P Witte wrote, on 19/Jun/10 20:00 | Jun19:
Norman Dunbar wrote:
George,
The current trend appears to be towards Cloud computing,
Aha! But how do you program for this?
Cloud is the latest marketing paradigm/buzz word to hit the IT world.
Like most other "next great things" it will pass and fade from memory.
All it means is that instead of you or your company owning a pile of
servers onto which you install and run stuff, like Oracle databases,
WebLogic app servers and so on, huge companies like Amazon and
(possibly) Google own the servers and you rent space on them as and when
you need.
You pay by the time used and if you need, say, to run a training course,
switch on a few more processor cores (or whatever) and pay the extra for
that training course only.
The problem is, all your data is on Amazon's servers - do you know that
Amazon are making the security work? How safe is your data? Who else can
see it?
It's fine under certain circumstances, but personally, I don't trust it.
However, I have become very cynical with the IT business - having been
in it far too long - and all these "next great things" that so far, have
all come to nothing!
Best avoided.
But surely you see that it could spell then end of the Personal
Computer, in which case the "next great thing" becomes significant and
not merely a fad. The issues you raise regarding privacy and security
will be solved, otherwise this idea will vanish (until needed on some
other occasion). The most common devices to access these vast
resources may well look very different from our standard PCs of today.
They could be small, always-online mobile devices with lots of bling
and little brain. In other words smartphones or iPads or what have you.
Of course there will be thousands of old fogeys, like me, and perhaps
you, who wont take to all that jazz, but will continue to issue our
curses and incantations over strange black boxes from another era,
nay, civilisation. Still, I have a DropBox account, and find it very
handy. Its like a folder in Explorer except its located in the Cloud.
Anything I copy there is immediately replicated across all my PCs and
physically reside there, as well as in the cloud. If my house burns
down with my computers and backups I can still access my data from
anywhere. If the Cloud should become inaccessible, I still have copies
across my computers. Privacy? I only store zipped and encrypted files
in DropBox unless I decide to share.
So its not all bad. It may not be the final word in computing
paradigms, but you dont NOT take the ferry because youre convinced
that in ten years time therell be a bridge.
These DropBox guys dont at present seem to want to program you or
rifle through your private papers. I suppose they make their money by
getting you addicted and then selling you more space above the two Gig
"free" bait. Seems fair enough to me.
Google Docs, Calendar, etc are really a peek into a possible future of
Cloud Computing. (Is it true that Google is as big as General Motors?)
If it is, they must be doing something right. It is right if it makes
sense, but more often it is right if it makes a profit and so you make
damned sure it makes sense too, by making every other way of doing
things increasingly difficult and expensive, and finally obsolete.
In the end it comes down to: "Eat shit! A trillion flies cant be
wrong!" We all do it, you know. We all finally succumb to that
scatological temptation. (Hands up all here with PCs! Right! See! I
rest my case.)
.... well a Macbook (8-)#
I guess I use a cloud of sorts - but it is:
1) VPN to my space on a Worldnews machine
2) Mapping a drive on my server in Maidenhead.
I feel secure with these as I am in control and I *know* they have
secure firewalls and logins, especially the WN VPN. I would not like to
have my data unencrypted with a third party.
Tony
--
QBBS (QL fido BBS 2:257/67) +44(0)1442-828255
t...@firshman.co.uk http://firshman.co.uk
Voice: +44(0)1442-828254 Fax: +44(0)1442-828255 Skype: tonyfirshman
TF Services, 29 Longfield Road, TRING, Herts, HP23 4DG
_______________________________________________
QL-Users Mailing List
http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
