any scripts for this. Just standard email programs. Under ubuntu evolution (but not thunderbird yet, unfortunately) is fully integrated into desktop search, so I can run a search and find that serial number/password whether it's saved in a text file or in some email.
I also have an online email account which I theoretically only use for non-private stuff, but honestly, I don't really stick to it. I think RMS is mostly right as usual, although he makes it all sound extreme and controversial (again, as usual).
When Stallman blasted "cloud computing", I'm fairly certain he wasn't referring to website hosting.
As for Gmail and other web-based email services, that's a bit of a compromise. Many people like or need to be able to access their email from different locations and computers (at home, at work, on their iphone, etc.). Web-based email makes that pretty easy. There's definitely a performance hit (but maybe not compared to Outlook...), and there's a disadvantage in having your data not stored on your own computer, but the remote-access aspect for many people more than makes up for that. Unfortunately, for most people, there's no easy way to remotely access their home machines and run their email clients there, so we use webmail. (Even if you're a Linux user like me, it may not be possible to access your home computer; for instance, my workplace won't allow me to do remote SSH connections outside the corporate intranet, so even though I use Linux both at home and at work, I can't access my home computer from work to remotely run applications using SSH forwarding.)
Sorry but which email account can you NOT access from anywhere? I mean whether it's your ISP or your employer or your privately paid hosting, any half-decent email account provides IMAP over SSL so you can access it from anywhere. Most also have a web interface if you're at an internet cafe which doesn't provide any email client for you, and you're not tech savvy enough to get around restrictions and run your own client without admin rights.
OK, you like your PC. You don't mind maintaining it, running anti-viruses and so on. But you're not everyone. A lot of people want their services managed. Other people might want a way to manage peaks in demand without buying server infrastructure for the rest of the time (one of the commonest uses of S3 seems to be companies putting their catalogue images on there).
when at the same time he says proprietary software is wrong. Well isn't it data that should be kept private? If so why would you make it public but for some sort of incentive. Oh I know we all belong to a utopian society where everyone works for free for the benefit of their fellow man. Sorry I forgot.
Admiral Ackbar phoned home; he wants his lines from The Empire Strike Back returned to him
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Can I ask if any of you anti-RMS ranters have ever done anything of the following:
- decorated a room in your house rather than employing a painter?
- done your own car maintenance or repairs rather than taking it to the garage?
- taken an electrical device apart (or changed a plug fuse) instead of paying an electrician to do it?
If you've done any of the above, then you've done it because of one of the following reasons:
- It's cheaper for you to do it
- You believe you can do a better job than the guy you would pay to do it
Yet when Stallman, who is basically a "software DIY" person gives his viewpoints, you don't like it???
Can I suggest you people not take his comments at face value and "read between the lines" a little?
Unfortunately, and whether you like it or not, if you use a piece of closed software where the source code is not subject to review, then there are *no* guarantees that software is not doing stuff with your information or data that you would prefer it didn't do - or have I just imagined all those previous Slashdot articles about, say, the "evils of Windows Genuine Advantage"?
Just because Stallman believes all software should be free does not automatically make it so but he is *absolutely right* in making everyone aware of the *potential* perils of entrusting your information to a third party whose core interest is about making money.
No, all corporations are not evil but many will put profits over customer service, and that is the message Stallman is basically putting across.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Why GMail isn't opensource?.. Why any of the Google Cloud Computing Services are opensourced? Does RMS mean 'Closed Data' and 'Open Programs' will solve the issue?
Richard's view is irrelevant. He is quite responsible for the decline in the number of CS majors. Who wants to graduate in CS with the promise of working on "free software"? Is RMS a communist? Not really. What he is though: a PR force that advocates people should work for free. His impact on society: irrelevant. His impact to the CS community: a couple of free tools best suited for a VAX computer, and the addition of fear that a CS major should work for free.
My 2 cents.
Maintaining a PC is not as hard as you imply it, and with the onslaught of real OSes (Mac, Linux, even desktop BSD taking bites out of Windows' market share), the days of regular crashing, reboots and virus infection are numbered as are the days of Windows.
Windows' hegemony will only last a short while longer unless it becomes at least as reliable and secure as a Mac, because it's previous advantage, ease of use, has eroded away to almost nothing.
So no, I don't accept that people want to use Google Apps because it is more reliable and less work to maintain than a local office suite. I don't accept that Google Maps is inherently better than a local mapping package. I don't want to have to get online every time I want to use my PC. It's hard enough already finding power for your laptop, making people also have to find an Internet jack before they can do anything meaningful with their PC is *not* a step forward.
I hate printers.
This did actually to a friend. She were using a decent, respected free web-based email provider for years. That was ecosse.net. You've never heard of it, but it was liked by its users for a long time and appeared to be stable.
Not so different from Gmail/Googlemail really.
Then bang, one day it's a page saying they've stopped offering the free service, and she could only access her stored emails by subscribing to their ADSL or dialup service, or paying a yearly fee of about £20 (US $35).
Now she's on a domain hosted by Gmail. I'm not very comfortable with that, but I don't see what she could use which is better. Even commercial low-cost services go away from time to time, and she certainly cannot afford 'proper' email hosting fees.
I could offer her an account on my server, but that's no more reliable in the long run, if I have personal difficulties supporting it.
This is an honest question. How do I replace Gmail? Here's my problem:
I want email. If I use my ISP's mail service, I can't change ISP's without notifying everyone one earth what my new email adress is (i.e., I get locked in). If I set up my own mail server I can't email a lot of people because my machine isn't on their whitelist. In fact, the typical block of adresses I'm going to be getting from my ISP is likely to be blacklisted.
It seems I *have* to go with a big central mail provider. If there is an alternative, I'd like to hear about it.
This is meant as no disrespect to him as a hacker or a person, but first-hand accounts of his visits to Brazil all share one point: Not once he did shower while here. 100 degrees Fahrenheit. One week or more. Refused all offers to take a shower. We _do_ shower everyday here, and people were kind of freaked by his behaviour. Other oddities in his demeanor were noticed, too. He strikes people as just plain rude, and not in a cute Sheldonesque way.
BSD? Windows' days are numbered? Great fun... you gonna be here all week?
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
So don't use it. But you should at least be able to admit that for some people, and for some uses, cloud stuff is preferred. Sure, managing *a* local office suite shouldn't be too difficult (though there are plenty of people who can't manage even this!), but what about thousands across an enterprise? Maybe the cloud version is better in some of those cases.
And the cloud version of many things (like google maps) is pretty convenient, especially if you don't have access to your 'local' mapping software.
If you're really upset about people saying that cloud computing is the *only* or *always* best (which isn't what your post actually says) then I'd agree with you. But you are being just as silly as that hypothetical hysteric.
JOIN US FOR PONG!
"But you should at least be able to admit that for some people, and for some uses, cloud stuff is preferred."
I can admit that. however, like Windows, big business is pushing something that many who don't know any better will use out of ignorance of a) alternatives and b) big business' real nefarious agenda.
"Sure, managing *a* local office suite shouldn't be too difficult (though there are plenty of people who can't manage even this!), but what about thousands across an enterprise?"
Managing thousands of machines is only hard due to Windows' inherent flaws. An org that properly displaced Windows for Macs or properly configured Linux boxes would not have the headaches involved in administering thousands of machines running a rickety unstable OS.
"If you're really upset about people saying that cloud computing is the *only* or *always* best (which isn't what your post actually says) then I'd agree with you. But you are being just as silly as that hypothetical hysteric."
No, actually. I'm trying to convince you that if "cloud computing" catches on because the ignorant masses start using it, we're all screwed, as big business will see to it that personal computing as a paradigm atrophies, giving them a monopoly on the very use of the PC which can now be charged at a monthly fee. It may seem unlikely at this point in time, but big business will wait the decade or two that it will take while people slowly get frogboiled into this new paradigm. They have the incentive, they have the resources and we all know they have the willingness to keep at it.
For these reasons I would like it if informed people did not recommend "cloud computing" to the masses. It is not in anybody's long term interests except big business. You're only OK with it for now, because you, like the proverbial frog, think that the water just seems nice and warm.
I hate printers.
It's Control.
Every single bit of Open Source and Free Software hinges on the placement of control: who controls the software and who sets the rules by which it can be used.
The whole idea of "not getting enmeshed in proprietary software" is ultimately about control. Nobody would object to using "their own" proprietary software. And why not? Because you control it.
Free software is primarily software that the end-user (any end-user) has control over. Oh yes, and incidentally you can't really have that control unless you anchor that empowerment in the license for the source code, making it free and open and making sure no-one can close it again.
Now the whole idea of "cloud computing" can be viewed from a "control" perspective too. As in: "who controls the hardware, the software, the service, and the data that's in the 'cloud?'". Answer: whoever runs the server and offers the service that people want. That means at the very least a transfer of control, and with it a bargaining chip for whoever provides the "service in the cloud" that we use.
By contrast, text documents that reside on my hard disk and are written in Latex are under my control. Those on my hard disk in Open Office format too. Those in MS Office format less so.
But what if I had any data "in the cloud"? For starters I am dependent on the good offices of the service provider to make my data available. If he were to suddenly go under (Now that can't happen, can it? Firms like that are as solid as the bank ...).
Secondly, I would be obliged to follow whatever format the service provider uses, or stop using the service. Not that much of a hassle when there are multiple service providers to choose from, but that can't last.
Thirdly, who among us carefully studies their service provider's Terms Of Service with the intent of being bound by them? I know I don't. Now what if there are small and sneaky clauses giving the service provider world-wide distribution rights to what I put on their servers? Or clauses that give the service provider the right to study your data (Google queries anyone? MSN email profiling?), or that can be used by others to study your online behaviour in ways you might not have intended (Employers reading up on facebook profiles anyone?).
People who warn about that tend to be seen as alarmists, and told "If you don't like their TOS, don't use their servers". And there is the rub. The question of control is turned into the question of "How much control do you want to exchange for convenience or (in the face of e.g. social sites) being part of a 'scene'?"
That's why "Cloud Computing" is a bit pernicious and certainly dangerous. We're not talking about distributed calculations or Internet-size parallelism. We're talking about using people's proprietary services.
That's why I fear that Stallman really does have a point here. When considering "Cloud Computing" one really should be aware of the implications of control.
b) big business' real nefarious agenda.
Big business, as you put it, doesn't function as a single unit. Each one has a profit motive, and each one has a series of competitors. They all have customers. Without customers, who can go to one of their competitors, deciding to use their products or services, 'big business' which you falsely qualify as a single conspiratory unit would be little business. Or, more likely, out of business. See? It even happens on wall street. You can take your consipiracy theories else where.
Cloud computing makes sense if you want to use it, and I can see there are applications where you don't want to use it. I like having my music files from all the computers I touch. I want my email everywhere too. I don't want my proprietary non-free non-communist for-my-own-profit source code floating around on someone else's cloud computer network, so yes I agree, that it's not true that we should ALWAYS have everything in the cloud. For a large portion of what I do on my computer though, or rather at least the things I store, the cloud is great.
Speak for yourself.
Having apps on a local server, and using thin-clients to access to those apps, might make sense. Your support people could use a vpn to access your server if they necessary.
But putting apps offsite, and using an internet connection to use your apps means significant problems with speed, reliability, and possible security. So why do it?
RHS is not a manager.
CIOs/CTOs are managers.
Management listens to Marketing/Sales hype.
Technologist listen to Research/Developers facts.
Do you listen to facts or hype?
Current economic conditions make it very clear (as did the ".com" burst...many past) marketing hype is always the real danger.
Also, I advise against single points of failure. CC for network services and/or Single/Virtual-OS for servers, desktops... are all (metaphorically speaking) "Genetically predisposed to viral killer and massive systems failures."
!HAVEFUN!
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Maintaining a PC is not as hard as you imply...
For you and me, you are correct - it really isn't all that hard if you devote even a little time. However, professionally (and personally) I am regularly called on to fix other people's computers and for many people it clearly is hard. There are many reasons why of course but it is unquestionably beyond the capabilities of many people.
Sometimes it's because they can't be bothered, sometimes they don't have the time, other times they are afraid of screwing something up, and frequently they simply don't know how. I often joke that knowing how to maintain a computer is a great way to seem smarter than I actually am. Fix a broken PC and people think you are some kind of tech wizard - whether you actually are or not.
Plus a lot of folks simply don't have the time even if they know how. As an analogy I'm quite capable of doing my own plumbing but I do it so seldom it is more efficient for me to hire someone else to fix problems when they arise. Likewise a lot of my clients can solve their own problems but they simply don't have the time so they hire me.
So yes there are problems with cloud applications but there are problems with locally hosted applications too. There is no free lunch, it's simply a question of what works best for your needs.
Anyone dumb enough to trust "the cloud" with anything that matters or would best be kept secret gets exactly what they deserve.
Right now that sounds like those silly people who didn't think home prices would rise forever and that maybe those funny financial deals might have consequences. Time, as it always does, will tell.
Its ability to offer instant updates to maps, both satellite and traditional kinds, is surely a plus.
I'm guessing thin clients will make a comeback.
Since so many people seem willing to do this, why not sell your houses and start paying rent? I mean, if it is the right thing to do, it is the right thing to do all over. That way a corporation would also take care of servicing your house when they felt it was needed. Obviously they would know when this was needed much better than you would.
Also, do not make an investment today to rid yourself of eternal monthly payments. The way to get rich must be to pay someone else a monthly fee until forever. Don't buy your car. Rent everything.
She made the willows dance
All due respect to RMS.
But doesn't it depend on what you're trying to accomplish?
Obviously sending data onto someone else's servers is a really bad idea in many cases, but is it always?
People send tapes off site all the time. Here's a case where people are already trusting in encryption to allow others to hold sensitive data, and that seems to make sense for many companies. Is using the "cloud" for off-site archiving (as Oracle is pushing) that much different? You could argue that it would be easier to rip off data that is stored on a spinning disk somewhere, but that assumes that the security measures taken behind the scenes at the Iron Mountains of the world are undefeatable.
The "cloud" certainly beats storing tapes in the trunk of your intern's car.
The startup is another great example where pay as you go disk/cpu seems to make a ton of sense.. Ya the marketing hype is a bit nauseating, but what else is new.
You do know the reason behind the FSF copyright assignment, right? If you transfer you GPL code to FSF than they can defend it against GPL violators.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
A LOT of people want to go through live without thinking about real implications of their decisions, then they "suddenly" find themselves homeless and in the streets. I don't think RMS wants to outlaw Cloud Computing, this is a warning and those who have a brain will hear it and the rest will "suddenly" find themselves in another hole of their own digging.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
greed and selfishness are the opposite of this, they are concerned with the good of the individual, at the expense of society.
There's so much wrong with that statement I don't know where to begin. I hope I can do Libertarianism and Ayn Rand justice and not butcher up the following argument.
How exactly is greed at the expense of society? In a free society, greed does no harm to others. In fact, people act in their own self interest to the benefit of society. I don't care about my fellow man, only myself. However, in order to benefit myself, I must benefit my fellow man. I'll provide a concrete example.
The cattle ranch owner needs money. He doesn't care about anyone but himself. Now, in order to make money, he sells beef. The wholesale beef buyer doesn't care about the cattle ranch owner. However, if they exchange money for beef, it is a mutually beneficial exchange performed by both parties in their own self interest. The trucker transporting the beef doesn't care about me, the cattle rancher, the beef buyer, or anyone else. But in order to earn a living he transports the beef. The owner of the restaurant I'll eat the steak at doesn't care about me. But in order to earn my business he has to provide a good product/service to me. And on and on it goes.
So from source to destination, start to finish, everyone is greedy and acting in their own self interest. The cattle rancher doesn't care about me nor do I care about him. But because of his greed and mine, I get to eat a steak tonight.
AYN RAND, Atlas Shrugged
So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal wlth one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
is the fact that he assumes everyone else but him is an idiot. He is usually right, but he is also gets annoyingly condescending. He discredits the entire internet application market because he assumes everyone is a moron when it comes to security, that is wrong. Instead of lambasting cloud computing why doesnt he try to educate people on how to use these applications in a secure manner?
Given that, I absolutely agree with him on this topic. The companies sponsoring these apps are not being honest with their customers. They are down playing the security issues and only pushing the convenience aspect of the apps so they can collect marketing data on people. I have to admit many of these apps are convenient but I always use them with one rule in mind, "Never store anything on someone else's server that I wouldnt mind seeing in the local newspaper."
That guy in Germany seems to be doing fine going after GPL violators without FSF copyright assignment.
Cloudy
As far as I'm concerned, "they" can have my PC just after they've pried my Glock from my cold, dead hands. However, I think that the advocates of so-called "cloud computing" are groping towards a service for which there is an actual need. To be sure, I don't need it, and if you are reading this, you probably don't need it either, but I know people who do need something like the cloudy people are talking about.
I'm thinking of my sister-in-law. She believes—or used to believe—that I was her personal, dedicated computer support muppet. She is the archetype of the Clueless Normal (C.N.). Not only does hardware develop an unholy propensity to fail whenever it passes the doors of her house, but she was constantly calling me about networking issues, how to get into her Hotmail account (luckily, I could truthfully tell her I know nothing about Hotmail), and how to use whatever braindead application she decided was essential to her life. (How I rid myself of this problem may form the basis of a journal entry, if I find the time.)
Fellow geeks, you all know at least one person like this—someone who is draining your vital forces at the behest of demonic brain-sucking Bogons who dwell in an alternate universe that has long suffered final entropic heat death. I suggest to you that "cloud computing" is just the thing this sort of person. Give the C.N.s a terminal with just enough smarts to connect to a fiber optic line and talk to its Master. The CN can now read his email, "surf the web", and run stupid application to his heart's consent, without ever worrying about reinstalling Windows, system misconfiguration, application crashes (that can't happen in the clouds, can it?), viruses, or whatever.
So what if the Cloud carries a distinct whiff of sulfur. Data privacy and brain-sucking have never been on the C.N.'s list of worries in any case. And if he calls you, then you can answer quite truthfully that you know nothing about this stuff because you don't use it, and direct him to contact Yellow Stinking Cloud Tech Support.
Yep, I think there's a big market out there for cloud computing. Just because it's not us doesn't mean it's not there.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
The main benefit of cloud computing is its thin client approach. Client side just needs a web browser. To the extent that a generic, standards-compliant web browser works, that means that the cloud computing model is also platform-neutral. From a development point of view, it makes great sense. You build something, and can deploy it in any configuration from servers on the Internet 'cloud' to internal corporate servers.
Why can't that be even further extended to support a single-user server running on a desktop PC? That essentially would give you the ultimate in deployment flexibility from a single code base.
Of course, you then have to factor in the fact that (current) web-based app functionality doesn't measure up to desktop apps. Also, deploying a 'cloud' on your desktop PC seems a little nasty - traditionally a web server and app isn't a nicely shrink-wrappable quantity. But maybe one day there will be an open source 'portable, zero-admin, web app environment' that could be easily used for such deployments.
Then again, maybe Google Gears or XUL-based apps like Songbird already provide much of this benefit. Real desktop apps built with web technologies so they can be repurposed as cloud apps where appropriate...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Maybe we should just stop driving cars and living in houses that we didn't build ourselves too. We wouldn't want to trust anyone else to build those for us and possibly kill us. Geez he needs to come to grips with reality a little bit.
I agree with RMS. That is a sure sign of the Apocalypse. Time to restock the cabin in Utah.
" Big business, as you put it, doesn't function as a single unit. Each one has a profit motive, and each one has a series of competitors. They all have customers. Without customers, who can go to one of their competitors, deciding to use their products or services, 'big business' which you falsely qualify as a single conspiratory unit would be little business. Or, more likely, out of business. See? It even happens on wall street. You can take your consipiracy theories else where. "
/. logic, mean that Microsoft should be pushed back to being only a minor player in the market?
Wouldn't this arguement, according to standard
If you're not trolling and you're genuinely trying to get other people to do work you want done, you should consider asking people more nicely. Honey attracts more flies than vinegar, as the old saying goes.
Actually, RMS' software is all free software. The programs I named are each very complex programs anyone would be proud to have developed if any one of them were all they wrote. People use lots of free software programs, particularly server-side, even though they have no idea that they're using them. There's a difference between the philosophies of the two movements that sometimes result in distinct results.
Being a fan of RMS is not what's required to properly address RMS' concerns here. Ultimately I think that you're trying to motivate someone who owes you nothing by complaining about them (this makes you seem impolitic), and presenting no clear understanding of the magnitude of the issues in front of us (this makes you seem insensitive). Consider what RMS is talking about and you'll see that the lack of trust is not so easily handled by making a new product. For instance, with email one might want to host their own email service so they're not dependent on a server they don't control. But that requires considerable infrastructure and publicly signing encrypted email isn't (yet?) transparently useful across all of the most widely used email programs. I believe the issues RMS raises aren't new issues per se, but they are mostly new in scale—we've had these problems before but now that a lot more people with a wide range of technical skill are online we face new difficulties addressing all of their needs in ways novices can appreciate and get behind.
Digital Citizen
Nope. They've got enough customers, who aren't readers of slashdot, that are willing to pay them for the products they produce, when compared to those that are dissatisfied with them. There's a difference between people having customers with complaints, and customers with such grandiose complaints that they stop buying your products. Undoubtedly some companies, like microsoft, have some static friction in the market place. But that doesn't make them infallible. Again, I only need to point you toward Wall Street, where the huge market players are all shaking in their shoes because they didn't look out for their customers. (It doesn't serve anyone's customers well by proceeding with bad business practices, like investing in junk and saying it's golden. Especially when you know it's junk, and there's lots of evidence to suggest they knew just that, and were playing hot potato with the bad assets. That isn't customer focused behavior.) And the ones who didn't play stupid games, well, for the most part they're the ones buying up the failed examples.
Speak for yourself.
So-called "cloud computing" doesn't mean the Gestapo will bust down your door, confiscate your computer, and leave you with only a cloud terminal. It's a choice. It's an option available to those who want the convenience it provides.
The rest of us will continue using what we've always used.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
And a lot of people need their heads examined.
The degree of overlap between the two groups is left as an exercise for the aardvark.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
...Now I have to pay Internet bills...
Worse, if the connection goes down, you can't even type a letter or contract for printing if a program requires that connection in order to work. Maybe, when the Internet is as reliable as good old POTS, that objection will no longer hold. Even cell phones are not anywhere near as reliable as the old fashioned land line.
It seems like some IT professionals never got over the fact that the PC took away the iron clad control they had over all computing back in the days of the mainframe. Now they have figured out a way to wrest control back from the users to themselves. Back then the users were subservient to the high priests of computing. The computer priesthood now sees cloud computing as an opportunity to regain the control they had before the PC was invented and gave the users that control instead.
If the government wants to snoop on the data on your local HD, they still have to get a warrant and physically come to your location. That is how it used to be when they wanted to tap your phone line. Now all they have to do is jiggle a mouse and all your phone conversations come right into the office of whatever government official has a whim to listen. If your data resides on some servers run by some big company, they will automatically give the authorities what they want and neither you nor any judge will ever even know about it. These big companies have no incentive to protect your data from prying eyes, especially governments. It's not like that sort of thing has not happened already. Big companies are only interested in ONE thing: money.
All theory is gray
It's not that he doesn't realise, he honestly doesn't care.
This is a guy who would try and argue physics with Stephen Hawking if he challenged his extremely narrow worldview.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
This thread is already inside google, so I will post a summary and shut up.
I retract the general statement I made earlier in the thread and summarize the information here.
This a Mac Powerbook Pro purchased at Fries Electronics in San Jose in July 2007 with Mac OS X 10.4. It was booted for the first time outside the store.
It was upgraded to 10.5 with a shrink-wrapped box purchased in Manila, Philippines from an official Apple store this past July, before the hardware problems listed below manifested.
I had the show password hints option set.
I do not have a password hint on my account.
When I clicked show hint at the login screen, my password was displayed.
The machine is now out of service with a bad motherboard that is being replaced. It is possible there was some kind of hardware problem.
The system may have been booted into Safe Mode. I do not recall. One aspect of the dying mother board was that the airport was being misdetected at system boot.
This was an administrative account.
The software was purchased in the Philippines. It may or may not be the same image sold in the United States.
All music, videos, and most games sold in the Philippines are counterfeit, pirated or both. I have no idea how much of shrink wrapped software for sale is counterfeit.
I cannot reproduce the issue at the moment because my wife's Macbook is 7000 miles away and mine is in the shop for repairs.
An Apple person with a Macbook and a spare partition is welcome to call me at the office in order to borrow the Philippine 10.5 DVD long enough to install it on the empty partition and duplicate the same steps described above.
I like Macs. I'm not a fanboy, but it's Unix inside and my wife loves her Mac. I would love to be proved wrong, or demonstrate to someone that bad Apple system software is being sold in the Philippines.
I will shut up until I get my Powerbook back and have had a chance to redo the steps myself.
"Big business, as you put it, doesn't function as a single unit."
Oh really?
Those guys represent the largest companies from the entire cross section of the IT world, acting as a single unit, with the objective of filtering the Internet.
If you think that they all play by the rules, adhering to the principles of competitive fair play and not acting like a pack of wolves coordinating to engage in a pack-like feeding frenzy on the consumer's flesh, then you're quite the deluded idealist.
"I like having my music files from all the computers I touch. I want my email everywhere too."
Thsse are standard server-side services. Cloud computing's end game is the moving of all data processing and creation off the client computer. My understanding of it is that the browser will become the OS and PCs will become overpriced thin clients. This is the model that is most profitable for the business sector, and I guarantee you that this is the model they have their eyes fixed on. The link above to the lobby group formed to filter the Internet is part of this same goal; to ensure that all computing is done in a model that can be leveraged to ensure regular payments.
I hate printers.
cloud computing is basically Windows users (plus some Linux users) moving to web-based services.
it's a paradigm shift (Windows/ Linux -> cloud). Stallman is right...nothing is free...not even cloud computing.
if a user wants to read mail from anywhere s/he can use imap+ssl for their own mail server, there are lots of other open source tools/ applications that can give connectivity from anywhere that people can setup for themselves. but i guess windows and some linux users are too stupid/ lazy/ busy to do that.
Please go ahead and reply to SL Baur, I'd love to see what you say now that your idealized image of Stallman has been pretty much destroyed by someone who actually knows what they're talking about. As opposed to you, who simply adores blindly from a distance.
...to pay your $699 licensing fee you cock smoking twitter!
That filter group has it all wrong too. It's MORE in their best interest to meter upstream traffic and charge by the gigabyte, like the australians do. Because, the free market will eventually prove that 'unlimited' service is a bad, really bad, idea, and net neutrality is moot. You have to think totally free when you consider free markets. You can't think "what would happen immediately following if we turned things free right now" you have to consider "What companies would be left standing if they didn't adjust their business models to be more consumer friendly X years down the road?"
Speak for yourself.
I'm sure he is, but the point is that not everyone has resources and time to represent himself (or to hire lawers) in court against alleged GPL violators.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Does Web Search count as cloud computing? Or is it not just because we do not hand our data to any third party? And if it does, what is the Free Software alternative?
"The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it. -- Abbie Hoffman"