Slashdot Mirror
Has the WebOS Finally Arrived?
SphereOfInfluence writes "Dion Hinchcliffe over on ZDNet declared in a new post that the Web OS has finally arrived and that businesses and IT departments must adjust to the fact that everything's starting to move to the cloud. He cites John Hagel's so-called big business shifts of the 21st century and claims cloud computing, crowdsourcing, open APIs, Software-as-a-Service are the future of the workplace. He goes on to present a compelling visual model of the Web OS circa 2009 and examples to back up some of the statements."
Weren't we supposed to be all using thin clients right now in our flying cars, sucking the fat electrons straight from the coax at gigabit speeds by now? Now comes the latest proclaimation: We're going Carebears mode. Everyone into the clouds! Tenderheart's not going to be happy about this. I sense a big carebear stare coming for the Cloud-Mongers.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Some like 80% of posts here are gossipy bullshit nowadays. How am I supposed to get distracted enough so that I can get back to work?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
There is a phrase about IT
"We don't understand the hardware, we don't understand the software... but we can SEE the flashing lights"
This has led to a whole load of crap IT dedicated to neither hard-core hardware or to hard-core software, its the land of the PHB and its the land of the powerpoint. What surprises me about clouds however is that its often the hard-core folks who are scared of the cloud, they bitch about security and latency but really its because they fear it will make them less important.
It doesn't.
What clouds do is hugely commoditise infrastructure and (in the case of SaaS) those massive package implementations that customise to death a package that would have worked much better without all that consultancy "help".
The people who should fear clouds are the ones who lived off customising packages that didn't need it and who revel in a world of powerpoints and meetings because what SaaS and clouds do is shift the buying of crap boring IT into the hands of the business and then leave the business with the real questions of how to deliver the stuff that actually matters... the hard-core software and genuinely high performing infrastructure.
So don't think of clouds and SaaS as a threat... think of them as kicking the PHB and his expensive package customising consultants in the nuts.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
what ever happened to articles about tech that actually existed instead of what might happen in the next 3-4 years?
Someone needs to get their head out there ass before putting it in the clouds.
The Navy Motto "IF it ain't broke Fix It" "A day is wasted if you don't learn something new"
I think I'm a frustrated crook or security consultant.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
somebody has been smoking too much weed.
Assimilating all of that Web 3.0 content led me to strategically develop a fully horizontal organizational orientation. I immediately shifted paradigms and commenced "cloud computing" for about 15 minutes, dynamically visualizing an innovative brave new world.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I feel a rapid fluctuation in my supply chain.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Beware the perils of outsourcing.
If you are using a 3rd party to host corporate data, make sure:
* it meets all legal and regulatory requirements you must meet, guarenteed
* it has performance and uptime you need, guaranteed
* it is responsible for break-ins that are beyond your reasonable control, even if they are beyond its reasonable control. If you can't get a guarantee, pick another vendor or buy an insurance policy to cover you from lawsuits if customer data is compromised
* you can keep backup copies of corporate data in a meaningful format, in case the vendor goes belly up. "In a meaningful format" typically means a published format, but it could be a proprietary format which is shared by many vendors. Open format is many times better than proprietary.
Depending on your needs and size, it may literally be cheaper to pay an outside vendor to "clone" their infrastructure at your shop and train your IT dept. how to use it, so you can keep everything under your control. If, for example, regulatory rules prevent you from shipping your data to Google, you could hire them to build a mini Google server farm inside your firewall and have it index your data and offer "yourbrandhere-Google-powered" web-based "office" applications.
Another option is to use in-house or, if you prefer, outsourced virtual servers which you control access to.
Finally, there's the default option of "keep doing it they way you are doing it now." That option should never be off the table until a better option presents itself.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I have been working for over 20 years with various people who proclaim the dawn of the Era Of The Diskless Workstation is upon us. Cloud computing seems to be another instance of this class. I predict it's going to NOT be the "next big thing". The next big bubble of bullshit is more like it.
Just don't call it a Web OS because it's not an OS, it's just a desktop or window manager. Xenon is a fine (in-development) example of this which explains the concepts.
The cloud does not interact with the computer, it needs a layer such as the browser, networking stack, and kernel. So, "web desktop" would seem to be correct.
That article was an example of techno-buzzword mental masturbation.
I am sick and tired of pie in the sky thinkers who think they know more than their actual abilities clearly indicate.
No technology is an "end all be all", and that includes web technologies as well. Each have its own unique strengths and weaknesses. Also, any time I see words like "crowdsourcing", I want to vomit simply because they continue to try to minimize the process of solving ideas and building real products. Personally I think that in the next 50 years, the time right now will be remembered as when business managers were able to walk the earth freely assuming that they know everything. In time, however, their companies failed because they contribute very little to the overall process of creating a business or product. MS learned this very painful lesson first hand with Vista (aka No amount of business marketing/technique solved poor development), and hopefully they have corrected their issues with Windows 7.
In short.... Real people have to build these "Real" technologies, and we understand that each technology is not perfect. Meaning, the "Web OS" will never a reality unless people are willing to compromise on functionality simply because fat clients will almost always trump any web app simply due to sheer amount of resources and options available to it.
"Diskless workstation" typically is either a "lots-o-ram/no disk/bootstraps over LAN" system or a "glass tty" or "smart glass tty" system. The difference being on a smart system significant local computation related to the application at hand occurs beyond just i/o.
The interface to the cloud, the web browser, is a "smart glass tty" system. However, it typically lives side-by-side with other things like local applications, local or at least non-cloud printers and other i/o devices, and other "smart glass ttys" i.e. web browsers and "less smart" ttys such as Windows Remote Terminal Services Client, ssh, telnet, etc.
One reasonable prediction is that businesses will continue to commoditize their employee's workstations, and give them access to resources either on their local LAN or in an external cloud based on their job function. The idea is if their computer hardware or base operating system breaks, you can just drop-replace it with a spare and have them back up and running very quickly. For many companies, this day is already here for most of their employees.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"Dion Hinchcliffe over on ZDNet declared".
This pisses me off to no end. I suppose it works because saying that you declare something as nebulous as WebOs arriving sounds more important than "My opinion is such that...".
The worst of the worst is Arrington, as well as TechCrunch in general. If I recall correctly, Arrington declared both voicemail and email to be dead, Dead, DEAD!!! Really asshole? I use both every single day in a very efficient manner. In the future please just say "I don't like these things" instead of declaring them to be dead. Maybe I'll go write a blog post with the title "I declare Mike Arrington to be dead".
Just recently TechCrunch did the same for RSS, which is funny because RSS is how I arrived at this article, as well as the one for TechCrunch. I assumed they meant they didn't want me as a subscriber to their RSS feed, so I rectified the situation. Can't believe I ever read that shithole site.
In the future if an article declares something to be so, I'll declare that it is a shitty article.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
Yeah, 99% of all malware simply won't run on Linux. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Forgot to mention the recent horseshit about Arrington declaring the handshake dead, and that we need a new alternative to prevent the spread of germs.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
And let's not forget that all your data is now in the hands of somebody else, who is almost certainly subject to laws in their country that give the local government unfettered access to all your company jewels.
There, fixed that for you.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Also, no level of people talking about "the support costs" is going to change the fact that a good secured OS (Headless Linux boxes especially) require nearly no level of support.
This may be true for hardware support, but it ignores the costs of software maintenance. Even good secured OSes need patching. Yes, you can have these on semi-automatic, or if you are daring, automatic, but someone has to be there to pick up the pieces if things go south.
If the guy picking up pieces is on your payroll and on salary, then yes, your company may be able to declare it comes "at no cost" but that's just playing games with numbers. Every hour he's picking up after a problem is one hour he's not doing something else.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
but google, an advertising company, advertising its own product (an advertising platform) for free, isn't, well, harming somehow the competitors who have to pay google in order to advertise their products? In the front page? Where is the DOJ?
Can we now stop the web economy bullshit generator and go back to news for actual nerds instead of pointy-haired "IT deciders"?
(Apropos, I did start a WebOS (warning: never finished alpha version) back in 2003/2004, so if there ever would have been a time for it, we (or at least me) would have long passed it. ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
There are many free Web OS (as I understand them) out there. For example, EyeOS at http://eyeos.org/en or this other: http://www.oos.cc/login.html YouOS https://www.youos.com/ (now closed :( ) and one from the MIT whose URL I can't recall now...
These project are 2 or more years old. If the new Web OS is just this old concept, I think like they're just shouting buzzword (again).
the wildly successful Network Computer.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Yeah, but he's got a really pretty diagram. The fact that the diagram is largely meaningless is beside the point.
You gotta have a good diagram if you're going to go around proclaiming things.
...that a WebOS is yet another "great" example of the inner platform anti-pattern.
(I guess that is why I stopped working on it, as soon as I left the company, and why I then started to code in Haskell. :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
As I look at that beautiful PNG, I think it's the time to update our company bullshit bingo cards.
There's this newspaper reporter from 1996 on the line. He wants his sensationalist headline back.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Larry Ellison, September 2008: "The interesting thing about cloud computing: it is either going to be or already is the most computing architecture in the world, because we redefine cloud computing to include everything that we currently do. It has already achieved dominance in the industry. I can't think of anything that isn't cloud - with all these announcements."
It won't happen just because the big players in the industry want to move to selling services.
Resistance is futile, you will be commoditized.
"Blah blah blah." - [citation needed]
... the Internet is not available at high enough speeds for cloud computing to reflect anything close to using software on my home computer.
That doesn't mean I can't wait for it if its something that we're all moving to anyway; I'm just trying to bring up the obvious fact that there is lag in web apps and for some of us it might be a bit harder or longer process than others.
I'm ready to pay the $6/household that the major ISPs said it would cost to double bandwidth. I'm ready to pay it several times over. Is anybody listening?
If that doesn't work try running it through the main deflector array.
Crap. What did the new CSS do with the "Post anonymously" option??
Especially when they don't even get the terminology correct. Sorry but OS stands for operating system and this describes "Web OS" is not an operating system. Crap like this makes me wonder what other basic things about computers and IT these type of people don't understand.
First the industry needs to perfect internal swappability and server plug-and-play before they try to tackle external. Companies are not going to immediately trust external hosting until it's demonstrated that such technologies work internally. Things like version and config compatibility management and security still have a lot of work to be done.
Table-ized A.I.
Hmm, mainframe computers and dumb terminals... Something is wrong with that idea. I just cannot put my finger on it though...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Do I need to repeat the rest of the explanation? We've been having this tug-of-war over software subscriptions for almost 15 years now. Call it "the cloud" or any of the other rebranding attempts from the past, but it's all had the same goal: making you pay more for the software you use.
What we should fear is no longer having any control at all over the software we use AND having to pay every month/day/hour/minute for the privilege of being able to use it.
BTW, did anyone who modded parent up happen to notice the URL and content of his shared homepage? He's hardly an impartial observer in this matter: he has a specific vested interest in promoting this "SaaS". SaaS very much a threat... to anyone not producing or selling it. The people promoting it aim to tip the economic balance even farther in their favor. Sure, supposedly we all have that goal in common, but some people are greedier than others. It's large corporations that will benefit from "SaaS", not the little guy.
Not just malware, but 99% of all software won't run on Linux. You have a nice selection of text editors though. Kudos.
since when has the sky been covered by a handfull of clouds?
"cloud computing" makes more sense when you see it like Nokia does: your phone is a cloud, your server is a cloud, your desktop is a cloud, etc., and they can all link to each other and allow you access them even when you're not around. Store all of your music on your server and stream them to the clients; store all of your documents on your cellphone and access them from your desktop if you'd like. etc.
Cloud computing also makes sense when it comes to thin clients in a server and stuff. Or making bigger datacenters near cleaner ressources, and stuff like VM hosting. But not this garbage Web2.0 shit. Since when is JavaScript considered "green"? You can barely run stuff like Wave on an Atom... Can't run facebook properly on my Pentium 2.
Cloud computing is great! My mother calls me to tell me that PBS told her so.
Hey now, my copy of Unreal Tournament 2k4 runs AWESOME on Ubuntu! If it were not for the fact that Stalker (SOC and CS...but could we hope for a Linux-release of Call of Pripyat?...not likely) won't run on Linux, I would never use a Windows variant again.
-Oz
I've heard this prediction so many times, it was silly the first time, it still is. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that part of my job involves placing computers in places where internet is not. Went searching for comments on this absurdity, where else would one find a reference but here at good ol' /. http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/30/2146250
Subject is quote from "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus" by Firesign Theatre. Apropo, no?
"businesses and IT departments must adjust to the fact that everything's starting to move to the cloud"
When a pundit* makes a claim that comes true, they collect on the only currency involved -- publicity -- by reminding you at every chance. When they're wrong, which is usually, they simply wait until so few remember that if anyone does bring it up, they can easily explain things away with a line of BS (what they call Believable Statements) that they've developed since realizing they were wrong.
* Pun' dit (n): from
(1) "pun", a statement with a double meaning; those agile enough with language to earn the name pundit can manipulate the double meaning to be polar opposites, such as "is" and "is not". (A recent inquiry into the activities of one such person resulted in their tacit admission in belonging to this class of person, when they asked of the investigators, "Define 'is'.") Through the application of this inclusive exclusion, such a person can claim to have meant what they meant when they said it, and if necessary to have meant the opposite. A truly superior practitioner can not only apply this, but also make it appear as though it were the listener's fault for the confusion.
and from:
(2) dit, from Morse Code "dit" and "dah", known as "dot" and "dash" to non-Morse speakers. This is the equivalent to a single trinary "trit" of information in that it can take either active state (dit or dah), or not be there at all (a wait state). Applied to Boolean, it is the basis of the IF...THEN...MAYBE statement, the 'fuzzy logic' extension of IF...THEN...ELSE. By itself (ie. with no associated data or wait state) the single trit "dit" means nothing at all.
Thus, "pundit" is one who can take a piece of information, useless by itself, and by association with another statement, imply a meaning to it with which they may then later prove that they meant X or that they meant NOT X. For instance, a person at a tech-oriented new organization can make a statement like "everything's moving to the cloud", and when everything doesn't, claim that by "everything" they meant also "everything else", and by "is" they meant "isn't", yielding "everything is moving to the cloud, except everything that isn't moving to the cloud." If it seems that the phrase "some things" would be more appropriate, you are not a pundit. They use "everything" because it can be used as "everything is", "everything isn't" or "everything is except everything that isn't", and changed according to the need of the pundit to appear to be right at the cost of looking like an idiot, or even worse, a politician.
See also "pendantic"; similar to "pedantic" (holding forth at length with the appearance, even if not in actual fact, of being an authority), but taken from "pendulous" for 'swinging back and forth freely, usually something that is very low hanging', and "antic" a comical behavior.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I don't know about anyone else, but it chaps my butt when someone tells me I have to adjust to tech trend of the moment. I'll adjust when I'm good and ready. And I'll be ready when it makes business sense. Like service architecture, before that it was web services, go back far enough the hot buzz was client-server. I don't use what's trendy, I use what works.
Like moving email to "the cloud"...I hate that term. We dumped Exchange in favor of corporate Gmail and not only saved a fortune but it's a lot less stress to manage. We switched because it made good business sense, not because it was trendy. And no one really had to adjust because most of our staff was already using GMail at home.
We don't need a web OS, we use Ubuntu on a lot of desktops and Linux servers. A web OS might be an advantage...some day. But I can't really see what that advantage is now. So, no need to "adjust" now, is there?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I'm sorry that some asshole with their head up their ass modded you flamebait. This was the single most insightful post in this thread.
Posting as AC for obvious reasons.
Unless you run a Mac. Then Steve Jobs has unfettered access to your family jewels.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/10310/saturday-night-live-bad-idea-jeans
I suspect it's because you modded me flamebait and don't want the vote taken away by commenting.
Ok, all kidding aside, I've noticed every single post I make with any type of foul language is tagged as flamebait within minutes of posting, even though they all eventually get modded back up. Other people have responded to my posts with warnings about some kind of self-appointed "vulgarity police" roaming around here modding people down. I think most people here are adult enough to handle this sort of thing without having someone else doing the censoring.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
Oh it's even better: If any piece of the cloud is in one country, that country will try to apply its laws to the entire cloud. If a piece of the cloud isn't in that country, they'll apply their intelligence agencies instead.
Declarations like Dion's or Arrington's make me want to class the writers in the same set as so-called Futurists, and as some very clever Slashdotter put it last year, Futurist = 1 part Fail, 1 part Sci-Fi writer.
Sadly, success in business seems to be 9 parts marketing, 1 part actual intelligence or talent at best.
A real cloud doesn't know the borders of a country.
I fear the cloud, because:
* It will 'commoditise' massive package implementations like Sharepoint, which I was hoping would just die and rot in hell.
* It makes my job more about maintentance and less about implementing (aka less fun)
By the way, (some) SaaS is a trap. Because it's cheaper, companies are more likely to give those shitty 'Enterprise' (*) applications a spin. Later on, they will find they need some customizations, and in come the consultants.
(*) I used to like the word "Enterprise" in my trekkie days, but 'they' stole it and perverted it, and now whenever I hear that word it makes me want to throw up...
1) Encrypt your data. This works well for outsourced data-backup. It can work with outsourced data-backup and application-binary-hosting scenarios. For example, if I contract with you to host a word-processing environment and to host my files, you may have a Java applet word-processing application that runs locally on my employee's computers. It goes to the cloud to get the encrypted file and accesses local, on-my-network, or in-the-user's-head data for the encryption key. The cleartext data and passwords are never stored on your system. This is enforced by contract and by code audited by a third party that will guarantee the code does not play games.
2) Contracts that spell out exactly what will happen if there is a change in management and that specifically prohibit anyone from accessing my data except as needed to provide it to me.
If this is starting to sound complicated, nobody* said responsible data management was easy.
*People trying to sell you "data management made easy" products don't count
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And "The Cloud" must adjust to the fact that businesses and IT departments require reliability, not several-hour down-time, unavailability, and security issues which only affect a "subset of users."
The people who should fear clouds are the people who want their data in their own hands, and don't trust third parties to handle it for then. It's that easy, and it's what will make SaaS fail.
I see sooo much bitching and whining here about "OMG Waat about the intarnetz goind down!" and "third party data security". I hear it all the way to the bank. Which, BTW, is an outsourced third party who manages information for me. (The bank, that is)
Woops!
See, money is information. It's abstract information about amassed wealth potential. It's not even pieces of paper, any more. (Perhaps 1% of my financial transactions by amount are in cash.) And the bank does a pretty damned good job of keeping track of this information for me, and even though thousands of bank employees have access to this privileged information, the real risk of harm from banking is pretty slim. Banks are, in fact, proof that SaaS is a very viable business model - they've been managing money as a service for hundreds of years....
Cloud computing is no different. You are trusting a third party to track information for you. It's really no more or less to it than that. Just as you should take some care about where you put your money, you should take some care about where you put your business information. (Which is, in a sense, another form of money)
"What about when the webs goes downzes!?" - Yea, that'd be tough. Since many businesses primarily transact on the Internet anyway, if the 'net is down, the company is effectively closed, anyway. And even a crappy $20/month home DSL line generally manages 99% or better uptime.
"Trust your information to a third party"... Take a look at the SLA for your contract. Wait, you don't have one? Well, you are getting what you are asking for. Any good contract with an out-sourced third party should include clauses for discretion. Talk to a lawyer if it matters. At my cloud-computing company, we offer strong clauses in our default contracts for the benefit of our customers. We take information security and privacy very seriously. All staff with access to privileged information are under a strongly worded NDA.
"Patriot Act" - do you think that the information being at a third party makes a damned bit of difference? If the feds want your data, they'll get it. The only real question is whether or not you spend time in the clink while they are doing it. My advice? 1) Don't do bad things, and 2) vote down the patriot act. I've several times written my congresscritters in opposition.
"Evil Plus Bad" - Yes, there are cases where outsourced vendors failed to perform backups. Go back to your SLA/Contract (you do have one, right?) and take a look at the terms. Periodically check to see that backups are being done - demand proof, and raise hell if you find any lack. It's your right, it's your money, and it's your contract.
Hook up with a company you can really trust.
People here are convinced that the worst is going to happen. Well, you know what? We've closed contracts after terrible things happened *in house*. Servers die with corrupt backup tapes, or backups of directory short-cuts. Horrid performance, where simple queries take minutes to perform. In one case, the client's server room was stolen. No, I'm not kidding. Servers,routers, switches, all gone. Including the backup tapes!
In our case, the equipment sits in a multi-million dollar, high-class, maximum security data center. We have a redundant site for Disaster Recovery, with fresh data every 24 hours, and a pre-release process that incidentally verifies out backups, every time we issue an update. And a third location just for long-term data backups and archiving. All with excellent security, under lock and key, with strong encryption in use.
I run a cloud-computing service, and I say with confidence: the Web "O/S" is here, and its name is Firefox/IE/Safari/WebKit/Opera.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The manly russian kiss will empower weak american immune systems much better than the handshake, da, da.
That article has more buzz words then an apoidea dictionary.
If taxation is legalized theft, then Capitalism is a prolonged rape followed by a slow death.
Is a distant dream for most of users or will be the boiler plate as SOA was proclaimed to be? May be for 95% users on earth, the cloud computing and yours OS's will be just a dream, or anyone here can do on download at superior speeds than your HD ? I don't think so. For my point of view and may be there are more people that should share it with me, Cloud Computing is one of the newest IBM marketing in action as was SOA, that in truth are the same and old Mainframe did and do, to sale new machines, solutions and shake the IT market making a lot of $$$. Of course that make $$$ is the purpose of everyone in IT industry, but they are try to sale that the idea is quite easy and cheap to put it to work and that is suitable to anyone, that is not true. Today we have a lot of earlier marketing, about things that basically doesn't exist yet or is just one idea that no one might knows if it in fact it will work one day. It's not good for the IT market at all, because today is one area that many company directors see as one deep hole for the $$$ that never ends and create new solutions without fix the previous ones properly. Today the market is flooded with MS marketing solutions, that means shoot to any where and them, draw the target around it, and with it you will always have one bulls eye, or in other words they are creating solutions for things that we actually don't need and creating after a lot of uses for that solutions and selling it as the big deal. Today we are living the marketing age on IT, and I really hope that the next one should be in fact one that provide utile and coherent content that will provide to us the same feedback that you have when you buy one chocolate bar and is happy because that one have the chocolate taste, texture and smell that you want.
Let me be the first to say FUCK the "vulgarity police" and fuck modders who have any kind of fucking agenda.
Would Palm give up on that name?
The internet and network connects are not the holy grail to computer. Who ever is promoting "cloud" as the future of communication is a moron. The internet has its uses but it isn't the answer to everything remotely OS related.
Banks are, in fact, proof that SaaS is a very viable business model - they've been managing money as a service for hundreds of years....
Have you been following the news lately?
"What about when the webs goes downzes!?" - Yea, that'd be tough. Since many businesses primarily transact on the Internet anyway, if the 'net is down, the company is effectively closed, anyway. And even a crappy $20/month home DSL line generally manages 99% or better uptime.
Nice dodge. Connectivity is not required for ALL computer operations. The cloud push is designed to get people USED to the idea, even if it means degraded performance for now, so that they become used/dependent on it for ALL their needs. It's pure marketing/control freak bullshit.
At my cloud-computing company, we offer strong clauses in our default contracts for the benefit of our customers. We take information security and privacy very seriously. All staff with access to privileged information are under a strongly worded NDA.
Bwhahaha! Only a lawyer would think that legalese has the ability to usurp physical and mathematical laws. The reality is that your employees can still, at any time, violate such pieces of paper and cause damage. Then there's the government, which current trends suggest will have an ever increasing scope of power and precedent to do whatever it wants. For example, look how well the constitution is protecting us from PATRIOT powered liberties violations...oh right, it isn't.
The only real question is whether or not you spend time in the clink while they are doing it. My advice? 1) Don't do bad things, and 2) vote down the patriot act. I've several times written my congresscritters in opposition.
so basically you're saying "sorry you've already lost your rights, so you might as well trust your data to me anyway with the expectation that when the authorities come knocking, I'll happily let them mine any and all data without any resistance." sorry, I'd rather retain the only copies of my data so to limit this kind of patent abuse. I'd love it if you'd define 'bad things' for me. What's ok today, isn't tomorrow, and that's the major thrust of the argument against 'cloud computing.' As we both know, writing congress without a check in the envelope will do exactly nothing.
"Evil Plus Bad" - Yes, there are cases where outsourced vendors failed to perform backups. Go back to your SLA/Contract (you do have one, right?) and take a look at the terms. Periodically check to see that backups are being done - demand proof, and raise hell if you find any lack. It's your right, it's your money, and it's your contract.
Once again I have to ask. How will this piece of paper with a written promise on it get my data back when/if you fuck up? Oh right, it won't do shit.
Hook up with a company you can really trust.
Trust? A business? hahahah! Now, that's a good one. next you'll ask me to trust the authorities, oh wait, you already implied that. All I need to do is not do 'bad things.' Quit drinking your own kool-aid.
People here are convinced that the worst is going to happen. Well, you know what? We've closed contracts after terrible things happened *in house*. Servers die with corrupt backup tapes, or backups of directory short-cuts. Horrid performance, where simple queries take minutes to perform. In one case, the client's server room was stolen. No, I'm not kidding. Servers,routers, switches, all gone. Including the backup tapes!
It's all about probabilities, right? Moving the data from dozens of corporations to one centralized e-location just makes that location more tempting to would-be attackers. Also, the single point of failure moves from the old server rooms of these companies to the ever-so-pliant legal contracts between them and you. Net out, the only ones who gain something are tho
Per my subject-line above, see Dion Hinchcliffe's BIO: He's DEFINITELY "Pro-Web 2.0" (& that says it ALL for me (probably the rest of you as well))
In short - He's simply using his position here @ ZDNet to further his OWN interests (typical of bloggers & journallists), & thus, his TRUE "Hidden Agenda", in his now trying to promote the b.s. he works on himself, so he can get more contracts!
That IS all this blog REALLY is, really about... & that fools NOBODY, period.
APK
P.S.=> Fix the javascript DOM? Your WEB 2.0 MIGHT ACTUALLY GET SOMEPLACE, because until you do? Javascript, a linchpin of Web 2.0, is nothing more than the "harbinger of doom" via scripts that are malicious & even found in adbanners the past few years! Where is EMCA script anyhow?? apk
Which makes it even more dangerous.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
handshake dead, and that we need a new alternative to prevent the spread of germs.
full ACK
I agree, all us IT guys have to adjust to a buggy, slow, intermittently unavailable, insecure set of services where our clients and staff get to upload their documents to mysterious servers with the vague promise that somehow this is oh so much better.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I am not American either, but wake up and face the reality...
Microsoft would love to rent Windows and Office to you. Remember Microsoft's original "DOT-NET" campaign a few years ago? Everybody would run a thick dumb client (don't ask me to explain), but all the apps would be on MS servers. And if your cheque bounced or your credit card was maxed out, you lost your access (and Word and Excel; sorry I couldn't resist). Over the years MS would make a lot more money from renting than from a one-shot sale.
Even before switched to linux, I was MS' marketing nightmare. By the time I stopped multi-booting linux/Windows, 98SE had been "upgraded" to Windows ME and Windows XP. MS did not get a penny from me for upgrades. I have old Win98SE and Office97 CDs from back in the days when I was still on Windows. If I really needed to, I could get an old PIII, or virtualize one on linux, and load them up. For that matter, I've been able to load up real Win3.1 (gee, I'm a packrat) on DOSBOX under linux, to play Chessmaster 3000. I never could get it to run under WINE.
The point is that you would end up paying a lot more over the years. And MS would make higher profits. Another item that hasn't been considered is the internet bandwidth usage. By the time you finish doing your basic stuff, you've blown your monthly quota, and there's nothing left for P2P. I'm sure the MPAA/RIAA would love that, too. Not to mention the fact that they could ask MS to send monthly reports on who's downloading what. This is a marketer's wet dream, and a consumer's nightmare.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
i doubt it will be useful for us at all for the next 20-50 years. im gettin real angry if i take in mind that cpus lilke the i7 and others are so fuc***ing fast - but state-of-the-art memory like ddr3 or harddrives are soo slow that the cpu could need faster ram access aso... with this in mind one reads stupid things like things about web os... what silly marketing idea or silly we-harvest-all-information-from-da-people-idea could that come from?
its just complete nonsense - people who invest their time and energy in such projects could better use this energy and time for useful projects.
sorry for my bad english.
... and nothing came of it. Exhibit A
If this impresses you now, I suggest you delete all your stock bookmarks and go back to school.
And the fact that this guy is using the term WebOS which has been coined most recently by Palm* tells me he is either careless with his terms, doesn't care, or thinks he coined the phrase first**... all which put him in the LOSE column.
*It is official if they wikipedia it first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS
** Hyperoffice acquired WebOS.com back in 2000/2001
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperoffice
> Banks are, in fact, proof that SaaS is a very viable business model - they've been managing money as a service for hundreds of years....
Have you been following the news lately?
Yes. Funny that profits are UP...
Nice dodge. Connectivity is not required for ALL computer operations. The cloud push is designed to get people USED to the idea, even if it means degraded performance for now, so that they become used/dependent on it for ALL their needs. It's pure marketing/control freak bullshit.
It's not a dodge. DSL MODEMS do offer 99% or better uptime in most cases.
>At my cloud-computing company, we offer strong clauses in our default contracts for the benefit of our customers. We take information security
> and privacy very seriously. All staff with access to privileged information are under a strongly worded NDA.
Bwhahaha! Only a lawyer would think that legalese has the ability to usurp physical and mathematical laws. The reality is that your employees can still, at any time, violate such pieces of paper and cause damage. Then there's the government, which current trends suggest will have an ever increasing scope of power and precedent to do whatever it wants. For example, look how well the constitution is protecting us from PATRIOT powered liberties violations...oh right, it isn't.
And how is that any different than the NDA signed by an employee? Oh, right, it's not any different.
so basically you're saying "sorry you've already lost your rights, so you might as well trust your data to me anyway with the expectation that when the authorities come knocking, I'll happily let them mine any and all data without any resistance." sorry, I'd rather retain the only copies of my data so to limit this kind of patent abuse. I'd love it if you'd define 'bad things' for me. What's ok today, isn't tomorrow, and that's the major thrust of the argument against 'cloud computing.' As we both know, writing congress without a check in the envelope will do exactly nothing.
I've worked as a server administrator or technology administrator for over 10 years, serving many thousands of clients in a variety of environments. I've only once been legally requested to recover data, and that was in a civil suit. It's just not commonplace. (But don't let that interfere with your rhetoric.) It's to your detriment to ignore the realities of the present.
It's all about probabilities, right? Moving the data from dozens of corporations to one centralized e-location just makes that location more tempting to would-be attackers. Also, the single point of failure moves from the old server rooms of these companies to the ever-so-pliant legal contracts between them and you. Net out, the only ones who gain something are those who benefit from easy access to huge data hoards....of other people's data.
Most of our clients have their servers in a hot, dusty closet at the end of the hall, protected by a $20 cardboard door with a $10 door knob, usually found unlocked. Compare that to our ultra-high-security data center with three high-security, mob-rated security doors, magnetic locks, and 10" steel-reinforced concrete walls, and tell me there's a net decline in security?
And the "single point of failure"? Give me a bag. We have redundant power. Redundant network feeds. Redundant load balancers. Redundant servers, in a cluster. Redundant hosting facilities, just in case. Redundant administrators, and a rule that our Admins never travel all together. We average somewhere between 99.95% and 99.99% uptime, with a pessimistic view.
This is just a level of service that a single admin on a tight budget can't manage.
Eww.. Write back when one can do high-data volume, high cpu load media work via RDP.
Why? What our clients need is highly structured data storage and collation. Data that they frequently don't
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
IT departments must adjust to the fact
must ... fact
Just like everyone must adjust to expert systems, 4GL, object oriented programming, java, web2.0, facebook, twitter, potter and my grandmother's facial mole with pubic hairs.
now the cloud (cue futuristic sound clip).
for fuck sakes, don't these stupid "tech" pundits have anything better to do? oh, sorry, of course they don't.
Well, as long as we're being paranoid I should probably point out that you can't guarantee your stuff won't get routed through places that *are* subject to USAPATRIOT.
Yes. Funny that profits are UP...
*wooosh* right over your head.
It's not a dodge. DSL MODEMS do offer 99% or better uptime in most cases.
It was a complete dodge, as is this quoted statement.
And how is that any different than the NDA signed by an employee? Oh, right, it's not any different.
Yeah, that's why it always boils down to who has the funds for lawyers and not who has the best technical solution. That's why the employer almost always wins legal disputes with employees. Language, even legalese designed to be resistant, is HIGHLY pliant. Any legal document can be 'interpreted' to get the desired result. Again, you completely missed my point...or purposely dodged it.
I've worked as a server administrator or technology administrator for over 10 years, serving many thousands of clients in a variety of environments.
Using yourself as an authority is fallacious.
I've only once been legally requested to recover data, and that was in a civil suit. It's just not commonplace. (But don't let that interfere with your rhetoric.) It's to your detriment to ignore the realities of the present.
That's the past, not the future. I guess you haven't read the bills being passed lately by the houses (USA). most of them are blatant violations of the bill of rights. Why would I want my data stored at a data center that will belly up at the slightest (il)legal pressure from the authorities? This is not about 'doing bad things.' This is about surveillance.
Most of our clients have their servers in a hot, dusty closet at the end of the hall, protected by a $20 cardboard door with a $10 door knob, usually found unlocked. Compare that to our ultra-high-security data center with three high-security, mob-rated security doors, magnetic locks, and 10" steel-reinforced concrete walls, and tell me there's a net decline in security?
Doesn't matter one bit when some russian hacker gets in. your system is one giant nut to crack, but a mighty tempting one.. As society moves towards centralized data centers like yours, there will be fewer break ins, but those that do occur will end up with access to more data, potentially...and none of your vaunted security matters if the crooks that run the US government hand over a subpoena. again, go read some of those bills passed recently.
And the "single point of failure"?
yes, it's not technical. it's legal.
Why? What our clients need is highly structured data storage and collation. Data that they frequently don't even know they are required to keep. We help them figure out what information that they need to be legally compliant, and make it easy for them to collect/store that information. This is a need highly optimized for cloud computing. This is a valuable service, as evidenced by the fact that our growth rate has held consistent at 40-70% per year for 5 years running.
The HYPE for 'cloud computing' has nothing to do with such service. It's about getting EVERYONE on board for it.
This is such bullshit. Our business would never move our systems into a cloud environment - ever - not in a million years. The value of our business is in our data. Moving that into the control of some third party is en extremely risky proposition. That will never change no matter how much encryption is thrown at it...
This may be cases where using the cloud makes sense - especially for vanilla systems like email or off-the -shelf packages like Sugar CRM, but there will never be a case for us to move our core systems into a cloud.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
"Cloud computing" is the next step in the commoditization of hosting. The economic benefits of adopting a virtualized, on-demand IT architecture are profound, and the technical people aren't going to have a lot to say about it when the VP of Finance tells the CEO that they can cut IT costs in half by outsourcing.
Better to get on board and live with what's coming. I've been very impressed with Amazon's Web Services offerings. Their latest idea is a virtual private cloud: cloud machine images hooked into your datacenter via VPN.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I just don't think the cloud will take off as much as they think. Sure, there are a lot of people drooling over the prospect of everyone moving to the cloud. They see dollar signs. However I just do not see it. There are some advantages, like easy collaboration, but there are too many downsides as well. First and foremost, for business, is the security nightmare. Trusting all of your security to the cloud? Umm, no. The second is bandwidth. The ISPs in the US guard bandwidth heavily, and unless they release that bandwidth, the cloud will not happen. People will become frustrated with the slowness and lag of their apps as more and more people hit the cloud, and will go back to their fast local operating systems and apps. Sorry cloud, but your future is a bit more limited than you think
Open Source: Eroding the Digital Divide
And even a crappy $20/month home DSL line generally manages 99% or better uptime.
People who carry a laptop away from the office to a work site can't rely on home DSL. Instead, they have to rely on 3G services that still cost $60 per month for 5 GB per month.
For the most part there just aren't any purely technical objections to the cloud(barring of course operating a business in a country which doesn't have any cloud data centers).
I can think of two more: 1. lack of Internet access at the work site, and 2. bandwidth or latency requirements that exceed those of available Internet access. Once the cloud is robust enough to (extreme example) let one edit video over the Internet while flying over the Pacific, desktop apps aren't going to disappear soon.
I have had people with literally zero IT knowledge tell me that they want to do everything by themselves, and then ask me how to do it. If you were a consultant, what would your response to this be?
If I didn't want to get into the business of training their IT staff, I'd refer such a customer to a firm that specializes in training.
Software subscriptions, if we acquiesce to them, are akin to extortion, or the same tactics that drug pushers use.
Yet European governments already subsidize the drug pushers, and the current administration in the United States is looking to do the same.
As you pointed out, contracts with little, unarmed guys can be worthless - they've got little to lose if they don't perform.
Contracts with huge guys can be dangerous because their lawyers can eat you for lunch.
Contracts work well if you are a big guy and the other guy is medium-sized.
They also work well if there is personal liability involved and the person either values his honor or cannot afford to face personal bankruptcy.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The person who is running the project doesn't care about the quality of the solution, their only concern is to deliver to scope,
There's your problem right there. If quality is not part of scope, then scope is broken.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I've made final purchase decisions based on the number of flashing lights.
Mind you, it was a toss up at that point, but the cool lights have been the tipping point a couple of times.
I can't get away with flashy gamer cases with neon tubes at work, but I can use switches with maximum bling effect.
Note: Netgear consumer AP's with the disco lights are an exception - I won't allow them on site ever again. Too many people giggled at those.