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Featured Project:Linux Multimedia Sprint
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Featured Project:Linux Multimedia Sprint
This is a short opinion article describing how a cynical, paranoid, guy like me can come to love the cloud.
The “Year of the Linux Desktop” will never happen.
Now, you are supposed to be asking how come a position paper called “How I Learned to Love The Cloud,” would start by stating that Linux will never win the desktop, so let me answer that. Because Windows won the desktop. Windows was the last winner, and the competition closed. It’s like Derek Jeeter holding records for hits at the original Yankee Stadium. The Stadium is closed now, nobody can compete against Jeeter on those records, because there is no more original Yankee Stadium. Likewise I say to you, the desktop is dead.
You might ask what I mean by that, because you still have a desktop on your computer. Well, most computers will continue to have a desktop. What I am saying is that the desktop is an old concept that is dead, or at least moribund. There is a great chasm between the young and the old, and only the old still think about their desktop. Only people whoose computing experience is rooted in the eighties think about having to do something on their desktop. For the people who are high school seniors, people who have a hiptop and a tiny laptop, the idea of having to get to their “main computer,” AKA their desktop, is no longer a real idea. They can do all kinds of things without a full computer now. The only people who still think in terms of a desktop on their computer are the old. Windows owns these people, because they own the desktop. This is the reason that it is typically easier for the young to think of linux for their main computer, because in the deep subconscious thinking of the old, if you say “try linux,” their subconscious gets all racked up because they fear being deprived of thier familiar desktop. While a person who is young, or at least tries to have a “young attitude,” does not fear this.
The last bastion of the old will always be the Windows-centric corporate computer admin. You know, the guy who wants to decide what websites a company computer may visit, what software they may run, they guy making the label tapes that say “this computer for official corporate use only.” What modern lover of the computer would even want to do something personal on a corporate terminal, where this jerk might have a keylogger or something installed. Anybody who loves computers and had something personal to do would be outside the office place using ssh to tunnel into a something to do his own stuff on his coffee break or lunch break anyway!
OK, Rant Mode off. What do we mean by “the cloud” and “loving” it or “hating” it. This is hard, because really, the phrase “the cloud” is a marketing term invented to sell a bunch of stuff while proclaiming “shiny” and “new.” Let’s use anology again, what is it to podcast? Well, amateur recordings of lectures and mix tapes is nothing new. The new element is having a much huger audience that would not have been posible without the Internet. At the end of the day, the word “podcast” really speaks of doing something that has been done for years, but a few new changes made it different so we give it a new name to distance ourselves from the past.
Let’s apply this to “the cloud.” Well, what do all these services (running a server, or groups of servers, remotely; running your email on a remote computer, backing up to a remote computer, using spare cycles on remote computers for your scientific computing, etc.) The marketing push is “a new way of doing things on the internet all the time, and connecting anywhere from any computer.” Well, look at these services, they all involve a big computer someplace else. That is called “timesharing” to me. Oh, yes, I can just imagine the look of terror in the faces of cloud advocates that I used their real name! But that is what they are!! Never say DeepGeek ever held back guys, I will always call a spade a spade!
Now, they have a point, no podcaster wants to think about passing out five mix tapes to the guys at the bus stop in the morning, and no cloud advocate wants to harken back to the days of accessing a remote computer on a VT100 terminal. But if you refer to the “jargon file” AKA “the hackers dictionary,” you can see that there is such a concept of the “wheel of karma.” It speaks of old technologies being abandoned, and then re-implemented as things change in better ways.
So, what we really are discussing here is using remote resource sharing to advantage ourselves in a way that is appropriate to the decade we happen to be in. This new way, BTW, happens to obliterate the old “desktop” idea on a computer running under your desk, but don’t tell them, and this happens to bring back timesharing, but please don’t mention it.
So why did I hate the cloud? Because it was a bunch of corporate promises. If you have been following these podcasts, you know I harbor a little bit of distrust for “the corporate vision.” On top of that, the advocates had a lot of new startups mixed in with the crowd, which to me sounds like “inexperienced.” Seeing as I don’t trust newbies, nor do I trust corporate types in general, can you blame me for having such a reaction? You know, visions of data loss filled my head, and other visions of “customer care” people saying “according to your eula, we made no warrenties” filled my head also.
Still, the benefits draw you in. I mean, not carrying a computer, just logging in remotely. Not having to rush back to your main computer someplace to do something. There has to be a way to do it!
My journey from Cloud-hate to Cloud-love started with my decision to publish my web browsing. I’ve mentioned this before, but for those who may have decided to listen to this one episode (other’s please bear with me,) I decided a few months ago to publish my bookmarks at www.deepgeek.us/bookmarks.html. I have many podcasts under my belt at this time, and by putting this online I have the benefits of being able to show people where I have been doing research for any given future podcast, as well as inviting my regular listeners to kibitz when they see me pouring over a topic. I also enjoy benefits of quicker bibliography generation too. Yet another benefit is this: I found myself to find several pages I wanted to read before the day job, and hurridly putting them up on my website. Then, after the day job I help Mrs. Geek care for the elderly parents, and I find myself on a MS Windows computer at my in-laws. I pull down my own bookmarks page and continue my reading.
Well, dear listener, you can see the writing on the wall, can’t you. I had started to do something cloud-based. Cloud Bookmarks. And how could I, a guy who is cautious on the Interweb, do this? Simple, I own my own domain on the web. I am a client to a web-host of my own choosing. I run my own domain, thier job is keeping the system tip-top, they screw up, and they will be fired. No, no ad-based startup-like freebie servers for me, no. For me, they must answer to my wallet. Not that it is that expensive, mind you. But they have to be beholding to you, not some corporate sponser who buys a banner ad from them.
What happened then? A trial of IMAP (POP3 was better for me, it would have been different if I was connecting from my laptop from many places, but two computers at two known locations, POP3 still did the trick, in it’s pseudo-IMAP mode.)
So, I can now say that my desktop is not a live concept for me anymore. My real computing home is my domain on a webhost. I lease my main computer now, or at least a part of my main computer.
As far as how I see the cloud for those around me? Well, I am the older guy I mentioned above who tries to keep it “young at heart.” I am surrounded by those older people who are owned by MS, while my net-friends are usually younger than myself and more modern than my friends. So how do I see the cloud these days?
As a way of converting my real-life friends to free-software, without them knowing it. When they use software on a LAMP server, that is what you are really doing. You see, when MS killed themselves trying to stop netscape, they called the cloud “the middleware threat.” We have come to the point where we really are winning now, even if we have to have marketing come up with new stealthy names for it.