Slashdot Mirror
Doctorow On What Cloud Computing Is Really For
Diabolus Advocatus alerts us to an article Cory Doctorow has up on guardian.co.uk, addressing what cloud computing really means for the average consumer: "The tech press is full of people who want to tell you how completely awesome life is going to be when everything moves to 'the cloud' — that is, when all your important storage, processing and other needs are handled by vast, professionally managed data-centers. Here's something you won't see mentioned, though: the main attraction of the cloud to investors and entrepreneurs is the idea of making money from you, on a recurring, perpetual basis, for something you currently get for a flat rate or for free without having to give up the money or privacy that cloud companies hope to leverage into fortunes."
I've seen "Cloud Computing" around as a buzzword but I never really cared to investigate what it really was.
I'm assuming it is essentially paying a data center to host my data from my home system? Why in the hell would I even WANT to do that?
Or did I completely miss the bus? Something I missed?
on a recurring, perpetual basis, for something you currently get for a flat rate or for free without having to give up the money or privacy that cloud companies hope to leverage into fortunes.
If I go "Legit" - I don't have any money or privacy on the internet. It all goes to some music/movie/filesharing company or another.
If I "Pirate" - This stuff is all free, with the basic risks still assumed, and moving to the Cloud will not really change that.
So, I ask, what am I getting for Free or a flate rate that cloud companies are going to make me pay through the nose for?
keep slurping the dicks of the owner class - maybe they'll make you rich someday too!
The first online services charged you for every email you sent or received. The next generation kicked their asses by offering email flat-rate.
It's finally happening with cell phone service, too. It always galled me that I had a flat rate on a land line but had to pay minutes on a cell phone. Especially annoying when someone with a landline who likes to gab calls you.
Now I'm on Boost Mobile, and its pricing is even better than a land line. Free minutes, free internet, free voice mail, free text messaging, fifty bucks a month flat rate.
Good article, I coundn't find anything to argue with in it. I never did understand why the concept of "cloud computing" was attractive to anyone. I wish someone would explain it to me.
Free Martian Whores!
This is what is broadly defined as "Rent Seeking"; extracting more revenue from customers without delivering additional value.
I guess one more reason to read the EULA before committing your website/app/etc to the cloud. Not a shocker that selling your personal info is a much anticipated profit stream.
Cloud computing is useless for the average user. Who in their right mind would wants to store everything important to them on an advanced cluster for a monthly fee? They should pay me for all my data, as much as they want to hold on to it. Cloud computing == 0% privacy rate Cloud computing is only useful for private industry, maybe the government, and nothing else.
Ars Technica has a very nice response to this: http://arst.ch/722
Apparently you hate the idea of universal health care... but do you have to try to bring it up in every conversation? This has nothing to do with govt/market; it is about private companies that used to sell you a computer to do and save stuff now want you to rent a computer (for lack of better analogy) to do and store stuff.
While this might be nice to some who have no intention on maintaining a computer and care not for privacy, many people would not like these services (and some of the rates are outrageous... some not so bad). How did your bring the government in this convo? That makes me think you haven't really put any thought into your position on healthcare.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
Right now, the biggest issue I see facing Cloud Computing isn't the cost but the blatant misunderstanding that some people have as to what Cloud Computing actually is. I work with so many people who have absolutely no idea when it comes to Cloud Computing. One co-worker told me he was setting up a new website for himself. I asked him what hosting provider he was using. His response: "None. I'm putting on the cloud." Another co-worker saw me looking at a screenshot of someone who had over 20 virtual machines running on his PC at one time. He looked at me and said "That had to be done on the cloud."
I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of Cloud Computing. If providers can make money of off this new platform, more power to them. I just wish we could establish a large billboard that explained in detail what it was.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
Charging for services isn't the problem. Charging for bullshit services that we already have, and don't pay for, is the problem. No one is against corporations making money, but I, and apparently Doctorow, call bullshit when these greedy fucks try to charge for stuff that is currently free.
Its the same with these horse-ass streaming game services like OnLive and Gakai. They're purely DRM, they offer no convenience to existing PC gamers; in fact, they subtract convenience and choice.
Come up with an actual new service that is useful and not fluff and people will be happy to pay for it.
While Doctorow has a point, running an in-house data center is hardly something that lacks recurring costs. Once you get past the hype, the benefit of cloud computing is that it should be possible to leverage technical expertise and management across a much larger user base. The number of people you need who really understand email servers does not go up linearly with the number of users served.
Doctorow's gripe is NOT about cloud computing, but Software as a Service setups, where the software is externally hosted.
"Cloud Computing" is a very nebulous term, ranging from online apps in the browser (Google Apps) to high level compute APIs (Map-Reduce etc) to low level VM hosting and storage (Amazon EC2/S3).
The interesting things, IMO, from the cloud point of view are the compute side, which is a windfall (we used EC2 to great effect with Netalyzr), and the reliability/infrastructure offloading.
And let's do a puzzle here. Yes, a cheap computer is just that, CHEAP, which implies unreliable. Gmail, for all its griping, has pretty much 99.99% uptime. Does Doctorow realize how much even that level of reliability costs when done in-house?
Test your net with Netalyzr
After all, we can trust the banks, brokerages, governments, etc., that promise the same level of "trust". No way in hell would I turn data over to "The Cloud".
You didn't RTFA, did you?
Perhaps the government should provide 'Universal Cloud Service' to everyone for free.
There's a guy here named "badanalogyguy". I think you have him beat. Nice try getting your offtopic and illogical political view somehow incorporated into the topic, though.
Free Martian Whores!
Cloud computing works on the "frog in a pot" principle. Slowly increase the temperature, and the frog doesn't know it's being boiled alive.
-Don't worry about backup, let us do it, for a small monthly fee.
-Don't store your data locally, let us do it, for a small monthly fee.
-Don't worry about software, let us provide it for you, for a small monthly fee.
-Don't worry about a PC, let us provide one for you, for a small monthly fee.
Think it won't work? It already does. Look at your cellphone. You don't own it, you don't own any of it's data, you rent it, for a couple of small monthly fees, and some small "pay per use" fees.
Lets look at the XBOX model. You "own" the hardware, but ultimately, Microsoft gets to decide what you can do with it.
XBox live is your "small monthly fee". Expect the next version of XBox to be a rental only agreement.
You get all the "convenience", but none of the service guarantees, security, responsibility, etc.
They get all your "small monthly fees", and all your personal data.
Re: your sig; UPS and FedEx aren't doing that great right now. I know a bunch of people who work in IT in one of the above and they all had to take 20% pay cuts recently because the company is tanking.
But, go private sector!
It is a just a fucking technology to make managing those backend servers easier. Not good or not bad.
Now exporting your local business apps to a web-based software service does have implications that having nothing to do with these useless cloud computing conspiracy nutters who see evil coporate machinations like the religious right sees that face of mary in every potato chip.
Another Op. ed. from Doctor Who Fucking Cares. I'm amazed he didn't work in a few dozen plugs for his book.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
There are lots of ways to spend money, and lots of ways to point out that certain ways to spend money are not cost effective. I didn't read anywhere in TFA however, where it was suggested that the government provide cloud service free to everyone. I don't know what made you make that leap, but it wasn't anything related to the article's content.
What was pointed out was that it makes sense in certain situations, usually highly intense processing, storage, or bandwidth related circumstances and the occasional time when people might want to collaborate on a document (I would note however that for most people, emailing the document back and forth is perfectly adequate). For most people, it makes more sense to buy a cheap computer because first and foremost, it is cheaper in the long run, faster, more private, and not subject to connectivity issues.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Sorry I have it in my signature. I'll change it just to make you happy and wont bring up Universal health care in every comment from now on.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Moving people from their own computing resources to yours is about one fundamental: control. I control my PC in ways that I normally have a great deal of say about (sure, "regular people" may have to hire consultants or expert systems to regain control of their systems, but at least the potential is there).
The recurring payment model is the modern gold rush... companies are willing to give you "free" satellite STBs, cell phones, etc. in return for knowing they're getting your $50-$100 back on a regular basis. This also moves to an interesting market model. With regular purchases, you probably have to convince me that you're the best for my needs, if I'm a well informed consumer. With contracts, once I've bought in, you need to finr the minimal amount of satisfaction that keep the vast majority of your customers "hooked". So people love and defend their choice of Nikon over Canon, or Sony over Panasonic, for the most part. But everyone complains about their cable company, their cellular provider, etc. And yet, those are the guys making the Big Bucks.
So it's inevitable that web services will go in that direction, at least some of the time. There's currently little precedent for getting consumers to pay, but "cloud" subscriptions are at the same time being sold to business as an alternative to expensive desktop tools (even when free desktop tools are also available). For some business use, it's not going to be about the money, per se. They might actually prefer a subscription to a lump payment... that makes expenses predictable... the same reason many businesses lease equipment, rather than buy, even though the long-term expense is greater.
But what they'll really be buying is control. Many companies work hard to keep workers from installing "unapproved" software applications. Move everyone to the cloud, and they lose the ability to customize anything you don't want customized. This is probably the engine that'll push business into the cloud, and get them to pay.
For consumers, follow the cell/cable model... if you sign up for two years of Bubba Jones' computing services, we'll send you a netbook (running a ChromeOS style OS that puts everything under control of the cloud services, even though some local storage will still be possible). There are enough people unconcerned about "real" desktop computing that this will probably seem like a good deal. Particularly if they're unable to do the real math. Which many won't... ask any iPhone toting friend what they paid for their iPhone.. they'll usually say "$200" or some such. When in fact, they're probably paying a total of something like $2000-$3000 over the course of two years, once you factor in the contract costs. But if it's a slow enough bleed, and you keep them happy enough, folks don't notice.
-Dave Haynie
how dare they try to provide a service for people to use and actually charge for it. Perhaps the government should provide 'Universal Cloud Service' to everyone for free. (except of course for the taxes they are charged for it to hide the actual cost)
They are welcome to provide these services if they want to, this is just an article to explain to those who will listen why cloud computing is pushed so hard. It is a warning to not become dependant on "the cloud" because you and I probably don't know what it'll become, but it is likely that investors are flocking to "the cloud" in the hopes that they can grab control of anything, and then profit from that control. That probably isn't good for the users of the cloud.
I have pretty much stopped using proprietary software since I noticed how inevitably my interests will conflict with the interests of the proprietary software maker. I will look for open stuff first, and only if there isn't an alternative will I use proprietary stuff, like Google Earth and some games.
Cloud computing is just proprietary computing by another name. It can still be useful, but the control lies with the cloud owner rather than the user.
Car analogies break down.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe some people don't want to have to worry about upgrades, viruses, slowness, etc... If someone out there can provide computer access to users with the protection from Viruses, hardware becoming obsolete, and other general hardware problems, what's the problem in that?
This could work well for the elderly who just don't want to deal with all the crap that comes with owning a computer.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
"For most people, it makes more sense to buy a cheap computer because first and foremost, it is cheaper in the long run, faster, more private, and not subject to connectivity issues."
Is it though? I have a feeling that that "most people" is shrinking to maybe "half of the people" and will soon be "a few people."
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
It seems as though there are, really, two quite different flavors of "cloud computing" at issue here with very dissimilar properties.
On the one hand, you have something like Gmail: Basically everything there(your data, all the code, etc.) is on their systems and under their control. On the other hand, you have something like EC2, which is basically just VPS hosting with higher-than-traditional provisioning speed.
The first type creates real risk(particularly for more unsophisticated users) of the expensive longterm rental replacing ownership problem we've seen with other industries. (Consider poor old Grandma, still renting a phone from AT&T decades after 3rd party devices were allowed, cable box rental fees, and all the other attempts to tie individuals to a recurring charge setup). The situation isn't all bad; but there is real room for concern.
The second type seems much less threatening. First, it'll be aimed largely at more sophisticated users, who will have more options and negotiating room. Second, the potential for easier migration will presumably keep costs down and service relatively high. Something like EC2 is largely standard(the compute VMs you are allocated) or fairly simple(the mechanism for requesting/provisioning more) and available in independent implementation. Amazon can still crush the little guys through scale and efficiency; but there is nothing stopping you from going somewhere else, or running your own, if they decide to abuse the power.
Given that Doctorow is writing for a popular publication, about the impact on joe user, I'd say his warnings are justified. They may well not be justified for you but all the whinging in the world about how simple it is(for you) to just run your own server won't change the fact that you'll be surrounded by people paying more than they expected every month for the cloud(just like they do for all the other "services" in their lives). However, it isn't at all clear that his warnings usefully apply to the commercial sense of "cloud computing" where it basically just means hosting.
Yes, that is what the majority of offerings will be like. But you also have the opportunity to use the cloud in your own way, at least when it comes to data storage. You can purchase computation from one host, storage from another, and so on; you can do your own computing on your own hardware where it suits. All your data can be encrypted, so that only you (and of course, whichever hosts you send the keys to) can read it. Your data is thus as secure as you choose for it to be. The market will demand Open standards for the purpose of interoperability (and the current Cloud computing systems are primarily based on preexisting Open standards as it is) and you will be able to shop around even more than you already can. Using FOSS clients helps protect the integrity of your data.
In fact, this is one of the places trusted computing could help, although you have to assume that someone out there could still compromise your security with a system like that; still, it raises the bar considerably when you're talking about sending your code out for remote execution.
Data storage is nonetheless the first place where the cloud can make a significant positive difference for people. An encrypted, distributed filesystem is the first killer app, for those who actually do have always-on internet access. Eventually that will be everyone (progress marches on) so it's a growth market.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The web was supposed to be a cloud to begin with. I think services like Opera Unite are pulling in the opposite direction and reinforcing what the web was supposed to be like to begin with.
Did you know that the HTTP protocol has PUT and DELETE commands? As far as I can tell no browser implements them. It does explain why we have primitive authentication.
I call services like Opera Unite and Mozilla Weave a personal cloud because they can be hosted yourselves. The Opera servers only provide hole punching between unite users.
This is an example of what I want to see http://jkontherun.com/2009/06/16/opera-unite/
and my here.
It's sad that our society's photographs are on Facebook in low quality. The big tech companies want to make us powerless over our data and retain control of them.
Subscriptions have always been more profitable than actual game sales. Blizzard is laughing its way to the bank after selling the game and then asking for more money to play the game you already paid for.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
I'm neither especially pro-cloud or anti-cloud, but I'm getting really sick of the people saying that compute is going to be just like electricity or POTS or some other utility. Their assumption there is that they can provide some sort of generic "compute unit" that customers can just plug in to and use on demand. The problem is that network-enabled applications are far more complex than plugging in a toaster. OLTP is different from scientific computing, which is different from graphics rendering, and none of them are similar to what most people use their PCs for. Some require little CPU or RAM, but extremely high I/O, others need a ton of RAM but little CPU (can anyone say Java??). They keep saying that "there's already a generic interface - TCP/IP". WTF? You gotta be kidding me if you think that Amazon or Google is just going to give me generic TCP/IP access to their data center! Can I use EC2 to run a bit torrent client? Tor? Test the next version of nmap or nessus? Whew, I need a smoke after that rant!
myspace.com/johnnyfreakingcocaine
...you lost me at 'Doctorow on'.
Very amusing. You say "probably already using it" and list a bunch of things, all but one (gmail) being relatively obscure, and all of them being useless. But those values judgments aside, seriously, look at your list. You list those things and then have the balls to tell someone they probably already use it? Take a poll some time, mention those things to people, and you're going to get a lot of blank looks. In order words, the accurate reply is, "you're probably not already using it, unless you got suckered into gmail."
You can keep it in your sig... that's the place for inflammatory statements here on /.. But your post was what I was talking about... as well as the other few that responded. But I do like the new sig!
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
At least he finally shut up about not having a TV. Count your blessings, dude.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I guess you're a universal computer supporter? Free computers on every desk. I guess every issue has two sides.
It's in the cloud
It's in the cloud
MotherBuzzword
It's in the cloud....
Thanks for your excellent followup post, Cornwallis, as this poster nweaver, either attended an exclusive prep school, then either Harvard or Princeton, and belongs to that special plutocrat class of legacy twits, or else is a complete an utter douchebag!
Geez, I mean after every possible fraud has been perpetrated (at least worldwide and on the North American and South American peoples), and all fraud as practised by those in the richest bracket has been legalized, how could anyone not possibly trust the private sector?
Geez, twits such as nweaver don't even realize the American banking system collapsed back in 2007, with those individual banks being shut down after they can longer continue their individual charades (and due to the continuing depression in America). This clown actually doesn't realize that shift by the Obama Administration from "healthcare reform" to "health insurance" is nothing more than a backdoor bailout of the insurance industry - for the same very reasons why they bailed out the banksters - and is likely clueless about everything else in life - and firmly believes the bandits of the "private sector" are superior to everyone else!
"Here's something you won't see mentioned, though: the main attraction of the cloud to investors and entrepreneurs is the idea of making money from you, on a recurring, perpetual basis, for something you currently get for a flat rate or for free"
Duh. If the idea can't make money - it's unlikely to stay around if it even happens in the first place. That's the way the world works Cory.
On top of which... Most of things we get for 'free' are actually either a) ad supported or b) free because the company providing them has revenue from elsewhere and needs to build their brand. They aren't really 'free'. The same goes for 'flat rate', the services are generally subsidized and oversubscribed because the provider is betting (usually correctly) that 99.9999% of the users won't ever use the capacity they've signed up for.
The balance of his comment is essentially a Dvorak style rant, meaningless and somewhat disconnected from reality. But, like all pundits, if he doesn't keep the hits coming he has to stop eating... So rants pull the eyeballs and pay the bills.
Even in the clouds.
Off topic, yes. But illogical? If this were an actual Health Care Bill post, he would be spot on. At least give him some credit for being correct about the off topic subject.
I figured it was a way for him to sign Little Brother in every bookstore on the planet at the same time while posting about it on every blog in existence.
You can have free software in the cloud... open source webservices that can be run on any server, standards to communicate between different services etc.
\u262D = \u5350
I once set up a hosted service for the IT staffs of about thirty banks, legal firms, etc. built on two redundant entry-level pizza boxes from TigerDirect, something slightly beefer for storage, used routers/firewalls and $50/U rental at a local hosting joint. After five years the service has raked in about half-a-million dollars with an overall profit margin (including occasional, part-time labor costs) of around 80-85% - it only needs a little tuning or upgrade now and again. Uptime? 99.99% - with a third of that caused by the hosting joint.
Perhaps the government should provide 'Universal Cloud Service' to everyone for free.
Cloud service... for some reason that makes me think of death panels.
I am with you, but you just don't question certain things on the net, man.
Apple, Cory Doctorow, David Pogue are some of those. Even if they far, internet will go crazy how sweet smelling they are. Add Gizmodo to it for good effect.
In fact, they all keep on smelling each other's farts and they claim their own 'awesomeness'.
It's an echo chamber there, where the sounds of these farts are amplified over and over again. Slashdot, though not as bad, has their own contribution in the echo, for sure.
I? I just just drop some snarky remarks on such articles, while posting as AC. Any more attention to these farters and fart-sniffers is too much.
I completely disagree with you on your point about OnLive and Gakai being useless. For existing PC gamers, yes, they are entirely useless. But existing PC gamers aren't the target audience of those services. Instead, those services are designed for those who either (a) can't afford or (b) aren't interested in maintaining hardware.
It speaks volumes that their demos so far centered around putting their tech in cable boxes (something usually made as cheaply as possible) or as client software for thin & light laptops (I think the exact demo unit was a MacBook Air). The devices are far outside of the usual "gaming hardware" group.
Also, its not so much DRM on an item you own as a monthly service. Slashdot, in general, needs to realize when things aren't necessarily DRM. You enter into the agreement knowing that you're paying for a limited time use of their system, which they maintain, and are limited to the titles they offer. You enter the agreement knowing that you haven't bought the game and therefore aren't allowed the usual rights that come with owning a product. Such services can exist without DRM as we know it (software or hardware copy protection) because the actual software is running remotely and they serve a stream -- and if you don't pay, they just simply kill the stream. Its roughly equivalent to your local power station killing your service if you don't pay your electricity bill.
"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."
The argument that it's a scheme to put users on a subscription model is somewhat weak -- if you use commercial software you're already on a subscription model for all intents and purposes anyway. Most of the thin client deployments I've seen are abandoned pretty quickly. A couple of larger ones seem to have risen out of someone's need to justify buying all those thin clients. I can't cite any examples that would lead me to believe that thin solutions are feasible except perhaps in a few very specific applications.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
That's how I use Amazon's S3 cloud storage: not as an unreliable and slow hard drive, but as a store for encrypted backups of my critical files,
So far as I can seem that's nothing like cloud computing. That's merely offline storage (and not a very good way to back stuff up, anyway). Although the story has a headline about cloud computing, no-one seems to have told the author - who's fixated on online storage, maybe he doesn't understand the term?
. Personally I can keep all my critical stuff on a couple of (encrypted or not) 4GB USB sticks. One at home, one elsewhere. Trusting all your stuff to one, single commercial entity - and only having access to it when you're on an internet connection - is nobody's idea of clever, or sensible.
The point about cloud computing is that it's not for provate individuals - it's for large, commercial organisations to commoditise CPU cycles and ship their stuff around the world, buying up spare capacity in a spot market and having their number-crunching done cheaper than if they had to run a data centre themselves. The big problem comes with having to trust each of your hosting organisations with the security of your data, resolving conflicts of interest and being able to guarantee that not a single one of the "cloud" sys-admins is on the take - and won't sell your data. That's a big ask.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Why buy a $1500 computer when you can get 100x more power from a $100 thin client and $20 a month. (or what ever)
Because ISPs in the United States with a wireless last mile (3G or satellite) still charge on the order of $60 per month for on the order of 5 GB per month. Or because I want to do something and see the result happen without a second of lag.
Every time you use Google you are using the cloud.
Which is fine because I am using a service through the network to search for other resources that can be used through the network, and the resources don't need instant response. But at times, I might have no connection to the network, or I might have such a slow connection (either low bandwidth or high latency) that interacting becomes unbearable.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/25/
... but it is likely that investors are flocking to "the cloud" in the hopes that they can grab control of anything, and then profit from that control.
Does your bank grab control of the contents of safety deposit boxes and then profit from that control?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
OK, I'll bite. As someone who runs a SaaS product (http://gimlet.us, in case you care), I can assure you that we're not trying to nickel-and-dime our customers. We're trying to provide useful software at a reasonable price — nothing more, nothing less.
I've run a very similar open-source project, and found that by far, the most frequent question from people was "how do I get this running?" I talked to many people who wanted to try it, only to find that their IT department was an obstacle. One person told me — no lie — that their IT staff would charge $26,000 to install a small PHP/MySQL app.
Offering our software as a hosted service means we can provide it to nontechnical users without needing the help or approval of their sysadmins. It means that deploying patches is relatively straightforward, and that installers and packaging are things we just don't need to worry about. Instead, we can spend our (limited!) development time making our app better.
Will we, at some point, offer our code "for sale" as an installable, locally-run product? Almost certainly. However, the demand hasn't been there so far, so our efforts have been focused elsewhere.
Yes, there are some real concerns about putting your data up in someone else's cloud. But the idea that we're offering our app as a service to fleece people is simply not accurate.
If you have too much porn on your comp, just put all the old stuff onto a truecrypt drive and upload the container...
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
If you see cloud compute as a 'software service' system like Google Mail or Google Docs, then perhaps yes.
We use cloud compute in the 'generic virtual machine provider' sense.
We use a couple of cloud compute providers to host our web servers. We pay a monthly fee and get the root password to a standard Linux virtual machine, what we install on it is up to us. If the physical hardware that is hosting our server fails, we just install it somewhere else. All of the install process is automated, and we can transfer our server and data from one provider to another in a couple of hours*.
We can alter the machine resources (cpu, memory disc) whenever we like.
We review the costs on a regular basis and can move to another provider if think we can get a better deal**.
* Installing from backup on to a new machine takes about 10min, the biggest delay is waiting for cached DNS records to catch up.
** We currently use two providers, one in the US and one in the UK and currency exchange rates can make a significant difference.
I think Doctorow is starting to sound a little like Richard Stallman. Doctorow is lamenting and predicting the end of user control of our software, much as Stallman predicted loss of control over the operating system. GNU provided an option, while the majority of end users never noticed or cared as proprietary OSs took the dominant market share (at least in the PC market). Those of us who really know enough to care either use proprietary OSs willingly knowing that there is an alternative, or use libre OSs.
The same will be true if/when SaaS becomes dominant. While this generation's hackers will lament this as "the end of computing FOREVER," in reality the libre applications that already exists will still exist thanks to free licenses (and a bit of the Streisand effect, I suspect). Once software is libre and reasonably well distributed, there is little that can be done to prevent its availability. Hackers will continue to use and develop libre software, as they have for the last 20 years or so. Hackers will have the options that they do now.
The picture changes a bit for the average joe. They will have their software served to them, and if they know the difference it will be on a superficial level. Perhaps this is for the best; perhaps not. Perhaps the corporations will take their newfound powers and exploit them for nefarious purposes; there will be an alternative, even if unknown to the average end user.
As a software engineer and entrepreneur, the cloud means two things to me: low hosting costs for my nascent web application; being able to design an application such that it won't be destroyed by its own success. I work primarily with Google AppEngine, and it provides a platform that allows me to deploy my application with absolutely zero overhead cost. There are no recurring monthly fees, and I pay only for resources that are actually consumed, after the rather generous free quota has been consumed. For someone trying to bootstrap a new small business on less-than-a-shoestring, that I absolutely invaluable. I buy a domain name for $10, code on my own time and viola, I am done. Additionally, let's say that I hit the web jackpot and I end up coding the next Twitter (which seriously needs to happen, because Twitter needs to be over, like yesterday). Rather than scrambling to rearchitect and recode my application and add expensive server resources, so that it can meet the demand, I let Google scale up the resources to meet the demand, and they have more servers, routers and people monitoring the network than I will ever be able to afford. Their beyond-massive economies of scale are available to me just by virtue of writing my application inside their admittedly rather specialized sandbox. I have a hard time figuring out why I wouldn't deploy my web applications on AppEngine.
I'm confused why this post (among many others) are being modded down. He is absolutely correct in his statements. It seems a group of people with MOD points and a "cloud-positive" agenda are up to no good today.
I don't think so! Look, if someone can encode my videos to a DVD format before burning in 5 minutes instead of 1.5 hours on my 2.2GHz AMD64 X2, and also magically get the image to me for burning in 5 minutes, I'd pay for it in some circumstances. It's better than my computer being barely useable for a good chunk of the day. But as for running an office suite, I think I'll stick to my own computer for free thanks. What does the average person do that requires cloud computing? I don't have any databases big enough to merit being moved to a datacenter. I don't process Pixar level 3D graphics. Hell, youtube and other services already let me edit my videos on a cloud for free. So I don't see how the average person could possibly submit to being nickel and dimed for a cloud to run their apps that their own computer can handle itself. So what if you save $600 by buying some moderately intelligent terminal? $20 a month to run your apps is ridiculous, especially with the lag time and bandwidth required!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
I dub the new anti streaming game, DRM scare tacktics as the "BOO! Gakai" people.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
exactly, when a company/organization performs poorly they should fail. the post-office will never fail because they will be propped up by your and my tax dollars, perpetually no mater how poorly (or good) they are run.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
....what they used to call timeshare.
I remember there was a time there would be professionally managed mainframes that companies would then use to do things with on a timeshare basis. Seems that 'Cloud' computing is more or less a return to that model.
Funny how things never seem to change.
Cloud computing is really just a business/billing model.
It's a large set of cheap redundant storage with a layer of virtualization between you and the hardware with a way to allocate VMs/storage etc.
To people outside, leasing space, that's how it appears.
To the guys inside it's a whole bunch of machines running some special software with an API that is tied to accounts-receivable.
Using isn't magical and won't magically make your stuff run better, though there are advantages (and disadvantages).
Question everything
Cory is only repeating what I've been saying for years now: the "cloud" is merely the latest spin on trying to "re-educate" people to accept software subscriptions in place of one-time software licenses. There has been an ongoing effort for many years to rebrand software as "content", for much of which people have already become accustomed to paying a monthly fee. If Big Software succeeds in convincing people that software is content, then this battle is lost and we'll all wind up paying for software by the month, cloud or no cloud.
I've said it here repeatedly, blogged about it in my little backwater blog, with nary a modding-up in sight, but now Doctorow parrots the same allegation after all this time and suddenly it's news? I guess I should derive satisfaction from the fact that finally people might take notice of the unintentional conspiracy at work here.
want to kick the facebook habit but still keep track of your friends? then export all your friends to a csv file? try this app, it actually works: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=32853197098
There will always be a need for customer premised equipment. You cannot remove that need regardless of the strength of the cloud. Moreover, cloud computing introduces many difficulties when you talk about compliance to company specific requirements for data integrity. ClearCenter.com which is the next generation of ClarkConnect has an interesting infrastructure around this problem. They open source the customer premise portion of the problem and position themselves between the customer and the 'cloud' to provide centralization of identity to cloud resources. I think more and more providers will be forced to this model in the future or will end up needing to offshore identity management to other providers like OpenID. There will be a need to push this offline authentication method that is typical of internal networks to a WAN adoption of identity or push the WAN identity options to the LAN.
Whoever the idiot was who chose to represent the internet as an amorphous cloud... Scary to think if he'd used some shape that resembles the howling void to represent the net we'd be talking about void computing.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
the post-office will never fail because they will be propped up by your and my tax dollars, perpetually no mater how poorly (or good) they are run.
The USPS is funded by postage revenue, not tax dollars. As they have been losing money, you may have heard the disucssions about whether or not to reduce delivery from the current 6 days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service - About the USPS
It's the latest take on thin-client to server connectivity. Why buy a $1500 computer when you can get 100x more power from a $100 thin client and $20 a month. (or what ever)
The main difference this time is a web browser typically becomes your thin client and the server is actually a massively parallel cluster of servers. Every time you use Google you are using the cloud.
The problem is that you become dependent of the cloud. If your network fails or the server overloads, the $100 client/netbook/whatever will not be able to handle the same tasks.
It's good to have local devices capable of accomplishing the tasks you need. Cloud computing have its advantages, but isn't as reliable.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
Heh, that shouldn't be modded flamebait.
If anything, it deserves elaboration.
A large company can potentially provide computing services to a client for less cost than if the client supplied their own needs.
If I need server capacity, or raw processing, at a high volume but only infrequently, it might cost a lot for me to buy the capacity myself, when not using it all the time. If I need data storage, I may have issues with scaling, and with laying out the cash quickly to purchase new drives.
Cloud services allow for small companies to take advantage of economies of scale. Sure, the provider gets a cut -- but it still may be a bargain for the small company.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Whoever thinks that cloud computing is for desktops is an idiot. The best thing it's for is research and large or multiple small scale commercial computations. With cloud computing as a desktop you would have to rely on at least three factors: connection, client, and server. With a desktop you only need to rely on one thing: the client - the connection and server is not as important if you can still do your work on the client. I don't know about the rest of you, but my connection is _less_ reliable than my computer and I wouldn't trust my data on someone else's server.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Yep. Lotsa places. Isn't it amazing just how many places you find out there are?
And that is the Steam Cloud.
I have a suggestion for deciding if something deserves the "cloud" moniker. It is all about the potential to scale exponentially and transparently. It applies to big projects, not simple services for individuals.
If you are putting your personal file backups online, you're not doing anything related to cloud computing. You're simply using an online service.
If you are offering a backup service to the public, and you are paying another company to scale up your networking and storage needs from 10 users to 10 million users, so that you don't need to worry about the backend implementation, that would be cloud computing.
Does your bank grab control of the contents of safety deposit boxes and then profit from that control?
I'm pretty sure they would if it were not for the legal infrastructure and enforcement currently in place.
For instance, banks routinely make it inconvenient (though not impossible--that would be illegal) to move your money to other banks (procedures, fees, etc.). If they could suddenly make more money by taking control of all of their client's safety deposit boxes (including loss of reputation, etc.) they would do it. Current laws make such a move not "worth it", however.
In the case of cloud computing, there are no laws preventing them from forcing lock-in on their customers or otherwise duping them (other than generic anti-fraud laws). I'm not claiming that we need laws to protect cloud computing customers. I'm merely pointing out that those customers have every reason to not trust the vendors.
In other words, when a customer is trying to calculate the cost/benefit of using a particular solution (e.g. cloud computing vs. local), they absolutely need to take into account the negative of a cloud computing vendor "screwing them over" (e.g. making it difficult or impossible or costly to migrate data).
exactly, when a company/organization performs poorly they should fail. the post-office will never fail because they will be propped up by your and my tax dollars, perpetually no mater how poorly (or good) they are run.
No offense intended, but that's only a nice idea in this case as long as you don't think very hard about the problem.
It's beneficial to America, overall, if you can send mail anywhere in the country for a reasonable rate. This makes all kinds of business possible that wouldn't be otherwise.
It's not always economically viable to do that and serve the whole country. There's a reason that even a FedEx has a service like SmartPost that uses the USPS for final delivery.
A private company / capitalism is a good way, perhaps even the best way, to efficiently do X and make a profit. It falls down when doing X isn't profitable at all, or if you don't want the profitability/efficiency of X to be the primary concern, such as in health care, yet, for whatever reason, it benefits society to have X done anyway. It's not wholly unlike some kind of inverse version of the Tragedy of the Commons.
We use a couple of cloud compute providers to host our web servers. We pay a monthly fee and get the root password to a standard Linux virtual machine, what we install on it is up to us. If the physical hardware that is hosting our server fails, we just install it somewhere else. All of the install process is automated, and we can transfer our server and data from one provider to another in a couple of hours*..
In this case you are using "cloud computing" to apply to a service that was visualized (if not already being provided), before "cloud computing" was thought of. This probably represents what is wrong with this buzzword (and most buzzwords for that matter).
If I remember correctly, people started talking about "cloud computing" about the time when Google Apps started to be developed. It was a "new paradigm". People would no longer host software on their own computers. They would connect to the Internet and use a spreadsheet, or word-processor, or database that was hosted "on the cloud". Their data would be stored there rather than locally. It was about selling Software as a Service.
You are talking about hosting on the Internet something that is inherently on the Internet (web servers), while "cloud computing" was originally about hosting on the Internet things that had been considered inherently local.
The way you are using "cloud computing" is to refer to having Virtual Machines hosted on someone else's hardware. While that is not necessarily wrong, it is a different usage of the term than that of those who originally coined the term.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
What does the cost of bandwidth have to do with anything?
If I use a thin client, I need a constant connection to the network. But if I use a more expensive laptop and store all data that I use while in the field to my laptop, I can use a much cheaper sporadic connection. Ask anybody who bought an iPod Touch over an iPhone.
Perhaps the GP should have said:
Because then it's trivially simple for you (more importantly, for people who aren't at all technologically inclined) to get at it from anywhere with an Internet connection.
And my point is that "anywhere with an Internet connection" is not enough until the price of a mobile Internet connection plummets. For what one pays for a 2-year MiFi plan from Verizon or Sprint, I could buy a real nice fat client.
the idea would be that there wouldn't be anywhere that was away from a Wi-Fi hotspot that is either public or something that everybody needs to buy into in order to keep up with the Joneses.
I can name such places: the front passenger's seat of a car, or any seat of a bus. Or do you include a $60/mo 3G plan as "something that everybody needs to buy into in order to keep up with the Joneses"?
Doctorow should know the difference: He is talking about remotely hosted computing, not cloud computing. Vendors can host your applications, data or processing using a cloud, a bunch of clusters, pairs of load-balanced failover servers, or just individual servers. The issues he address remain the same: Lack of endpoint power and control.
Cloud computing is a technology your vendor can use to lower their costs, in some circumstances. As the consumer, it doesn't really matter what it's hosted on. All that matters is its performance, availability, etc. I get tired of end users and journalists mis-using the latest buzzword, but Doctorow should know better.
Except that the term "cloud computing" was used as market speak to refer to remotely hosted computing that one would connect to over the Internet. The term was used to overcome the resistance to remotely hosted solutions that had developed when other connection methods had been used to connect: "See, this isn't like that, it's over the Internet. It's 'cloud computing'." They tried to sell people that because it was over the Internet it wouldn't have the inherent problems of remotely hosted solutions (lack of endpoint power and control).
Once the term was out there people like you looked at it and thought that it was a good term to refer to virtual machines and other services delivered over the Internet.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Or you can spend $15-20 a month
Mobile Internet access is $60 a month where I live.
and get a constantly refreshed and updated/upgraded system every time you turn it on.
And a popular cloud computing client will probably be "refreshed and updated/upgraded" to lock out cloud applications developed by amateurs.
Just as a proof of concept, GMail's offline support is pretty good.
But once you have robust offline support, one might argue that you aren't really running an app in the cloud as much as a local app that syncs with the cloud. The problem is that the definition of "cloud" is, pardon the pun, nebulous.
because you don't have a choice anymore. You have to keep your money in a bank because everybody else is doing that too. And you're getting more annoyed by the fact every year as banks rise their service fees etc.
I have to buy new hardware when a)I run out of space or b)hardware dies. And just like clouds, the more data I have the more I have to pay-- the more hardware you have the more frequently you have to replace it or upgrade it. You're never going to get away from this, you're only going to shift it around. It's a law of the universe. Clouds just make things a lot simpler to deal with, and much more stable . Cory Doctorow will basically say whatever gets him a lot of press. He's a blogger looking for the next big hit. This kind of precludes him from taking a sophisticated, long-term view of any particular subject that he's writing about for pay. You've gotta look elsewhere, either in academia or by weighing the commercial evaluations against each other, to really learn what cloud computing is going to mean for the world.
Because it's called cloud computing for a reason.
Any "cheap computer" that's powerful enough to run a web browser that comes close to passing Acid2 is powerful enough to run a local word processor. And Internet access for laptops in vehicles is still not cheap.
What is the feasability of starting a local wi-fi co-ops scheme where someone pays for a highspeed broadband connection that's connected to a wi-fi router with open access In otherwords, a number of users with a wi-fi card and compatible software can connect and enjoy relatively fast speed access. Then like clockwork each month, everyone in the area gets a notice (doorhanger or network instant message) asking them to donate $10.00 each month (via a Paypal account or money order to a P.O. box) to support the connection and maintain the hardware. A simple agreement protects paying supporters from any reprisal from the user hosting the wi-fi connection. This would work great in apartment complexes or townhouses where people live in close proximity. The host user could set max clients and block people not paying. Obviously if the ISP got wind of subleting they would retaliate, but if people are getting anonymous unlimited wi-fi broadband for $10 a month, what's not to like. Someone please punch holes in this notion..
Does your bank grab control of the contents of safety deposit boxes and then profit from that control?
The answer to that question is, more or less, yes. Look up "retail deposit sweeping" - they don't grab the safety deposit boxes, but they do grab everything else.
In retail deposit sweeping, banks reclassify checkable deposits as savings deposits so as to reduce statutory reserve requirements. And of course, then they can re-loan it (and good luck - in the event of a banking run you'll realize that yes, they grabbed your non-savings account).
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Those are business wonk answers.
Any business that thinks that they're going to take Office and put it online and make $20/month rather than $150/4 years, doesn't realize that the cloud lets someone build it and give it away. Their customers don't have to use only Macs or Windows machines to use their app. And that's the appeal. Most of us don't live in homogenous environments anymore. We have windows machines, and apples, and ubuntu, and iphones, and blackberrys, and wiis and playstations and we want our apps to work on all of them. We want new features every week or month, not every two years.
From a tech perspective it allows us to build applications and easily expand the servers powering the apps as we add users. And we can do that for almost no money and without having an IT staff at a datacenter racking and provisioning. Which means more resources dedicated to innovating. It means offering applications for very little to no money and still being able to make a profit because the overhead is so low.
That's cloud computing.
You may 'own' your cellphone, if you pay for it outright, but you don't own the SIM card, your provider does.
That means, you contacts, numbers, notes, are not yours, they are the property of your provider.
This is why it is made intentionally 'hard' to transfer data from one SIM card to another.
Dropped calls? advertising?...you get to PAY for these 'valuable services'.
Want to roam, you get to pay for that too!
Want a custom ringtone? Sorry, you don't own your SIM card, so your provider gets to bill you for that privelege.
Own an XBox? PS3?, play an MMO? You get to pay every month, and your provider gets access to all your personal details.
Get used to the rental model, it will come to more and more devices. Ownership is not for you, it's for large corporations. In the near future, you will be renting everything from your home, to the clothes on your back.
Ownership means control and choice, corporations hate that.
Come on, this is somehow news because Doctorow says it? You have not noticed that when you get an email in google that all of a sudden the ads that are around the edges have something to do with what is in the email you are reading? If you put it in the cloud, those who own the cloud, own you and your data, NOT new news. And because of that, it will never happen in my world, I will pay someone to host my server, but I am not letting someone host my DATA.
isn't this guy a sci-fi author? When did he become a computer consultant? Does his writing of sci-fi give him the insight of large-scale computing operations?
Let's try to put real news on /. from now on.. please.
I have 2 computers at work and 3 at home. I have a Blackberry. Plus I travel and sometimes do not bring any of these with me.
I can pick my e-mail from any of these computers, with perfect sync between all of them, because I use Gmail. Which is a cloud service.
I remember the days of having a dedicated e-mail application on my home computer that reached out to my ISP's mail server to download my e-mail. But, I don't remember it well because I switched to Hotmail just about as fast as I could when it came out. It's incredibly inconvenient to have my communications tied to one particular device sitting on a desk somewhere.
People like cloud services for the same reason most people like cell phones better than landlines: convenience and portability.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Wrong. The index has to be updated on the client, but it can be stored remotely.
If the index is stored remotely in cipher, it cannot be used unless it is copied to all clients every time a client updates it. If it is stored remotely in the clear, the search provider can do analysis on the queries.
There's nothing wrong with the idea, but in practice it's used to deny me my fair use and first sale rights as a consumer of media.
And encryption of stored data can be used to deny the application hosting provider its "fair" use rights over the first "sale" of statistics aggregated from your data.
If a cloud computing service provider wants to charge you more to access your data, you must comply. Cloud computing has its advantages, BUT.. if at some point in the future all you can do is purchase thin clients rather than full home PC's, you're screwed.
This seems much like the iPass in Illinois. iPass started out as a convenience. Then it became the standard and they jacked up the price of regular tolls to about twice what you would pay normally. Now I guarantee you that at some point someone will say 'hey hardly anyone uses those tolls.. lets just force everyone onto iPass' lets get rid of the regular tolls...
Next thing you know they can monitor anyone's speed by judging distance/time between tollpasses.
So by tempting you with convenience, the making the old option a burden, then making the new option mandatory.. the venus flytrap closes on you and you're stuck looking at the world from behind those little bars.
You can always rely on Cory to point out the obvious.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Unless the networks "pipe" becomes fat "enough" at fairly affordable price (not like Comcast's 58 bucks a months for 10 mbps), the dat security concerns are addressed, and the user/data privacy is guaranteed the cloud computing model would not be a success.
Silly me.
I'm already paying for this 'cloud computing' business plan without realizing it!
It's called my combination cell phone/PDA. I pay $55/month to be able to use it.
The phone has nowhere near enough power to run the local apps I want,
but the apps I write for the phone can't seamlessly interact with the apps I write for the computer.
That's because I have to get approval to distribute the application I write, and put it on
If I write an app that the cell phone carrier doesn't like, or company that made the phone things could would impact its future revenue, there is a kill switch that allows them to remove the application.
I find it ironic that Doctorow was totally OK with everyone's intellectual property being freely copied all over the net, but suddenly balks at the idea of sharing software and disk space.
Gee, this socialism doesn't taste like its supposed to.
...as World of Warcraft is to games. One more way to charge a monthly fee.
Doctorow is a fiction author. He doesn't have any qualifications to talk about computing any more than Rachael Ray is qualified to talk about electrical engineering.
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
Remote hosted systems via the Internet existed long before cloud computing. The first term I remember is ASP (Application Service Provider). What Doctorow means is SaaS (Software as a Service), which is the latest term for ASP.
As the other poster asked, why was the parent post modded down? Even if you disagree, it's hardly deserving of -1. It's not spam or 'first post'
is also about control. The tout will ask you what your annual holiday spend is, total it all up for your expected lifespan, and sell you a great discount on your holiday bucks. Some of them are *genuinely* a good deal, although few and far between (someone's got to pay for the tout in the first place - he's not doing it for the joy of making you happier). .... well, that goes just as well as any "explaining to the wife" ever works.
What you're generally forgoing, of course, is the option to use that predetermined holiday spend in a location or manner that is NOT consistent with their list of partner holiday locations, i.e control over your spend.
Like the P notes, there are plenty of "ZERO COST" mobile phone plans out there now - just permanent rental.
My wife never buys a new phone - she just goes to her provider every 2 years for her "free upgrade" on her hardware.
Explaining to her that she's paying for it anyway, without a genuine range of options in her hardware devices
She "feels" she's getting a good deal, and logic and numbers are irrelevant.
I would complain, but she appears (so far) to "feel" that she's got a good deal with me, so it's best not to dance with the devil of logic too often...