Thread: cloud OS?
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Old December 31st 17, 03:43 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Mayayana
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Default cloud OS?

"Michael Logies" wrote

| No, a Chromebit. That is a full PC in the size of an USB-stick, with a
| big monitor and a big keyboard and mouse attached for using web apps
| (from Google and others).
|

Ah. I didn't know about those. At the CNEt review
page it says 1.8 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 16 GB storage. Uses
Google apps and requires an HDMI monitor plus
bluetooth keyboard and mouse. That's easy and
economical? It's not even mobile. It's a low-end,
compressed desktop that can only run a few web
apps.

So what's the appeal? Saving some money? I suspect
that's rarely a factor. $5 coffee, take-out food, game
devices, computer phones and HD TVs all attest that
the average first world person is almost oblivious to
costs. Those are all expensive, non-critical items.
Computing, on the other hand, is a critical need
for most people.

| Web apps are (often) conceptionally superior to local programs: No
| need for upgrading by the end user, the web app is upgraded centrally
| instead. No need for massive, local CPU power, because the heavy
| lifting is done centrally. No need for big local storage, because data
| is stored centrally. The result is a cheaper, safer, easier use of
| computer power. Economics of scale are at work here and that`s why
| this will be the dominant way of computing in the future.
|
Maybe this appeals because you can limit what your
daughter gets mixed up in? I'm guessing there are no
S&M chat groups in GoogleVille.

Conceptually superior? That's misleading. Or to put it
bluntly, you've been duped. The web app companies
want you to think web apps are a natural progression
because they want you in a scenario where everything
you do costs a feee. Money or ads and/or personal data,
but some kind of fee.
Web app software is far more limited while also requiring
far more computer power. Most software rarely needs
upgrading. Most web apps do *not* run remotely. Office
365 and Adobe CS? They're installed locally. The remote
part is just the calling home and storage, to justify charging
you every month.
And you're talking about a fairly beefy PC on a stick with
the Chromebit. Photoshop or MS Office would run fine on
Win98 with 700 MHz and 64 MB RAM. You've got several
times more capacity with Chromebit.

This is my whole point: The logic simply doesn't add
up. If you want to limit your daughter's activities or
save money on kids school supplies, that might make
sense. Setting up a Chromebit rig to use as a real
computer does not make sense in terms of cost,
practicality, functionality, or even convenience.

| The existence of tablets has nothing
| to do with the life of desktops, just as the existence of
| microwave ovens doesn't make stoves obsolete.
|
| A better analogy would be the fate of open fires after the introducing
| of central heating.
|
Suit yourself. This is starting to sound like religion
to me. Not because you like web services but because
you're so adamant that they must replace everything else,
despite the fact that millions of people, including you,
use a desktop.

| I don't mean that. I mean that Google products are spyware.
|
| Then choose another web app provider. Chrome OS/Cloudread has an
| anonymous (guest) mode.
|

You're missing the point. By pretending to do your
work on their website and storing your data on their
cloud, they define it as a service. That justifies the
rent. That also provides the excuse for them to
claim co-ownership of your data. That's what gmail
does. The whole system revolves around targetted ads.
Or you pay very steep prices. You didn't just
stumble upon a magical kingdom of free stuff. You
pay one way or the other. It's possible that Microsoft
will be slightly less slimy with their web services, but
that's not saying much. However you look at it,
you're letting the landlord co-own your stuff and
spy on you. And the real kicker is that you don't
actually have to do that. (Most people have real,
free email through their ISP. Theyt just can't be
bothered to set it up.)

In a lawsuit awhile back, non-gmail customers
sued Google for reading their email without permission.
Google's defense: Those people had no business
thinking they might have privacy because Google
has been spying on everyone for years and everyone
knows that. In other words, "You can't prosecute
us for stealing their stuff because everyone knows
we steal everyone's stuff!"

Adobe charges something like $10 US/month and
stores work online. Anyone who doesn't know enough
to make local copies will lose all their work if they end
the rental. In other words, with web apps you still
don't get the convenience of not needing to understand
the device. You still use hardware that can cause problems.
You still need to learn how to use the software. And
you still need to understand the pros and cons of
your brave new Rental-Rama. If you're not careful you
might lose all your data.

| In the future "the system" will be mainly in the cloud, connected to
| dumber terminals. You don`t learn to operate a power station to use
| your electricity at home, do you?
|
You seem to be watching too much TV. How is
it that you know the future with such certainty?
Your words sound like a TV commercial.

The "system" is local.
Do you really think that every time you type a
letter in Google apps it's calling Google for a webpage
update? And if you press backspace 30 times it
makes a roundtrip to Google for a new webpage
30 times in 2 seconds? Not likely. If it does then it
will be a very limited app. What you've got is either
software that's really running locally, or a bloated
javascript program running in the browser and
calling home frequently.

As noted above, Office 365 and Adobe CS do
not run on the cloud. They only pretend to be in the
cloud. And a web app is not lean. Wrapping all that
functionality in sandboxing and a browser is
extremely inefficient. That's partly why it's taken
so long to make the web app scam work. Microsoft
invented .Net for web apps. In 2001. They tried
to make a sandboxed version of Windows, running
on top of .Net, in 2005. By their description, it
failed because there was not yet hardware powerful
enough to handle the extreme bloat.

Why didn't it work? Because .Net is a bloated,
superfluous layer used to simplify programming
tasks and add sandboxing. It's not the future
any more than javascript is the future. It may be
one future tool, but some kind of software has
to work directly with the processor and RAM. That's
what the OS makes possible. A browser running
javascript and/or Silverlight is several layers
removed from the "bare metal" functionality of
the CPU and RAM. Each of those layers is costly.
The problem in 2001, and 2005, was that neither
the hardware nor the Internet connection speed
was adequate to run the extremely inefficent,
bloated layers that are necessary for web apps
to run convincingly. Also, the hardware and the
public were not yet ready for reducing computers
to crippled kiosks. (Why run software online, after
all, if it runs better and cheaper locally? The solution?
Restrict computers in the name of security and
convenience.)

Your Chromebit is clearly dumb, but it's not low-power.
It's Linux with extensive sandboxing and crippling
technology to create a kiosk system that locks
you into a browser. My very elderly father has something
like that. It's called a WOW: Linux built into a monitor,
set up as a web browsing kiosk system. He didn't buy
it because it's the future. He bought it because he
could no longer focus sufficiently to use a fully
functional computer.

In other words, you've been had. Google's not on
the cutting edge of the future, unless these companies
somehow manage to deprive us, by hook in your case
and by crook in mine, of non-crippled computers.


| As for Windows ads, what about ads for Candy Crush
| or MS Office in Metro buttons?
|
| I deinstalled these. Havn`t seen other ads on my PCs with Windows 10.
|

So you do see ads. Removing the ads is not the
same as there being no ads. And removing them
required some expertise. I don't have any Candy
Crush crap on my computer. If I did I'd know that
some malware had snuck on.


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