Personal computing discussed

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Will the cloud computing take over?

Yes
7 (7%)
Yes for enterprise
13 (13%)
Yes for home
4 (4%)
Hard to say
14 (14%)
No
49 (51%)
Cheese!!
10 (10%)
 
Total votes: 97
 
Flatland_Spider
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Mon Mar 26, 2012 7:46 pm

Madman wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
Madman wrote:
...

If your app doesn't require a heavy-duty server a cloud-based VM is a lot cheaper than co-location. It's also a lot more flexible, regardless of the size of server you need.

Still more expensive and less flexible than renting virtual server in collocation facility :roll: Nowadays they go for almost free.


A VPS still has the same problems the cloud does, after all VM servers had the cloud possible.
 
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Mon Mar 26, 2012 7:47 pm

just brew it! wrote:
Madman wrote:
StuG wrote:
I work in web-hosting and I think it's going to take center stage in the coming years.

But why? It's a lot more expensive than collocation over 1 year period.

If your app doesn't require a heavy-duty server a cloud-based VM is a lot cheaper than co-location. It's also a lot more flexible, regardless of the size of server you need.


The big thing you have to consider, and hence why I prefaced with it, is that I work in the web-hosting industry. Many of our clients want fully managed services where we are dealing with all the issues, and not them. So in that regard, you can understand why a collocation service would not work for the clientele base I'm referencing.
 
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:02 pm

just brew it! wrote:
I sometimes wonder whether the convergence of IPv6, better wireless connectivity, and more powerful mobile devices will eventually spark yet another paradigm shift, where the pendulum swings back towards decentralized systems again. This paradigm shift won't come from the established players (telecoms and content providers) though; they've got way too much invested in being the gatekeepers and traffic cops to turn control back over to the users.


Dumb pipes with huge amounts of throughput in both directions, and I can smoothly move around while I have continuous access to my systems has been a dream of mine for a long time. :) Unfortunately, there's not much development in distributed systems.

The gatekeepers and traffic cops have proven time and time again to be too authoritarian and repressive for centralized systems to survive. Inevitably someone with a napolean complex ends up in charge and people revolt. The information gets disseminated, and everything is democratized.
 
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:11 pm

I work on a cloud system for student demographic/attendance/grades/etc. data and what schools have proven over and over is that the weak point in our case is the user. Administration requires strong passwords. Teachers write down passwords that they can't remember. Students log in and change their grades. Only now they can do it at home when nobody's looking.
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Flatland_Spider
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Mon Mar 26, 2012 10:59 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
I work on a cloud system for student demographic/attendance/grades/etc. data and what schools have proven over and over is that the weak point in our case is the user. Administration requires strong passwords. Teachers write down passwords that they can't remember. Students log in and change their grades. Only now they can do it at home when nobody's looking.


I had fun when I worked for a school district as a tech. It was the worst of everything. :) Large amounts of openly hostile users, inept users, shoestring budgets. It was a simpler time then.
 
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Tue Mar 27, 2012 9:31 am

A thousand times NO. Enough computing power exists even in the least powerful devices that there's really no real need to have some other remote computer do all the processing. Internet bandwidth, as it is, however, still has a long way to go, particularly in countries that aren't very well off.

Some lightweight apps, such as your Yahoo! mail, do well on the 'cloud', but I can't imagine many other things being the case. Of course, I'm not Steve Jobs and I don't have a crystal ball, so...
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LaChupacabra
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Tue Mar 27, 2012 11:05 am

ronch wrote:
Enough computing power exists even in the least powerful devices that there's really no real need to have some other remote computer do all the processing.


Agreed.

I believe this to be a huge business opportunity. Where I used to work I was ordering quad-core dell machines (i5-2400's) for essentially e-mail and as a terminal to an as-400. Other departments did different things, but it was essentially lightweight work. The reason I was over purchasing on these systems is I couldn't convince the VP's that we didn't need to spend the 1,000 dollars a system the guy I replaced insisted was necessary (these systems, with 3 year next business day support were under 600$).

Anyway, I bet there would be a market if someone came up with some sort of server/client software (like folding at home) that businesses could deploy inside their networks to take advantage of the hundreds of PC's that are basically doing nothing. If it was written well and the financial incentive was good enough (this would be for the marketing guys to figure out, electricity in some places isn't cheap and the systems would die earlier) I could see it making sense for some businesses.

Back to the cloud thing, though, it's still hard to accept your point of failure being an internet connection. Twice in the last year our main pipe was cut by construction workers. Being at the mercy of Charter for uptime is not an ideal scenario.
 
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Tue Mar 27, 2012 11:29 am

I'd say yes between 10-20 years from now. We are still currently struggling to expand infrastructure. Its possible some new tech will allow us to leapfrog our current growth but it will be at least 10 years before 95 percent of consumers can manage a decent enough of a connection to do this I expect.
 
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Tue Mar 27, 2012 11:34 am

LaChupacabra wrote:
ronch wrote:
Enough computing power exists even in the least powerful devices that there's really no real need to have some other remote computer do all the processing.


Agreed.

I believe this to be a huge business opportunity. Where I used to work I was ordering quad-core dell machines (i5-2400's) for essentially e-mail and as a terminal to an as-400. Other departments did different things, but it was essentially lightweight work. The reason I was over purchasing on these systems is I couldn't convince the VP's that we didn't need to spend the 1,000 dollars a system the guy I replaced insisted was necessary (these systems, with 3 year next business day support were under 600$).

Anyway, I bet there would be a market if someone came up with some sort of server/client software (like folding at home) that businesses could deploy inside their networks to take advantage of the hundreds of PC's that are basically doing nothing. If it was written well and the financial incentive was good enough (this would be for the marketing guys to figure out, electricity in some places isn't cheap and the systems would die earlier) I could see it making sense for some businesses.

Back to the cloud thing, though, it's still hard to accept your point of failure being an internet connection. Twice in the last year our main pipe was cut by construction workers. Being at the mercy of Charter for uptime is not an ideal scenario.


Yeah, a type of network computing function would be very impressive, would remove the need for larger servers for small-medium sized business'. put a app on each computer and let its extra resources scale dynamically to meet the needs of the network. Besides centralized storage and backup this would be huge and would tap into so much underutilized tech sitting in each office.
 
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Tue Mar 27, 2012 12:25 pm

Flatland_Spider wrote:
derFunkenstein wrote:
I work on a cloud system for student demographic/attendance/grades/etc. data and what schools have proven over and over is that the weak point in our case is the user. Administration requires strong passwords. Teachers write down passwords that they can't remember. Students log in and change their grades. Only now they can do it at home when nobody's looking.

I had fun when I worked for a school district as a tech. It was the worst of everything. :) Large amounts of openly hostile users, inept users, shoestring budgets. It was a simpler time then.

The technical people at schools are heroes that make everything happen with almost nothing. I have huge amounts of respect for those folks.
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Tue Mar 27, 2012 8:11 pm

ronch wrote:
A thousand times NO. Enough computing power exists even in the least powerful devices that there's really no real need to have some other remote computer do all the processing. Internet bandwidth, as it is, however, still has a long way to go, particularly in countries that aren't very well off.

Some lightweight apps, such as your Yahoo! mail, do well on the 'cloud', but I can't imagine many other things being the case. Of course, I'm not Steve Jobs and I don't have a crystal ball, so...

I'm amused by this illogical post.

The more I read in this thread, the more I think:
a.) the responders know nothing about software industry.
or
b.) really don't understand "the cloud" at all

I can talk at least about my opinion on replacing home software... and I'd say the industry is moving in that direction but it will be a while and there will always be some applications where it doesn't make sense. Overall, I think it makes a lot less sense for any kinda of "consumer" type app with the exception of a few limited cases.
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Tue Mar 27, 2012 8:16 pm

It's one thing to go thin client and push/process all apps from/on a server in the same building/campus, but yet still under your direct control (in fact, it's one of our "good ideas" when it comes to controlling/preventing the ID10T & PEBKAC errors). Pushing apps into the cloud, where you have no idea where execution takes place and what might have been tampered with at the various points of execution, is simply a non-starter in my day job. Some are sniffing around cloud storage while we regulators scowl (but moving to cloud gives us the legal authority to examine/audit the cloud) but no one in the industry would ever think of trusting execution resources to unknown/unknowable cloud vendors.

Write all the Google Apps you want, and PM me when one of them turns into a core banking platform that I can examine through six degrees of freedom and be satisfied in the end.
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Tue Mar 27, 2012 8:36 pm

Captain Ned wrote:
It's one thing to go thin client and push/process all apps from/on a server in the same building/campus, but yet still under your direct control (in fact, it's one of our "good ideas" when it comes to controlling/preventing the ID10T & PEBKAC errors). Pushing apps into the cloud, where you have no idea where execution takes place and what might have been tampered with at the various points of execution, is simply a non-starter in my day job. Some are sniffing around cloud storage while we regulators scowl (but moving to cloud gives us the legal authority to examine/audit the cloud) but no one in the industry would ever think of trusting execution resources to unknown/unknowable cloud vendors.

Write all the Google Apps you want, and PM me when one of them turns into a core banking platform that I can examine through six degrees of freedom and be satisfied in the end.

I'm not arguing that it will take over everything. There are situations where it would not make sense.
I'm just boggled that most don't seem to be seeing the huge advantages in a few cases, which I imagine is because they don't understand some part of the problems existing in some areas or don't understand the cloud.

Personally, consumer applications make little sense to me ... and their move to the cloud is more about control on the side of the industry than any other advantages.
The benefits on the software industry side will hurt the hardware side, though.

As per your complaint about untrusted vendors, I'd imagine that will become less of an issue moving foward. However, in some cases and for some stubborn people ;) you could just use a private cloud where your organization would still have all control. And again, there are cases where even that would not make sense... however, I'd argue that the cases where some "cloud" solution doesn't make sense are much fewer than cases where it would make sense.
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Tue Mar 27, 2012 8:49 pm

danny e. wrote:
As per your complaint about untrusted vendors, I'd imagine that will become less of an issue moving foward. However, in some cases and for some stubborn people ;) you could just use a private cloud where your organization would still have all control. And again, there are cases where even that would not make sense... however, I'd argue that the cases where some "cloud" solution doesn't make sense are much fewer than cases where it would make sense.

Actually, the financial space is finally catching on to Larry Ellison's thin client idea of 2 decades ago. The average office drone can deal with the latency of a server-run instance of Word, Excel, or Outlook, the core banking apps all run in emulation anyways, and the lack of any removable storage option on the average drone's desk is a win-win. Yes, there will always be some people who need real hardware (the financial modellers first off) and that's easily dealt with. Instead of buying desktops for all and trying to find something to do with the unused cycles the industry is finally realizing that, in their particular space, Ellison was right.

Look, it's going to be hard enough to get us regulators to accept cloud storage until and unless we know exactly which data center and have the ability to go to that data center and run our tests. Moving execution off-site, as I said before, is simply beyond the pale. Given the massive increases in server power, thin client is finally ready for prime time.
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Tue Mar 27, 2012 9:00 pm

Alas, I guess I can at least share the information we've gone public with:
http://www.apihealthcare.com/cloud-solutions

reading that won't provide all the insight but if you think a little about it beyond what the words say then some of the huge advantages should start to become clear.
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Tue Mar 27, 2012 9:03 pm

danny e. wrote:
Alas, I guess I can at least share the information we've gone public with:
http://www.apihealthcare.com/cloud-solutions

And what do you show the HIPAA examiners when they ask pointed questions?
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:27 am

Captain Ned wrote:
danny e. wrote:
Alas, I guess I can at least share the information we've gone public with:
http://www.apihealthcare.com/cloud-solutions

And what do you show the HIPAA examiners when they ask pointed questions?

I'd imagine a company like this has a better implementation of HIPAA security and privacy standards than the hospitals themselves. When I worked at a claims-adjusting startup, we had hospital IT folks email us password-protected WinZip files as if that met the encryption standard (sigh). We installed a lot of GPG instances for our clients :-).
 
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Wed Mar 28, 2012 5:24 am

enable organizations to operate more cost-effectively

What the ...? Why everyone keeps saying that cloud is cost effective, what kind of skewed math do you have to use to arrive at such desicion?
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Wed Mar 28, 2012 10:56 am

Madman wrote:
enable organizations to operate more cost-effectively

What the ...? Why everyone keeps saying that cloud is cost effective, what kind of skewed math do you have to use to arrive at such desicion?


Some of it does make a lot of sense for small business. Office 365 is great example. I wouldn't use it for Word or Excell, but for 6 bucks a month you get a fully hosted Exchange system in the cloud. Users sign in to Outlook like they normally would, have your own domain, etc. etc. But the directory and all the services are hosted by Microsoft. For an office of 5-10 people paying 30-60 dollars a month for an Exchange server isn't a bad deal.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office36 ... yD5CrKiGiV

I'll stick by my guns on most cloud based services being terrible solutions. The idea of storing any kind of private company data on someone else's server is just idiotic. I also wouldn't trust any application that runs in the cloud, if only because you are at the mercy of any software or UI element changes your cloud service provider (I'm going to coin the term CSP) decides to roll out. The day Microsoft switched Word and Excell in Office 365 to a metro style interface is the day that any kind of office productivity would plummet.
 
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Wed Mar 28, 2012 9:13 pm

This really depends on the type of work or use someone has - most know the benefits (ease of management, no need to backup, access anywhere) and drawbacks (loss of control, privacy, service/bandwidth issues) of this, so it all boils down to use.

For office work, data entry, tablets, phones, and social networks, cloud is certainly the way to go, as the drawbacks are minimal and the benefits are magnified. At your work, your company controls (or should control...) all the data, bandwidth is not a concern, and they can centrally management everything.

For "hardcore" graphically/computationally demanding games, scientific/industrial apps/databases with large data sets, content/multimedia production, sensitive data/paranoid users, cloud does not make a lot of sense for technical and security reasons - the local desktop or at least locally controlled resources make more sense.

And this does not mean a one or another scenario either. For instance, when I'm at work, we have shared drives, intranets, share point, synced calendar/email/contacts through outlook in a somewhat "cloud" model on our laptops and mobiles. But at home, I have a few systems (and an iPad - yey) and though they are networked, they are more individually "traditional desktop" or server oriented (ie; bitcoin, main game machine, router/nas, test machine etc...) than "cloud" oriented, as that's what makes natural sense for me. So again, it depends on the situation for the workload and use.

Bottom line is that we now have more flexible options than in the past; it doesn't mean that near-line video production and non-encrypted private data belongs in the cloud, or that social networking needs to start using floppies for data exchange - it just means that we have more options and need to know the realistic benefits and drawbacks in a given scenario to make the right choices.

For me (and many tech types), I wish there was more emphasis on the "private home could", which in my mind means robust linux programs that could live on a SOHO style linux server and provide media (uPnP, DNLA, webmail, TV/content streaming) and easy interfaces/apps to andriod/iOS/mobile, VPN, and robust webservices like office style apps and other desktop tools (think eyeOS) so people could run their own clouds. Though it's possible to do this today, it seems very clunky and only those with hardcore tech chops can get all the pieces to work together, and even then it's not like the whole google or apple "cloud experience". Shoot for the top :-)
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Wed Mar 28, 2012 10:18 pm

Cloud computing. It has been given such a name to give it a soft, fuzzy sound. Hmm, cloud computing, sounds nice, since clouds can be nice and soft too. :) NO THANK YOU!!! I would rather own my own stuff than become a number in a part of the collective. They will have to pry my physical software media from my cold, dead fingers.
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Wed Mar 28, 2012 10:34 pm

Not no, but hell no.

Only a certified moron would subject his/her business to the whims of crap like google/M$/cloud. I have an android phone, it is google's property they shut it down anytime they want. matter of fact when they decided to go to a uniform password username across all google crap my phone went to the setup up screen and would not do squat till I reset every password/username on youtube/gmail etc. let me reiterate my phone was a paper weight while I fought through two days of worthless google crap help and finally just deleted every google related account I had in order to get my damn phone to work. All that cloud stuff I had stored was just gone, but damnit, my phone worked again so I wasn't losing money.

Do you really want to be going into a make or break presentation to a major customer and discover googlemscloud services has reset your password and will update your services and email you a new password in a couple hours. Or just who in the hell are you going to call/email when something doesn't work... have any of you cloud idiots tried to contact a live human at one of these imaginary services? You people need to quit playing computer games and get back in the real world. I don't need to be shut down because lightning struck somewhere 2,000 miles from me. Its not just that my data and working tools are being rented to me, I don't even control them. I am stuck with one line out to all my data and tools.

Currently if I have a hardware failure, I just work on one of the other computers till I get the failure fixed. If the cloud fails what can I do to fix it? Its probably going to be supported by some third world country slave that doesn't speak english or understand anything about the application.

How Am I going to trouble shoot a cloud based software error?
 
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Thu Mar 29, 2012 12:22 am

cass wrote:
Do you really want to be going into a make or break presentation to a major customer and discover googlemscloud services has reset your password and will update your services and email you a new password in a couple hours.


Would you really go into a "make-or-break presentation" without any redundant backup? What if your laptop won't boot, your file was corrupted, you can't get the customer's projector to work with your laptop, etc... When I was interviewing a few years ago I had my job talk on my laptop, on a USB stick with me, emailed to the hiring manager, stored on my university web space, and yes, uploaded to Gmail in the scaaaaaary cloud :).
 
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Thu Mar 29, 2012 7:12 am

cass wrote:
I have an android phone, it is google's property they shut it down anytime they want.


That's why I clicked deny in every single "Do you agree" box. A lot of the functionality is disabled, I can't watch youtube videos, I can't use google navigation, I cant download any software, unless I manually find the necessary APKs, which is very hard, as most developers don't host them online, and downloading software from random sites is not very cool. But at least I know my data is not leaking all around and constantly synced with Google.

I would like to root the phone, but the model I have, cannot be rooted because it's S-on, and cannot be S-offed without hardware.

Bottom line, although Android is Linux, it's locked up super tight. And this is the trend with all cloud related technologies. They take away all freedom from end user.

Also, I have to use free apps only, I can't buy an APK unless on Google market.
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Thu Mar 29, 2012 9:23 am

I will go on to say that my company has its entire SharePoint infrastructure in the cloud, some 32 servers worth. I have first hand knowledge of this since I am a SharePoint dev

We looked at Azure but Microsoft was not ready with it to do extensive hosting like what we needed. (in fact they said SharePoint wouldnt be ready to Q4 of 2012) So we went with Amazon.

AWS has been excellent to work with. Better than our internal server team and NOC.

At first I was leary about our information being in the cloud but after implementing this solution for our SharePoint environment I am all for it!
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Thu Mar 29, 2012 9:46 am

Captain Ned wrote:
danny e. wrote:
As per your complaint about untrusted vendors, I'd imagine that will become less of an issue moving foward. However, in some cases and for some stubborn people ;) you could just use a private cloud where your organization would still have all control. And again, there are cases where even that would not make sense... however, I'd argue that the cases where some "cloud" solution doesn't make sense are much fewer than cases where it would make sense.


Look, it's going to be hard enough to get us regulators to accept cloud storage until and unless we know exactly which data center and have the ability to go to that data center and run our tests. Moving execution off-site, as I said before, is simply beyond the pale.


Is it, though, is it really? It seems like as long as you dump a SAS70 or SSAE16 on an examiner for whatever vendor you're using, they cease to care.

"All my customer data gets dumped nightly to an offsite core processor then they do stuff to it and magically the next day they give us different numbers."
"Really? We should check them out!"
"Here's a SSAE16."
"Oh, ok, nevermind then."

How about check/cash images (whatever you call that junk) being sent somewhere to get processed? That's all dumped offsite on a daily basis too. I agree with you, Ned, I think that the cloud is garbage for storing financial stuff and all these bankers hear buzzwords and want to jump on the bandwagon--lotta smaller banks don't have any in-house IT guys so no one to tell them it's a bad idea until it's too late. However, I don't see a huge difference between storing personal data in the cloud and having all your customer info dumped daily to random vendors. It's still offsite and vulnerable. And a necessity to do business. As was pointed out here:

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Detai ... ge-788029/

Heartland was PCI DSS compliant and I bet they had SAS70 too.

Look, I'm all for security paranoia, but from being on the other side of the whole examination bit, it seems that most state and federal examiners just want to look at paperwork and call it a day. Your security practices are crap? Oh wait, but you documented it? Oh, ok, then you're good to go!
 
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Tue May 01, 2012 1:50 pm

Found an interesting article about cloud computing: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... _page=true

Made me rethink a few things, and to be even more cautious. Especially about storing any type of personal data in the cloud for more than a few days.
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Tue May 01, 2012 3:13 pm

I do use GMail and I do use SpiderOak for off site backup, as SpiderOak doesn't have the encrytions keys.

Other than that, heck no! At the very least I want my applications to be installed on my machine where I can access them no matter if I have an internet connection or not. Same goes for my data. The thin client is a sucky idea for the most part.

I see cloud computing either as a fad or a method for the likes of Microsoft make people rent rather than buy software. Either way, no way. I don't want to live my life through a browser.
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ShadowEyez
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Tue May 01, 2012 8:57 pm

srg86 wrote:
I see cloud computing either as a fad or a method for the likes of Microsoft make people rent rather than buy software. Either way, no way. I don't want to live my life through a browser.


Agreed. A good way for software companies to switch from a retail box model to a service and subscription model ala cable/phone services.

And I don't want to live my life through a computer, much less a browser :-)
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RedAdmiral
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Re: Do you believe cloud will replace stand alone software?

Tue May 01, 2012 9:11 pm

For me, the bottom line is that I have lots of data and certain sets of software that I depend on for my job and for several projects and photos, music etc. I don't trust people and companies running cloud services to keep this for me. I don't trust my own backups, let alone an anonymous person somewhere out there where I have absolutely no control over my data. I don't know if cloud services will get bigger or not, but I won't be using them. And as for renting software in a browser, I'd rather go without if it comes down to it. Murphy's kung fu is just too damn strong and when I absolutely must have the software because something depends on it the services would go down.

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