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Is Cloud Computing the Hotel California of Tech?
Prolific blogger and open source enthusiast Matt Asay ponders whether cloud computing may be the Hotel California of tech. It seems that data repositories in the form of Googles and Facebooks are very easy to dump data into, but can be quite difficult to move data between. "I say this because even for companies, like Google, that articulate open-data policies, the cloud is still largely a one-way road into Web services, with closed data networks making it difficult to impossible to move data into competing services. Ever tried getting your Facebook data into, say, MySpace? Good luck with that. Social networks aren't very social with one other, as recently noted on the Atonomo.us mailing list. For the freedom-inclined among us, this is cause for concern. For the capitalists, it's just like Software 1.0 all over again, with fat profits waiting to be had. The great irony, of course, is that it's all built with open source."
Don't use them.
There's nothing like keeping your own data on your own system..
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
I can't transfer my yahoo to my twitter, this cloud computing has gone wild.
I tend to save things in LCD format, txt or RTF for Documents, tab delimited for tables, JPG or GIF for images (or PNG), MP3 for music etc.
The point being, if you save data in a format that is limited (.doc, .xls, .raw, etc) you're going to have difficulty moving it around.
And stuff that has to be saved in a proprietary format gets a simpler version, that may be missing things (formulas, charts), so that I can move them to a new system should the need arise. I used to use Dataviz to convert stuff, but found it was just easier to re-create the things I need rather than trying to clean up the splash of translation.
It is also makes it easier to learn a "new" setup if you have to use it to set the things up you need, rather than letting something automate it.
The point is, you don't need to worry about data portability if you plan for it.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
If you mean a big hit that everyone knows.
I don't think that's what they meant by turning Hotel California into an adjective or analogy.
I believe the one-way street attribute would probably be the easiest way to describe it. Although there's more subtle caveats to 'Hotel California' as a lyrical work. Though interpretations have been numerous (I've heard it compared to prison), the writers describe it as an allegory about hedonism and self-destruction in Southern California--especially the music industry (that we all know and love). From the Wikipedia entry:
"Don Henley and Glenn wrote most of the words. All of us kind of drove into LA at night. Nobody was from California, and if you drive into LA at night... you can just see this glow on the horizon of lights, and the images that start running through your head of Hollywood and all the dreams that you have, and so it was kind of about that... what we started writing the song about. Coming into LA... and from that Life In The Fast Lane came out of it, and Wasted Time and a bunch of other songs."
So if I may elaborate the analogy may be trying to describe cloud computing as something you're kind of forced into and it would seem stupid not to take it ... but then you start to realize that it's not everything it was made out to be at the beginning. You are promised success and all the resources imaginary but then at the end when you realize you don't have control over the situation and your data or privacy becomes seriously important to you, it's nowhere to be found and irreclaimable. The song's final lyrics before the guitar solo and double stop bass: "You can checkout any time you like/But you can never leave."
No, this isn't unique, Lynyrd Skynyrd felt the same way as did The Kinks and I bet if I sat and thought I'd come up with much much more. I guess you'd be better off explaining it outright than calling cloud computing Hotel California but the English language allows one to play and invent I guess. The author might consider the younger crowds though for this piece.
My work here is dung.
As I understand it, cloud computing can be a cloud application, like google. Or you can actually run your own servers in the cloud, to which you would have complete control of the data and could dump it at will.
Of course using Software as a Service will lock you in... even if there aren't nefarious reasons behind it. But if your going to provision several cloud server instances, load Redhat on them, and put everything in mysql... then your free to do what you will with your data.
Software as a Service Cloud Computing. If anything SAS is just a small segment of the Cloud Computing movement.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Clearly Asay doesn't know about Google's internal team specifically working on ways to get your data out of the cloud. http://www.dataliberation.org/home specifically details what data you can pull from each of Google's services and how to do it. They concede they haven't "liberated" all the data from every service, but they're working on it.
Ever tried getting your Facebook data into, say, MySpace? Good luck with that.
From the "but-you-can-never-leave dept?" More like from the "no-shit-sherlock" dept... Why on earth would a company allow customers to automatically populate another company's website with your data? What I've found with social media sites is that if you invest so much time into inserting your data into their site, you are going to be much less inclined to go to the same thing again and again on other websites. Even if you don't like the interface as much as you may like some other site, you may feel a bit lazy and stick around. Whereas if the company said "here you go, click this button to transfer your profile to !" people would be jumping ship all over the place and it would be much more difficult to retain customers.
"For the capitalists, it's just like Software 1.0 all over again, with fat profits waiting to be had."
At the risk of stating the obvious, isn't the whole idea of the straw-man capitalist (as opposed to an individual in a capitalist society) that he/she treats everything as a profit opportunity? I mean, for the greedy, there are fat profits in rubber band manufacture or book binding or air fresheners, to choose three items I can see from my chair. It's necessarily not some intrinsic aspect of cloud computing/web 2.0/web 1.0/whatever.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
No, and I never tried fucking a styrofoam sheep while doing underwater welding either.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
While all of this is true I think you took the reference a little far. They most likely just meant a small bit of the song.
"You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave."
HAHAHAHAHAahahahahahahahahahah excuse me
ahaahaahha oh man im so sorry i just cant stop laughing at this idiotic comment
It's the warm smell of colitas, a plant, not of coitus. ;)
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget. This is not what I look for in hardware.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
this article is total garbage. slashdot needs some new editors who has a little common sense of the things they are publishing.
Uh, yeah.. maybe your data wants to be free, but my data is staying right the hell on my computer, where it belongs.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
This is the idiot that posts this nonsense... http://slashdot.org/~mister_playboy
He forgot to hit the anonymous button on his last post. I still don't understand what the point is... these guys never even respond when I ask.
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