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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.'"
....but, sadly, doesn't.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Only people who are really in favor of the cloud are in management.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
MegaUpload
We've already seen what can happen when a cloud service goes down. Amazon and Microsoft's Azure have both went down recently, causing havoc for many businesses. When Megaupload went down, it caused a huge loss for many legitimate customers as well. If your Steam account gets suspended, or you disagree with the new TOS - you're shit out of luck, all that you "own" is gone for good and you can't do shit about it. Dropbox lost a shitload of emails due to a security breach, Sony lost the details for 70million+ customers for a similar reason. Every single example of a cloud operation that I can think of, be it a service or a product, has had issues and it's not going to change.
The cloud is a wonderful idea in principal, but we need a completely different outlook on it. And possibly a hell of a lot of new laws governing ownership of the content.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
for years car dealers pushed monthly payments to clueless buyers to scam them into higher prices. same with the cloud.
dropbox, only $100 a year
cloud storage of music? $25 a year via itunes or amazon
remote backup? $50 a year
virtual server? $xxxx a month. oh you don't like the service, OK just buy your own for $15000 plus hosting
dollar here and dollar there and soon its real money
when you think about it a machine at your location is a consumer class CPU/hard drive. cloud provider will have multiple machines with enterprise class CPU's, overpriced enterprise hard drives, precious metal support contracts, etc. I bet the hardware vendors love it and are pushing the cloud hype through the tech media
Moving to the cloud, whether Apple or Microsoft or any of the other players, has two main purposes:
- Guarantee ongoing profits through subscriptions and micro-payments to the providers for storage, use of cloud-based applications, or viewing or listening to cloud-based media.
- Control of digital media, making DRM easy to enforce since your audio and video files will all be on their servers to be scanned, audited, and confiscated.
Even with the fluctuating prices for hard drives the cost to store media locally is lower than ever, and there are plenty of options for sharing your media over the web yourself due to the low cost of high speed Internet access.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
"monologist Mike Daisey's controversial two-hour expose of Apple's labor conditions in China."
Oh, my. Where to even start? First, where's the controversy? Who is against Apple's labor conditions in China? Nobody. Popular wisdom has workers jumping to their deaths in order to escape Apple's tyranny. Where is the opposition that this brave monologist is so bravely and controversially standing against?
Second, Apple doesn't even employ the workers in China. Foxconn does. If you think you can dictate terms to your Chinese contractor regarding worker conditions, you are dead wrong, mister. You can write a contract, you can inspect the factory, you can do anything you like. At the end of the day, it's the Chinese factory's decision regarding how they will conduct their own business. Foreigners dictating terms to Chinese which the Chinese will obey without exception...what's that called again? Oh, right...imperialism.
Thirdly, Foxconn's workers are well-paid and well-treated, by Chinese standards. Remember, China is a socialist state, and workers are represented by officially approved unions. The All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) is a government-run organization that has been implementing aggressive unionization tactics aimed at foreign companies in China since the middle of 2006. Just think of how the US government intervened to keep the GM unions afloat and you'll get the right idea of how things work in China. The Labor Law of 2008 requires that any employee who completes a 1-year contract, upon renewal of that contract, be employed for life. How is Apple supposed to improve on lifetime employment, exactly? I'm not an Apple fanboi, I hate them as much as anyone who loves innovation and despises walled gardens, but jeez. How, exactly, should Apple dictate terms to Foxconn without recalling the bad old days of unequal treaties and foreign enclaves?
Fourthly, what does monologist Mike Daisey think should be done? Pay Chinese workers Western wages? This would invalidate the entire idea of moving production to China. It would render millions of Chinese people unemployable - in favor of Western people. What's that called again? Oh, right: jingoism. Or protectionism, take your pick. Either word is repugnant.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I think Steve has been asleep for the past decade or so, here a few services that we spend 99% of our time on and don't own: Ebay Paypal Webmail Webdisk / Webstorage Photobucket et al YouTube Facebook, myspace et al Netflix We don't own squat...
TOP DSLR Cameras Reviews of the top DSLRs
Woz is a creator. So was Jobs. But they both needed Consumers - Jobs was more aware of that than Woz obviously.
Woz was his own consumer. He probably would have lived a perfectly happy life with none beyond that and maybe a few fellow enthusiasts.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
So long as it's trivial to sync to your own privately held computer infrastructure.
For storage, I love the concept of a provider keeping bits (that I have pre-gpged) for my reference. The problem is the trend seems to be more and more limited and convoluted storage capability in favor of more exploitive pricing and schemes (e.g. Amazon changing from a modest capacity to a pathetic song count on their cloud).
For compute, so long as you own the DNS name and all the data needed to reconstruct your presence elsewhere, it gives smaller businesses a chance to have a presence without a lot of up-frot cost. Too bad the trend is overwhelmingly fewer and fewer businesses making this benefit moot.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
"the shift away from hard disks towards other people's hard drives"
Fixed.
I hate the term "the cloud". It's fucking remote servers is all. I can just see some guy with 20 years experience managing network server applies for a job and HR screens him because he doesn't have "Cloud" in his resume. It's a stupid marketing term that people are taking for a technology.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
"fabricated facts" sounds too bulky a phrase. Let's try to think of something else. Fize, thighs, ties, no, no, no... Wait, I got it:
Lies.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon