"Google's not-so-secret new OS"

"Roger Blake" wrote

| I can sympathize with everything you write. But we, the consumers have
| also a profit motive. You call it convenience - less money and time
| spent by consumers for the IT-functions/-services they wish.
|
| Ken Olsen was right, just ahead of his time.
|

I had to look that one up. The founder of Digital?
Is this the quote you're referring to?

"People will get tired of managing personal computers
and will want instead terminals, maybe with windows."

1992. Remember 2000, when the PC magazines went
gaga over thin clients.... that didn't sell? Remember
the death of the PC a few years back? We might just
as well be talking about how the microwave replaced
the stove, or how automobiles cured walking.

If we look at the details, many people are happy with
a cellphone, and maybe sometimes a tablet for shopping
or reading news. Though even tablets seem to be getting
replaced by "phablet" phones. But that hasn't had much
effect on computer sales, and certainly not in business.

Michael is pleased that his daughter has a Chromebit
instead of a computer. That is, he's happy that she's
learning to use a browser as consumer tool, rather than
learning the use of the computer, a productivity tool.
It's not a computer without the hassles. It's just a kiosk
shopping and entertainment device aimed at spreading
Google services. What about when she needs to write
school papers or takes up photography and wants to edit
her photos? A browser-based Internet device hardly
seems like a great new improvement for those things.

Cloud generally means rental software.
It doesn't necessarily mean having no computer
to maintain. If one wants to do any kind of work and save
any kind of files then there's a computer involved. And
that computer will need a mouse and keyboard to be really
useful. People can use "cloud" map services and call
Uber taxis from their phone. But Adobe's cloud graphic
editor and Microsoft's cloud office suite? They're both
local, massive, installed software. Does anyone really
think it could make sense to edit 10 MB photos remotely?
The cloud part is simply that they're spyware, you have
to pay rent on them, and they let you store files online.
(Any Abobe cloud Creative Suite user who's not
moderately computer-literate will lose all those files if
they quit the service because by default they're not
saved locally! So once Michael's daughter upgrades to
a PC she'd better learn about using file systems and
recognizing file types so that she can maneuver in the
sneaky world of cloud.)

I don't mean to dismiss cloud as entirely useless and
irrelevant. Office 365 or Adobe CS might make sense
for some people.

But the big issue here is not really cloud.
What's going on with computers is changing the software
sales model to rental in order to increase profits. In order to
do that, the computer needs to be restricted so that rental
software appears to be the best option. Restricting the
computer dovetails with growing security concerns. It also
dovetails with copyright licensing concerns of media companies.
It also dovetails with the growing trend toward consumer
services. So in many ways the whole idea begins to seem to
make sense: Easy, secure, more profits for software companies...
Let's buy a Chromebit or a tablet and go shopping, carefree!

But people are still using cloud Photoshop on computers.
They're just paying more money for it now. That's the story
with Windows 10. It's coercion toward rental of computer
functionality. Chromebits and iPhone apps don't replace
computers. It's very unlikely that Google is going to make
anything for productivity that doesn't serve up ad-supported
online apps.

There was another interesting bit on the Wikipedia page
about Ken Olsen. He's quoted as saying, "There is no reason
for any individual to have a computer in his home." He said
that, yes, that's an accurate quote, but that he was talking
about computers to manage the house, not personal computers.

So maybe he was ahead of his time.... in forseeing the
absurdity and problems resulting from The Internet of
Things. (I saw news recently about a new frig with a
TV screen on the outside that lets you see inside! You
don't need to open the door! It reminded me of the old
Mad magazine.

On Mon, 20 Feb 2017 10:12:59 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

Michael is pleased that his daughter has a Chromebit
instead of a computer. That is, he's happy that she's
learning to use a browser as consumer tool, rather than
learning the use of the computer, a productivity tool.
It's not a computer without the hassles. It's just a kiosk
shopping and entertainment device aimed at spreading
Google services. What about when she needs to write
school papers or takes up photography and wants to edit
her photos? A browser-based Internet device hardly
seems like a great new improvement for those things.

Devices with Chrome OS are the most sold laptops to US schools. So
they suffice for school work:
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/03/googl...m-devices.html
Google's Chromebooks make up half of US classroom devices sold
Harriet Taylor | @Harri8t
Wednesday, 9 Dec 2015 | 10:20 AM ET

http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/19/11...us-idc-figures
Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US
by Tom Warren@tomwarren May 19, 2016, 7:50am EDT
(...)

http://www.talkandroid.com/308652-go...tops-bett2017/
Google’s education efforts bolstered with new Chromebooks
Justin Herrick
January 24, 2017
(...)
Just how big has Chrome OS gotten in education? Statistics were made
available, and here they are. There are currently more than 20
millions students and teachers using Chromebooks and Classroom.
Furthermore, Google says G Suite for Education now reaches more than
70 million people who actively use the platform. Seriously, that’s a
lot of people looking to Google for education needs.
(...)

Our daughter (10 years old) is already manipulating fotos on her
smartphone (Honor 5C) with some fun apps. Snapseed (Google) would be
enough for her school time, I assume. All her fotos on her smartphone
go into the Google cloud automatically.

No, I don`t see a future for a fat client for her generation besides
special use cases. Even scientific writing starts to go into the
cloud:

https://pkp.sfu.ca/pkp2015/paper/view/503
ome PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference 2015 John D Lees-Miller
Overleaf: Scientific Writing and Publishing in the Age of the Cloud
(...)

http://www.editage.com/insights/writ...rative-writing
Writing in the cloud: tools for collaborative writing
Dr. Thomas Crouzier | Jun 2, 2014 | 12,789 views
(...)

Out daughter is already opening and printing *.docx from her school
with Google Docs (on her Chromebit), and I hope that she can avoid
fiddling around with the mess called "Word".

Regards

M.

"Michael Logies" wrote

| Devices with Chrome OS are the most sold laptops to US schools. So
| they suffice for school work:
|
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/03/googl...m-devices.html
| Google's Chromebooks make up half of US classroom devices sold

Cheap, limited, and secure. So US schools
are buying cheap, limited-use notebooks for their
students. I don't see how that negates the relevance
of desktops. (Also, the figures don't include desktops
sold to schools, according to the article.) There's
a place for such devices. What else could be given
out to students to share an assignment but a limited
kiosk device on which they can't take off to Facebook?

What has that got to do with the relevance of
desktop computers?

I also wouldn't necessarily subscribe
wisdom to school admins. My ladyfriend is a
retired kindergarten teacher who now supervises
teacher trainees. When she was teaching she was
forced to get Macs in order to qualify for Federal
funding for such things as tables and chairs. The
Feds were mandating Macs in all classrooms! The
Macs sat there, unused. (5-6-year-olds are mainly
busy learning how to relate to their own bodies,
and to other children.)
Maybe that was due to Apple lobbying.
I suspect the problem was probably just technophilia
among government "experts". There's a widespread,
baseless belief that merely being exposed to
computerized devices increases the intelligence
of children. Widespread use of computers in
schools also goes along with the trend (thanks
to Bill Gates and his buddies, among others) toward
not trusting teachers and requiring them to
standardize -- to be techinicians who's skills
and success can be extrapolated from generated
data and put onto graphs. Computers are a good
way to standardize. (Though Bill Gates must be
mad that his education scam is helping Google
more than it's helping Microsoft.)

| Our daughter (10 years old) is already manipulating fotos on her
| smartphone (Honor 5C) with some fun apps. Snapseed (Google) would be
| enough for her school time, I assume. All her fotos on her smartphone
| go into the Google cloud automatically.
|

That's fine for a 10-year-old who's having fun
putting kittie faces on photos of friends. I know
many adults who take photos and send them
in email, with no knowledge at all of file types,
graphic editing, etc. From what I've seen, their
iPhones give them an option of 3 file sizes to
send, but most don't even understand that.
That's fine for photos sent from cellphones.

But again, that has nothing to do with the
relevance of computers. It's not either/or.
A graphic editor is a far cry from a cellphone
graphic app. If your daughter ended up getting
into photography she'd need a real computer,
a good camera that takes RAW photos, and an
editor that can handle those. The situation
would be similar with other hobbies. If she gets
interested in music? She can listen to songs and
buy them on her phone. She can't get into
serious sound mixing. Graphic design? Same
thing.

Your daughter may very well grow up to be
someone who has no use for a computer... or
a kitchen... or hand tools. Many people don't
need those things. She may not need literacy,
for that matter. (Goodness knows it's already
a rare skill in her generation.) All of that may
not be an obstacle to her having a fulfilling life.
She might be a dancer, a farmer, a physical
therapist, a housewife/mother, a yoga teacher,
or any number of other things that won't
necessarily require such knowledge. But it's a
very big jump from there to saying that computers
are outdated.

But I guess you're right that getting rid of
computers is simpler. And simple is good, right?
So what's for dinner tonight from your
microwave? Artificially flavored chicken
teriyaki pasta? Frozen rice with fake lobster
chunks? Yum. Thank goodness you don't have
to deal with pans, flames, spoons, spices, and
all that other 20th-century complication. Hopefully
your daughter's generation will never know the
tedium of cooking, huh?

One does not need a fat client to learn basic concepts about a
computer. Daughter already knows Total Commander, DiskUsage, Image
Shrink, TubeMate, all apps for Android. She learns that the SD card in
her smartphone gets full fast with downloaded videos from youtube and
that a sound file generated from such a video (easy with TubeMate) is
much smaller.

(And don`t start with fotography, thats my hobby. You don`t need
longer RAW for this, my 60,000 thousands pictures are mostly jpg and
in Picasa. The Jpgs from Nikon dslr were always good enough and the
jpg processors in cameras are much better today than they were 10
years ago and even then jpg was better for most:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/raw.htm)

Because she does not have to take care of and waste time for outdated
computing devices (like the first drivers of cars had to be their own
mechanic), she can go horse riding with her sister, is cooking with
her mother and has a classic, russian piano teacher (and a good Kawai
electric piano, the choice of her parents - her mother plays piano
well).

It is me who knows more about Windows PCs than I ever wanted. I had to
read "Dvorak's Guide to PC Telecommunications" at the beginning of the
1990ies to connect to the most important medical database
(Medline/PubMed). Later I had to learn about network basics,
groupware, terminal server, encryption and solving many glitches of
Windows only to get my work done and to command the computing power I
need without paying a fortune to the computer industry. And it is me
who cannot ride, cook or play the piano. ;-)

I think the younger generation is much better off using web apps in a
competent way than to waste their time on fiddling around with local
machines and OS just to keep them running.

Best Regards

Michael

"Michael Logies" wrote

| (And don`t start with fotography, thats my hobby. You don`t need
| longer RAW for this, my 60,000 thousands pictures are mostly jpg and
| in Picasa.

No, you don't "need" RAW. But if you got
seriously involved with working on photos you'd
want RAW. JPG is arguably the worst format,
except GIF. It's popular only because it's
cross-platform, compresses well, and there
are no royalties. But the resulting image has
very little of the original image data left. If
your daughter became a professional photographer
she wouldn't be doing it with JPGs in Picasa.

| Because she does not have to take care of and waste time for outdated
| computing devices (like the first drivers of cars had to be their own
| mechanic), she can go horse riding with her sister, is cooking with
| her mother and has a classic, russian piano teacher (and a good Kawai
| electric piano, the choice of her parents - her mother plays piano
| well).
|

I build my own computers, repair my house,
do oil changes on my truck... Why is that
wasted time? Because it's laborer's work?
And riding horses or playing piano is somehow
a higher quality activity? I practice calligraphy
and computer graphics. Is the former an
elevated pursuit while the latter is tedium?

You seem to have a class-based value system
that you're applying to activities, defining a
possibly dubious quality-of-life scale: Playing
the piano is edifying. Fixing your car is not.
That defines life as a collection of consumable
experiences. Interestingly, that's just the idea
that Microsoft is trying to sell -- using the word
"experiences" as much as possible to sell simple
computer devices as quality-of-life enhancers:

Computer are no longer for dreary work. They're
for exciting, rich experiences.

It's a sophisticated form of materialism that they're
pushing. The classic marketing angle used with the
white collar peasantry: You are what you own. But
in this case the ownership is more sophisticated. It's
"psychological materialism". One owns rarefied
ideas and memories of exotic lands rather than
sports cars and big TV sets. But the basic approach
is the same. Self as possessions.

Would you feel the same if it were your son
and not your daughter? Or if she wanted to
learn how to build "artisan" stone walls?
(That's a very "useless" skill, after all, by the
standards you're defining. No one needs to
build stone walls anymore. It's "boring" and
strenuous laborer's work. We have vinyl
fences that are far cheaper and easier to
install. On the other hand, building artisan stone
walls might be associated with being a very
artistic, advanced and admirable person who's
choosing their consumable experiences wisely.
An enviable person who's "getting a lot out
of life".


| I think the younger generation is much better off using web apps in a
| competent way than to waste their time on fiddling around with local
| machines and OS just to keep them running.
|

I would agree that there can be a lot of
wasted time. Technologies come in only to be
outmoded. Much of what I've learned will
probably be as useless as a Mayan alphabet
in a few years. Then again, much of what I've
learned about many things is changing.

Maybe a compromise would work: Don't
discourage your daughter using computers
or teach her that she's been saved from the
tedium of using tools. Let her discover her options
and choose how deeply to go into things for
herself. If she decides to get seriously into
photography and wants a desktop computer
to do RAW editing, she can always pay someone
like you to maintain it.

I don't mean to keep arguing with you, but this
seemed like a good opportunity to air out this issue.
Your views are exactly what the corporate services
industry wants people to think. And there's a lot
to be said for that view of convenience. But it's
also one-sided. Debating the view provides a
chance to balance out the issue.

On 2017-02-20, Mayayana wrote:
I had to look that one up. The founder of Digital?
Is this the quote you're referring to?

"People will get tired of managing personal computers
and will want instead terminals, maybe with windows."

I keep forgetting how much time has passed, I can remember when anyone
on Usenet would have known about Ken Olsen and DEC.

That's one of the relevant quotes. Olsen was never a fan of the personal
computer concept. Unfortunately when PCs became popular in the 1980s,
centralized computing fell out of favor and the company started imploding
by the early 1990s. (DEC was subsequently bought out by Compaq in 1998,
which was then gobbled up by HP in 2002.)

What people really want of course is something that gives them the
capabilities of a computer but without all the messy and complex
responsibilities of system administration. So today the pendulum is
swinging back to centralized computing, all dressed up with the "cloud"
buzzword to make it appear new and exciting.

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.)

NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com
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Badges don't grant extra rights -- http://www.CopBlock.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Tue, 21 Feb 2017 10:59:17 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

No, you don't "need" RAW. But if you got
seriously involved with working on photos you'd
want RAW.

It depends. If your are shooting for a photo agency RAW may be
forbidden:
https://arstechnica.com/business/201...flect-reality/
Reuters bans submission of RAW photos: “Our photos must reflect
reality.”

I never would encourage my daughters to become a photographer. That´s
most likely a way to meager income, if at all. Of course I teach them
taking photos and about shutter time, aperture, depth of field,
lenses. But that`s nothing they should take too seriously.

I build my own computers, repair my house,
do oil changes on my truck... Why is that
wasted time? Because it's laborer's work?

I refill oil on our car, too, and may change harddisks and RAM. And of
course I try to show it to our daughters, who are more or less
interested. ;-)

And riding horses or playing piano is somehow
a higher quality activity? I practice calligraphy
and computer graphics. Is the former an
elevated pursuit while the latter is tedium?

That`s a pedagogical question. Horse riding and piano playing have
stood the test of time for training self-confidence, caring,
fine-motor skills, rhythm and presumably some other talents, too. I`m
not so sure about computer graphics.

You seem to have a class-based value system
that you're applying to activities, defining a
possibly dubious quality-of-life scale: Playing
the piano is edifying. Fixing your car is not.

I don`t care much about their piano play per se, because I`m not much
interested in music, anyhow. But I`m faszinated by their progress. For
me it is a playground for building other skills like patience,
endurance, concentration. An experience, that if you try hard and
often enough you will get results. All this can apply to fixing a car,
too. But there is no russion school of car fixing to build on. ;-)

But the basic approach
is the same. Self as possessions.

I don`t want to get philosophical here. And Erich Fromm, "To Have or
To Be" was a bit boring already 35 years ago, when I read it. My
thinking is more influenced by Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity,
and some stoicism. Ivan Illich on the other hand was worth reading as
a critic of consumerism and critic of the faith in experts. Adorno in
his anti-capitalism was a bit too radical for me, but I enjoyed his
german.

Or if she wanted to
learn how to build "artisan" stone walls?

Being an artist is another way to meager income, if at all...
If I would be rich, I would not care much about earning money with
work. But being a professional and liking it I prefer hard sciences,
math, classical philosophy, sports as an educational program.
Adminstrating computers cannot compete, because it does not teach
enough. It becomes boring after a few years and obsolescent.
Of course they have to learn a lot of social skills, too. I assume
that being bilingual (german, russian) with family members all over
the world is not a bad start.

What I have not mentioned so far is the big difference cloud apps make
in the support and development cycle. Cloud apps means that the
offering company has to support only one version of her software at
any time on only one OS. Errors can be fixed fast (for all customers!)
and easily, because a lot of guesswork is taken out of the process (no
interference with other software, different versions of OS, DLLs).
That means that cloud apps can go forward much faster than desktop
apps and is a competitive advantage hard to beat.

Microsoft is struggling to get there, that`s why they gave/give away
Windows 10 for free. The complexity of supporting too many different
versions of their OS is too expensive.

Best Regards

Michael

"Michael Logies" wrote

| No, you don't "need" RAW. But if you got
| seriously involved with working on photos you'd
| want RAW.
|
| It depends. If your are shooting for a photo agency RAW may be
| forbidden:
|
https://arstechnica.com/business/201...flect-reality/
| Reuters bans submission of RAW photos: "Our photos must reflect
| reality."
|

Interesting point. I remember that. So much for Life
magazine and art photography. Their ban was analogous
to saying they only accept Polaroids because developed
photos can be doctored. But that was only the superficial
reason and not an honest one.

First, they're depending on people cooperating with
them. There's nothing to stop someone refining their
RAW photo, saving to JPG, then transferring the metadata
from the original JPG. Also, RAW doesn't accomodate
things like fixing Donald Trump's hair on a windy day.
Those things are done after it comes out of RAW. RAW
editing about choosing the best (or preferred)
light and color out of what the lens picked up. When
Cosmopolitan magazine paints smooth skin or curvaceous
hips onto a model, or NYT removes a Pepsi can from a shot,
it's not RAW editing. Those are operations done on bitmaps.
The JPG format comes into play mainly for putting things
online -- a final reduction to the lowest tolerable quality
for the purpose in mind.

So it makes sense for Reuters for a number of reasons.
As they said, sending a JPG direct from camera gets them
the news photos quicker. Newsprint and Web don't need
a quality image. Also, the metadata will usually contain date,
GPS data, etc. That makes it easy for Reuters to automate
storage, categorizing, tracking of copyright, etc.
So Reuters has a number of business reasons to prefer
JPG. Their claim of "honest" photos is a white lie to make
them look good.

RAW is very closely analogous to developing your own
photos rather than sending film to the drugstore. It allows
you to do what you might have once done in the darkroom.

"Mayayana" wrote

| RAW is very closely analogous to developing your own
| photos rather than sending film to the drugstore. It allows
| you to do what you might have once done in the darkroom.
|

Getting a bit OT, but this might be of
interest to some here. As I understand it,
even an iPhone can take RAW shots these
days. So if you use an iPhone you could
experiment and find out for yourself whether
RAW is worthwhile. You could probably get
a free trial of a RAW editor. I actually
downloaded a free tool yesterday.

DxO OpticsPro 9:

http://www.dxo.com/us/digitalcamerauk

I haven't installed it yet so I'm not sure
what it does. It seems to be a specialized
image quality tool for RAW rather than a full
editor.
Normally $149. The older version is free in
exchange for an email address where they
can send ads. But it's also a good example of
one limitation with RAW: different cameras
use different formats and software gets
outdated by new hardware. This particular
freebie supports only Win7/8 and among
iPhones supports only 4,4s,5,5s.

A good option for a fullscale program at a
fair price is Corel Aftershot Pro.

On Wed, 22 Feb 2017 10:00:43 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

First, they're depending on people cooperating with
them. There's nothing to stop someone refining their
RAW photo, saving to JPG, then transferring the metadata
from the original JPG.

No, that will not work. There is forensic software available (I
assume: part of Reuter`s photo pipeline) which shows, whether a JPG
has been processed directly in the camera or not. If you try to cheat
Reuters, you will loose your contract.

Regards

M.