Will Capped Data Plans Kill the Cloud?

theodp writes "With the introduction of its Chromebook, Google is betting big on the Cloud. As is Apple, with its iCloud initiative. So too are Netflix and Skype. Unfortunately, their very existence is threatened by data-capping carriers, who have set a course to make sure that the network is NOT the computer. 'I don't know what the solution is,' writes David Pogue. 'I don't know if anyone's thinking about this. But there are big changes coming. There are big forces about to shape our lives online. And at the moment, they're on a direct collision course.'"

Comments

Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution is taking the networks away from those who don't want to provide the service they promised to provide when they were given monopolies by the government.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

If this does kill "The Cloud" can we go a whole week without a new story about it?

Yes you can cluster computers together so that the individual identity/address of any particular node of the cluster is unimportant. Yes you can combine the resources of those nodes to increase computing power and availability. Can we all collectively get over this and end our eyes-glazed fascination with the subject now? It really is and should be a very simple thing to understand.

Nope, gotta bend over and grab your ankles and say "please marketers, please ruin one more thing, please ravage me hard". So wait, we gotta come up with a term for it. We'll call it, "THE CLOUD" because that sounds mysterious and foggy and like something you can't see through so you wouldn't know what was inside it. That'll keep 'em at the edge of their seats, yeah. Thanks to previous marketing efforts they already think their PCs are magic boxes they could never understand anyway, so this will build on that mystery.

The final step is crucial. We must obsessively expound this at every opportunity. It must be inserted into every conversation. Sure, you can upload a video to Youtube. But have you uploaded a video TO THE CLOUD (cue dramatic music)?! Yeah, you can set up a web server and serve up web pages, but have you made web pages and uploaded them TO THE CLOUD (dramatic music)?! Sure, Seti@Home and other projects (mostly about breaking encryption) demonstrated that distributed computing can process massive amounts of data... but have you hired Amazon so you could do this WITH THE CLOUD (music)?!

It's fun to create a solution and then look for a problem to which it applies. And then mentioning it everywhere and inserting it into every conversation, like an evangelical who just discovered Jesus. Next time we do this can we keep it a secret from the marketers? The only way they ever seem to understand technology is to dumb it down.

Re:Simple

[hedwards]

That's a really bad precedent to set. If we start charging more for certain content than for other types of content, what precisely is there to prevent it from spreading to other areas where the ISPs are able to rationalize the decision? A better solution would be for ISPs to start fulfilling their promises rather than using savings to beef up executive compensation.

Answer...

[girlintraining]

"Only in the United States, where caps are popular." But in truth, I'd be more concerned about unbrided capitalism and monopolistic practices killing not just the cloud, but any hope my country has of competing in a global marketplace. We've already hamstrung ourselves on an antiquidated patent and copyright system that is forcing our talent overseas to produce, we have our government busy chasing down music pirates while ignoring the massive amounts of identity theft and fraud perpetuated by malware and botnets, and the list goes on.

Re:Answer...

[spinkham]

Would for profit roads be better for our economy then our present system? Are you against municipal providing of water and sewer services?

Government excels at providing these sort of infrastructure projects. If we took a tiny fraction of the military budget and put it to providing fiber to every home in America, we would be investing in important infrastructure just as we did with roads. It would be a boom for our total economy, instead of a small win for a small fraction of the telecom space only.

Re:Answer...

[causality]

But in truth, I'd be more concerned about unbrided capitalism and monopolistic practices,

I guess I don't understand why capitalism is a dirty word around here. Isn't it a good thing that businesses are not run by the state? Does competition not spur innovation? Which economic system would you have in capitalism's place?

The problem is that the ISPs were not built on a model of capitalism. They were built on state-funded and state-granted monopolies. Capitalism is not perfect and the model does have weaknesses. One such weakness is when the barrier to entry is astronomically high so that new players cannot independently enter into the market and compete with established players. It was precisely for this reason that the tremendous cost of running lines to each individual home had to be state funded.

You cannot establish a monopoly with state money, suddenly decide to treat it as a purely capitalistic enterprise, and then expect healthy competition. This is doomed to fail simply because it is inconsistent with the nature of the situation. The reality is, we the taxpayers got these companies and systems off the ground and made their existence possible. We the taxpayers have a reasonable expectation that they behave in our interests. They are rightfully beholden to us and they have the option of changing careers if they don't like that.

So far the best solution we have created is to let them operate as a private corporation that holds a monopoly with reasonable regulations to prevent them from exploiting the fact that they are a monopoly. This includes requiring them to lease lines in such a way that competitors can enter the market without digging up thousands of miles of land to lay down their own lines. Your other option is to have no competition at all. This system has weaknesses that are easier to overcome because they are political problems, not economic problems. The political problem is to keep the monopolies in check so that their interests don't override ours.

But to talk about this as though it were a commodity like coffee, where any farmer can independently grow coffee and sell it on the open market and compete with the big boys, well that line of thought is getting us nowhere. It doesn't apply. It's a square peg that you're trying to drive into a round hole. This is a unique situation and the more general rules of capitalism only partially apply.

Re:Answer...

[mcgrew]

I've been reading The Mobs and the Mafia: the Illustrated History of Organized Crime by Hank Messic and Burt Goldblatt (1972, ISBN 0-88365-211-0) and was struck by a passage:

... in the three years after the [stock market] crash... those businessmen who didn't kill themselves turned by the thousands to the only men with money and credit -- the gangsters.

It goes on to describe how legitimate business was in debt to the mob, and how politicians were beholden to businessmen for their campaigns. I think that pretty much explains why government goes after file sharers while ignoring spammers, fraudsters, and identity thieves. Our governments, federal, state, and local, are corrupt to the core. The "MAFIAA" really is the Mafia.

Re:Apple

[siride]

The last thing I want is Apple owning the ISP infrastructure. Imagine how locked down the internet would be then.