On 19/06/10 20:00, P Witte wrote: > 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. They said that COBOL was dead. it lives on many many years after it's alleged demise. The reaosn being, there are still far too many apps written in COBOL to be rewritten in "TNGT" (The Next Great Thing). COBOL is still with us, 10 years after the Y2K "problem".
Think about how many laptops, desktops and so on there are, even tablets and netbooks. The clouds (grey and miserable usually!) will not take that away. The applications may run on the cloud servers and the data may reside there too, but people sill still have DVDs to watch, CDs to listen to/rip to MPx/OGG/FLAC or whatever, emails to send etc. The desktop PC, like COBOL, is not dead - and won't be for a long time. > The issues you raise regarding privacy and security > will be solved, otherwise this idea will vanish (until needed on some > other occasion). The issue I have are simple, I don't *know* that my data are safe in the cloud. I don't know that the competitors I have cannot see my data. it's true I don't want to have to pay for all those servers when I can get space and rent someone else's, but I will never *know* how secure they are. Equally, when the cloud hosting company goes bust - where is my data and applications? Do I get them back? Or am I stuffed up beyond all recognition. My business could depend on it! <SNIP> > 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. There may well be old fogeys, like me and you ;-) but I don't think that "ludditism" will be the reason for not taking up the next fad. That doesn't mean to say lots of people won't be taking it up - after all, look how many iPads Apple have sold - and, as Darran pointed out, they are basically good looking but useless cr4p! > Still, I have a DropBox account, and find it very handy. Yes, but you are "Joe user" and not "Big Joe Company". DropBox isn't really the cloud, it's off site storage. Really. > Its like a folder in Explorer except its located in the Cloud. Come on! It's located in the "cloud". It's located on a server somewhere on the other end of your internet connection. That's all. Companies have been using this sort of "technology" for years. It's was never called the cloud back then. That's simply a bit more marketing hype - call something we already use by a trendy new name and watch the money roll in! I used to have some free disc space at Demon. It was there when I logged in on any computer, from any location. Granted it wasn't a drive mapped in explorer - but I have a network drive here that I can access from anywhere on the internet - but it's not cloud! It's network attached storage. I'm too much of a cynic I'm afraid to fall for the hype. > 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. This is exceedingly useful, I agree. But it's NAS, not cloud. > 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. Beware, if you mean your zip files have a password, do a quick Google for "cracking zip passwords" and be worried. I advise you get hold of something like Gnu Privacy Guard, crate yourself a pair of keys and use that to encrypt your data. Encrypt with the public key and decrypt with the private key. It's a lot safer than trusting a fairly easily broken zip file password. At work, and since before the Tax Man lost 29 million names, addresses and bank details, we have been using GPG (Gnu Privay Guard) on Windows and Linux to encrypt all data being sent off site. Each vendor must supply us with a public key before we will send them anything. A couple have refused, but when they didn't get the data, they soon capitulated! (I can be a right stubborn b'stard when I want to and when I'm protecting my sensitive data - I'm stubborn!) > So its not all bad. It may not be the final word in computing paradigms, There's never going to be a final word in paradigms. When one has been here for 30 seconds, it's so last week! Think Ruby On Rails - where's that nowadays? > but you dont NOT take the ferry because youre convinced that in ten > years time therell be a bridge. B*gger! No wonder I never got across the water! ;-) Equally, it doesn't mean you have to be on the maiden voyage either. Think titanic. > These DropBox guys dont at present seem to want to program you or rifle > through your private papers. Yes, maybe. But do you really really know that 100%. You and I have no idea what happens to your data when you don't control it. > 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. And to me. I have no problem with the off site storage, but not unless it's GPG encrypted. With a 2048 bit key as well! > 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?) I don't know. (to the latter question). They could be, given that GM almost went under during the banking crisis. > If it is, they must be doing something right. Google does a whole lot right. They don't like Microsoft for starters and that's impetus enough - for Google. They do some things badly as well though. > It is right if it makes > sense, but more often it is right if it makes a profit Think Betamax. It was "right" in that it was the better video format. But VHS won the race. <SNIP> > In the end it comes down to: "Eat shit! A trillion flies cant be wrong!" They might be wrong, how do we know. Maybe eating shit was the only option that they had - and they might survive on it, but do they like it? > 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.) I do indeed have a PC. Have you tried to buy anything else in the computing department these days - choice is fairly limited - PC or Mac. And the Mac is using Intel chips these days as well, so it's not really all that different now. They look better, I admit, but then again, I think my (bright cherry red) Dell laptop looks better than any Mac! > Per > (feeling a bit strange after those tablets my doctor gave me %o$ ) :-) Thanks Per, I do so enjoy a good rant! Cheers, Norman. _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
