

Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman - mark_l_watson
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.computing.richard.stallman

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tosseraccount
Of course it's a trap.

So was Windows, Iphone, Oracle DB, etc. etc. It always starts off as the "easy
button" and it takes a while to figure out you're trapped. "Just get Windows
95" ... "Iphone just works" ... "Don't worry, it's SQL, we can port it to
another vendor anytime". Eventually people wise up and a low cost alternative
undercuts whatever happens to be the "evil empire" of the day.

Just make sure you can secure and recover your precious data and code when
disaster strikes. Pray that the "company jewels" are being traded on some East
European dark net.

------
api
<http://catb.org/jargon/html/W/wheel-of-reincarnation.html>

There are other examples of this than the one cited. There's a wheel of
reincarnation in computing between the mainframe/thin-client model and the
PC/P2P-network model. Right now we've come from an era of PC dominance back to
an era of mainframe models around the "cloud." (The new term for mainframe
computing.) IPv6 and ubiquitous wireless broadband would be among those things
that would turn the wheel back around to the PC/distributed side.

The big barrier is the carriers and their squatting over the wireless spectrum
and insistence upon control over the device. Once the carriers are opened up
and commoditized, or once meshnets or other innovations make them less
relevant, we'll have this. Open the spectrum and kill NAT (with IPv6), and you
kill the cloud.

