The cloud - a big pain waiting to happen?

[Mike0105]

I was reading about the Google Chromebooks that are about to be launched and was wounding whether anyone else thinks that this 'cloud' style of computing is a monumentally bad thing waiting to happen?

Instead of having files and folders on your computer, it all goes to cloud storage. Seems clever and helpful at first. But what about if you can't access the network when you need it? What about being on the move? Would you have to pay to connect to a network just to use your own files?

Round here the Internet speeds are utter rubbish, even using my home broadband it's only ever going to be 3mb max. mobile networks aren't reliable enough for this either.

So how will this work out in when these machines go on sale? Is it just me and am I stuck in my ways, or is this something that we don't actually want?

What about when (not if) this gets hacked like so many networks do? Could we lose access to our own stuff?

The reason I ask is that this seems to be the way things will go from what I have read, whether we all like it or not.

So what are your thoughts? Wonderful breakthrough in computing, or another gimmick that could be a right royal pain?

Edit: if this is a duplicate thread then please remove or merge etc. And if a mod could fix the spelling in the title I would be most grateful!

 

[wfooshee]

The cloud's a nice place for backups, but I don't think I'd want to live there.

That said, weren't folks saying that about servers on their LANs about 20 years ago?

"Geez, what if the server goes down, how do I access my files?" "If everything's on the server, what's to keep other people from looking at it?" "It's an awful lot slower loading from the server than my own drive."

 

[TenEightyOne]

Significantly more bytes of HDD-installation-based data are hacked every year than bytes of server-based data.

The cloud is the future of computing and gaming... I suspect that most peoples' opposition is based on the licensing restrictions that it will suddenly enable.

 

[BobK]

It's the wave of the future whether we want it or not. Among other things it's a great source for data mining. Do you really want Yahoo/Google/whomever to have access to even more of your private data?

I'm a bit disturbed by the fact that Amazon now knows not only what music I've purchased, but how often I play the stuff on my cloud drive.

 

[Mike0105]

That said, weren't folks saying that about servers on their LANs about 20 years ago?

"Geez, what if the server goes down, how do I access my files?" "If everything's on the server, what's to keep other people from looking at it?" "It's an awful lot slower loading from the server than my own drive."

I actually have this problem with our work 'thin client' system. It is hopelessly slow and unreliable. It is good in theory, but at the moment it doesn't work well enough.

I just hate the thought of everything going this way...

 

[Casio]

It will happen and it's basically already happened everywhere except for the general consumer. For businesses, they've been using things like roaming profiles for over 10 years. Just before I left my old job, we had just rolled out App-V, a virtual application server, to server over 5000 machines. It was amazing. No longer had to install software on every machine, but user could stream selected software based on their AD privileges to any machine on the network.

Yeah, servers and things can go down, but so can your local machine.

 

[Mike0105]

But our servers are always down or slow. Either that or it kicks you off the network for no reason.

I can live with this at work when it's reports and files etc., but when it's my music or holiday snaps I don't feel so comfortable with the idea.

 

[Casio]

Yeah but someone like Google doesn't have ****** infrastructure like you do though. Google commits to something like 99.99% uptime.

 

[Keef]

Cloud computing? Hell, I haven't even had time to get my home network set up. Having Windows 7 and Vista talk to each other took longer than the 5 minutes I had to spare, so I gave up.

I actually wish I lived in a simpler time, devoid of distractions. I get distracted so easily by various devices - Right now I'm typing this on the laptop, reading news on the PC, and watching a recording on TV. Not doing homework like I should be. I wish I never would have known these things, and maybe I'd actually get important things done.

 

[niky]

3MBps is slow? Geez... I feel like a caveman. I only get 2MBps on my good days. Most days I'm lucky to get more than 300KBps.

Cloud-based is a good idea... Just like thin clients. Yeah, thin clients suck when it comes to outright performance, but they allow your workers to do 99% of the work they can do on a full computer for half the cost and a fraction of the power consumption.

And having files on the server and an offsite backup (sometimes two) simplifies things immensely. A lot easier than backing up and restoring dozens of individual PCs, that's for sure.

I'm apprehensive about losing files on a cloud server, but if they can ensure that they will be backing up often... And as long as you keep your own personal backups (terabyte drives are now ridiculously cheap) at home... I don't see the problem. I mean, we're already doing this with photobucket, imageshack, googledocs and the like... Why not do it for everything?

 

[eSZee]

For some reason I don't quite see the need for cloud computing, maybe I don't get it. I do like the idea of accessing my files from anywhere but dropbox can already do that. Plus ISPs are cracking down on bandwidth usage so I'm not sure how far this can go with the limits that will be imposed.
Didn't the crackers that brought down PSN use amazon's cloud service to launch the attack?

 

[Robin]

I personally will never trust the cloud, especially as we are seeing more and more breeches occuring. How do you know these data centers will be private, secure and operational forever? What if governments fall, or there's world war... who's hands is this information going to fall into?

Even if its relatively safe for now the more you put into the cloud the more you are open to data mining, targeted adverting (how Facebook makes its billions) and identity fraud which is just not worth the hassle to manage. Sure I can't control where my bank etc. puts my details but at least I know where my personal hard drives and CD's are.

Robin.

 

[Casio]

For some reason I don't quite see the need for cloud computing, maybe I don't get it. I do like the idea of accessing my files from anywhere but dropbox can already do that. Plus ISPs are cracking down on bandwidth usage so I'm not sure how far this can go with the limits that will be imposed.
Didn't the crackers that brought down PSN use amazon's cloud service to launch the attack?

Conversely, I think that legitimate cloud computing services will put pressure on ISP's to increase quotas/speeds or run unquota'd services.

Take Google Music as an example. I really like the idea of it, and it suits my lifestyle well, but I'm only on a 1GB Dataplan on my phone, more than enough for webbrowsing and crap, but not for 8 hour a day streaming.

It'll take a lot of bandwidth to upload 20,000 songs from your PC (Though for most people the biggest limitation to that will be time), and a lot mobile bandwidth to stream music to your phone all day. The first ISP that says "All Google Music uploads will be uncounted", get a one up on the competition; the first mobile carrier that says "All Google Music streaming will be unquota'd", will have me signing up the next day.

We have here in Australia for example, ISP's which do not count steam/PSN/Xbox Live/iTunes downloads to your download limit, which is a huge positive for them, and definitely gets more customers who use those services regularly. The more legitimate uses there are for high data usage, the more legitimate pressure they will have put back on them when they try and tighten it up.

 

[Centura]

Also, don't forget that streaming music all day is going to take quite a bit of battery.

I'm glad we don't have download limit on broadbands in Sweden.

OnTopic: The Cloud? Other than for synchronization and back-up, no thanks. I haven't used Chrome OS, but I don't like the idea of it. Using an OS built around terrible web apps doesn't sound very pleasing to me.

 

[AlexGTV]

Mike, you can edit the title by clicking on it on the forum.

As for cloud computing seems like a great idea for online apps, as in already happening big time, but is a difficult subject for sensitive data.

The cloud will get obscenely bigger with the advent of the memristor from the HP labs next year.

Is our soul fleshy memristors?

Also there was this discussion in my class where our senior lecturer said the business model of all novel technologies, like the chromebook and others, is ads. It's all about advertising.

I'm a bit disturbed by the fact that Amazon now knows not only what music I've purchased, but how often I play the stuff on my cloud drive.

Yes, it's a brave new world. The only defence is to stand up for who you are. But don't forget nobody in amazon knows you, BobK, just their databases. It's relevant to game theory, and the fact that we'll be playing dominant strategies en masse sounds a bit blunt. Cyberpunk much?

 

[eSZee]

Conversely, I think that legitimate cloud computing services will put pressure on ISP's to increase quotas/speeds or run unquota'd services.

I hope this happens.
Right now, ATT has put in data caps. From what people have revealed so far, it's mostly due to ATT wanting people to dump NETFLIX and use their own ON DEMAND video service. I don't have much of a choice but with the caps, there's just no point thinking of the cloud.