Opinion: Woz Predicts a Horrendous Cloud, and I Agree

[d_kuhn]

All it will take is a few worst case scenario's blowing up in the clouds face to take the gilded shine off... in the consumer space it'll take media coverage of a disaster, in the corporate space it'll take a few high profile expensive blowouts.

Then there'll be a group rethink of 'the cloud', and what will emerge won't be the free for all Security and IP nightmare that currently exists.

 

[cknobman]

I dont "lease" cars.
I dont "subscribe" to music.
I wont put my sh!t on the cloud.

If I cant own it I dont want it. Subscriptions have their place just like the cloud but they are not for everything. I will always demand ownership of some things.

 

[nebun]

welcome to reality....ignorance is bliss

 

[ojas]

well i'm 19, saw companies like google and facebook rise, AoL fall, etc.

I, for one, only use the cloud to share large files or complete folders. Only cloudy things i use are steam and dropbox. of course, email too.

 

[Wizwill]

I have been immersed in all things electronic since my first crystal radio set. As a professional IT consultant for 20+ years, any client who has inquired about remote sensitive-data storage on a server not under their physical control has consistently received the same answer. A resounding "No way!". I think the so-called "cloud" (remote public 'server-based' data storage) is an very bad idea. And, unless THG is publishing selective comments, so do most of its readers.

Facebook WAS the "app of the decade" until the crucible of Wall Street pretty much leveled it (and, hopefully the rest of its genre). I wish "The Cloud" could be placed in a similar public forum for swift judgement and, hopefully, an equally swift crucifixion. Unfortunately, the private and (most especially!) governmental powers-that-be will probably never allow that sort of adjudication to come to pass because the data-mining potential of that much data just sitting there is like leaving stacks of hundred dollar bills lying on the street, just waiting to be picked up.

 

[TeraMedia]

If you think about it, the cloud is really the cheapo substitute that people use when they can't afford the higher costs (time, labor, HW, SW, space) associated with managing data themselves.

I use the cloud for personal email because I can't afford or justify the time investment required to manage a mail server at home. Am I happy about my email sitting out there in gmail/msn/yahoo/hotmail/whichever company's servers? No. But until I'm as wealthy as the average Hollywood A-lister, I won't have the time or money to run my own.

The same works for corporations. There are a bunch of sacrifices you make when you switch to the cloud, not the least of which may include the ability to positively influence your system's stability, robustness, performance, security, and manageability. But those are offset by cost savings. We try to tell ourselves that those sacrifices are also offset by having the best-in-breed security, A/V, network management, operations management and other cloud-provided features and capabilities... but unless you have a contract with specs and auditing rights, and you exercise those rights, there's really no way to know.

There is another type of ownership that many people - and perhaps almost all FB users - are sacrificing as well, and that is copyright ownership. When you post a pic to FB, my understanding is that you are giving FB full unfettered copyright privileges. I understand why this is the case - they need to be able to show your pic to your friends without you going and suing FB for doing so - but I think it could have been done differently and without such a heavy-handed, corporation-focused contract.

 

[frank_drebin]

i don't want to pay subscription fees just for storing stuff in the "cloud" . screw that. i m ok with my local storage

 

[jecastej]

To me the Cloud is just an additional convenience. It may be good for entertainment and for some none critical data. Even for some temporal not to critical files. But as others said I will never trust the Cloud, the files I care are backed up on my isolated HDs that I can turn on/off just when needed.

But also I won't pay to much or anything at all for a cloud service.

 

[Guest]

"Many of us lease cars, which is also - with a certain stretch - a kind of subscription."

"lease" a car??? I live in America pal, we don't have very much money here to "lease" a freak'n car! I drive an 18 year old POS that I payed for out of pocket. I've never -EVER- been able to afford to lease a car, let alone buy a new one, and I most likely never will the way this country is going down the toilet.

Everything I have, I "own". I hate this stupid "cloud" fad BS and I will freaking run down the street naked with a beer in one hand, risking being thrown in jail for exposing myself, and consuming alcohol in public (god I hate the US, can't even be naked and drink!) just because I'll be so fing happy that the curse once known as the "cloud" is no more. seriously, as an aging technician that first started on the Xerox Star, then moved to the NBI ubang, then to macintosh, I whole heartily agree with the great and all-mighty Woz. The Cloud needs to die.

Thanks

 

[kronos_cornelius]

This reminds me of the argument back in the 90's about the mouse replacing the keyboard. Now this fantasy was just before I started to get into computers, but the lesson is the same. The Cloud won't make hard drives go away. If you don't want stuff in the cloud, don't put it there. If you use Amazon for your music, you can download the mp3 of the music you own and store it in a format that is sure to play decades from now (unless some other iDRM service). The cloud is an option, not something that will be forced on consumers.

I own my car because I am not dumb enough to work to make some other guy rich. However, I do pay for an Internet subscription because it makes economic sense. In other words, the Cloud is an option just like leasing versus owning, you choose.

The only people threaten by the Cloud are the cows among us that adopt technology simply because every body else is doing it.

 

[Guest]

"The cloud is an option, not something that will be forced on consumers."

So the whole Cisco forcing it's users to connect to their "home" routers through the cloud was a fantasy? Cisco forcing a flash of said routers, that never happened either? Diablo III? EA's Origin? Steam? All these cloud services never existed? They never forced you to connect to their servers to play the games you wanted to play offline???

The cloud is a disease, a disease that needs to be eradicated before more companies FORCE users into virtual services that you must connect to to use.

The whole "the cloud is an option" is incorrect. It is becoming an everyday requirement.

 

[jdwii]

I'll never store anything i care about online, I like the idea of cloud but its not a 100% replacement of are data i think its nice to have a cloud based network in are house or business but not on the whole internet.

Such as having all dummy Laptops in the house that run off my beast desktop, But i'll never use a computer at my house that needs the internet just to log in!

The Internet is not everywhere and i can only get hugesnet in my area how the hell is cloud going to work when were capped so low, hell even DSL is getting capped to 150GB a month that is not a lot if all your data is online!!!!

 

[eddieroolz]

I disagree with the subscription mentality. I own nearly, if not all of my data and tangible things. I do not lease. I do not finance. I simply buy them outright. Same goes for data.

 

[sallyb1057]

Who says people in their 40's, 50's and 60's can't change anything anymore? Where do you think the experience to change the status quo comes from and why those in their 20's & 30's are happy with the way things are?!

 

[alcalde]

I mentioned this in another article: if you want the benefits of the cloud without the drawbacks, the trick is simply to create your own cloud. For hardware you could use anything from a tiny pogo plug, nettop or thin client up to any old PC you have. You could also use a hosted virtual personal server (VPS), although this doesn't remove 100% of the drawbacks of the cloud. You next need Linux. You could use Windows, but it's both an unnecessary expense (especially in ratio to the low cost hardware you'll be using) and if you want to use something like the pogo plug or raspberry Pi the version of Windows that runs on ARM won't be available to consumers, only OEMs. Finally more software exists to create a cloud on Linux.

There may also be some distros designed to be cloud servers, as well as virtual machines - in that case you could run it in a VM on Windows if you really wanted or had no extra hardware.

Episodes and show notes from several Linux Action Show episodes cover the software you'll need to replace Drop Box, GMail, etc.

http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/8211/bryan-smash-google-las-s16e09/
http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/8506/build-your-cloud-pt1-las-s16e10/
http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/17386/your-owncloud-las-s20e08/

Firefox's bookmark syncing code is open source too (and I believe now working with OwnCloud, a general-purpose cloud replacement software still in development for Linux) so one can even bring that "in house". OwnCloud offers file sharing and syncing, music streaming, calendar, contacts and webDAV so far and is in a constant state of continued development. RoundCube gives you webmail (Zimbra is another alternative), Feng Office can provide document services (a full-featured LibreOffice is coming for the web as well, probably next year). With calibre (not mentioned in the show notes) you can even serve up your e-book collection to your devices, read any of your books via a browser, or convert RSS feeds into e-books and serve those as well. Several backup solutions exist as well. Linux offers full-disk encryption, so your data can be physically safe as well.

You can have the benefits of the cloud without needing to rely on anyone else and their security, their failure to patch products, their willingness to offer access without a subpoena, their going bankrupt and disappearing with your data, etc. It just takes a little bit of knowledge and a lot of open source.

 

[spartanmk2]

Ahhh the great and powerful Woz, I wish he would sign my vintage 1977 Apple Two!

 

[cats_Paw]

Well, its quite easy. Our kids will live with it and accept it. We probably wont. I had the same idea long ago (if anyone checkes my opinion on this i think i wrote it about 20 times trying to warn ppl TT).

I grew up with starcraft broodwar, with offline, LAN! Now we dont get these things, and i have to admit that im surprised young kids just accept this.

In the end, i dont think it really matters. Critical thinking is something that has been effectivily dstroyed by our "modern" and "evolved" sociaty to the point of creating robots who do not decide what they want, but decide based on what is offered.

Lucky for me, that also means, people who are capable of critical thinking, will stay ahead of the next generation when it comes to effectivness, and i really look forward to it when dating or finding a job .

 

[tburns1]

I don't trust the cloud. But ...I don't want my PC turned inside-out via draconian DRM with every game I purchase. To avoid this, I only download *games* from the cloud (i.e. Steam).

 

[chibiwings]

guess being on a 3rd world country has it's own advantage =)

 

[nameon]

Which reminds me, better get my sh*t sorted... Havent been at it for a while now...

 

[stefanGR]

He's right , its all about control . You loose all of it in the cloud . And the malware/virus threat is what terrorism is in real life , a vague threat that makes you relinguish your freedom and be happy about it . Anyone been wondering why theres a huge push for internet speed ? Now you know . When everything is online , and you dont have storage locally , you will pay for everything as a utility . No more piracy , no more freedom , no more privacy , ridiculous terms of usage , and when you dont agree you will just be cut off . What a perfect world .....

 

[David Zember]

The cloud brings quite a few major advantages to end users, particularly to mobile users.

Remember that cloud computing is in its infancy. Sure, it may not be a secure storage method now, but in the future, expect it to change dramatically.

 

[Guest]

Unfortunately even if we personally do not choose, or submit, to using cloud computer farms, a growing number of institutions who possess our private information are. As an example, one of Amazon's largest cloud computer consumer demographics is the health care industry - hospitals and doctor's offices. As far as what these institutions and businesses actually choose to upload to Amazon's computer is not very often publicly discussed, but there's a distinct possibility it could be our confidential medical information. Therefore, the real concern may not be us as individuals choosing whether or not to personally use cloud computers, as much as whether or not medical, legal, and financial institutions who hold our truly sensitive information choose this option. That being said, these same institutions have for decades now acted as cloud computers, sans the new phraseology, in that our credit card and medical information have always resided on some external server. However, the problem becomes one of central locality, in that if my credit card is on one server, and my health information is on another a 1000 miles away, it becomes less likely that both will be stolen. But if they are both housed in the same facility they become more prone to hacking - either remotely, or on location by some low paid computer technician. I get that security measures are better than ever before, but so are hackers and thieves. Anyways, my point is that our family pictures movies aren't nearly as detrimental to us being stolen as our health and financial information, which is being stored on Amazon and Google's without our choice, or awareness, anyways.

 

[Guest]

Computers are being made into handheld gadgets, and jailbreaking them is going to get a lot harder. You won't be able to run any substantial software on those things, so you will need to use the apps on cloud servers. In the future, getting anything more than a graphics machine with a net connection will cost a lot of money.

 

[maddad]

To those who think it is ok since no damage was done, it was like a joke. Suppose someone loosens the gas line on your car. You run out of gas on the highway, but have the car towed since you know you have plenty of gas. The mechanic at the tow yard finds and fixes the loose gas line, you fill the tank back up and you are on your way. No harm done right it was just a prank; so why aren't you laughing?