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Stallman Worried About Chrome OS
dkd903 noted that Stallman is speaking out about the risks of Chrome OS and giving up all your local data into the cloud, pushing people into "Careless Computing." Which is a much more urgent concern than something like calling it GNU/Chrome OS.
Root Mean Square...or Richard M. Stallman?
Only time can tell.
Like most other expressions of concern that come from brother Stallman, the geeks hear him, and keep merrily on with technological progress. Not that his concerns are never valid, but he has become the Chicken Little of geekdom.
Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.
Anyone who reads and understands the free software definition can see that web applications and "cloud computing" fail to meet the definition. The users are not free to modify or study the applications, and lacking access to the actual program files, they certainly cannot redistribute the applications to others...
So why would anyone be surprised the RMS takes issue with an OS that is designed to be cloud-centric?
Palm trees and 8
It is funny that we all worry so much about protecting our personal identity and our precious data, fearing relinquishing it to the crowd.
But then we have always allowed just a few people to have full control of our governance. We call them "leaders" and "representatives" and "politicians," but we all know that they are in fact our rulers. That's what they think of themselves, and that's how we treat them. Now wouldn't it be nice if they relinquished control of our lives to the crowd.
He previously called the cloud a joke. But here is the reality of the situation. I like having my email available on multiple devices. I like how easy it is to use web services rather than run my own cloud. I'm voluntarily allowing Google to serve ads to me in return for free services.
And for most non-technical users who can't figure out how to back-up their data, automatically saving their data in the cloud is better than having no back-ups at all.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
But I thought information wants to be free?
I don't want my information in the cloud.
Neither do I want the inevitable yearly charge for constant upgrades to the latest Cloud software. I bought MS Office *once* for ~$80 and have been using it for thirteen years. (Likewise I bought Final Fantasy 10 for $20 and have been playing it for ten years. In contrast Final Fantasy 11 requires a ~$5 per month constant fee.) No thanks. I want to OWN my software not rent it.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Sometimes I am left wondering just how much "progress" cloud computing and web apps really represent. So you can edit your documents and photos using a web app instead of a desktop app...where is the progress? We were accessing files remotely years before cloud computing, so what exactly is it about the current methods that represents "progress?"
Just because you are using new methods to accomplish the same thing does not mean that you have made "progress."
Palm trees and 8
I see the point RMS is making but then again the point of ChromeOS is to not store things locally so they can be available from multiple locations.
There is nothing to stop you from creating your own website, with your own notepad, doc setup and logging into that. you don't need google's stuff. There are lots of different companies that offer such things now a days.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I started using personal computers back in 1981 because I wanted to be able to run my software whenever I wanted, and not be dependent on the (university's) mainframe system being up. Today, I can't imagine using the cloud for anything other than as a backup, and then only with strong encryption.
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
The only sure fire way to protect your data and business is unplug your computer, dust off your check book and buy a roll of stamps. Keep your pictures in an album and mail letter (yes letters!) to your friends. Better still move to the forest and forget it. Seriously can we actually have privacy and safety and be linked as we are today?
...the geeks hear him, and keep merrily on with technological progress. Not that his concerns are never valid, but he has become the Chicken Little of geekdom.
Perhaps the rest of us have the task of making sure it's not just 'the geeks' who hear him. Stallman has a valid and important point here, and I suspect most Slashdotters agree with him. But the non-geeks are the ones who most need to hear the message, and they'll only hear it above the din of Google's grand pronouncements if we all scream it out loud, long, and often.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
They are a corporation and have a self-interest governed by a hive-mind that has no sense of personal accountability other than demonstration of positive advancement of the corporate agenda.
Google has made it quite clear that they want to know every last thing about you and are working on finding ways to collect all your personal data, privacy be damned. This is why I only use GMail for public email and run my own mail server, why I refuse to use GoogleDocs, why I will never use ChromeOS.
These "free" apps and services come at a great hidden cost in terms of privacy, and that cost is too high IMO.
I'm not hating upon Google and do make limited use of their services.
But they are far from golden in my eyes and I am very wary of them.
who is Stallman anyway ?
The summary should be edited. your local data into the crowd
should be
your local data into the cloud
There's a relevant XKCD comic:
http://xkcd.com/743/
> Stallman warns would-be hackers not to download the LOIC software being pushed as a method of expressing anger with sites that have acted against Wikileaks - not because he thinks the protest is wrong, but because the tool's code is not visible to the user. "It seems to me that running LOIC is the network equivalent of the protests against the tax-avoiders' stores in London. We must not allow that to constrict the right to protest," he notes. "[But] if users can't recompile it, users should not trust it."
LOIC's source code is available on SourceForge.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/loic/
It's a choice - that's market economics for you. The models exist, and thrive, because demand is there, or at least there are enough people who are willing to sacrifice conventional ownership to play the game or use the software.
Welcome to the modern world: you don't like the product, don't buy it! Buy something else, something which does suit your needs. Or, if that doesn't exist, build it yourself, or help start an OSS project to do it instead. And, if all of that is impractical or impossible to finance, then you've probably found the reason why no-one else is doing it that way.
Of course, there is market momentum, the incumbent's advantage, monopolistic misbehaving etc, but that's what regulators are for (when they're left to do their job properly). However, "the cloud", downloadable content and subscription-based RPGs exist because there's a gap in the market. Think you can do better? Fill it yourself!
Rant over...
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
Of course, RMS has a point here. And this is not the first time he is arguing against cloud computing. As can be seen in his recorded talks he has been doing this for quite some time now. The problem is that cloud computing has a couple of advantages which makes it attractive. You don't need to have backups of your data and you can access your data everywhere given that you have an internet connection. So this is very convenient for the user. But then you are giving up some of your freedoms for convenience which is not really a good thing.
Do not give your private information to others, and you will not risk it becoming public.
I mean, with a piece of software that bloated, it could be decrypting your stuff and uploading it to anyone.
You can say that about any software at all; frankly, you can say that about your computer's hardware.
On the other hand, Stallman brings up worthwhile points. You may lose certain legal rights -- in the USA, for example, you may lose your 4th amendment rights. You do not have control over web applications -- the provider can change things, yank out features or add new features you do not want, and you have no recourse (how many times has Facebook done this?). You may even lose your access entirely.
There are different levels of problems. Yes, large programs like Emacs may have malfeatures that have been snuck in, as could a complex CPU or even the cloud programs themselves. Interestingly, if Emacs were trying to communicate your data to others, you could at least detect it; it would be substantially harder to detect if Google was leaking your data to others.
Palm trees and 8
Richard Stallman is also concerned about the ubiquity of showers and electric razors, and deeply worried that either may be nearby.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I still view the Browser as a "work in progress" there are certainly a lot of things which need finishing in it or it performs badly.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
RMS worried about non-GNU-Software, stop the presses!
With the recent costs of cloud computing (namely amazon) being really affordable and the cost of having your own home server equally affordable, I don't understand what the big problem is.
I can't wait to live in the cloud. -MY- Cloud. I have no problem with google hosting a few smidgets of crap for me. Maybe e-mail, maybe some docs, but having having a home server that can handle your more sensitive stuff or in my care, legally questionable tasks, IE streaming tons of music/videos to whatever cloud device I see fit via vpn.
The problem is the market just has to shift towards that. Linux is great for the slashdot crowd. WIndows home server is manageable for a hobbyist. Mac OS X server is pretty and unix based. Don't fret because the big boys are doing the dance. They simply offer a product. It's how it's used that gives the product definition.
But the non-geeks are the ones who most need to hear the message
and who care the least.
We are geeks.. we think and care about technological issues around privacy and freedom and security. They are a big deal to most of us. This seems to blind us to the fact that most people don't really care.
And it's not because they don't understand. Twitter and facebook are popular because most people outside of the geek community _like_ sharing every mundane detail about themselves with anyone who will listen. The answer to most "what they can do with the data" is "so what".
A conversation with a non-geek on the subject of data privacy tends to go like this:
They sell it to credit card companies, advertisers, marketters, and anyone else who wants to sell you some junk:
a) So what? how does that hurt me. I get more targetted advertisments and possibly products that better suit me
They give it to the government:
a) If the government wants to know what I did at that party last week.. I would have happily told them
When we revert into some paranoid disutopia the forces of opression will use your twitter comments to identify you as counter to their objectives and have you dragged from your homes and taken to the acid mines where you'll ...
a) oh get a life..
If we want to convince people that privacy is important, we need better scare statements!
Facebook was developed with Open Source software.
The heck with RMS, I am looking forward to editing 1080i video with the clouds using my awesome 60 kilobyte/second virgin media upstream. Cloud computing FTW!
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
imagine, all your sensitive data, all your history, your everything in the custody of a corporation. and a single government - if one recalls what happened to amazon.
its beyond logic.
the only way i would agree to moving wholly to a cloud, would be the time one independent, totally self-reliand p2p cloud is created. much like after the format of bitcoin idea :
http://www.bitcoin.org/
Read radical news here
'the guy'
Read radical news here
I think you're on the right track.
I'm disturbed why synch is "so hard". For whatever program you're using at a particular moment, it should be a snap to designate one active copy and X superseded copies. Then when another device with a superseded copy shows up, just synch it (or back-synch the Cloud copy, and with an advanced manual permission option).
My current opinion is that the Cloud Services vendors actively work to squash localizing copies of their programs. For example, I don't yet know of an easy "Yahoo Mail Offline" app.
I support RMS's view here - we risk literally becoming Cloud of Fortune. Would you like to buy a vowel?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I think warnings like his tend to fall upon deaf ears. And I don't think it has anything to do with his personality. I mean, can anyone here think of a time anywhere that someone issued warnings about some terrible impending thing (doom is a bit harsh since we are all still here) and said terrible thing was averted by said warning? Maybe Y2k qualifies, but so much of the software used was already compliant (in my experience, YMMV) through 2038 that I didn't see all that much actual danger personally. Well, for 28 years at least.
Personally, I think things will get very bad eventually, as Stallman warns, and until it does, most people won't care. Then there will be some sort of revolution, and everyone will care, for a while, and things will slowly slide right back to where they are now, and the cycle will repeat, with some small difference. Maybe the next cycle will be physical products (seems more and more likely every day with things like the Cupcake CNC machine being almost affordable for most hobbyists). My favorite famous quote currently is, "History doesn't repeat; it rhymes."
I hope I'm wrong, but I think human history backs me up.
... and they'll only hear it above the din of Google's grand pronouncements if we all scream it out loud, long, and often.
This is wrong on at least a couple of levels.
Firstly, people don't listen to you if you scream loudly. They just dismiss you as a crazy person.
Secondly, the average person has no idea of the latest thing Google has announced, and has no empathy or concern for Google as an entity. They just know that Google is how you search the interwebs to find the Facebook login page.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Software and information licensing is a trade-off, too, and cloud users are clearly happy with that trade-off.
I don't think that this is at all clearly established at this point. In fact, I don't believe you can even describe the bulk of 'cloud users' as being AWARE of the trade-off.
As an example: My wife went through a phase of buying a lot of wma's from Walmart, all while I was explaining how evil DRM was and that she'd eventually regret it. She understood the technical aspects of it, and believed that it was possible that she'd eventually get screwed over - she just didn't imagine a company ever actually doing anything like that. She 'bought' the song, so it was 'hers', right?
Fast-forward to the day they shut down their DRM servers. None of those songs work now. She still keeps all the files on her hard drive, hoping that one day I'll hear about a crack for them. But only NOW does she really GET what the risks are. Now one could call her 'aware' of the trade-offs of DRM. Today she buys mp3's from Amazon, and would never buy another DRM'ed song from anywhere.
Until the cloud burns enough users to make them imagine how the negatives of the trade-off might impact them on a personal level, human nature would dictate that people really are not measuring the decision with much care. Ergo 'careless computing' really is valid.
which exists with its own life, totally independent. imagine that, this cloud is created by millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people running p2p based clients on their devices. imagine that this cloud uses the collective computing power of these hundreds of millions of people, and with top encryption.
it cant be controlled. it cant be killed. it cant be censored. it cant be outdone. its everywhere.
that is the kind of cloud i would be willing to move into, without hesitation.
something after the format that bitcoin project uses http://www.bitcoin.org/ ( i know this is the second time i linked this, but im enthusiastic )
Read radical news here
On the other hand, Stallman brings up worthwhile points. You may lose certain legal rights -- in the USA, for example, you may lose your 4th amendment rights. You do not have control over web applications -- the provider can change things, yank out features or add new features you do not want, and you have no recourse (how many times has Facebook done this?). You may even lose your access entirely.
Likewise with the Facebook example, we can see that such changes do not cause the users to seek alternatives, either out of apathy or because there is none.
this is my sig
and who care the least.
We are geeks.. we think and care about technological issues around privacy and freedom and security. They are a big deal to most of us. This seems to blind us to the fact that most people don't really care.
This is hardly as universal as you imply. I am as geeky as the next Slashdotter and could not care less about privacy or security, and my definition of "freedom" is likely as idiosyncratic as yours. Geeks are fascinated by technology and I suspect that the vast majority of them would gladly part with privacy or security in exchange for something flashier, faster, and/or cooler, especially if it's programmable.
Advice: on VPS providers
I actually agree with Stallman in substance. But it's too hard to resist the headline from an episode of the Simpsons: "Old man yells at cloud".
I sympathize with your point. I like having my email available on multiple devices too. Along with bookmarks, notes, tasks, pictures, rss feeds, calendar appointments, shared documents, music and video. Basically I want to share my data with all my devices, and I don't want to have to surrender it to Google or some other cloud provider to get that functionality. I think Eben Moglen's idea of a local wall-wart style server that can be plugged in the the outlet and provide all your device's cloud services from your own home is the way forward. We know that the mainframe, centralized control of data and applications puts its own interests ahead of the rights of the users. That's why we all wanted our own PC so many decades ago when they hit the scene. I feel that if we need a server, it should be our own, and it should just work and be open for us to modify as needed. After all, it is our own data, and much like our thoughts their can be no greater claim of ownership.
I think RMS arguments, all of them, can be summed up concisely as:
STOP LIKING THINGS I DON'T LIKE
Similes are like metaphors
No, I use a lot of software that isn't overly complex and has been security audited.
I'm just wondering if RMS made Emacs clean before running his mouth about the cloud.
Unless they are your web applications.
Unless you have a contractual arrangement which prevents that. Sure, that may not be typically offered on gratis services, but then you have to judge for yourself whether the lack of recourse is worth the lack of up-front $ cost.
For many people, for many applications, the risk may be worthwhile.
... because your comment's body tells that things haven't changed since 1981 (in the mainframe vs PC respect).
For the love of KHHHAAANNNN!!!
No, I use a lot of software that isn't overly complex and has been security audited.
OK, what about your CPU? What about the compiler that compiled your software? It is fairly difficult to get an entire stack that has been audited.
I'm just wondering if RMS made Emacs clean before running his mouth about the cloud.
His point has little to do with security and more to do with what sort of rights and freedoms you need to give up to use "cloud computing."
Palm trees and 8
The trouble with "the cloud" is that it's ended up like this:
"But it's free." That's how it starts. Look at the pricing history of cable TV. Watch what's happening to TV on the Internet. For a while, you could watch reruns broadcast shows on the Internet for free. Now, shows are becoming less available, more ads are inserted, and shows are disappearing behind the iTunes, Hulu, and Amazon paywalls. That's for reruns of content previously broadcast free to air.
So don't expect the "cloud" to stay free.
I'm disturbed why synch is "so hard". For whatever program you're using at a particular moment, it should be a snap to designate one active copy and X superseded copies. Then when another device with a superseded copy shows up, just synch it (or back-synch the Cloud copy, and with an advanced manual permission option).
Works great until you change the local copy on two different devices and then you suddenly have to merge the two. That may be easy when it's a text file, but it's not so easy when it's Proprietary Undocumented Binary Document Format X.
I've had a number of issues with Valve's 'Steam Cloud' save game storage, for example, where I was playing the game on multiple machines and it would decide that the save on machine X had been changed so it couldn't download the previous save for the game I'd been running on machine Y.
My current opinion is that the Cloud Services vendors actively work to squash localizing copies of their programs. For example, I don't yet know of an easy "Yahoo Mail Offline" app.
I believe it's called paying them $10 a year for IMAP access.
First, to be clear, "cloud computing" is basically a term derived from "the cloud" which is the nebulous internet when you didn't want or need to specify what servers or path your data was taking to get to you. You aren't really sure who's hosting your stuff, unless it's written in the ULA somewhere.
Sure, "cloud computing" MAY make your data accessible anywhere there's internet availability, but what's to stop the host from data mining all your stuff or forcing you to watch commercials while you're on the brink of discovering Unified Field Theory, because you agreed to it in some sort of user agreement.
Stallman should be more concerned about the trend that caused this one: the drastically decreasing numbers of people who actually create stuff on a computer. Twenty years ago there were lots of geeks out there and Stallman's desire to modify and study other people's work was understandable. It is even understandable that he thought everyone should have these freedoms he so enjoyed. Today such an attitude is unthinkable; computer users no longer create stuff, they merely consume it. The current trend toward the extinction of the desktop and its replacement by mobile devices or cloud computing is the natural consequence of this change. You can't create anything on your smartphone except raw pictures and video. You can, however, consume content that somebody used a desktop to create. And so, each year, there are more and more consumers, and less and less content worth consuming. What will be the point of having the freedom to modify and study code when nobody wants to DO anything?
As the bias in those sample questions may have implied.. I don't really care either. Not saying I'd want to live in a glass house.. but what I purchase and other mundane details.. I could care less about who sees that. Most of the scenarios where that data would hurt me require paranoia on a level that is beyond me.
And yes, I was generalizing on a massive level. I do think geeks are at least generally more aware of privacy and security concerns, because technology is becoming the new battleground for this stuff, and geeks naturally tend to understand technology better than non-geeks.
I definitely wouldn't say most geeks are obsessed with their data or privacy, but I would say that most geeks have at least thought about it and formed an opinion, which is more than can be said by a large portion of "meh" crowd.
^This. People don't care because nothing bad actually happens.
It's not a battle the privacy advocates can win, because for every one of them, there are 1000 or more who don't care.
It is fairly difficult to get an entire stack that has been audited.
But not impossible.
The question stands: has anyone ever checked on security and Emacs?
As for his canards about rights and freedoms, there's virtually nothing on most people's computers that hasn't already been run through someone else's computer, meaning that it's already attached codocils to their rights. None of your banking information is really private as long as the bank can see it; phone records; email; all that billing stuff: it all goes through someone else who has to observe it to process it and by now applies a TOS that grants them rights that obviate the user's.
If you want to keep something out of other people's hands, don't attach it to the network at all.
And don't use Emacs to read it. You don't know where that's sending it.
I'd be more interested in Stallman's commit log than his prose
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Final Fantasy X came out in 2001, so the most you could have played it is 9 years, not 10. But since you bought it for $20, you must have got it used or as a greatest hits release, in which case you might have played it for 8 years at the most.
While there are some really difficult side quests in the game, there is only one ending, so doing multiple play throughs doesn't make a lot of sense. So given that it takes, at most 100 hours to see everything in FFX, that must mean you're enjoying about 12 hours of gaming a year with your $20 investment.
Having supported friends and family's home and small business computers for years, I'll go on record saying "in the cloud" is better than storing it locally for most of them.
- I'm pretty confident Google is doing a better job securing their data in the cloud than many home users and small businesses do securing their local PC's from trojans and other malware.
- I'm pretty sure Google is doing more frequent and reliable backups than many home users and small businesses.
Now I would never condone a business putting customer or sensitive company data on Google's cloud without a business contract with Google, and I would have friends and family avoid storing their taxes or other critical personal info in the cloud or on their personal computer, but for documents, pictures, etc. the cloud is probably a much better place for most home users.
Up to now I've been concerned about the privacy issues of data in the cloud, so I thought a good encryption system would be the solution, so although Google may store my data they can't actually use it (without significant effort). However, if the U.S. government wants my data, they WILL put in the significant effort to crack the encryption, thus if they can seize it without a search warrant than data in the cloud is just as bad encrypted or not.
I'll have to reconsider exactly what portion of my data I have in the cloud. I generally use Dropbox to share certain documents between my computers. Better double-check that ...
People store personal information on Facebook, whose privacy policies are a constant subject of debate and, it seems, in constant flux
People store information on facebook with the purpose of sharing it. Anyone using facebook for private storage does not understand the purpose of facebook.
I put information on Facebook in order to share that information with my friends and family...
I mean, I know Facebook does other things with that information, and for the time being I have accepted that. But that's not the reason I put things on Facebook.
In general I agree with RMS's position here. Entrusting our information to other parties is rather careless. But still, when he reacts to the industry's method of framing a discussion by careful choice of terminology by doing the same thing himself (i.e. "it's not trusted computing, it's treacherous computing!" or "it's not cloud computing, it's careless computing!") I can't help but think of a whiny kid in a schoolyard name-calling match.
And then, another fun twist: isn't this almost exactly the "client-server ideal" from years back? A thin client connecting to a server somewhere, offering convenient and reliable storage of your data from various terminals or devices? The only difference is that the server is owned by Google.
Bow-ties are cool.
How hard is it to just put a web server on your home network and use it as your own cloud? You are placing the reliability and security of your data in someone else's hands by using the "cloud". Someone who has no legal obligation to keep your data secure or safe. And you can bet if the government takes an interest in your data, Google, or whoever, will turn it over to them post-haste. The cloud is for suckers.
I work for a company that, amongst other things, recovers thousands of stolen laptops each year. Many many of our consumer customers have no backups whatsoever and frequently call is repeatedly and desperately, hoping we've recovered their laptop so they can get back their baby pictures or term papers or music collection... The consumer market alone is ripe for a pure-cloud solution if for no other reason than the fact that Joe Average can not or will not back up their data.
Last night I managed to get a free Chrome (CR-48) laptop. :) The first thing I did was log into ObjectCloud, my operating system designed for web computers.
The nice thing about ObjectCloud is that it's an operating system that you can host yourself on your own cable modem; or inexpensively at a hosting provider like Rackspace. ObjectCloud has a very simple programming model, so you can write cloud-based web applications in a web browser on the Chrome laptop, all while hosting it on a simple server behind your router on your cable modem.
No, I will not work for your startup
Normally, I don't pay a whole lot of attention to Mr. Stallman, but in this case, I think he's spot on. First, it is nice to have access to your data anywhere you might be, on the other hand, the first rule in securing data is to limit access to it. If I'm at the local coffee shop, using an internet cafe computer, how do I know what has been cached or not locally. I don't, which means I should assume that everything is (from a security perspective) and not do anything that might disclose sensitive information like bank accounts and passwords. Oh, wait, to use the cloud services, I have to enter my password, so right there is a potential security problem.
In arguing against Mr. Stallman's position, many point out how the use of computers has changed since the internet and how everything is now in the cloud. That might be fine if you are updating FB or tweeting, etc. But if you are a business, do you really want your employees transmitting sensitive corporate information over unsecure and unencrypted lines? Plus, in the past, if the salesperson lost their laptop, their data was exposed. Now, if they lose it, the data of everything they might have access to on the corporate site is exposed.
Also, for cloud computing to really be effective, people need broadband. Didn't they just report, yesterday, that 68% of the country (US) does not have access to broadband (3mbit or greater speed)?
Cloud computing sounds like a great idea, but, how do you secure the data? Is everyone going to have a FOB, like a lot of banks use for online banking? What about when the cloud is unavailable (anybody hear about the DOS attacks by anonymous)? The current notion of storing everything on the internet on somebody else's server doesn't seem like the most logical thing in the world (other than from a marketing perspective).
I wonder if Wikileaks had been using chromeOS and was accused of violated google's acceptable use policy, what would have happened to their data. We've already seen what happened to their funds with paypal and the major credit cards. Why would we think google would be any different?
Lame way to try to discredit a valid point.
I don't understand since when is it obligatory to trash on Stallman every time he's mentioned?
If we take a broad definition of system software (where system utilities are included), it is, in fact GNU/Linux. Even the narrow definition does not make it invalid, but it does make a lesser point (standard C library, one of crucial parts of the OS is GNU, and perhaps some would say GRUB fits here too).
In any case, if you want to trash Stallman do it on its own time, and for a good reason. For example his ethical views that do not concern software: Abortion, sterilization, etc.
SaaS, on the other hand is a threat. And not a small one. ChromeOS' point is to be a cloud client. Where the cloud is proprietary software.
Also, I think it's a useless OS, but that's another issue.
You should look at Freenet.
As the interest in controlling personal computing devices continues the COGAPI (Consumer,Gaming, and Personal Information), the AwkWard and the Steve-10 nano-cloud computing kits are sold. They take advantage of the newer and cheaper 1001010 quantum architecture. A couple of programmers working on the AwkWard release an easy method to build applications on the new device called the Advance language. A few years later a group of technology enthusiasts begin creating their own homebrew nano cloud computing kits. After witnessing the success of the AwkWard home computer a crafty bunch from from this group form a company called Orange. After the release of its Orange 2, that provides small businesses and home users access to the 4dVisiData spread page software. A couple of years later Microsoft enters the market with its RW (redmond washington) Bajo that provides an open architecture that other companies quickly take advantage of. During this time a programmer by the name of Willy Fence working for Google creates an operating system that becomes the norm on these new computers. Frustrated with the closed source of Google's applications Linux is upgraded.
Is it just me or does any of this sound familiar. It seems ever since the data center lost control of the data by the introduction of those toys (called the personal computer, back in the day), they've been trying to get it back. We've had citrix servers, remote access, thin clients, etc. Everything with the notion that all you need is a dumb terminal or a scaled down pc not much more than a dumb terminal and everything you need will be taken care of on the back end.
We've seen that model fail over and over, why would cloud computing, using the internet instead of coax or leased lines be any different? If you like the idea of somebody else having the ultimate control of your data and how you can access it, great, go for it. However, if you are concerned with who at google, or wherever has access to your data, what will they do with it, etc., then why would you ever want this. Wasn't it the slashdot crowd that was upset not too long ago because google was scanning emails for marketing purposes? What will happen when they do it to your corporate documents and corporate emails?
Thin clients were supposed to hold down costs, eliminate upgrade headaches and make everyone more productive. That didn't happen. Now we are told that cloud computing is the answer, and yet, all it is is repackaging of the old thin client model, but run on a public network with a third party corporation serving up your data. And this is supposed to be good, how?
Like most other expressions of concern that come from brother Stallman, the geeks hear him, and keep merrily on with technological progress.
In this case, keeping on with technological progress means to avoid going back to the ages before we had personal computers upon which to store our data. RMS is telling you: don't believe Google's claims for how awesome CompuServe will be; hold out for THE INTERNET!
brother Stallman [...] has become the Chicken Little of geekdom
Thou speakest of Him like that?
Didn't someone say "Real men upload their files to FTP and let the world mirror them"?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
This time around it's called cloud computing and Web 2.0. Basically, what we are actually witnessing is the slow death of personal computing. Here we go again with mainframes in datacentres we depend upon for storage and processing of data. When this development continues we'll be back to using mere terminals again. It is awefully reminiscent of hooking up a terminal/teletype to a phoneline and buying processing time and storage space from a datacenter. What's personal about that? Get out your IBM songbooks, and give cheers to T.J. Watson. He was right in the end, it seems.
Hell must be freezing over. I'm in agreement with RMS about something. :)
Cloud computing is IMHO a bad idea if relied on by itself. It can be a piece of a computing environment, but relying only on centralized servers to store data and serve apps has many downsides. (Remember the SideKick phone fiasco?)
A laptop running a version of Linux from CD with local storage for data, and automatic synchronization of data with a central server over the net is far more effective.
It lets you work on your data when you have no connection, but still lets you have the advantage of being able to reach it from most anywhere or any machine when you do have the connection.
It's secure. When it reboots, the OS is the original version. Your data may have been diddled with, but this would happen even if it had been stored on Google's central servers.
Further, it's much more flexible as you don't have to wait for Google to vet apps before you use them.
As to people saying "If you don't like it, don't use it.", that's fine, but if this succeeds in the market, it sets what is available in the future. People learn to not be in control of their data or computing environment.
I don't want that level of control being outsourced to someone other than me, or my organization.
People like sharing. They could set up their own site and have better control but that's just not going to happen and they will be happy to sell their privacy for someone to do the leg work and give them a platform to reach the whole world. It's not good and they'll cry when it comes back to bite them in the ass but for now they're happy.
I'm geekier than you :)
Stallman expressed concern about government searches without search warrants for data in the cloud.
http://reason.com/blog/2010/12/14/great-4th-amendment-news-from
(Quoting another article)
In a landmark decision issued today in the criminal appeal of U.S. v. Warshak, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers....
Excuse my language, but holy fucking shit. Up to 98% of incumbents stay? Holy fucking shit.
he has become the Chicken Little of geekdom.
RMS was right about Bitkeeper. He was right about binary modules in the Linux kernel and prominent developers argued the same thing years later. He might have been right about Java - we'll have to wait and see, but things certainly aren't as rosy as they appeared to be once upon a time. He currently seems to be against ACTA, and he will probably proven right in a few years when the first ACTA legislated court cases start popping up.
How many times was Chicken Little right?
Because, implicit in the definition, is the fact that the end user can run a modified version of the program. Even if you have the source code, this is not the case with most 'cloud' apps.
The only cases where you can't run a modified version of a cloud app are:
1) Where you don't have the source code for the app, or
2) Where you have the source code for the app, but don't have an implementation of the infrastructure it is designed to run on.
For apps relying on Amazon's cloud technologies, there are open source implementations of EC2, SQS, S3, and related technologies.
For apps relying on Google App Engine, there is an open source implementation of most of that released as a development tool by Google, and there open source third-party implementation of many of the features that aren't included in the dev server from Google. (There are even third-party hosts.)
And while some cloud technologies use special APIs, etc., that are particular to the cloud infrastructure, many "cloud" platforms abstract away the implementation entirely, simply running code that is completely unaware of the cloud. I can run something that is a "cloud app" when run on Heroku on any machine that will run Ruby on Rails.
The whole 'tivoisation' issue was that users could modify the code, but couldn't then run the modified version on their hardware. Cloud services are the same.
No, they aren't. If you are running open-source cloud software on your own hardware (and assuming that that hardware isn't tivoized) you can certainly run modified versions of the software on your hardware.
Of course, you may not in some cases be allowed to run modified versions of some apps on a remote cloud hosts hardware, even if the original version is open source and you have the software. But that's not because your freedom with regard to the software is impaired, its because you've chosen to rent someone else's hardware -- hardware that you share with other users -- rather than buy your own hardware.
Its been a while but IIRC you can get your yahoo mail through POP or IMAP to a local client.
Think I've seen at least 10 commercials with "to the cloud!" in them today alone. This is a little bit pathetic.
ChromeOS will have a standards-based browser, right? Otherwise it will make iOS look positively open...
So all you need to do is get yourself a server (anything from a $200 NAS device hanging off your home broadband to a rack full of hardware in a datacentre somewhere) add some open-source equivalents of Google Docs, adjust your SSL certificates to taste and, voila, your own little private cloud for you, your colleagues, your friends and anybody else of your choosing.
All we need is that open-source server-side cloud software. However, I see there are AJAX-based SSH clients that ought to let you use your iPad or ChromeBook to run EMACS on your server, so what else do you need?
More serious example of open-source cloud software is Cloud 9 - a Javascript IDE that you can download and run on your own server.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
In another press release today, RMS Richard Stallman announced that henceforth his followers would no longer be allowed to use banks, as they put their money in danger and require too much trust on the part of the users. You just don't know what they are going to do with it, he proclaimed.
but, its not my expertise area. i specialize in web development on l.a.m.p.
Read radical news here
especially if it's programmable
What use is programmability if you're prevented from actually installing anything on your device in the first place? What use is your application if it is subject to the whims of whoever owns the cloud it's running on?
I suspect that the vast majority of them would gladly part with privacy or security in exchange for something flashier, faster, and/or cooler
Some Blippy users found out the hard way that that's a bad idea.
For example, I don't yet know of an easy "Yahoo Mail Offline" app.
Yahoo Mail unofficially enabled IMAP, since forcing mobile users to read mail in a browser was not working well. Details here:
http://guillaumeb.com/ym/imap.html
Bring on the FreedomBox!
http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox
RMS has not only talked about various issues over the years but the general public (not the geeks) seems to have a knack of totally ignoring him. By that count Chrome should be a commercial success adopted by millions of people. Just like RMS warned us about Windows, Iphone, Kindle, etc. Look each of them is a commercial success.
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
OSS proponents think they're realistic
But rest of the world thinks you're sarcastic
Govt must constitute a panel to rewrite US Constitution and Quran
The main advantage of clouds, where you can access your data anywhere, can be just as easily achieved by a home server, for example. And nowadays, just about any computer, even a Intel Atom PC drawing less power than a tungsten bulb would work as a file server. Granted, it takes expertise, but setting up a basic home server can easily be automated. The only reason cloud computing is flourishing instead is hype. People don't realize if cloud computing ever becomes the norm, Google would start charging their services.
Sheeple - "It is often used to denote persons who voluntarily acquiesce to a perceived authority or suggestion without sufficient research to understand fully the ramifications involved in that decision, and thus undermine their own human individuality or in other cases give up certain rights. The implication of sheeple is that as a collective, people believe or do whatever they are told, especially if told so by a perceived authority figure believed to be trustworthy, without critically thinking about it or doing adequate research to be sure that it is an accurate representation of the real world around them."
I was going to post something similar, but looked through the comments first. I like the idea of the cloud, but only if it's
1. Distributed - not tied to one provider, but fully abstracted
2. Encrypted - so that I, and only I can get the data out
3. Universal - So that I can log into any compatible networked computer anywhere in the world and have my desktop and apps right there
4. Free - As in price and freedom
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Stallman have right. What belong to me and it's on my own device - it is really my. What belong to me and it is not on my own device - it is not really my.
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
"Yes, I found out yesterday that LOIC is free software.
I will do something to correct that error.
--
Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org"
A conversation with a non-geek on the subject of data privacy tends to go like this:
They sell it to credit card companies, advertisers, marketters, and anyone else who wants to sell you some junk: a) So what? how does that hurt me. I get more targetted advertisments and possibly products that better suit me
They give it to the government: a) If the government wants to know what I did at that party last week.. I would have happily told them
When we revert into some paranoid disutopia the forces of opression will use your twitter comments to identify you as counter to their objectives and have you dragged from your homes and taken to the acid mines where you'll ...
a) oh get a life..
If we want to convince people that privacy is important, we need better scare statements!
Compared to most people here, I'm hardly a "geek" but in my social circle outside the computer, I certainly am considered one.
And my answers would be "So what? I don't have to buy what they advertise to me." / "I doubt the government would be that interested in me, in anything I would part of some shallow stats report about internet usage." and "Oh, get a life".
The idea of having to to be connected at all times to a server to basically "have a computer" is ridiculous to me, Because of privacy? No. Because I'd have to pay a monthly fee to USE a computer (because, y'know the whole no-internet-no-files-hence-no-computer thing)? Hell yes.
I know an internet-less computer is hardly the way to go about in this day and age, but at least I have the option that if I don't have Internet access, I can at least have all my files right where I want them and still work with them.
All glory to Arstotzka!
"I saw an opportunity to troll you and get you out of the woodwork.." - by gmhowell (26755) on Monday December 13, @06:56PM (#34541134) Homepage Journal
FROM -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1907528&cid=34541134
and here also from that same exchange/thread:
"I never denied trolling you. And the only person I troll under the AC banner is tomhudson." - by gmhowell (26755) on Tuesday December 14, @01:55AM (#34543612) Homepage Journal
FROM -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1907528&cid=34543612
No denying it, is there, gmhowell? After all, your own quoted words in black & white with the links you posted them in are difficult to deny now, aren't they? LMAO!
You're very stupid.
People: Don't pay this trolling douchebag gmhowell any mind, he's an incompetent out of work ignoramus who has nothing better to do than admittedly troll others here and he admits to it above in his own words quoted no less.
(Payback's a bitch, and nobody's a bigger beyotch than gmhowell, the trolling scumbag waste of life).
Those who would give up their Private Data to purchase a little Temporary Convenience ...
'Which is a much more urgent concern than something like calling it GNU/Chrome OS.' It already exists : it is GNU/Linux.
Your characterization fails to convey that you understand why he says what he does. Freedom, for its own sake, is worth pursuing. He doesn't make his claims exaggerating and mischaracterizing like you do ("the universe will explode"). He gives frank and factual examinations of reality showing where a loss of freedom leads to people losing their rights. You picked a particularly poor time to make your half-hearted critique as right now Amazon has again been caught removing e-books from customer's "Kindle" devices, including Amazon workers chastising those seeking a refund for the e-books that have been taken from them without their consent. It's not hard to see how paying for an e-book you don't get to keep and having someone else choose what you're allowed to read on your device is bad for people. Things like this help us understand why Stallman refers to the Amazon Kindle as the Amazon Swindle. He saw stuff like this happening many years ago and wrote his dystopic short story about the practical consequences of non-freedom. Check out his reaction to a 2005 incident when a Harry Potter book was sold before its intended for-sale date; I haven't read anyone else give a cogent thoughtful analysis like he did.
You said "Like most other expressions of concern that come from brother Stallman" and then cited none. Your followup cites nothing. Saying "not that his concerns are never valid" is meaningless because nobody is wrong all the time; you're saying that as a shield so you can come back later and claim that your objections only contain mild inaccuracies when your theme is profoundly wrong and undefended. You seem to want to criticize Stallman for being unpopular (with an audience that should know better than to accept claims like yours without specific evidence, quite frankly) yet you ignore the examples he points to and what's going on around you.
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