Stallman Worried About Chrome OS 393
dkd903 noted that Stallman is speaking out about the risks of Chrome OS and giving up all your local data into the cloud, pushing people into "Careless Computing." Which is a much more urgent concern than something like calling it GNU/Chrome OS.
News Flash! Water is wet! (Score:2, Insightful)
Cloud a joke (Score:4, Insightful)
He previously called the cloud a joke. But here is the reality of the situation. I like having my email available on multiple devices. I like how easy it is to use web services rather than run my own cloud. I'm voluntarily allowing Google to serve ads to me in return for free services.
And for most non-technical users who can't figure out how to back-up their data, automatically saving their data in the cloud is better than having no back-ups at all.
Re:News Flash! Water is wet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Like most other expressions of concern that come from brother Stallman, the geeks hear him, and keep merrily on with technological progress. Not that his concerns are never valid, but he has become the Chicken Little of geekdom.
In this case, however, I believe his concerns are completely valid. People store personal information on Facebook, whose privacy policies are a constant subject of debate and, it seems, in constant flux. Information security aside, when I store my credit card information on my home computer I can feel safe that no one is going to get at it who I don't want to get at it. When I give it to some entity in the cloud, who knows what could happen without my knowledge or consent.
"Progress" (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because you are using new methods to accomplish the same thing does not mean that you have made "progress."
Re:News Flash! Water is wet! (Score:5, Insightful)
However, his expressions of concern are basically never of the form "Technological development X won't work", which would be disprovable simply by making it work. Rather, his expressions are of the form "Technological development X will reduce the freedom of users and/or developers and/or both, which is bad". That isn't a statement about the possibility of Technological development X(indeed, he basically doesn't bother issuing statements of concern about stuff he thinks won't happen), and is almost always true for the various Xs he has warned people about.
Re:News Flash! Water is wet! Spread the word! (Score:4, Insightful)
...the geeks hear him, and keep merrily on with technological progress. Not that his concerns are never valid, but he has become the Chicken Little of geekdom.
Perhaps the rest of us have the task of making sure it's not just 'the geeks' who hear him. Stallman has a valid and important point here, and I suspect most Slashdotters agree with him. But the non-geeks are the ones who most need to hear the message, and they'll only hear it above the din of Google's grand pronouncements if we all scream it out loud, long, and often.
Re:Cloud a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
I like having my email available on multiple devices.
Me too...but I have had that for a long time, and it has nothing to do with the "web" or "cloud computing."
I like how easy it is to use web services rather than run my own cloud.
I will not even try to decipher that one, it looks like your definition of "cloud computing" is different than...well, actually, there is not even a standard definition, so I guess the point is moot.
And for most non-technical users who can't figure out how to back-up their data, automatically saving their data in the cloud is better than having no back-ups at all.
Stallman is not referring to backups, he is referring to the situation in which the data only ever exists on Google's servers. Non-technical users may not be aware of the difference until it is too late, when suddenly Google or Microsoft or Amazon is able to dictate if and how they can access their data, and they are powerless to do anything about it because their computer was designed to only store their data remotely.
Re:Cloud a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, this is why the cloud is attractive. You could accomplish the same thing without the cloud, but it would involve transparent synchronization between all your devices, and that's a problem nobody's adequately solved. But if you had transparent synchronization, you would be in control of your data. Without it, someone else is in control of your data. That's all. Personally I think that's the important issue.
As far as the open source question goes, the average user uses what they perceive to work best for them. Trying to get the average user to use something that gives the perception of working less well simply won't work. Free software advocates who care about this issue, which is a real issue, ought to care about the user experience of open source apps. Provide a better user experience, and the users will flock to your software. That's the only way to get users to switch.
Is that his only concern about LOIC? (Score:4, Insightful)
> Stallman warns would-be hackers not to download the LOIC software being pushed as a method of expressing anger with sites that have acted against Wikileaks - not because he thinks the protest is wrong, but because the tool's code is not visible to the user. "It seems to me that running LOIC is the network equivalent of the protests against the tax-avoiders' stores in London. We must not allow that to constrict the right to protest," he notes. "[But] if users can't recompile it, users should not trust it."
LOIC's source code is available on SourceForge.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/loic/ [sourceforge.net]
So don't. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a choice - that's market economics for you. The models exist, and thrive, because demand is there, or at least there are enough people who are willing to sacrifice conventional ownership to play the game or use the software.
Welcome to the modern world: you don't like the product, don't buy it! Buy something else, something which does suit your needs. Or, if that doesn't exist, build it yourself, or help start an OSS project to do it instead. And, if all of that is impractical or impossible to finance, then you've probably found the reason why no-one else is doing it that way.
Of course, there is market momentum, the incumbent's advantage, monopolistic misbehaving etc, but that's what regulators are for (when they're left to do their job properly). However, "the cloud", downloadable content and subscription-based RPGs exist because there's a gap in the market. Think you can do better? Fill it yourself!
Rant over...
Re:News Flash! Water is wet! (Score:5, Insightful)
People store personal information on Facebook, whose privacy policies are a constant subject of debate and, it seems, in constant flux
People store information on facebook with the purpose of sharing it. Anyone using facebook for private storage does not understand the purpose of facebook.
Re:News Flash! Water is wet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:News Flash! Water is wet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The problem is convenience (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need to have backups of your data
Really? You actually trust Cloud Supplier X to a) be taking usable backups of your data and b) not decide to shut down your account and delete all your data?
Good luck with that.
Re:Times have changed ... sort of (Score:5, Insightful)
'Local processing good, remote processing bad' turning into 'Local processing good, remote processing better'?
Nah, it's just that in every new generation of IT someone gets the idea that life would be wonderful if we all paid to rent mainframe time from them. And then after a few years we remember that mainframes sucked and go back to local processing for a few years until the next generation comes along.
Re:News Flash! Water is wet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Stallman is actually extremely accurate, sometimes verging on "prescient"("The Right To Read" written a fair few years vs. Amazon's remote kindle wipes or Apple's 'cryptographically blessed software only' smash hit... for instance).
Or the Java trap. [gnu.org]* (Meaning it's not enough for Sun to be friendly to the OSS/free software community, it has to guarantee those freedoms with appropraite licenses. Also GPLv3 was before the Oracle takeover.) Sun wasn't applying the GPL license to Java and OpenOffice until some anti-Java activism from Stallman.
* It doesn't mean I don't develop in Java. Actually, I like it pretty much, and the licensing of Mono isn't any better either. They're just not on the same level of freedom as e.g. Gnome.
Re:News Flash! Water is wet! Spread the word! (Score:4, Insightful)
and who care the least.
We are geeks.. we think and care about technological issues around privacy and freedom and security. They are a big deal to most of us. This seems to blind us to the fact that most people don't really care.
This is hardly as universal as you imply. I am as geeky as the next Slashdotter and could not care less about privacy or security, and my definition of "freedom" is likely as idiosyncratic as yours. Geeks are fascinated by technology and I suspect that the vast majority of them would gladly part with privacy or security in exchange for something flashier, faster, and/or cooler, especially if it's programmable.
Re:Proprietary Software (Score:2, Insightful)
Cloud computing doesn't have to rely on giving up your data - it's just moving to a thin client model. Maybe this is an opportunity to promote open source web-based applications that take advantage of the cloud based computing concept while leaving you in charge or protecting your own data, as RMS is advocating.
Re:News Flash! Water is wet! (Score:5, Insightful)
RMS is always eventually right, years ago he was warning about Java and nay-sayers kept merrily nay-saying.
Look at the mess ORACLE has made of Java now.
He has eventually been right about so many things I was expecting that by now people would get it. Idealism is long term pragmatism.
Properties of "The Cloud" (Score:4, Insightful)
The trouble with "the cloud" is that it's ended up like this:
"But it's free." That's how it starts. Look at the pricing history of cable TV. Watch what's happening to TV on the Internet. For a while, you could watch reruns broadcast shows on the Internet for free. Now, shows are becoming less available, more ads are inserted, and shows are disappearing behind the iTunes, Hulu, and Amazon paywalls. That's for reruns of content previously broadcast free to air.
So don't expect the "cloud" to stay free.
Re:News Flash! Water is wet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Those people deserve to lose their data. Period.
Outdated concerns (Score:5, Insightful)
Stallman should be more concerned about the trend that caused this one: the drastically decreasing numbers of people who actually create stuff on a computer. Twenty years ago there were lots of geeks out there and Stallman's desire to modify and study other people's work was understandable. It is even understandable that he thought everyone should have these freedoms he so enjoyed. Today such an attitude is unthinkable; computer users no longer create stuff, they merely consume it. The current trend toward the extinction of the desktop and its replacement by mobile devices or cloud computing is the natural consequence of this change. You can't create anything on your smartphone except raw pictures and video. You can, however, consume content that somebody used a desktop to create. And so, each year, there are more and more consumers, and less and less content worth consuming. What will be the point of having the freedom to modify and study code when nobody wants to DO anything?
Re:News Flash! Water is wet! (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as I'd really, really love to dismiss Stallman as a lunatic
Why? Because he is fat? Because he has a long beard? Why the desire to dismiss a man you know to be right?
The purpose of Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
People store personal information on Facebook, whose privacy policies are a constant subject of debate and, it seems, in constant flux
People store information on facebook with the purpose of sharing it. Anyone using facebook for private storage does not understand the purpose of facebook.
I put information on Facebook in order to share that information with my friends and family...
I mean, I know Facebook does other things with that information, and for the time being I have accepted that. But that's not the reason I put things on Facebook.
In general I agree with RMS's position here. Entrusting our information to other parties is rather careless. But still, when he reacts to the industry's method of framing a discussion by careful choice of terminology by doing the same thing himself (i.e. "it's not trusted computing, it's treacherous computing!" or "it's not cloud computing, it's careless computing!") I can't help but think of a whiny kid in a schoolyard name-calling match.
And then, another fun twist: isn't this almost exactly the "client-server ideal" from years back? A thin client connecting to a server somewhere, offering convenient and reliable storage of your data from various terminals or devices? The only difference is that the server is owned by Google.
Re:Outdated concerns (Score:5, Insightful)
"the drastically decreasing numbers of people who actually create stuff on a computer. "
What the heck are you talking about?
People use computers more than ever to compose music, to write papers, to edit photography.
"You can't create anything on your smartphone except raw pictures and video"
Yes and when they get home to their real computer, they use IT to edit their raw pictures and video into a finished presentation. What else do people do with their "raw pictures and video"?
Maybe you are talking about software developers? But the number of developers is growing rapidly also! Along with the number of languages and applications.
So really what the heck ARE you talking about?
Ad hominem (Score:5, Insightful)
Lame way to try to discredit a valid point.
I don't understand since when is it obligatory to trash on Stallman every time he's mentioned?
If we take a broad definition of system software (where system utilities are included), it is, in fact GNU/Linux. Even the narrow definition does not make it invalid, but it does make a lesser point (standard C library, one of crucial parts of the OS is GNU, and perhaps some would say GRUB fits here too).
In any case, if you want to trash Stallman do it on its own time, and for a good reason. For example his ethical views that do not concern software: Abortion, sterilization, etc.
SaaS, on the other hand is a threat. And not a small one. ChromeOS' point is to be a cloud client. Where the cloud is proprietary software.
Also, I think it's a useless OS, but that's another issue.
Re:News Flash! Water is wet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, you pretty much said the equivalent of "Just look at how she was dressed, she was asking to be raped." or "All people should expect to get ripped off when purchasing a product, therefore we should not hold the seller responsible."
These companies promised a bill of goods. What you believe the customer should have expected does not diminish the companies' responsibility to deliver said goods as promised.
You did prove my assertion that cloud based services should not be trusted. Thanks to your assertion not only should they not be trusted, but don't expect society to hold them accountable since you should have known better to use them in the first place.
Re:"Progress" (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah quite often I find editing documents hard because I'm always going through two or three computers before finishing...... Oh wait that never happens and restructuring my entire computing experience to account for that one improbable event seems like a bad decision.
Re:News Flash! Water is wet! (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? Because they were lied to and told (by entities like Facebook, among others) that "the cloud" was a good, safe, convenient place to put that stuff? Because they believed what they were told? Because they're not educated on the topic like we are?
That's such an asshole thing to say I don't even know how to respond. People are kept ignorant, dependent, and in the dark by forces larger and more powerful than they. They need help, not disdain. Take your snide comments and gtfo.
And the horse you rode in on.