4 ms·

I never liked the "cloud" from the start. To me it was simply dumb terminals all over again, which had the potential to shift everything to a server which was n

by alan_cx 13y ago

I never liked the "cloud" from the start. To me it was simply dumb terminals all over again, which had the potential to shift everything to a server which was not mine. Security was an issue, but also it meant being reliant on the connection and service being up and running. In my experience, web sites were down more often than my desk top. And that's just on a personal level. Why a business would do such a thing was even more beyond me. Personal or business owned clouds for limited scope use, fine. But handing all that control over to a 3rd parts, over the net, in a foreign country? I see the marketed advantages, useful as a throwaway extra, but over all? No way.

davidw 13y ago
> Why a business would do such a thing was even more beyond me. Mostly the same reason they rely on third party infrastructure like electricity and plumbing: economics.
- belorn 13y ago
  Both electricity and plumbing has immense regulations, and historical perspective of being neutral and non-threatening to businesses. Cloud services has none of that, and can cut off service for any reason. Work on any competing services that "the company" dislike, or do anything disruptive to people in power, and instant see your future, your business, you speech be taken down to a 404 not found. Any logs, any files, any property at all confiscated. Even pure money is not safe from "indefinite suspension of the account". Maybe this is a lesson that if you ever want to legally produce a scam, steal, or do anything that normally would land you in jail, all you need to do is go into producing third-party digital infrastructure. There is basically nothing a cloud service can do that would lend the owners to go to jail except tax evasion.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - saosebastiao 13y ago
    The regulation has to do with the fact that plumbing and electricity are Natural Monopolies. If they were not Natural Monopolies, they would have competition (as Cloud providers do), which acts as a form of regulation.
    - shiven 13y ago
      That is not regulation, merely threat of competition. And competition is moot if all the servers are accessible to the "bad guys", in this case, NSA. Unless, you mean to tell me there is a viable alternative to AWS that is located in Switzerland?
      - pyre 13y ago
        Right, because it's not like the US government has been able to pressure the Swiss banks into giving up the historically famous anonymity of their clients! Oh wait...
        shiven 13y ago
        Alrighty then, pick another country FWIW. Germany, Iceland, wherever. Still doesn't change the point I'm making.
  - res0nat0r 13y ago
    AWS has tons of regulations and compliance. It is adding new standards all of the time. http://aws.amazon.com/compliance/ http://aws.amazon.com/compliance/ https://aws.amazon.com/security/ https://aws.amazon.com/security/ http://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/security/ http://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/security/ http://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ http://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ http://aws.amazon.com/serviceterms/ http://aws.amazon.com/serviceterms/ http://aws.amazon.com/aup/ http://aws.amazon.com/aup/
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Apples and pears. There was not a time when the mass population had their own generators, then flocked to supplied electricity in preference. They never had power independence. Water was originally done locally, rivers and what not, but hygiene and health became a game changer. The benefits were huge and clear. The whole history of all three are so different, you cant reasonably compare any of them.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    The benefits of outsourcing your computing infrastructure are also huge and clear, as are the benefits of sharing your personal information. That's why so many people do it, and will continue to do so. In-house computing infrastructure is very expensive and most firms have their comparative advantage in doing Something Else, so it makes much more economic sense to run on AWS or somesuch instead of buying a pile of physical machines and running their own server farm. Likewise, many web and mobile services provide huge benefits for their users via network effects. I personally don't enjoy using Facebook enough to maintain an active account, but many millions of people clearly do, and I can't say they're wrong for choosing to spend their time that way.
  - davidw 13y ago
    You wanted to know the reason why companies choose cloud computing, and I answered. Computing power is - no - not exactly like other things like electricity and water, but it's headed that way for certain types of applications. What hosting solution(s) your own company use?
speeder 13y ago
In the company where I work, everything but the IDE is in cloud... We use Google Apps, Trello, Wave (for accounting), Corona SDK (that builds in Corona cloud servers), Google Drive (previously was Dropbox), Google Docs (we never used any office here, MS, Libre, or anything else), and so on... I am personally against it, but the CEO decided it that way because he did not wanted to bother about IT infrastructure, we are not big enough yet to bother about it, cloud stuff make things much easier.
- tommi 13y ago
  So, you're not using https://c9.io/ https://c9.io/ yet? ;) Are there any other tools that could fit the description of cloud IDE?
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Yeah, sure, until some numpty digs up your internet connection cable. Cheaper, I can vaguely accept, but "easier" to me means "lazy". Nothing good comes from easy. But, yes, in reality, I can see how CEO types would be sold on the cloud. I just think its potentially misguided. BTW, IT infrastructure? You are all networked, right? So, whats left? One large ish server? Hardly my idea of "infrastructure", which to me implies something a bit more large and diverse. IMHO, being networked for the internet means you already have infrastructure, ish!!!
  - speeder 13y ago
    Right now our office has two workstations, two desks, two chairs, a water filter (not cooler, only a filter, made of clay), paper, pens, two potted plants, and of course, all relevant cables. We don't even have a place to put a server... We already freak out enough fearing people will steal the workstations and test devices! (we are in Brazil, last year there was 20 mass robberies, 90 cops executed, several random murders, and 3 different incidents resulted into homeowners ending in hospital after being shot with military-grade rifles in common robberies)
  - bdunbar 13y ago
    > Yeah, sure, until some numpty digs up your internet connection cable. My last employer was not into 'the cloud'. Just a smart manufacturing company, with sites in five countries, two data centers, one on each continent. Which would die in about a day without the internet. Each site could chug along for a while, but without the bits flowing in, and out, coordination gets out of whack and after about three workshifts they'd have no idea what to work on next. Cloud or not, if the internet goes so goes the business. That or they'd ask us to re-install those doggone fax servers we retired in 2007.

by alan_cx 13y ago

davidw 13y ago

> Why a business would do such a thing was even more beyond me. Mostly the same reason they rely on third party infrastructure like electricity and plumbing: economics.

belorn 13y ago
Both electricity and plumbing has immense regulations, and historical perspective of being neutral and non-threatening to businesses. Cloud services has none of that, and can cut off service for any reason. Work on any competing services that "the company" dislike, or do anything disruptive to people in power, and instant see your future, your business, you speech be taken down to a 404 not found. Any logs, any files, any property at all confiscated. Even pure money is not safe from "indefinite suspension of the account". Maybe this is a lesson that if you ever want to legally produce a scam, steal, or do anything that normally would land you in jail, all you need to do is go into producing third-party digital infrastructure. There is basically nothing a cloud service can do that would lend the owners to go to jail except tax evasion.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- saosebastiao 13y ago
  The regulation has to do with the fact that plumbing and electricity are Natural Monopolies. If they were not Natural Monopolies, they would have competition (as Cloud providers do), which acts as a form of regulation.
  - shiven 13y ago
    That is not regulation, merely threat of competition. And competition is moot if all the servers are accessible to the "bad guys", in this case, NSA. Unless, you mean to tell me there is a viable alternative to AWS that is located in Switzerland?
    - pyre 13y ago
      Right, because it's not like the US government has been able to pressure the Swiss banks into giving up the historically famous anonymity of their clients! Oh wait...
      - shiven 13y ago
        Alrighty then, pick another country FWIW. Germany, Iceland, wherever. Still doesn't change the point I'm making.
- res0nat0r 13y ago
  AWS has tons of regulations and compliance. It is adding new standards all of the time. http://aws.amazon.com/compliance/ http://aws.amazon.com/compliance/ https://aws.amazon.com/security/ https://aws.amazon.com/security/ http://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/security/ http://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/security/ http://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ http://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ http://aws.amazon.com/serviceterms/ http://aws.amazon.com/serviceterms/ http://aws.amazon.com/aup/ http://aws.amazon.com/aup/
alan_cx 13y ago
Apples and pears. There was not a time when the mass population had their own generators, then flocked to supplied electricity in preference. They never had power independence. Water was originally done locally, rivers and what not, but hygiene and health became a game changer. The benefits were huge and clear. The whole history of all three are so different, you cant reasonably compare any of them.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  The benefits of outsourcing your computing infrastructure are also huge and clear, as are the benefits of sharing your personal information. That's why so many people do it, and will continue to do so. In-house computing infrastructure is very expensive and most firms have their comparative advantage in doing Something Else, so it makes much more economic sense to run on AWS or somesuch instead of buying a pile of physical machines and running their own server farm. Likewise, many web and mobile services provide huge benefits for their users via network effects. I personally don't enjoy using Facebook enough to maintain an active account, but many millions of people clearly do, and I can't say they're wrong for choosing to spend their time that way.
- davidw 13y ago
  You wanted to know the reason why companies choose cloud computing, and I answered. Computing power is - no - not exactly like other things like electricity and water, but it's headed that way for certain types of applications. What hosting solution(s) your own company use?

speeder 13y ago

In the company where I work, everything but the IDE is in cloud... We use Google Apps, Trello, Wave (for accounting), Corona SDK (that builds in Corona cloud servers), Google Drive (previously was Dropbox), Google Docs (we never used any office here, MS, Libre, or anything else), and so on... I am personally against it, but the CEO decided it that way because he did not wanted to bother about IT infrastructure, we are not big enough yet to bother about it, cloud stuff make things much easier.

tommi 13y ago
So, you're not using https://c9.io/ https://c9.io/ yet? ;) Are there any other tools that could fit the description of cloud IDE?
alan_cx 13y ago
Yeah, sure, until some numpty digs up your internet connection cable. Cheaper, I can vaguely accept, but "easier" to me means "lazy". Nothing good comes from easy. But, yes, in reality, I can see how CEO types would be sold on the cloud. I just think its potentially misguided. BTW, IT infrastructure? You are all networked, right? So, whats left? One large ish server? Hardly my idea of "infrastructure", which to me implies something a bit more large and diverse. IMHO, being networked for the internet means you already have infrastructure, ish!!!
- speeder 13y ago
  Right now our office has two workstations, two desks, two chairs, a water filter (not cooler, only a filter, made of clay), paper, pens, two potted plants, and of course, all relevant cables. We don't even have a place to put a server... We already freak out enough fearing people will steal the workstations and test devices! (we are in Brazil, last year there was 20 mass robberies, 90 cops executed, several random murders, and 3 different incidents resulted into homeowners ending in hospital after being shot with military-grade rifles in common robberies)
- bdunbar 13y ago
  > Yeah, sure, until some numpty digs up your internet connection cable. My last employer was not into 'the cloud'. Just a smart manufacturing company, with sites in five countries, two data centers, one on each continent. Which would die in about a day without the internet. Each site could chug along for a while, but without the bits flowing in, and out, coordination gets out of whack and after about three workshifts they'd have no idea what to work on next. Cloud or not, if the internet goes so goes the business. That or they'd ask us to re-install those doggone fax servers we retired in 2007.