You completely missed the deliberate "it's" vs "its" issue, so no points for you. So sad to completely fail as a grammar nazi. Maybe you should adopt a new peeve.
That's ok. We have technology. If you're ok with meeting we can work out a video anwer and that's probably best, Canucisatan is, regardless of its other benefits, cold and that's not my preference. G'nite..
Symbolset is my hook and you can reach me at the associated gmail address. Unlike many, I would like to hear from you.
Ok, we've done this slashdot thing for a while. I have a great deal of respect for you and your opinions. It's time for us to sit down and have some some serious talk over beer IRL. I'm in the Pacific Northwest and can come to meet you somewhere. If you're amenable, send me an email at the slashdot username at gmail.com. If you're not in the PNW let me know and we'll work it out. Obviously international isses may obviate a video meeting.
One of the problems here is that you're talking about a metaphorical grandma, and I'm talking about my actual grandmother who's 77 years old. She's been on Ubuntu for 18 months and she's doing fine.
She pays $1800 a year for bandwidth, so she's not among the poor. She can do what she wants to do without Microsoft's assistance. She does facebook and myspace, her digicam and webcam stuff, she sends out the digital Christmas cards without your help. Her HP printer gives her photos from her camera.
There have been some challenges in defining the differences, but Chrome OS is not an operating system. It's a distribution that includes the Linux operating system that adds its value in the user interface space. The underlying operating system is Linux. Chrome OS is a shell.
Its scope is every environment the base OS applies to, and that's going to stretch from the firmware of your wireless router to the TOP500. Its target market is grandma, but it's open source to the point where builds are now available for every Virtual environment and we're not 48 hours in yet.
In short by opposing something that's not yet defined, you're destroying your cred.
Yeah, since I'm getting insightful mods I might as well campaign for "funny". The use of "its" for "it's" was a deliberate (and failed) attempt to get even more grammar nazis to weigh in.
I don't see busineses going for this yet either, so about this we agree. Students are quite skilled, and I doubt they'd be interested as well, so I agree with you about that too. So that covers the 1/4th geek square of the market.
Unfortunately for you argument the grandma square is also important. Remember that this thing doesn't have to own the whole of the IT market to be successful - it just has to turn a profit in the sector it's in.
I think that's one of the problems with Windows: it tries to be the master solution for every question with bloat. That's not the right approach. Microsoft needs to fragment itself more to provide more specific answers to customer needs.
Since the beginning I've said Silverlight, C# and.net are traps. People have called me paranoid for saying that Moonlight was an intentional trap - a deliberate move to inject in the Linux development process a follower to Microsoft technologies that can never catch up. Now the trap is sprung. Mac OS and Linux users can't use this system. By doing this you've validated all of the criticisms I've levied and blessed me with more credibility - thanks for that.
I get that you guys are trying to win. If you did it in the right way the tinfoil hat crowd would have less justification for their raving. You're handing them credibility every month. That's not good. Microsoft is becoming the AT&T of software: the monopoly with tentacles everywhere that prevent progress. It's a losing battle - progress will occur with or without you. A better tack would be to come out on the side of progress and innovate in all ways from supercomputing to phone platforms to ebook readers and deliver a better solution than the alternatives by being more open.
You can still win this one but the window is closing. I told you before - you guys don't have too many more tries at this thing. The world made a turn without you. Your position is less tenable now than it was then. You need to get ahead of this curve before we watch you shrink in our rear-view mirror. Given your corporate history I hope you'll individually forgive me for not wishing you well. Whatever my hopes though, I'll tell you true: you're doing it wrong. As we move to the cloud this will become more and more obvious. Free software in the cloud has no licensing ambiguities that can wreck your enterprise.
It's not possible to make a secure PC with Windows unless your deployment process involves a metal shredder, and the shredded PC's utility would pretty much negate the negate the utility that provides ROI and makes the deployment worthwhile.
Steven Sinofsky is on the record as admitting that Microsoft doesn't even understand the dependencies in their core OS. Slashdot's own Foredecker (A MS senior PM) is on the record as saying that feature demand and legacy support both trump security. Security professionals know what this means: Microsoft has neither the ability nor the desire to make their systems secure and these lacks are Policy. Unlike other IT fields, security has no grey area: there's secure, and there's not. There's not some hypothetical security spectrum with "most" on one end and "least" on the other. Security is not some add-on - it's a base condition and a philosophy that accepts no expansions that compromise* security.
DeepFreeze is an interesting Windows third party add-on that restores a PC to its initial condition each time it boots. In the hands of a knowlegeable person it can improve the security of a Windows system by preventing one user from tainting the environment of another. In the hands of a less skilled person it can ensure that all users are equally compromised. Regardless of who's using it, it is a lock on the front door of a house that has its windows wide open.
I do like the idea of ChromeOS, but I wish it followed more traditional OS lines, with more advanced application separation, a good filesystem (ZFS comes to mind), and so on.
There's a lot being said about Chrome OS today and a lot of it is completely ignorant. Chrome OS is based on Linux, and Google has graciously released enough of the source to assess it by building working systems. It's more of a user shell than an OS. It's a base OEM distro. Like RHEL, like SLED, it's a base distro others can bend to their own uses, but unlike those it's focused on the LCD end user who interacts with web-apps only. Since remote desktop to a real machine is a web app, I don't have a problem with that - you can use it to remote desktop to a real machine (or virtual machine) that has all the facility you expect as long as the network is up. When the network is down how much work are we getting done anyway? Third parties have already enabled many features which negate your objections and we're less than two days in.
In short it's too early to tell what the utility of this may be but the vehement attacks against it are disclosing the bias of a great many formerly trusted analysts. The established forces are horribly terrified by this thing not because of its properties but because it comes from Google and Google is known for embracing disruptive technologies.
*Actually, since I'm symbolset I'm going to pin the problem on a symbol here. "Compromise" is a part of negotiation where each party in the transaction surrenders part of their desires to move closer to their greater goal, valuing agreement over base principles. In security "compromise" means failed security in the sense "security was compromised". That means that some party agreed to something that allowed a security failure to occur. In security, compromise is a bad thing. If you're the kind of guy that works in an environment where if IT security fails, people die, you think about this stuff. If the scope of your work covers things less important like the survival of your business and your continued employment, maybe you're less careful.
Saying that you don't see something is a very different statement than saying that something isn't there. I don't quite see the compelling nature either but I'm willing to believe it's there. I haven't played with it yet but I'm sure I will. It's got tremendous buzz. The developer community is already all over this thing. I think as a VM for hosted desktop solutions it may have some merits - low cost, small footprint, minimal complexity, cloud storage. We'll see. I disagree with your assessment but respect it given your experience and intelligence.
As for pricing, well, not everything is about money.
It's Linux underneath so it's as much of a general OS as any. I'm sure all of the general drivers and applications can be added back in to make it a supercomputer compute node, file and print server, webserver, database server or full blown desktop, but that's probably not the point of the thing. As for the Droid, Sergey Brin has already said there's a good chance that Chrome OS and Android will converge into one OS eventually.
It can be helpful to engage an independent VAR. Not all, but some, offer presales assistance that includes needs assessment and design for free or at low cost. They do this with the hope that by demonstrating their technical prowess you will be more comfortable with buying from them, and in the hope that you'll engage their engineering teams for best-practice deployment consulting.
It sounds like the organization in the fine article doesn't have a lot of experience with this. Modern systems can be complex and a single configuration error can lead to downtime, wide-open security, and more. Ask slashdot is nice, but it's not a dialog with a certified professional with years of experience who's on your site and has spent some time understanding your network and needs.
I was already contrarian in yesterday's Chrome thread. Some people are asking "Does Chrome OS Spell the End of Desktop PCs?" I think the thing that's in the most danger of being taken over by Chrome OS is slashdot. Some people will make some interesting builds, and it will be a lot of fun to play with. It's doubtful much more will come of it than that.
But of course Microsoft and their friends at Forrester and Gartner, PC World and news.com.com.com will be declaring it a greater threat to world peace than Scientology, claim it causes genital warts, say that it may damage both your computer and your self esteem. The funniest thing I've seen along this line is this one.
Mining of any kind is an environmental nightmare. I imagine globalization has international companies avoiding the practice within the jurisdiction of the EPA as much as they can.
Yeah, a lot of people don't see the business case for netbooks in the enterprise either. But that's where two thirds of them go. I guess there's no figuring some of this stuff - they make it, they put it out there, and the end market is some application none of the developers imagined or planned for. I think that's pretty cool actually.
I do try and stay away from the buzzword bingo. I'm not always successful. VDI is a negative for the chrome OS so far because it doesn't support remote desktop technologies yet that I know of. Then again, it's only been a couple days. Since it's open source people will be building virtual Chrome clusters this morning and using them for some of the most absurd purposes you can think of - some of which will work out. That's the power of FOSS. They'll probably have a Chrome Thin Client on a pendrive distribution available before the weekend is out, and it will probably include a quick script to download and install the Citrix client, but if they don't it's Linux so people can just install it themselves.
Cloud is cool if you understand it - but so few people do. So many people are pushing the cloud without understanding it that yes, talking too much about it in public can yield derision. When my brother asked me about it yesterday I was quite careful to define the scope of applicability first, build a strong conceptual wall around that, and then be enthusiastic for the thing in that limited scope. It's not a cure-all, but the idea has some powerful attributes.
Legacy is what everybody has, and it's important to serve the users we have with equipment we have. But we utterly rely on innovators to cut loose from the drag of legacy technologies and venture out in new directions if we are to have progress.
Did you know that all of the mainframe vendors (IBM and, uh, IBM) have built web front-ends to the mainframe so their platforms can remain relevant?
I already have browsers coming out my ears. I like doing some of my own processing on the fat multicores in my notebook.
That would be sweet. I'm having trouble seeing how this release is preventing you from doing that since you don't have to install it - in fact, installing this looks to be quite a chore. You should avoid it until it's more stable.
The hot new buzzword is "cloud", but the cloud is just virtual machines rendering services to clients, and the services are the same processing of storage to render output they always have been.
Google still hasn't shown a real 1) educational 2) business case 3) entertainment or 4) porn case for ChromeOS.
Ahem. It's been one day since they released the source code. They haven't launched the OS and don't intend to for a year. Don't you think you're being a tad bit impatient? If you want to test the alpha for those properties you're welcome to, but Google hasn't promised anything because it's very early.
Interesting note: Google has two operating systems released right now. How odd is that?
As long as I'm following up to fix the link, I might as well point out that this absurd article tries to tar Google's cloud services with Microsoft's T-Mobile Danger brush - as if the two were related in some way other than as polar opposites. That link works better if you're tying Microsoft's cloud services since they're the ones to fire the footgun in that case. They try and say that if you paid for Photoshop on your PC, you're licensed to use it on your netbook. They point out that this alpha OS that's a year from initial release hasn't signed a single cellular provider and doesn't yet support cellular wireless data - even though it was Google that made any-app-you-want any-device-you-want data-only wireless possible. They even quote an analyst from some thinktank I've never heard of (Interpret?). The only way to describe this article is "hit piece". Later let's examine why this author would do this, and who he's trying to help. For now I want to talk about the extremely disruptive nature of this change, in the context of stuff many of you don't konw.
Long ago there was this guy who wanted to make phone calls over radio. He was a bright guy and rigged up the radios to talk to the phone through an acoustic coupler, only to find that "The Phone Company" (at the time there was only one, AT&T) would not permit him to connect his device to a phone on their network. Like any stubborn geek he persisted in his insistence that his equipment could not harm their network. Unlike your common geek he sued all the way to the Supreme Court, gaining fame and support along the way. Ultimately his efforts resulted in the Carterfone decision, and all of the advanced telephony changes we enjoy today including dialup, wireless phones, cellular phones and the Internet, and propelled him to ignonimy. Somebody needs to find this man and reward him for what he's done for us. It is because of his persistence and efforts that the AT&T monopoly was broken and we enjoy the advancements we have today.
Kids today (lawn, get off) are going to have trouble grasping this idea, so let's walk it back and forget some things: Forget tweeting your various stages of pooping. Forget SMS'ing pics of the dead squirrel you found. Forget texting. Forget even calling Mom from the corner that you're going over to Tommy's house to play the latest online game, because none of that is possible. You're like the poor kids who have no cel, except nobody has one so it's NBD. Now forget wandering around the house with the wireless phone, because that wasn't possible either. Now you've got a phone or two in your house if you're not poor but you can only talk on them when you're withing a few feet because there's this coiled wire that connects you to the phone which is either mounted on the wall or attached to the wall with a wire so Mom can hear everything you say - but it gets worse! Mom can't even own this phone - she can't upgrade it to a new model from the store because it doesn't belong to her. She only leases it from the phone company. They don't even have to make new models of phone, because what is she going to do if they don't? The phone company can cut off even this limited access any time they like or charge her anything they like (and they liked a LOT) because they're not just the phone company - they're the phone company. They don't have to care -- that was actually their motto. "We don't have to care: We're the phone company." Oh, the horror! I wanted to rip the onion from my belt and throw it at them to express my disgust.
There's a lot of handwaving about how Chrome is not Windows, how it won't let you use photoshop on the netbook, as if you would. Here's a hint: if you're trying to run Photoshop on a 10" screen, you're doing it wrong.
Look for disastrous reports from Gartner, Forrester and of course the Rob Enderle / Maureen O'Gara flackalyst duet on how Chrome is the worst thing since smallpox. These are your clues that this is the real thing. They said the same things about the When Google says they released the source, people build it and publish virtual machines the same day.
Netbooks are stepping up in performance, as this four-threaded model shows, and will soon be able to do many more things. Yes, VDI is starting to ramp. There is still a place for Chrome. It's the dead-simple desktop interface that many of the technology impaired need. It's a point on the graph twice the distance on the line from Debian to Ubuntu.
A bunch of people are going to whine it doesn't support disk. It's a next-generation operating system and solid state is the storage of the next generation. It has local storage - just not the slow kind you're used to. There is no more reason to support the legacy spinning disk on this platform than there is to support tape storage or floppy disk. Moving parts are so 2008.
Or maybe the Droid was only released with Android 2.0 three weeks ago and it will take a few more days to build an installed base of people to sell your neat applications to. Earlier Android phones were cool and all, but the Android 2.0 platform and the hardware enhancements of the new platforms are what's going to build the market for these apps. Giving up at this point is just silly.
Slashdot Mirror
You completely missed the deliberate "it's" vs "its" issue, so no points for you. So sad to completely fail as a grammar nazi. Maybe you should adopt a new peeve.
That's ok. We have technology. If you're ok with meeting we can work out a video anwer and that's probably best, Canucisatan is, regardless of its other benefits, cold and that's not my preference. G'nite..
Symbolset is my hook and you can reach me at the associated gmail address. Unlike many, I would like to hear from you.
Ok, we've done this slashdot thing for a while. I have a great deal of respect for you and your opinions. It's time for us to sit down and have some some serious talk over beer IRL. I'm in the Pacific Northwest and can come to meet you somewhere. If you're amenable, send me an email at the slashdot username at gmail.com. If you're not in the PNW let me know and we'll work it out. Obviously international isses may obviate a video meeting.
One of the problems here is that you're talking about a metaphorical grandma, and I'm talking about my actual grandmother who's 77 years old. She's been on Ubuntu for 18 months and she's doing fine.
She pays $1800 a year for bandwidth, so she's not among the poor. She can do what she wants to do without Microsoft's assistance. She does facebook and myspace, her digicam and webcam stuff, she sends out the digital Christmas cards without your help. Her HP printer gives her photos from her camera.
Tom,
There have been some challenges in defining the differences, but Chrome OS is not an operating system. It's a distribution that includes the Linux operating system that adds its value in the user interface space. The underlying operating system is Linux. Chrome OS is a shell.
Its scope is every environment the base OS applies to, and that's going to stretch from the firmware of your wireless router to the TOP500. Its target market is grandma, but it's open source to the point where builds are now available for every Virtual environment and we're not 48 hours in yet.
In short by opposing something that's not yet defined, you're destroying your cred.
Yeah, since I'm getting insightful mods I might as well campaign for "funny". The use of "its" for "it's" was a deliberate (and failed) attempt to get even more grammar nazis to weigh in.
I don't see busineses going for this yet either, so about this we agree. Students are quite skilled, and I doubt they'd be interested as well, so I agree with you about that too. So that covers the 1/4th geek square of the market.
Unfortunately for you argument the grandma square is also important. Remember that this thing doesn't have to own the whole of the IT market to be successful - it just has to turn a profit in the sector it's in.
I think that's one of the problems with Windows: it tries to be the master solution for every question with bloat. That's not the right approach. Microsoft needs to fragment itself more to provide more specific answers to customer needs.
Since the beginning I've said Silverlight, C# and .net are traps. People have called me paranoid for saying that Moonlight was an intentional trap - a deliberate move to inject in the Linux development process a follower to Microsoft technologies that can never catch up. Now the trap is sprung. Mac OS and Linux users can't use this system. By doing this you've validated all of the criticisms I've levied and blessed me with more credibility - thanks for that.
I get that you guys are trying to win. If you did it in the right way the tinfoil hat crowd would have less justification for their raving. You're handing them credibility every month. That's not good. Microsoft is becoming the AT&T of software: the monopoly with tentacles everywhere that prevent progress. It's a losing battle - progress will occur with or without you. A better tack would be to come out on the side of progress and innovate in all ways from supercomputing to phone platforms to ebook readers and deliver a better solution than the alternatives by being more open.
You can still win this one but the window is closing. I told you before - you guys don't have too many more tries at this thing. The world made a turn without you. Your position is less tenable now than it was then. You need to get ahead of this curve before we watch you shrink in our rear-view mirror. Given your corporate history I hope you'll individually forgive me for not wishing you well. Whatever my hopes though, I'll tell you true: you're doing it wrong. As we move to the cloud this will become more and more obvious. Free software in the cloud has no licensing ambiguities that can wreck your enterprise.
It's not possible to make a secure PC with Windows unless your deployment process involves a metal shredder, and the shredded PC's utility would pretty much negate the negate the utility that provides ROI and makes the deployment worthwhile.
Steven Sinofsky is on the record as admitting that Microsoft doesn't even understand the dependencies in their core OS. Slashdot's own Foredecker (A MS senior PM) is on the record as saying that feature demand and legacy support both trump security. Security professionals know what this means: Microsoft has neither the ability nor the desire to make their systems secure and these lacks are Policy. Unlike other IT fields, security has no grey area: there's secure, and there's not. There's not some hypothetical security spectrum with "most" on one end and "least" on the other. Security is not some add-on - it's a base condition and a philosophy that accepts no expansions that compromise* security.
DeepFreeze is an interesting Windows third party add-on that restores a PC to its initial condition each time it boots. In the hands of a knowlegeable person it can improve the security of a Windows system by preventing one user from tainting the environment of another. In the hands of a less skilled person it can ensure that all users are equally compromised. Regardless of who's using it, it is a lock on the front door of a house that has its windows wide open.
I do like the idea of ChromeOS, but I wish it followed more traditional OS lines, with more advanced application separation, a good filesystem (ZFS comes to mind), and so on.
There's a lot being said about Chrome OS today and a lot of it is completely ignorant. Chrome OS is based on Linux, and Google has graciously released enough of the source to assess it by building working systems. It's more of a user shell than an OS. It's a base OEM distro. Like RHEL, like SLED, it's a base distro others can bend to their own uses, but unlike those it's focused on the LCD end user who interacts with web-apps only. Since remote desktop to a real machine is a web app, I don't have a problem with that - you can use it to remote desktop to a real machine (or virtual machine) that has all the facility you expect as long as the network is up. When the network is down how much work are we getting done anyway? Third parties have already enabled many features which negate your objections and we're less than two days in.
In short it's too early to tell what the utility of this may be but the vehement attacks against it are disclosing the bias of a great many formerly trusted analysts. The established forces are horribly terrified by this thing not because of its properties but because it comes from Google and Google is known for embracing disruptive technologies.
*Actually, since I'm symbolset I'm going to pin the problem on a symbol here. "Compromise" is a part of negotiation where each party in the transaction surrenders part of their desires to move closer to their greater goal, valuing agreement over base principles. In security "compromise" means failed security in the sense "security was compromised". That means that some party agreed to something that allowed a security failure to occur. In security, compromise is a bad thing. If you're the kind of guy that works in an environment where if IT security fails, people die, you think about this stuff. If the scope of your work covers things less important like the survival of your business and your continued employment, maybe you're less careful.
Saying that you don't see something is a very different statement than saying that something isn't there. I don't quite see the compelling nature either but I'm willing to believe it's there. I haven't played with it yet but I'm sure I will. It's got tremendous buzz. The developer community is already all over this thing. I think as a VM for hosted desktop solutions it may have some merits - low cost, small footprint, minimal complexity, cloud storage. We'll see. I disagree with your assessment but respect it given your experience and intelligence.
As for pricing, well, not everything is about money.
It's Linux underneath so it's as much of a general OS as any. I'm sure all of the general drivers and applications can be added back in to make it a supercomputer compute node, file and print server, webserver, database server or full blown desktop, but that's probably not the point of the thing. As for the Droid, Sergey Brin has already said there's a good chance that Chrome OS and Android will converge into one OS eventually.
Yeah, its the Asberger's. Since we're on peeves Asberger's is possessive and gets an apostrophe.
where do we start to make it GO?
It can be helpful to engage an independent VAR. Not all, but some, offer presales assistance that includes needs assessment and design for free or at low cost. They do this with the hope that by demonstrating their technical prowess you will be more comfortable with buying from them, and in the hope that you'll engage their engineering teams for best-practice deployment consulting.
It sounds like the organization in the fine article doesn't have a lot of experience with this. Modern systems can be complex and a single configuration error can lead to downtime, wide-open security, and more. Ask slashdot is nice, but it's not a dialog with a certified professional with years of experience who's on your site and has spent some time understanding your network and needs.
What, 30 hours after the alpha drops, a full year before release, and it's already Google's most famous flop? Projecting a bit, aren't we?
I was already contrarian in yesterday's Chrome thread. Some people are asking "Does Chrome OS Spell the End of Desktop PCs?" I think the thing that's in the most danger of being taken over by Chrome OS is slashdot. Some people will make some interesting builds, and it will be a lot of fun to play with. It's doubtful much more will come of it than that.
But of course Microsoft and their friends at Forrester and Gartner, PC World and news.com.com.com will be declaring it a greater threat to world peace than Scientology, claim it causes genital warts, say that it may damage both your computer and your self esteem. The funniest thing I've seen along this line is this one.
Mining of any kind is an environmental nightmare. I imagine globalization has international companies avoiding the practice within the jurisdiction of the EPA as much as they can.
Pick a distro and knock yourself out.
Yeah, a lot of people don't see the business case for netbooks in the enterprise either. But that's where two thirds of them go. I guess there's no figuring some of this stuff - they make it, they put it out there, and the end market is some application none of the developers imagined or planned for. I think that's pretty cool actually.
I do try and stay away from the buzzword bingo. I'm not always successful. VDI is a negative for the chrome OS so far because it doesn't support remote desktop technologies yet that I know of. Then again, it's only been a couple days. Since it's open source people will be building virtual Chrome clusters this morning and using them for some of the most absurd purposes you can think of - some of which will work out. That's the power of FOSS. They'll probably have a Chrome Thin Client on a pendrive distribution available before the weekend is out, and it will probably include a quick script to download and install the Citrix client, but if they don't it's Linux so people can just install it themselves.
Cloud is cool if you understand it - but so few people do. So many people are pushing the cloud without understanding it that yes, talking too much about it in public can yield derision. When my brother asked me about it yesterday I was quite careful to define the scope of applicability first, build a strong conceptual wall around that, and then be enthusiastic for the thing in that limited scope. It's not a cure-all, but the idea has some powerful attributes.
Legacy is what everybody has, and it's important to serve the users we have with equipment we have. But we utterly rely on innovators to cut loose from the drag of legacy technologies and venture out in new directions if we are to have progress.
symbolset
Apparently mail delivery for that domain is down. Try gmail.
Did you know that all of the mainframe vendors (IBM and, uh, IBM) have built web front-ends to the mainframe so their platforms can remain relevant?
I already have browsers coming out my ears. I like doing some of my own processing on the fat multicores in my notebook.
That would be sweet. I'm having trouble seeing how this release is preventing you from doing that since you don't have to install it - in fact, installing this looks to be quite a chore. You should avoid it until it's more stable.
The hot new buzzword is "cloud", but the cloud is just virtual machines rendering services to clients, and the services are the same processing of storage to render output they always have been.
Google still hasn't shown a real 1) educational 2) business case 3) entertainment or 4) porn case for ChromeOS.
Ahem. It's been one day since they released the source code. They haven't launched the OS and don't intend to for a year. Don't you think you're being a tad bit impatient? If you want to test the alpha for those properties you're welcome to, but Google hasn't promised anything because it's very early.
Interesting note: Google has two operating systems released right now. How odd is that?
Ever not get a link right? Sometimes it's a nuisance that you can't edit a posted slashdot post. <sigh> I wouldn't change it though.
handwaving.
As long as I'm following up to fix the link, I might as well point out that this absurd article tries to tar Google's cloud services with Microsoft's T-Mobile Danger brush - as if the two were related in some way other than as polar opposites. That link works better if you're tying Microsoft's cloud services since they're the ones to fire the footgun in that case. They try and say that if you paid for Photoshop on your PC, you're licensed to use it on your netbook. They point out that this alpha OS that's a year from initial release hasn't signed a single cellular provider and doesn't yet support cellular wireless data - even though it was Google that made any-app-you-want any-device-you-want data-only wireless possible. They even quote an analyst from some thinktank I've never heard of (Interpret?). The only way to describe this article is "hit piece". Later let's examine why this author would do this, and who he's trying to help. For now I want to talk about the extremely disruptive nature of this change, in the context of stuff many of you don't konw.
Long ago there was this guy who wanted to make phone calls over radio. He was a bright guy and rigged up the radios to talk to the phone through an acoustic coupler, only to find that "The Phone Company" (at the time there was only one, AT&T) would not permit him to connect his device to a phone on their network. Like any stubborn geek he persisted in his insistence that his equipment could not harm their network. Unlike your common geek he sued all the way to the Supreme Court, gaining fame and support along the way. Ultimately his efforts resulted in the Carterfone decision, and all of the advanced telephony changes we enjoy today including dialup, wireless phones, cellular phones and the Internet, and propelled him to ignonimy. Somebody needs to find this man and reward him for what he's done for us. It is because of his persistence and efforts that the AT&T monopoly was broken and we enjoy the advancements we have today.
Kids today (lawn, get off) are going to have trouble grasping this idea, so let's walk it back and forget some things: Forget tweeting your various stages of pooping. Forget SMS'ing pics of the dead squirrel you found. Forget texting. Forget even calling Mom from the corner that you're going over to Tommy's house to play the latest online game, because none of that is possible. You're like the poor kids who have no cel, except nobody has one so it's NBD. Now forget wandering around the house with the wireless phone, because that wasn't possible either. Now you've got a phone or two in your house if you're not poor but you can only talk on them when you're withing a few feet because there's this coiled wire that connects you to the phone which is either mounted on the wall or attached to the wall with a wire so Mom can hear everything you say - but it gets worse! Mom can't even own this phone - she can't upgrade it to a new model from the store because it doesn't belong to her. She only leases it from the phone company. They don't even have to make new models of phone, because what is she going to do if they don't? The phone company can cut off even this limited access any time they like or charge her anything they like (and they liked a LOT) because they're not just the phone company - they're the phone company. They don't have to care -- that was actually their motto. "We don't have to care: We're the phone company." Oh, the horror! I wanted to rip the onion from my belt and throw it at them to express my disgust.
There's a lot of handwaving about how Chrome is not Windows, how it won't let you use photoshop on the netbook, as if you would. Here's a hint: if you're trying to run Photoshop on a 10" screen, you're doing it wrong.
Look for disastrous reports from Gartner, Forrester and of course the Rob Enderle / Maureen O'Gara flackalyst duet on how Chrome is the worst thing since smallpox. These are your clues that this is the real thing. They said the same things about the When Google says they released the source, people build it and publish virtual machines the same day.
Netbooks are stepping up in performance, as this four-threaded model shows, and will soon be able to do many more things. Yes, VDI is starting to ramp. There is still a place for Chrome. It's the dead-simple desktop interface that many of the technology impaired need. It's a point on the graph twice the distance on the line from Debian to Ubuntu.
A bunch of people are going to whine it doesn't support disk. It's a next-generation operating system and solid state is the storage of the next generation. It has local storage - just not the slow kind you're used to. There is no more reason to support the legacy spinning disk on this platform than there is to support tape storage or floppy disk. Moving parts are so 2008.
It's a trap!
/Wait... am I late? I'm always late to these things. It WAS a trap. The next one is not a trap though. The next one will be just fine. Trust me.
Or maybe the Droid was only released with Android 2.0 three weeks ago and it will take a few more days to build an installed base of people to sell your neat applications to. Earlier Android phones were cool and all, but the Android 2.0 platform and the hardware enhancements of the new platforms are what's going to build the market for these apps. Giving up at this point is just silly.