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Wozniak Predicts Horrible Problems With the Cloud
Hugh Pickens writes "'I think it's going to be horrendous,' said Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak when asked about the shift away from hard disks towards uploading data into the cloud. The comment came in a post-performance dialogue with audience members after a performance in Washington of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, monologist Mike Daisey's controversial two-hour expose of Apple's labor conditions in China. 'I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years.' The engineering wizard behind the progenitor of today's personal computer, the Apple II, expanded on what really worried him about the cloud. 'With the cloud, you don't own anything. You already signed it away through the legalistic terms of service with a cloud provider that computer users must agree to. I want to feel that I own things,' Wozniak said. 'A lot of people feel, "Oh, everything is really on my computer," but I say the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we're going to have control over it.'"
Why would Woz legitimize the work of that liar?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
An expose would reveal, well, reality.
Mike Daisey was found to have fabricated all of the issues he raises against Apple.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He's not at Apple and has not been for a long while.
Wrong. He may not work there daily, but he is still listed as an employee of Apple
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak#Employment_with_Apple
Hotmail provides pop3 access so you can certainly download your mail.
perhaps you are not understanding what he is saying.
At Home: Files secure. In Cloud: unknown variables. Server down, backup processes, human intervention, government intervention, service turned off without notice
At Home: Legally yours, and cannot be searched without a search warrant. In Cloud: Search warrant given to cloud provider, if at all, and data is searched without your knowledge.
At Home: Files not datamined unless you download a virus. In Cloud: you can be sure, datamined.
At Home: Files are accessed by known individuals pending hacking In Cloud: People you dont know have access.
So... maybe you are right, simple files like MP3s can be stored there, just be sure you have proof of purchase, lest the RIAA come after you.
Hey... maybe you can store the Proof of Purchase on the cloud!
How about Tahoe-LAFS?
By the way, it has a too hard name -- every now and then I want to mention it but keep forgetting what Totse-TANSTAAFL was it again!
Explain.
I use Dropbox frequently. It keeps files in sync and accessible between my laptop, desktop, and phone. If Dropbox disappears literally 1 second from now - what data have I lost? What outage have I suffered? Where's the damage? How can they hold my data hostage, exactly?
The WORST that would happen is I'd have two separately-modified versions of the same file on 2 separate computers to reconcile when/if the service came back online.
I use iTunes Match. If that service goes away literally 1 second from now - what data have I lost? What outage have I suffered? Where's the damage? In fact, I saved a lot of time updating old 128kbps MP3s that I ripped from CD years ago to the higher-quality 256kbps Matched versions - so even if the service disappears in an instant, I've still benefitted.
Your ranting sounds like somebody who is entirely unaware of the operation of these cloud services you're criticizing. Your local filestores are completely unaffected by the "cloud" outage, unless you explicitly DELETE your local copies, trusting to a single copy in the cloud. If they jack up prices, disappear, etc., you cancel your account and revert back to the local storage copies that are ALREADY and HAVE ALWAYS BEEN on your local storage.
In other words, they AUGMENT, not REPLACE, the capability of your local storage.
Hasn't RMS already warned us all about this?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.computing.richard.stallman
Only in the Windows world. On the Mac platform, where reasonably convenient backup functionality is built into the OS itself, and where it is cleanly integrated with the manufacturer's wireless access point/NAS solution (Time Capsule), about 55% of users back up regularly (source: PC Magazine), as compared with only around 11% of Windows users (source: TechTarget).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Yeah because the true genius that is Woz went on to do so much later in life and it's not like he's still collecting a paycheck from the big bad evil Apple.
Last things first: Woz gets a 'symbolic' $120,000/yr. from Apple. I'm sure that's chump change to someone with his bank balance; but I sure wouldn't sneeze at $120k.
Second, it's easy to sneer at those who pave the way... When Woz created the Apple computer, people didn't have computers in their homes, they were big-iron mainframes that cost millions.
For him to conceive, and create, machines that even kids could afford, modify, hack, program, and in general have fun with was amazing. He helped change computing and the world.
National Medal of Technology, Inventors Hall of Fame, Heinz Award for Technology, he's the founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, founding sponsor of the Tech Museum, Silicon Valley Ballet and Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose and is Chief Scientist for Fusion-io. So, he's been busy "later in life" too.