"Cloud computing" - end of Personal Computers, end of freedom?

Some projects on a grand scale seem to be rather scary - resembling the science fiction movies, where big bad computer controls the whole world ("HAL 9000"). What is behind big "investment projects"? No more local hard drives? No more personal libraries of any kind? Absolute control of information?
..or just a simple natural progress in computing, more efficient ways to handle data?

www.fool.com...

I just hope that they will have to keep these boring PCs for rural, remote areas...hehe. So, this transition will be a little slower than they hope.

The Economist claims, "As computing moves online, the sources of power and money will increasingly be enormous 'computing clouds.'" David Hamilton of the Financial Post says this technology "has the potential to shower billions in revenues on companies that embrace it." And Nicholas Carr, former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review, has even written an entire book on the subject, entitled The Big Switch. In it, he asserts: "The PC age is giving way to a new era: the utility age." He goes on to make this prediction: "Rendered obsolete, the traditional PC is replaced by a simple terminal -- a 'thin client' that's little more than a monitor hooked up to the Internet." While that may sound far-fetched, in the corporate market, sales of these "thin clients" have been growing at over 20 percent per year -- far outpacing the sales of PCs.

[edit on 6-1-2010 by herbivore]

Cloud computing is doomed to fail. The recent news stories involving it show the major flaws of the system - single point of failure and thousands (if not more) of customers loose everything.

It is one of those things that look nice on paper, but practicality shows it doesn't work well in the real world. Things break. The problem with cloud computing is if something breaks, it affects a heck of a lot more then just one customer.

Someone will need to have a standard PC. Some people will program those "cloud devices" (clients). Personal computing is not going anywhere if you so choose to.

Probably more of us will use some small gadget for most of the time but no cloud computing - to be effective - would be costly.

Imagine milions of poeple editing their home digital movies... online

Yeah, right. How are you going ot transfer that data anyway?

The TV didn't kill the radio. The online books didn't kill the standard ones (although they're still trying, give me a foldable screen and I'll probably do the same ). The consoles didn't kill the PC and so on and so on.

What we're seing today is more possibilities. Each day there are tons of new ones. The old ones are dying slowly - don't worry

[edit on 2010/1/6 by krzyspmac]

The future seems to be heading away from centralization and towards a more holographic direction. At least I hope so.

Originally posted by TLomon
The recent news stories involving it show the major flaws of the system - single point of failure and thousands (if not more) of customers loose everything.

If they had a single point of failure in the cloud, then the cloud was not setup correct. Not redundant. Server, powersupply, switches, core routers, networkkabels and sans.

Datacenter single point of faillure? Then mirror / standby a second cloud in a other datacenter.

In a cloud it should not matter if a server/swtich/san/router would go up in smoke. If you had set it up properly. But it comes mostly down on the available money.

Originally posted by Deny Arrogance
The future seems to be heading away from centralization and towards a more holographic direction. At least I hope so.

Possible with cloud technology!

[edit on 6-1-2010 by Rorror]

Well, I can't argue your point about the single point of failure. However, there is still a single point of screwing up.

The Microsoft/Danger/T-Mobile Sidekick Fiasco is NOT a Failure of Cloud Computing!

Interesting timeline of the Sidekick fiasco.

Cloud Computing is destined to go the same way as Thin-Net which was the exact same concept but failed miserably. So, 10 years go by and they rebrand the Thin-Net concept under a different name and give it another try. For all the same reasons Thin-Net flopped, Cloud Computing will do so too.

However, we already store tons in the Cloud. How many people have Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail accounts with all their personal e-mail stored in the Cloud? What about those people doing Remote Online Backups of their data? What about everyone who is storing their pictures in the Cloud on Photobucket, ImageShack, Flickr, Picasa, Shutterfly, Snapfish, etc. Or what about those who is using online apps such as Google Apps for their shared Calendar, Contacts and Documents?

Hundreds of Millions of people already use Cloud Computing for a myriad of needs!

You do understand that the laws covering Unlawful Search & Seizure only pertain to physical property in your possession. As you do not have ownership rights over Google's Cloud Servers, then they can be Searched by anyone that Google allows, all without you ever knowing.

You also understand that the Terms of Service that you agree to when you sign-up for those services indemnifies the provider of that Service from wrong-doing or from violating your privacy, and from Copyright Infringement if they happen to use your images, contacts, e-mail, etc. for themselves. Google uses the contents of your Gmail to use directed advertising. Every Webmail provider uses your contacts to sell to marketers and advertisers. Most of the photo sharing services sell your photos to ad agencies.

For those that take their privacy seriously, nothing beats storing data locally on a boot-encrypted drive with triple-encryption. For those that want to retain Rights over their Intellectual Property, you'd never think of storing it in the Cloud.

Cloud computing will never come to be.

I know people who have already received phone calls from certain companies asking my friend if they would like to have their VoIP servers hosted on a Cloud network.

My friends you could say are "security savvy", and like myself; we all disagree on Cloud Computing.

Cloud computing has already been labeled as "a big white elephant" by all leading network security consultants.

EDIT: Cloud computing will more than likely be digested by Social Networking Sites and starter companies. The owners of said companies and websites will find out that they made a bad move. It will be a big flop, and life will continue as normal. Too much security issues with CLOUD.

[edit on 6/1/2010 by the_denv]

If your actually concerned about this issue and you have a high enough aptitude to understand the article you will just build your own PC. You will still have your own library of media. If its DRM then you will find a way to crack it and save it at home on your own media.

reply to post by IntelRetard


What if, 10 years from now, there is no hardware available to store anything on? You can maintain your PC only so long without spare parts....

cloud computing is a good thing ... imagine that you wont need to process that much data in your computer ... a lot of people couldnt run a software like Photoshop or whatever, since their computer cant run, but in a browser cloud computing like, its possible

I dont believe everything is going to be cloud computing, but lets just say

- email is a good cloud computing application, its amazing ... you can open anywhere you go
- applications that need a lot of computing power, that would take too long in your computer ...
- games could have a cloud computing future if they can fix the latency problem
- applications that you need to use access everywhere u go, like in your job, home, cellphone, videogame, whatever ... just like an email type application ...

for the people who say, ahhh they are going to control all your information

WAKE UP, they already can do that my friend, it wont be cloud computing that will make you lose your freedom

Originally posted by fraterormus
Hundreds of Millions of people already use Cloud Computing for a myriad of needs!

This forum uses Cloud Computing

Originally posted by the_denv
Cloud computing will never come to be.

I know people who have already received phone calls from certain companies asking my friend if they would like to have their VoIP servers hosted on a Cloud network.

My friends you could say are "security savvy", and like myself; we all disagree on Cloud Computing.

Cloud computing has already been labeled as "a big white elephant" by all leading network security consultants.

EDIT: Cloud computing will more than likely be digested by Social Networking Sites and starter companies. The owners of said companies and websites will find out that they made a bad move. It will be a big flop, and life will continue as normal. Too much security issues with CLOUD.

[edit on 6/1/2010 by the_denv]

gmail is used by everyone everywhere ... I never heard of some big security flaw ...
I never lost data in gmail ... so I am fine with that ... applications in browser will be the future, thats the truth, so cloud computing will happen

it will be something less expensive than if you had to buy your own high powered computer to do some tasks that cloud could do to you

its not like they will make you store all your data in a cloud, well, you could do that if u want, but its not like you wont have an option

but with the internet evolution, you wont need to store that much data in your computer ... so there will be a lot of services for u to buy movies and watch anytime anywhere, music too ...

a good example about cloud computing is an application that would run the games for u in a cloud, so you wouldnt have to buy an xbox and a wii and a high powered pc to run these games, you would just need to have some cheap adapter, plug into any kind of monitor you have and its done, you would be able to run any game u want ...

with the advance of the internet speed, there wont be a need for big hard drives so a cloud will have to happen ....

Without a solid state drive to lock down information and files this is guaranteed to be a headache for personal pc users and a daydream for hackers....You thought you'd have to worry about your stuff on your hard drive? Imagine having everything, every piece of data in the internet on some server god knows where.

For practical uses I don't see this going far...In the business sense it has potentially many kinks that need to be worked out first and there are factors that could devastate this before it gets a chance to move forward.


I think the personal computer could be optimized a bit better...but not this way. This is a dangerous road to head into the information age with...

.... and what happens when someone, somewhere arbitrarily decides you're guilty of some online crime and decides to not allow you to go online any more?

No more computing for you?

Cloud computing as another option = OK
Cloud computing as replacement for a full blown PC? = No way. not interested

Most of you seem to agree that cloud compting is on the way out with the dodo. Let me be the one to fan the flames.

I was like you seeing cloud computing as a problem to fight as a business prospect for good reasons:

We still have not made any laws regarding the data. If a business has a server on a cloud with some ISP or other entity, that goes bankrupt, or endures a hostile take-over only to be dissected and shut down, then what happens to the data? What guarantee do you have that the data really is private? Corporations have alread lost all data due to a cloud service going bankrupt.

To be honest, this is not why I'm here. I'm replying to bring attention to something that genuinely scared me as a technologist and I am trying to spread the word.

Late last year I attended a VMWare group meeting with a VMWare rep and several cloud server providers. The cloud providers are not slowing down, they are ramping up. And they are doing it in concert with VMWare. VMWare announced that they are currently working with Intel to produce laptops with no native operating systems, but rather a VMWare boot screen requiring you to choose an image...provided by a cloud provider for a monthly fee. The cloud companies are currently preparing for this sudden surge and creating VM workstations in preperation for this release.

When I heard this I was genuinely scared for the future of computing. Literally they could control all data flow. And as they say, if you control the flow of data, you can control the masses. I am not a conspiracist, however the writing is on the wall, they have announced their plans. And if you think that these companies could be trusted with allowing the free flow of info, let me just remid you that in the not too distant past we heard many stories of ISP's filtering the content their users see.

When Apple announced that they were going to start using Intel processors, I used a G4 mac at that time, I warned that we would see a multitude of new macs running windows. I was called crazy, and scoffed. Not 6 months after their arrival to the market, we saw a huge influx of macs running windows that were having problems. I'm smart enough to understand the issues, I've worked in the technology field for 15 years and I heard the intent from the horses mouth. Do not take this lightly, be mindful, and watch for this to become more of an issue.

The other technology they are working on is a vmware for cell phones allowing you to have 2 cell OSes operating on the same cell at the same time in a split screen so you can have a work phone and a personal phone on the same device. That's kinda cool, but the latter is downright dangerous to the populus. Jus thought you should know what I heard.

-Mac

reply to post by macinslaw


Of course we are not "taking it lightly", but what can you do?

It is impossible (as far as I know) to build your own computer at home (including the manufacturing of all electronic components). So, once they are all obsolete, that's it.
George Orwell could not predict this kind of control tool...it will go beyond any science fiction, you will have a huge monitor at home that will control you day and night...if you are let to live, of course.

But, there is no such thing as complete control, and, sooner or later, this too shall pass...

I've been beta testing one Linux based Cloud OS and I can't say it is doing any harm.. all my stuff is stored locally on nas drives.. but it does allow me an additional level of backup should I need it..

All my programs are hosted locally on my machine, some are front ends.. But then again a lot of internet software now is only a front end to someone elses system anyway so no change there.

So it depends if you want to be become dependent on external network or your own internal network.. I personally will always go for an internal network that I can keep within my control.. but do understand that not everyone can do this with the amount of data they accumilate, sometimes it is easier to hand it over to someone else to manage, but personally I dislike placing my files on someone elses drives and in their hands to ensure they remain safe.

You must not fully understand cloud computing of you think it could be the end to freedom.

reply to post by '___'omino


Cloud computing is not the end of the freedom....but it is the beginning of the end.