Anti Cloud

[anticloud]

Hi,

After reading the “Ars Technica” article published few days ago titled “Everything as a Service” and thereafter reading a lot of similar articles and judging the current situation going on in the IT it seems quite logical that everything is moving towards the cloud.

Microsoft has just moved its Office into the cloud. Further their plans include moving their other products and also the Windows operating system into the cloud. The biggest hurdle for letting people retain powerful physical/local computers is gaming. And it seems with Google’s Stadia platform it too would move to the cloud. But gaming would require some time for Google, Microsoft or Sony to move it towards the cloud as they would need to wait for the further improvement and upgrading of the internet like dealing with the latency and other issues in the infrastructure throughout the world and for the 5g technology to mature. But it would be just a matter of time when gaming too would move toward the cloud.

At present the internet in most areas of the world is quite capable of running operating systems, majority of software and apps quite efficiently. Personally I hate cloud computing. I also know the majority of people hate it too. I am anti cloud computing. I like physical/ local computing. I want to have control over the operating system I use, software/apps I use and the games I play. I don’t need all of these as a service. Most of the people don’t. But judging by the situation when large corporations switch everything towards the cloud this would bring an end to powerful PCs desktops and laptops, Smartphones or related hardware availability anywhere to buy. Instead we would find thin client computers having barely enough power to connect to internet and browse.

So even if we wish to install and use Linux we won’t be able to. Whatever efforts the many Linux and open source communities have put in Linux and open source software, making them close to Windows and proprietary software in performance as well as putting a lot of efforts into making gaming on Linux work would go in vain.

I think people should unite and take a stand against all this and raise their voices against cloud computing otherwise we would lose our freedom. We would have to subscribe to do everything we do today on our computers we won’t have control and we won’t own anything. Everything would be only available to us as a service. I think there should be an Anti Cloud community just like the free software community to deal with this problem. Kindly share your opinions. Best regards.

[uRock]

"I like big clouds and I can't lie,
all those data brokers' can't deny,
with little bit of haste and a lot less hardware waste,
tech support be sprung,
they don't have to worry about their servers being hung,"

I would keep going but my coffee evaporated into the cloud. In all seriousness, they've learned that they can make more money by offering cloud services and small companies learned they can save more by letting Amazon or whoever manage the servers. Just as companies have learned that it is much cheaper to pay a support vendor to remote in and fix local desktop issues than it is to hire full time desktop support personnel.

[TheFu]

First - wall of text == BAD. I almost didn't bother reading.

Linux isn't at any risk.
Linux has better performance than Windows, by far. No comparison.
You can run all your old "cloudy" applications if you like. They can be on the public cloud, in a private cloud or installed to a small IoT device like a Raspberry Pi, if you prefer.

I'm anti-cloudy applications too. Putting my data, on someone else's computer, on someone else's storage, at the end of someone else's network, just seems ... foolish. But with that stance comes responsibilities. Not everyone is willing to step up and accept those responsibilities.

Upgrading my communications server is a hassle, but I know it is my responsibility. If I wasn't willing to do it, I'd probably use protonmail instead. By far, maintaining that server is the hardest of all that I run.
Nextcloud is a slight hassle. It breaks from time to time and needs a few hrs of love every quarter or so. Plus, I'm willing to take chances with my install, since I won't put anything important on nextcloud. Most of the files it holds are through read-only NFS mounts which can only be modified by other systems, also hosted here.

There is a time to use IAAS.
There is a time to use SAAS.
Both have liabilities, but so does running your own systems on your own hardware. If I needed 2-4 VPS systems, I'd use IAAS. I need over 20, so hosting it from my home-office **is** much more cost effective, for my needs. We are all different with different requirements. One size doesn't fit everyone.

For people interested in hosting their own stuff ... some ideas: https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign

[Shibblet]

Linux isn't at any risk.

Yeah, I don't think so either. Maybe one or two distributions may fall that direction. Heck, even if most of them fell in that direction, there would still be some out there that didn't.

One of the best things about the Linux world is choice.

[SeijiSensei]

"Clouds" are very valuable if you are running Internet-facing servers. I have three virtual machines hosted at Linode (https://www.linode.com). Much better choice for hosting web sites and mail servers than a physical server in an office or rack-mount space. Someone else is responsible for things like power and air-conditioning, and I have a big pipe out to the Internet that I could never afford on my own. I also have public IP addresses with no restrictions. Running a mail server in a home office is pretty much impossible these days because outbound SMTP connections are often blocked to protect against spambots.

I've run physical servers and hated having to deal with problems like dead hard drives.

[fragglebliss]

I've run physical servers and hated having to deal with problems like dead hard drives.

This problem can be minimized by virtualizing servers. Obviously you'd have to decide on priority of mission critical application to sort what can be virtualized and what would need to be restricted to hardware only.

[Skaperen]

you can still have dead hard drives in the cloud. they just work around it by decrementing your redundancy level until the replication finishes in a couple minutes. that goes fast because everyone affected by that dead drive has their live copies spread all around in different places, unlike RAID. so the drive access conflicts are just mixed in with all the other activity. and this is all automated.

a dead machine has the greatest impact. one or more virtual machines has a hard reboot done automatically (unless you flagged it to be stopped, instead). again, it's all automated (then it sends a human to go replace the machine, eventually).

and that's just IaaS.

then there's SaaS, where lots of cloud users are moving to.

i love it all. with the click of a rodent i can build a new system or make a bad install just vanish.

[fragglebliss]

you can still have dead hard drives in the cloud.

Nobody mentioned dead drives in the cloud...

[anticloud]

Guys most of your replies are covering the commercial and technical aspects of cloud computing.

Viewing it in a broader sense I would ask your opinions about the general users who use their own physical PCs, both laptops and desktops, smartphones, tablets etc. That’s not to say we should ignore commercial users like small businesses and large enterprises.

I am not totally against the cloud but I think that cloud computing and local computing should co-exist. The cloud should not mean the total end of local computing. Although the wind is blowing in the opposite direction, I feel somehow local computing would survive and not be completely viped out in the future and there would still be general users as well as commercial users small and large enterprises doing local computing.

What you think about that? Kindly inform your point of view.

[uRock]

Guys most of your replies are covering the commercial and technical aspects of cloud computing. Viewing it in a broader sense I would ask your opinions about the general users who use their own physical PCs, both laptops and desktops, smartphones, tablets etc. That’s not to say we should ignore commercial users like small businesses and large enterprises. I am not totally against the cloud but I think that cloud computing and local computing should co-exist. The cloud should not mean the total end of local computing. And I feel that somehow local computing would not be completely viped out in the future and there would still be general users as well as commercial users small and large enterprises doing local computing. What you think about that? Kindly inform your point of view.

At least half of my friends no longer use a desktop computer for more than web browsing, if they even have a computer. They do most things on their phones. The only friends who do more than that at home are techies, school teachers, or PC gamers.

I know several people who do everything on their phones. They can't afford internet and their PCs were PWNed by malware or just broken years ago and can't afford to have them fixed, nor have the smarts to do so themselves. I also have high income friends who don't use computers because they just don't have a need for them outside of work, so they use their phones for everything.

[anticloud]

At least half of my friends no longer use a desktop computer for more than web browsing, if they even have a computer. They do most things on their phones. The only friends who do more than that at home are techies, school teachers, or PC gamers.

I know several people who do everything on their phones. They can't afford internet and their PCs were PWNed by malware or just broken years ago and can't afford to have them fixed, nor have the smarts to do so themselves. I also have high income friends who don't use computers because they just don't have a need for them outside of work, so they use their phones for everything.


But that doesn’t mean that there are a very few PC users. There are a lot of them. Especially when PC gaming is considered. Now many play PC games on Linux, specially Ubuntu supported by Valve. Also smartphones too are mostly local computing devices. Apps and games are installed in them and used locally as well as through the internet.

[uRock]

But that doesn’t mean that there are a very few PC users. There are a lot of them. Especially when PC gaming is considered. Now many play PC games on Linux, specially Ubuntu supported by Valve. Also smartphones too are mostly local computing devices. Apps and games are installed in them and used locally as well as through the internet.

Most of the people I know of who play games on their phone are playing cloud based games. They're using cloud services for their music. They use cloud based email, obviously. They create/edit documents in Google Docs, which they store on Google Drive. Most of my friends use game consoles for gaming. I have few friends who do PC gaming. Most of my friends are too busy "adulting" to have time for games. Most of them just stream music and use Facebook to stay in touch.

My wife and daughter both have gaming computers, yet the wife spends most of her time on her phone and the kid on her Chromebook using cloud based softwares for writing and publishing short stories. I hate doing anything on my phone, so I am the only one in the household who spends a lot of time on the computer. Aside from firing up the PS2 to play GTA 3 once in a very blue moon, I don't game. I spend most of my time job hunting, doing techie stuff, and brewing wine. Gaming is just a waste of time in my eyes.

[TheFu]

Guess I don't know any "normal" people.

I don't know anyone without a computer. Most of my friends have multiple computers and run Linux. About 30% also run internet-facing webapps. Odd to me is the 1 friend who I see almost every week, who runs multiple Linux computers, but doesn't use ssh because he doesn't see any need for it. He doesn't use ssh!!! That freaks me out.

Ah ... one of my sisters uses a tablet for all her personal stuff, but her husband uses a PC for gaming.

[poorguy]

I'm not a gamer although I run Microsoft Flight Simulator X on an old computer running Windows XP which I built exclusively for Microsoft Fight Simulator X.

I don't see how anyone uses a smart phone for anything other than making phone calls or texting the phone format sucks imo.

I'm can't say I'm anti cloud although I don't use cloud storage I have used some cloud based apps and have no complaints with them.

I guess everything will goto cloud based eventually and it seems as everyone or everything we use or do online is already collecting our personal user information and has been for years imo.

Guess we wait and see what happens and choose what we do at that time.

[uRock]

Guess I don't know any "normal" people.

I don't know anyone without a computer. Most of my friends have multiple computers and run Linux. About 30% also run internet-facing webapps. Odd to me is the 1 friend who I see almost every week, who runs multiple Linux computers, but doesn't use ssh because he doesn't see any need for it. He doesn't use ssh!!! That freaks me out.

Ah ... one of my sisters uses a tablet for all her personal stuff, but her husband uses a PC for gaming.
I thought I had more friends who used computers until I started seeing the posts on FB about "How do I get all of these pictures off of my phone because I'm out of space." After talking them through how to move the images to their Google Drive or iCloud, then end up replying with "OMG, they were already uploaded there." Then there's the complaints that their cloud service is saying they are running out of space. In both scenarios I get replies that their computers died ages ago or they've got a virus or that they never bought a computer after moving away from living with their parents and they couldn't afford and/or had no interest in using a computer.

My wife used to be the president of a non-profit and it was amazing how many members complained of having no computer to open the MS docs with and/or no way of printing documents. We even had two members who complained about notifications not being mailed as they don't even have cell phones.

I also base some of my thoughts on people who called for support when I worked for one of the the few international shipping companies and people were trying to make changes to their shipments that couldn't be made from the mobile apps, nor the mobile website and had no home computer to log in on. I worked with a few customers a day who ran into those problems and I was baffled. Some of the callers would go on to say "Who in this age needs a computer when everything can be done on the phone?" and I'd be like, "Well, you can't do this."

TheFu, about that friend who doesn't use SSH, are they using telnet? That is scary. I have very few friends who even know what Linux is, much less use it. They think I'm some sort of IT super hero when I start talking about Linux or how I configure my own servers to use cameras as part of my home security plan. Every single one of my friends who has security cameras have the ones from cheap sources that are often making the news for being very insecure.

[1fallen]

I don't see how anyone uses a smart phone for anything other than making phone calls or texting the phone format sucks imo.



+1 I have a handful of various types of puter's,Servers, Desktops, Media, Back-ups, Testing.
No way a phone would work for me.
I'm not sure I'm a Cloud Fan either. :p

[ajgreeny]

+1 I have a handful of various types of puter's,Servers, Desktops, Media, Back-ups, Testing.
No way a phone would work for me.
I'm not sure I'm a Cloud Fan either. :p
Nor me, and with the poor G4 and non existent G5 mobile coverage in my locality, cloud based services are almost a non starter.

How do mobile phone users manage in the cloud if the mobile network disappears?
No network - no cloud!

[1fallen]

How do mobile phone users manage in the cloud if the mobile network disappears?
No network - no cloud!

Excellent Point! :KS

[Skaperen]

i do agree local and personal computing needs to continue to be available. but we need to take an even wider view. almost everyone knows that the majority of smartphones run Android, which is a Linux distribution with a modified kernel. do you know that millions of other devices run some form of Linux, too. whether it is Linux, or Windows, or something else (there are a few proprietary embedded OS choices out there), the world is moving in the direction of computing devices in all kinds devices we use or are affected by, or not.

so how will this affect us? this will be a positive force while also removing a lot of motivation from many people to have a computing device they fully control (can load any workable OS onto). the positive will be development kits existing. this will be, for as long as people can independently create any product we wish to. the negative will be the markets and finances. will we have the cash to develop a device that is all open computing for what will likely be a diminishing market.

"granpa, you mean, real people actually steered where the car goes, in real time?"

"granpa, you mean, real people actually wrote processor software without the logic integrator?"

the future is us.

[1fallen]

Yes I agree, but I would of thought that we as Linux user's already have a motivation to scratch. (Good Choices and a wider view)
When those devices accomplish what I do now, Then I'll be on-board, till then I watch cautiously. :D

[anticloud]

i do agree local and personal computing needs to continue to be available. but we need to take an even wider view. almost everyone knows that the majority of smartphones run Android, which is a Linux distribution with a modified kernel. do you know that millions of other devices run some form of Linux, too. whether it is Linux, or Windows, or something else (there are a few proprietary embedded OS choices out there), the world is moving in the direction of computing devices in all kinds devices we use or are affected by, or not.

so how will this affect us? this will be a positive force while also removing a lot of motivation from many people to have a computing device they fully control (can load any workable OS onto). the positive will be development kits existing. this will be, for as long as people can independently create any product we wish to. the negative will be the markets and finances. will we have the cash to develop a device that is all open computing for what will likely be a diminishing market.

"granpa, you mean, real people actually steered where the car goes, in real time?"

"granpa, you mean, real people actually wrote processor software without the logic integrator?"

the future is us.

I agree with you. Cloud computing has its own advantages and Local computing has its own. So they both should exist side by side. It gives people the choice to use whichever model of computing they like. It should not be allowed that one model completely dominates the other model and leave people with just one model to choose eliminating the other model. Both of the computing models have their own advantages, market and there are limitless opportunities for innovation in both of them.

[Irihapeti]

I do proofreading of university assignments for international students (their first language is not English). I can't edit their material on a phone, and I think they'd be struggling to write 5000 to 12,000 words that way.

Of course, what their computers are connected to is a different matter.

[VMC]

I wasn't a cloud fan either until today when
I realized I could put some cell programs I'm using for my house rebuild in the cloud. Before I needed a specific os to open them. Not anymore. I do have a cell phone but its normally off. PC's almost exclusively.

[Tadaen_Sylvermane]

I don't see OS level things going to the cloud. For one, Microsoft has already said (how much can we trust that? IDK) that they will not make Windows SAAS. That would require full cloud for it to be so. Second, it isn't practical for the majority of the world. I think those who live in areas with a hundred+mb/1gb internet forget that most of the world does not have that kind of access. I can't even get higher than 11mb in Arizona in the states, and this country started the internet. Much of the world is in the same boat. Until that is solved, no worries for cloud takeover.

There will always be a need for local hardware and usability. I do however believe that OS agnostic software is the future. We already see this. I don't use but as I understand, Photoshop has a browser based version. Others include Quickbooks, Office, Google Docs. All major things used by the majority of small businesses in the world. These may not be as full featured, but they are getting better. Most home users don't do anything other than web browsing anyway so they are already in it. Gamers will always need real hardware and local software. Latency matters. I've seen people complain about 50-75 ms ping on online games. They won't tolerate it from so called single player offline games that they stream.

Then you have the trust issue. Yes some things are slowly moving that way, but who can really trust it. Seems every single day is another privacy breach by someone. And they don't seem to inclined to fix them because they get hit with a tiny non existent fine, and back to business as usual. It's less to pay the fine than fix the issues in most cases. People just don't trust it all the way. I have a few friends who love to take pictures. They already don't put anything online because they just don't trust it. Many people do, but many don't. You would need a global trust of the internet for pure cloud to work, something that won't happen.

As far as losing Linux specifically. Not happening. Remember that 75-85%? of the internet runs on Linux of some sort so that fixes that almost by itself. That includes most cloud stuff. Then the source is available online. People can get and compile, do whatever they want. The only way that open source would become unusable is for them to eliminate local storage completely. And that will never happen.

Full cloud is going to be an all or nothing thing. It won't be partway. And that won't happen without some major changes in global networking, peoples perception, and necessity.

[anticloud]

Hey guys,

Just read it for yourselves how Cloud computing will take away everything from you what you freely use now:

http://www.klientsolutech.com/how-will-cloud-computing-change-our-lives-in-the-future/

I hope this would give you a better understanding.

[anticloud]

I don't see OS level things going to the cloud. For one, Microsoft has already said (how much can we trust that? IDK) that they will not make Windows SAAS. That would require full cloud for it to be so. Second, it isn't practical for the majority of the world. I think those who live in areas with a hundred+mb/1gb internet forget that most of the world does not have that kind of access. I can't even get higher than 11mb in Arizona in the states, and this country started the internet. Much of the world is in the same boat. Until that is solved, no worries for cloud takeover.

There will always be a need for local hardware and usability. I do however believe that OS agnostic software is the future. We already see this. I don't use but as I understand, Photoshop has a browser based version. Others include Quickbooks, Office, Google Docs. All major things used by the majority of small businesses in the world. These may not be as full featured, but they are getting better. Most home users don't do anything other than web browsing anyway so they are already in it. Gamers will always need real hardware and local software. Latency matters. I've seen people complain about 50-75 ms ping on online games. They won't tolerate it from so called single player offline games that they stream.

Then you have the trust issue. Yes some things are slowly moving that way, but who can really trust it. Seems every single day is another privacy breach by someone. And they don't seem to inclined to fix them because they get hit with a tiny non existent fine, and back to business as usual. It's less to pay the fine than fix the issues in most cases. People just don't trust it all the way. I have a few friends who love to take pictures. They already don't put anything online because they just don't trust it. Many people do, but many don't. You would need a global trust of the internet for pure cloud to work, something that won't happen.

As far as losing Linux specifically. Not happening. Remember that 75-85%? of the internet runs on Linux of some sort so that fixes that almost by itself. That includes most cloud stuff. Then the source is available online. People can get and compile, do whatever they want. The only way that open source would become unusable is for them to eliminate local storage completely. And that will never happen.

Full cloud is going to be an all or nothing thing. It won't be partway. And that won't happen without some major changes in global networking, peoples perception, and necessity.


Tadaen_Sylvermane,

Great analysis. I wish and hope that things in the world unfold accordingly. :)

[Artim]

Students use PCs, mostly at school, maybe at home for school work (if not for gaming). But we turn in a lot of our assignments by uploading them to a cloud server, hosted by the school or by a vendor the school hires. Google Docs is popular for that. You still can't use a phone to write a term paper with all the formatting, footnotes, etc. On a cloud service all I would need would be a dumb terminal connected to the Internet, and all the software is in the cloud as well as my schoolwork. Privacy? Forget about that. No one worries about privacy because it's assumed that there's no such thing anymore.

I use a PC because I don't trust the cloud, I don't like the idea of running all my apps and storing all my work on someone else' computer. I keep it safe on my own hard disk drive, backed up on USB sticks. I upload it to the school server because that's what the professor wants, but that server has lost other kids' work in the past, so I keep a copy myself.

I have an Android phone but I use it basically only for phone calls and text messages. All that other "smart" stuff is baffling and even a little scary to me. But I'm probably the exception to the rule, being a technophobe from a race of technophobes (https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Artim). Most of my classmates use cell phones for everything except school work.

[VMC]

You need at least a computer to access the cloud, unless you consider your cell phone a non-computing device.

[Skaperen]

many of my friends and family are now using pad devices for that "big" display and when i tell them it's still small they yank out the HDMI cable and head to the 52 inch TV.

[Skaperen]

i keep my precious data at home and back it up in the cloud, encrypted here. i have a bootable USB memory stick with the decryption software and its source code on it. the decryption key for my backups is there, too, encrypted with a long pass phrase i can remember.

[anticloud]

You need at least a computer to access the cloud, unless you consider your cell phone a non-computing device.

Today we can buy powerful PCs, Smartphones and Tablets (which are all computers, of course) and do whatever we wish. But what if sometime in future we are unable to buy powerful computer as they are not available anywhere and instead we can only buy thin clients computers which barely have the power just to browse the internet and access the cloud?

[Frogs Hair]

But what if sometime in future we are unable to buy powerful computer There are countless computers using real hardware in industry and educational institutions around the world and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

[SeijiSensei]

many of my friends and family are now using pad devices for that "big" display and when i tell them it's still small they yank out the HDMI cable and head to the 52 inch TV.

I find Chromecast a better solution for that. Just hit the Chromecast icon in the Android application you are using, and it appears on the TV. Or you can use Chrome itself for apps that don't have native Chromecast support.

Some apps that should have Chromecast support annoyingly still do not, like the mobile app for the NESN service that carries the Red Sox. Unfortunately casting one's screen to the TV usually has performance issues since the stream has to be first downloaded to the phone then re-uploaded to the Chromecast device. Apps with native Chromecast support receive their content directly from the source.


There are countless computers using real hardware in industry and educational institutions around the world and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Me neither.

[VMC]

Today we can buy powerful PCs, Smartphones and Tablets (which are all computers, of course) and do whatever we wish. But what if sometime in future we are unable to buy powerful computer as they are not available anywhere and instead we can only buy thin clients computers which barely have the power just to browse the internet and access the cloud?
So what's your answer to accessing the cloud in "the future". No computer, phone, what do you use, your mind?
You still need a hardware device to access any web, cloud service.

[anticloud]

So what's your answer to accessing the cloud in "the future". No computer, phone, what do you use, your mind?
You still need a hardware device to access any web, cloud service.

When everything moves to the cloud you will still be able to buy computers and phones but those would not be as powerful as we can buy now. They would just have enough power to browse the internet and connect to the cloud. You won’t be able to do more than that. They won’t be able to do any heavy lifting. So you won’t have any option other than using the cloud and pay subscription for every service you use. It won’t be like today when you can do everything on your computers.

[SeijiSensei]

I find that vision of the future highly implausible.

[uRock]

I find that vision of the future highly implausible.
Same here. I'm more inclined to expect that we'll have very powerful nano implants that will attach to our spinal cords before the death of the desktop.

[anticloud]

Read about that vision on my post No. 25 on page 3. Click on the link and read for yourselves.

[VMC]

Read about that vision on my post No. 25 on page 3. Click on the link and read for yourselves.
Did you skip over reading the second paragraph:

Note: The whole article is written based on personal thoughts. It’s for awareness and education about cloud computing for students. It’s more negative. So that students can understand and plan, develop a better future for the people worldwide. I can be wrong in this article and I am doing it so that you will understand and analyze what is right from your common sense and knowledge. I hope you will like it.

His personal thoughts.

[anticloud]

VMC,

This is not just one such article about Cloud computing. There are many. And the general perception of most people about Cloud is negative too. Also Free Software Foundation is against the cloud.

[uRock]

<snip>Also Free Software Foundation is against the cloud.

Do you have any references to back this claim?

[anticloud]

Yes you can read Richard Stallman’s views about the cloud.

[uRock]

Yes you can read Richard Stallman’s views about the cloud.

You mean the articles from 2008?

[uRock]

Here's where we(UF) had that conversation when it was fresh news. https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=933981

[anticloud]

I am sure Richard Stallman is still standing by his words.

[QIII]

What the FSF is for or against is up to the FSF and has neither authority nor influence beyond itself. Neither does anything RMS has to say carry the weight of gospel. In fact, RMS has now resigned from the FSF under a cloud many would find distasteful.

This ouroboros is rapidly consuming itself.

This being a Cafe discussion notwithstanding, closed.