Another Case Against the Cloud

Cloud computing is FAIL and here's why • The Register

Quality of reporting is FAIL.

<face palm>

The cloud is fairly new so there are bound to be issues. I personally don't see the need as personal local storage and backup is so cheap and the only real reason for the cloud seems to be for ease of personal access across multiple platforms or people.

But, you FAIL to grasp the point.

You can't BUY the software and keep it on your hard drive. You can use it but you can't open it up like purchased software and use it, unless you are connected to the cloud.

If you have an old copy of Adobe, you still can use it off line. But, not for long.

Microsoft is headed that way, too. It allows them to overcharge you every month for service you only paid for once in the past.

I feel a whole lot safer with my data on a thumb drive in my pocket!

Darn it, I have been advocating end users of control systems like SCADA (where you have to pay for usage, more timers, memory etc.) demand SCADA be one time software purchase with free access to as many control blocks as your computer memory and processor can handle. Now you all have pointed out, instead of SCADA evolving to be like any other computer software you one time purchase, the computer software (and OS) is evolving to be like SCADA. Bassackwards.

Companies and individuals will need to watch closely, the ever increasing subscription fees for the lifecycle of their software purchases, like it was a credit card that could get out of hand.

But on the bright side, I could have lived off of XP, win 7 is fine, just wont upgrade to newer cloud computer/OS. Also if enough consumers demand a way to get their head out of the cloud, someone will provide the solution.

Demise? Not a chance. There's big enough pool of naive to leach a buck from. Besides, many software houses' real money nowadays is not what you pay at the cashier. It's in the dirty market of buying and selling your information to entities that want you as a client or worse, and "cloud" computing is a more proffesional effort on those holy causes. If you add to that the even more dirty govermental (yours and foreign), manipulation of your data, you get the idea. And I see no way out. Even "open source" OSes seem to hide in their complexity backdoors, transvestied as bugs, for manipulation by the "chosen". And there are propubly already hidden hadware mechanisms inside new CPUs to do that, independent from the OS. S.M.

I recently purchased a laptop from Office Depot with W8.1 (what a piece of crap operating system). I hope to have Ubuntu Linux installed soon (slight learning curve) I also picked up a "pcDuino3" that boots Linux out of the box (UC Boulder is using it for a teaching aid in computer classes) and this little 3"x5" card is currently my desktop system and is where this note is coming to you from. It is quite the tool and should move many people from Windoz.

Wow, that pcDuino3 sounds fun... I shall google it.

(Out of stock at the moment £70 in the UK, quite tempting)

The sooner Windows dies the better for the universe!

Del
(PS. did I mention, I hate windows?)

$79 US + shipping from 'sparkfun.com' in Boulder, took 3 days UPS-USPS cheapest way.

42 in-stock at the moment (2014.06.06 09:48 UTC)

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12856

While I fully support stand alone systems, (and that is what I use), the fight is not necessarily with the software suppliers, but actually the Taxation / Accounting industries and maximising tax deductions.

Hardware (and maybe soon software) that lasts more than 2 years in Australia does not enjoy accelerated depreciation for 'capital purchases'. So if you have a (mining) project that requires say a Cat 770 off highway truck for maybe 5 years, do you lease/hire with month by month tax deductability, or buy it knowing for the last 2 years of the 7 year write down period, you will need to secure it with a fence and hope that someone does not steal the tires, to get the depreciation tax benefits.

So now we come to software. I can see the accountants pushing for cloud based systems, regardless of the downtime if the comm links fail, because of the accounting tax benefits and service availability depending on instant cshflows. Commonsense ... no! Long term thinking ... definitely not.

There were similar outcomes with fly in / fly out workers on remote mining sites. Instead of companies supplying subsidised low cost family housing that created communities, it was because of the fringe benefit tax in Australia that such housing communities have not been created. Instead, there are camps with airstrips and 12hour shifts, 2 weeks on / 2 weeks off and similar rosters. It is getting around the tax issues that has driven the resulting outcomes ... and I fear that cloud based software (fully and instantly tax deductible) will take us the same way. Time for Unix for me.

You said "accountants"
Del

Even if Cloud-based schemes were completely reliable, we've not even touched on the security risks inherent in these schemes - *especially* where Adobe and Microsoft are concerned.

One item that surfaced in Snowden's NSA revelations is that Microsoft actively, willingly cooperated with the NSA (and were the first to do so) in telling them how to work around Outlook's security and how to break into their Cloud services with its (then) 250 million users - not that we should expect any of this to pose much of a challenge given that this is the same company that gave the world Internet Explorer. How many *decades* have they had to get it right and who are now asking us to trust them even further?

"Hey boys, for a nominal fee, how's about we hang you and your company's rep over the Abyss by single silken thread whilst handing a copy of your internal data to your government on a silver platter?"

Boy howdy! Where do I sign!

Under the Australin Defence Export Control Act of 2012, section 14, a person can go to jail for 10 years for taking 'controlled information' outside the borders. Now let us consider email systems ... by using Australia's main carrier Telstra or second major carrier Optus with Singapore owners, a person sending an email could easily see the transmission exchanges going outside Australia's borders. See CISCO Systems below.

Cisco Systems plans to invest $1B over the next two years on a new cloud- computing service similar to Amazon Web Services (AMZN). Cisco Cloud Service (CSCO) has already snagged partners, including Australian telecom operator Telstra (OTCPK:TLSYY) and Canada's Allstream. (March 25 2014).

So using cloud systems maybe BOTH unreliable and could put you in the clink!
And even if you put your data on a thumb drive, kept it in your pocket, and flew out of Australia to Bali for a holiday, the same legislation might apply.

My laptop with window's 8.1 just spent over 20 minutes updating, now there is a 'google drive' symbol in the tray at the bottom of the screen. Anyone know how to delete this and the crap Toshiba has dumped on this system? A screen full of 'APPS' I have no desire for popping up all the time.

Try this?...

Ain't no screen saver on earth will stop those arrows.

Del

You cannot shoot the cloud, only your interface to it.

;)