On Thursday 09 July 2009, Sean Dague wrote: > Chris Knadle wrote: > > On Wednesday 08 July 2009 07:32:52 Maxim Shkurygin wrote: > >> I am sure everyone already saw this coming, but now it's > >> official - yesterday google announced Google Chrome OS > >> (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrom > >>e-os.html), which is basically a modified linux kernel with > >> Google Chrome intended for network/cloud OS. > > > > It sounds like it's another niche Linux distro. > > > >> All software for it will be hosted online so the > >> user won't have to worry about installing software or data > >> backup. > > > > "All my data is on the web" is exactly what I don't want. If my > > data is local, yes I have to do backups, but I have *control* of > > the data. If my data is only remote, then I loose control of it > > -- it can be lost in a crash, go offline with net breakages and > > data center power problems, or I can loose access to it by having > > my account deleted. These things happen. > > While I get your point of view, it's definitely more of a minority.
Sure. But what does that really mean? > Just look at how many people have switched to gmail as their > primary email. :) I haven't, and other email administrators I know haven't either. [I have a Gmail account -- mostly for email testing purposes.] If anything, email administrators I talk to lament about Google's Gmail behavior. At least for a while Gmail seemed to be accepting email unauthenticated and then bouncing the non-existant destination addresses, causing massive backscatter spam. And from what I've been told, it's apparently very difficult to get in touch with anyone in mail administration at Google; emails to [email protected] or [email protected] yield no replies. Blocked IP, mail addresses, or domains get a cryptic explanation at best, and there's little or no recourse since there's no way to get in touch with the mail administration team. This is generally true of any large email service such as Yahoo, Hotmail, etc, but apparently Gmail is even worse in this regard. [I'm not personally having any particular trouble, but I'm also not running a large mailing list.] >From the user standpoint Gmail looks like a godsend -- less spam, free service, large company behind it keeping it working, plus options for IMAP and POP if you don't like webmail. However most people don't think twice about what it really means for a large company to be holding all of your email communications. Few if any ever read the terms of service, and if you look, there's always an "out" in the terms of service for anything vaguely related to law enforcement. >From what I gather in the news, these days law enforcement need only make a request without any court order for email records to be retrieved and passed along. And the built-in conflict of interest with the fact that Google is a company that built their empire on SEARCH and the thought of them hosting my email makes me go "Hmmm..." The real reason Gmail is gaining so many users is really because these days it is either very time consuming or costly to administer email in-house. Email is one of the more difficult services to administer (I've been told it's the most difficult, actually) because of the fine line the admin has to play between RFC compliance and real-world spam rejection or elimination attempts, maintaining performance, and the constant influx of questions of "Why did this happen?" from users of the system that most admins would rather not deal with. Most would rather avoid the hassle -- Gmail is an easier option, and so then we try to forget about the hidden costs and potential risks. I don't blame you or anybody else for that -- but when you imply I'm crazy for NOT using it, don't be surprised when I ask "Oh, really? Sure about that?" ;-) > Maybe in the future (next real) we could get some of our super > secret friends at Google to give a talk on it. ;) I'd like that too. And no, I don't plan to heckle. :-P I'm always interested in how others configure mail systems, and it would be especially interesting to get a technical glimpse of any large email system. > > I've heard statements like this for over 15 years now, and IMHO > > it's still not the case. There are always going to be exceptions > > where a browser-based UI is not a good fit. Most apps, sure -- > > all apps, no. Not universal. > > I'm actually amazed at how close we are. Every application I have > open right now besides emacs has a passable web alternative (most > written by google, and just come out of beta). Something that > makes me think Chrome OS might have some legs is google gears, > which lets you do offline web applications. > http://gears.google.com/ Anything 3D would be troublesome for a web app, anything that needs speed or high performance, heavy computation... etc. I also personally don't like the paradigm of "everything in the browser" -- although I did carefully consider it when I started to write the RF data plotting application I'm currently writing, because writing for the browser does have immediate cross-platform benefits. > Anyway, the speculation is fun. :) And it's nice that Linux got > some mentions in all the mainstream media I heard about Chrome OS. One speculation I found interesting was the thought that Chrome OS might use X. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle [email protected] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Jul 1 - Linux High Performance Computing Aug 5 - TBD Sept 2 - Linux and HDTV
