When I was getting into computers, the coolest thing I knew were the Sun workstations. I was friends with a U of Washington grad student (ca '91-92) and he let me get on his workstation at school from time to time. The monitor, of course, was huge, but the "cpu" was this flat, pizza box-shaped thing. "There's a hard drive in their?" I asked. "Yeah, but it's very minimal. My stuff is 'on the net,'" he said. "Oh," I said. At home I had a very minimal 486 with maybe 4mb ram and a 40mb hard drive, crappy monitor/card. So yes, even then, there was "cloud" i.e., the concept of "somewhere else" for "your stuff." I say the networked Unix workstation was "doing cloud computing" already 20-25 years ago. That was the Unix way, which was diametrically opposed to the weak, un-networked, single-user, single-processing, flaky DOS/Win PC experience. The whole Unix plan was a seamless, peer-to-peer world of Unix workstations growing and expanding. Now we have Linux as a de facto 2nd-generation Unix workstation. But it has grown up in this PC world both hardware- and network-wise. Sure, there are developer shops that use Linux exactly as the Unixae of old were used, but for so many of us we're isolated "behind" some ISP, simply replacing a Microsoft "home" or "business" computer with a 21 century Unix box. I'm not upset with Microsoft for the reasons most people are. I'm upset with them because they totally warped the evolution of computing into this crippled little "office/home" experience. Hey, they couldn't even do network file management until NT. For many years Novell had to do it for them. So the MS LAN experience, running MS Office on lame Windows iterations has so totally stunted computing that even these 20 years of Unix=Internet=Unix has only begun to roll the boulder aside. And of course we've accepted the MS control-freak model with our ISPs not allowing peer-to-peer, sticking us behind this or that barrier -- all for our own good -- because MS OSs have been for so many years so weak and poorly adapted to the Internet. So no, "cloud" was what Unix was always about. Unix was like the beautiful, mysterious fairy princess that gave birth to a wonderful child (microprocessor personal workstation computing, peer-to-peer, "network is the computer," academe/GNU mentality, Internet, etc.) and then had evil step parents (Microsoft) raise it. So is the child now grown up? Will Google obviate Microsoft? OlweGrand Marais, MN --- On Wed, 6/30/10, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> wrote: From: Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> Subject: Re: [tclug-list] Will Google rule with ChromeOS/Android? To: "TCLUG Mailing List" <tclug-list at mn-linux.org> Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 4:27 PM On Tue, 29 Jun 2010, Yaron wrote: > I just don't understand The Cloud mentality. It's nice to be able to access your data from any machine. It's nice to have someone else do your backups for you. They don't even charge for this. I think it's easy to see both good and bad in "The Cloud" (a strange name for giant metal boxes, by the way). > I want my data on MY MACHINE, in my DIRECT CONTROL. I want my > applications running on my machines, in my direct control, because if > the apps are running somewhere else, then somewhere else has my data. Me too. I do use Google Contacts, Google Calendar and Gmail, but the thing I like is that I *do* store everything on my own computer. You can have it both ways. I would not use Gmail if I didn't have absolutely every message immediately available on my own box. If Google vanishes tomorrow, I still have my data. > I know I'm at the extreme on this. Ever since the late 90s I've been > running my own webservers, my own DNS servers and my own Email servers. It's hard to run ones own email server. I used to do it, but there are hassles. That said, I might do it again someday. Meanwhile, Gmail provides my SMTP server. > I'm keeping my desktop, thank yoy. I'm keeping my 'monolithic' operating > system. I'm keeping my incredibly overcomplicated system, my incredibly > overcomplicated servers, my incredibly overcomplicated network setup, > and all my own data. You are better off, but I suspect you do this kind of thing for a living. It isn't an approach that you can recommend to most people. > And when there's a network outage, I'll still be able to access my > stuff. If the network outage is at Google and you are at home, sure. More likely, the network outage will be at home and you won't be there. I'm saying that a network outage is more likely to keep you from your data if you are storing/managing your own data than if Google is doing it for you. If Google is knocked off the web, it's probably worth about $10 million per hour for them to get back on, so you can bet they will be marshalling an awesome amount of technical power, attorneys, and anything else they can muster to fix it pronto. My ISP (Comcast) didn't mind when the cable was torn from my house by a garbage truck in the back alley. It took them almost a week to send someone out to fix it. Meanwhile, I could still look at Gmail using my cell phone. Mike _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota tclug-list at mn-linux.org http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20100630/6c4d75c5/attachment.htm