Yet another cloud computing dreamer.
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| jdixon Oct 08, 2009 6:44 PM EDT |
> The availability of netbooks that ride on the maturity of cloud infrastructure is heralding the return of the thin client... Which is fine as far as it goes. Assuming you make the thin client experience better than the thick client one. Which nobody has shown any sign of doing so far. And assuming you ignore the data ownership and network availability/speed/bandwidth issues, all of which have been discussed here in the past. But the real problem is simpler even that that. The above proposition assumes that the netbook is only capable of being a thin client. Which is demonstrably not true. Allow me to post the specs of an off lease Dell Latitude D610, which is somewhere between 3 and 4 years old now, available at a competitive off lease seller for $235 plus shipping: Dell LATITUDE D610, Pentium M 1.6GHz, 512 MB, 40.0 GB HD, CD-RW DVD Combo We've used the D600 series of machines at work for the past 6 years or so. While getting a bit long of tooth for everything the company is throwing at machines nowadays (don't ask, you really don't want to know), this machine is still perfectly serviceable for almost all uses. However, except for having a CD/DVD drive, this machine is worse in almost every way than any currently available netbook, and given the advances in processors and memory, probably slower. Thus demonstrating that, given the right operating system, any currently available netbook is more than capable of operating as a full thick client computer. I know, I'm preaching to the choir, but sometimes I feel the need to vent when I read yet another story misrepresenting the nature of netbooks. |
| caitlyn Oct 08, 2009 8:02 PM EDT |
Yep. My new netbook (here in a few days) has an Intel Atom N280 1.6GHz processor, a hyperthreaded little marvel that benchmarks significantly faster than processors with higher clock speeds and 2GB RAM (after upgrade -- too expensive from the factory. Tell me: what won't it be able to do as a thick client? Why should I trust a third party with my data anyway? I'm not a big supporter of RMS but he gets cloud computing 100% right. It's best completely avoided. |
| Steven_Rosenber Oct 09, 2009 2:00 AM EDT |
I can't see cloud computing NOT becoming the predominant model over the next decade. Whether to trust it or not is another story. Keeping everything encrypted in the cloud is one way to mitigate privacy concerns. |
| tracyanne Oct 09, 2009 3:27 AM EDT |
@steven an idea for a project would be an application/script that automatically encrypts the data prior to uploading to the cload. I've been playing around with Ubuntu One, and a local application or extension to the client that performs the encrption would be really useful |
| hkwint Oct 09, 2009 9:29 AM EDT |
Quoting:Why should I trust a third party with my data anyway? Well, I guess 'they' d say: Because they make your data available worldwide, at any time, at any place, with any computer. Most of the LXer readers are capable of doing that themselves. That would involve finding common 'older' hardware to act as a cheap IMAP server for mail, OpenLDAP for contacts, SFTP for file availability, forwarding ports in their ADSL / Cable modem and tadaaa, their it is, your very 'own' cloud. However, I guess for +98% of the consumers (which would probably include me too, I run none of the above servers) that's too complex. Those people like the simplicity of 'everything being managed for them'. If not, GMail and Google Docs wouldn't be as popular as they are today. And of course, when the servers are in the cloud, the consumer doesn't have to bother securing / updating them, which for most consumers would be / is a big hassle. |
| Sander_Marechal Oct 09, 2009 9:32 AM EDT |
SFTP? Nah. WebDAV or NFS is much easier. |
| jdixon Oct 09, 2009 9:50 AM EDT |
> they' d say: Because they make your data available worldwide, at any time, at any place, with any computer. Then "they" don't live in any rural state in the US. Something like 1/3 of West Virginia has NO broadband access. Some of them can get satellite, but then the bandwidth limitations kill you. There is nowhere near universal coverage in the US. the situation is even worse in many other countries. And that ignores the cross platform issues which destroy the any computer part of the argument. |
| caitlyn Oct 09, 2009 10:32 AM EDT |
I agree with jdixon. I also wonder how well these cloud companies will do once a well pulicized security breach occurs, which it inevitably will. |
| krisum Oct 09, 2009 12:26 PM EDT |
@tracyanne > I've been playing around with Ubuntu One, and a local application or extension to the client that performs the encrption would be really useful Check out encfs which can already accomplish this. I have been using dropbox with that to exchange data seamlessly with encryption. Here's how to set it up: * install encfs or cryptkeeper for a GUI (I usually use the latter and have it in startup programs) * create an encrypted directory and mount it (encfs {encrypted dir} {unencrypted mount dir}) * for dropbox I normally create symbolic links from the required directories inside the {encrypted dir} to the dropbox synchronization directory; usually I keep one subdirectory inside the {encrypted dir} tree which is used for synchronization; by observing the directory listing of before and after creating that subdirectory, the encrypted name of that subdirectory can be easily figured out and symbolic link to that created inside dropbox synchronization directory * now on the other computers you can create similar setup with the same password for the encfs directory and have the symbolic links the same way Looks like the above can be easily automated using a script. |
| tracyanne Oct 09, 2009 5:03 PM EDT |
Krisum, sounds like a plan. I'll check that out. |
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