Is Cloud Computing the Hotel California of Tech? 250
Prolific blogger and open source enthusiast Matt Asay ponders whether cloud computing may be the Hotel California of tech. It seems that data repositories in the form of Googles and Facebooks are very easy to dump data into, but can be quite difficult to move data between. "I say this because even for companies, like Google, that articulate open-data policies, the cloud is still largely a one-way road into Web services, with closed data networks making it difficult to impossible to move data into competing services. Ever tried getting your Facebook data into, say, MySpace? Good luck with that. Social networks aren't very social with one other, as recently noted on the Atonomo.us mailing list. For the freedom-inclined among us, this is cause for concern. For the capitalists, it's just like Software 1.0 all over again, with fat profits waiting to be had. The great irony, of course, is that it's all built with open source."
Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing like keeping your own data on your own system..
Re:Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Simple (Score:5, Interesting)
Or even just keeping a copy of your own data on your own system.
Thats why I don't call it "cloud computing", I prefer OPS (other peoples servers). Its more self-explanitory.
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Why? What could be a better phrase to describe something entirely clouded, than "cloud"? Keep the term and contrast it to "clear sky computing" where no clouds hide the sun (i.e. the data).
Re:Simple (Score:4, Funny)
Ya'll down with OPS.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo.
Let's see, you upload images and text onto Facebook. Now, what's stopping you from uploading the same images and text onto MySpace? _Nothing_.
The author's bitch is that you don't have a one-click Export-Import function. Should you? Should Facebook or whoever be required to make the structure that they have provided for free use on their system portable?
That's the business deal here. There's structural lock-in, but not data lock-in, in exchange for free use of the structure. If you don't like it, you're not required to use it, and even if you do, you remain free to use your images and text however you want.
I've got an Ubuntu computer here. It's loaded with data and configurations. If I migrate to Windows or Mac, it's going to take hours of work before the new box is 'my' box in the same way, though in the end it will be done. Is Ubuntu or anyone else an asshole because of that?
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What it really comes down to is market demand vs supply. Let's not frame the discussion about whether or not XYZ is an "asshole" because they don't offer customers what they want. Let's not ask whether the government should mandate such things. Not all problems can be answered by the "Free Market", but this is one problem which *can be*. At some point, whether it's Google or someone else, someone will see a market opportunity - a way to make customers happier, and hopefully more loyal, by giving them someth
Re:Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
So the Insightful comment here is bascially that there is no such thing as data lock in? After all, you can always recreate the data you put in. It's not like these services make it up...
Sorry, but that's a bit like saying "Microsoft Word documents aren't proprietary, you could always re-type the same thing in Open Office!".
The Facbook / MySpace examples are inane. Do people really really care so much about migrating their social networking data? The article is more apt for SaaS "clouds" such as Salesforce or AWS. The author doesn't appear to indicate cloud providers should be mandated to prevent data lock in, just that customers should be aware of the data lock in of most cloud services.
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They're not holding the information hostage. They still have it, from the same source they uploaded it from.
Saying that every service should be *required* to have a particular export to every other service is a good way to run banks, but not necessarily every business with user generated content.
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Re:Simple (Score:5, Funny)
Which one is that? the normal one exports all your data to hackers.ru at the click of a mouse!
Re:Simple (Score:5, Funny)
So data checks in but doesn't check out?
That's more like the Roach Motel.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Funny)
Oh that's the Hotel CA reference.
I was thinking that I can stab it with my steely knife, but I just can't kill the beast...
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Same thing, just for different species.
Re:Simple (Score:4, Funny)
And I was thinking along the lines of "This could be heaven, or this could be hell".
Cloud computing is eerily like the music industry, more news at 11!
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It's wild buckwheat native to southwestern North America [wikipedia.org]. So it probably smells like buckwheat.
Of course, never having been on a Little Rascals set, I have no idea what Buckwheat smells like.
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I'd rather NOT know what what an inflammation of the large intestine [wikipedia.org] smells like, thank you.
From the song it does have a warm smell, so maybe it's not so bad.
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There's nothing like keeping your own data on your own system..
What if its not your data or not that important?
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Sure. Except for the fact it costs more. And if there is a problem it is all your fault.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, EC2 gives the user no recourse if the system goes down for any reason, or if your data is lost. http://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ [amazon.com] You get a 10% discount if the system uptime is less than 99.95%, but that's the extent of your rights. If you screw up, it's your fault. If Amazon screws up, it's their fault but your problem.
Now, the nice thing about Cloud Computing is scaling. When your magic startup starts generating massive throughput, you can just add resources to your EC2 allotment as needed. But for small deployments that don't anticipate sudden rapid growth, I don't get the appeal.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
I can assemble a nice rackmount 1U RAID server with better computing resources than that for the same price.
But you can't make it redundant, back it up, give it high-bandwidth connectiontivity, or maintain it for that price. The hardware itself, is by far the cheapest part of any server room.
But for small deployments that don't anticipate sudden rapid growth, I don't get the appeal.
Because building and maintaining any remotely reliable IT infrastructure is expensive and requires expertise that is, for most companies, utterly irrelevant to their core business.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm just very nervous about entrusting the company meat and potatoes to an external business. If our stuff goes down because I screwed up - and it has happened - I can try to fix it immediately. If our power or internet connectivity goes down, I can work with the corresponding vendor to get it restored. If something goes wrong with my Cloud Computing setup, I am at the complete mercy of their technical staff. Instead of actively working to solve the problem, all I can do is stay on the phone with their tech support and hope they fix it. Naturally, I'd rather be working than waiting.
And of course, I'm at the mercy of the vendor. If they decide to shut down, I have to scramble to find replacement as quickly and painlessly as possible. If they decide to raise prices, I'm looking at an instant drop in operating income or else the expense of moving to another vendor.
I'm not saying the cloud is the wrong way to go. I'm just saying that I am nervous.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Your already at the mercy of the air conditioning vendor, fire suppression vendor, electricity, internet, etc...
And if a hardware failure occurs, you are at the mercy of whatever support contract (1 hr, 4 hr, whatever.). And just like a remote vendor, you are at the mercy of your other vendors if they go out of business. I worked for a hospital with all Alpha VMS servers. Compaq bought them and phased vms out. Not much I could do about that either. Being remote doesn't make you any more or less in cont
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EC2 is only a slice of their cloud though.
How much would it cost for you to build that rack with highly reliable hot swappable up to 1TB each (No cap on how many either I dont think) that backup to a file system replicated in about a dozen countries at the click of a button?
Then there is the message bus.
Then there is simple db.
Then there is the load balancing.
Then there is the fact that maybe I don't want the server all year, but only for 5 hours a week, so instead buying hardware I just ask for them on dem
Re:Simple (Score:4, Interesting)
What you can use the cloud for is to have a few truecrypt volumes stored there as a backup in case you ever need them.
If someone gets at your volume they won't be any wiser.
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Not today they wouldn't be, give it a few years however.
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Don't use them. There's nothing like keeping your own data on your own system..
Or just use the Web Services APIs to get your data out... Google, Amazon, and Salesforce all offer APIs that make it relatively easy to move data in and out.
Simply outdated (Score:3, Interesting)
There's nothing like keeping your own data on your own system..
Or burying your own money in your own yard.
Is Yahoo! the Facebook of webmail? (Score:5, Funny)
I can't transfer my yahoo to my twitter, this cloud computing has gone wild.
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Yes (Score:2, Funny)
If you mean a big hit that everyone knows.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Informative)
If you mean a big hit that everyone knows.
I don't think that's what they meant by turning Hotel California into an adjective or analogy.
I believe the one-way street attribute would probably be the easiest way to describe it. Although there's more subtle caveats to 'Hotel California' as a lyrical work. Though interpretations have been numerous (I've heard it compared to prison), the writers describe it as an allegory about hedonism and self-destruction in Southern California [wikipedia.org]--especially the music industry (that we all know and love). From the Wikipedia entry:
"Don Henley and Glenn wrote most of the words. All of us kind of drove into LA at night. Nobody was from California, and if you drive into LA at night... you can just see this glow on the horizon of lights, and the images that start running through your head of Hollywood and all the dreams that you have, and so it was kind of about that... what we started writing the song about. Coming into LA... and from that Life In The Fast Lane came out of it, and Wasted Time and a bunch of other songs."
So if I may elaborate the analogy may be trying to describe cloud computing as something you're kind of forced into and it would seem stupid not to take it ... but then you start to realize that it's not everything it was made out to be at the beginning. You are promised success and all the resources imaginary but then at the end when you realize you don't have control over the situation and your data or privacy becomes seriously important to you, it's nowhere to be found and irreclaimable. The song's final lyrics before the guitar solo and double stop bass: "You can checkout any time you like/But you can never leave."
No, this isn't unique, Lynyrd Skynyrd [wikia.com] felt the same way as did The Kinks [wikia.com] and I bet if I sat and thought I'd come up with much much more. I guess you'd be better off explaining it outright than calling cloud computing Hotel California but the English language allows one to play and invent I guess. The author might consider the younger crowds though for this piece.
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While all of this is true I think you took the reference a little far. They most likely just meant a small bit of the song.
"You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave."
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In reality it doesn't matter what the artist meant when they wrote the lyrics, it just matters what the lyrics mean to you, but still... hearing what they intended when they wrote the song takes some of the meaning away from the lyrics.
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No kidding. Now that I know he was singing about Cloud computing it's a total downer.
verbal meme? (Score:2)
Funny, I saw this same Hotel California analogy a few days ago in a tweet [twitter.com]. Where did it all start? These people must have seen it somewhere else, this is some kind of verbal meme. It often happens I noticed, a word or a comparison you wouldn't normally use that suddenly spread all around the Net.
Anyway, I thought this one was referring to the lyrics of Hotel California and specifically to this line: "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave".
Applied to cloud computing, I also like that o
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Perhaps if the submitter cast Cloud Computing as the "Take On Me" of tech, where your data is sucked into this weird comic book world, and if you can get it out it's all dirty and disheveled in the trash can behind the counter?
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No. You have to wait for a long guitar solo to finish before you can look at your address book.
Apples and Oranges (Score:2, Insightful)
Facebook and MySpace are not computing clouds they are applications
The google and amazon clouds are not applications(sort of). You can always move your data from one cloud to an other just back it up and restore it.
I would not expect to move cloud configuration from one cloud to another. That would be like moving from Windows to Linux, or Solaris to HP, they may be similar but work using different mechanisms.
Steve
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I usually think of Cloud Computing in terms of places to run virtual machines - Like Amazon's EC2, or a private cloud. There should be no problem getting data off of a cloud infrastructure.
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According to wikipedia [wikipedia.org], Facebook and MySpace are cloud applications.
The owner of a cloud application may own his very *own* computing platform, that's true. But in the case where both owners are not the same, the one who owns the computing platform is not necessarily responsible for everything the application creator did/does on it.
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@MILGR, OH SNAP! [wikipedia.org]
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I would not expect to move cloud configuration from one cloud to another.
If, I wanted to use cloud computing services I'd definitely want to have my data portable, I wouldn't want to be stuck with a service I hated.
Then again I wouldn't want to use another's system anyway, cloud computing, online data storage, or software as a service. I find it almost ironic we're going full circle. We started out with centralized computing (mainframes), along came Personal Computers (PCs), now we're moving back to centr
Least Common Denominator (Score:4, Informative)
I tend to save things in LCD format, txt or RTF for Documents, tab delimited for tables, JPG or GIF for images (or PNG), MP3 for music etc.
The point being, if you save data in a format that is limited (.doc, .xls, .raw, etc) you're going to have difficulty moving it around.
And stuff that has to be saved in a proprietary format gets a simpler version, that may be missing things (formulas, charts), so that I can move them to a new system should the need arise. I used to use Dataviz to convert stuff, but found it was just easier to re-create the things I need rather than trying to clean up the splash of translation.
It is also makes it easier to learn a "new" setup if you have to use it to set the things up you need, rather than letting something automate it.
The point is, you don't need to worry about data portability if you plan for it.
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if you save data in a format that is limited (.doc, .xls, .raw, etc) you're going to have difficulty moving it around.
The point is, you don't need to worry about data portability if you plan for it.
Are there common data file formats for databases? Say if I'm using MySQL or PostgreSQL but switch to Firebird or Oracle, can I easily move my data too? Or will I have to go through a hassle converting the formats?
Falcon
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if you save data in a format that is limited (.doc, .xls, .raw, etc) you're going to have difficulty moving it around.
The point is, you don't need to worry about data portability if you plan for it.
Are there common data file formats for databases? Say if I'm using MySQL or PostgreSQL but switch to Firebird or Oracle, can I easily move my data too? Or will I have to go through a hassle converting the formats?
Falcon
Sadly, I must say CSV. But, just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD.
Google or EC2 a "closed data service?" (Score:3, Insightful)
Can someone give a little depth to the vague and unsubstantiated comment in TFA, referencing i.e. google: "...with closed data networks making it difficult to impossible to move data into competing services."
So which is it? Difficult or impossible? Or both?
I'm not at all surprised that facebook or myspace are not jumping up and down to allow various kinds of data export. But the fact that these obstacles are conflated with google and EC2 policies in the same paragraph without giving any details whatsoever makes it tough to take this post very seriously.
What would stop you from taking your data out of the cloud? SFTP not allowed? Can't access Mysql DB from outside? I'm asking honestly - I'd love to know.
Re:Google or EC2 a "closed data service?" (Score:5, Informative)
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The problem comes in when providers are offering Sofware-as-a-service services. In these systems, your data is locked up somewhere with no simple way to get it out. Think Facebook or Myspace. (Google is working on some common methods to get things in and out of such systems... but for a company like Facebook, it's generally in their best interests to make it hard to get out)
Something like Amazon EC2 (or S3), in contrast, is really about providing application-agnostic resources, like a virtual disk. You put
So which is it? Difficult or impossible? Or both? (Score:2)
"The difficult I'll do right now,
the impossible will take a little while."
Both Billy Holiday [tunezee.com] and Rod Steward [rhapsody.com] sang it, with one letter difference. Personally I prefer Billy Holiday's rendition.
What would stop you from taking your data out of the cloud? SFTP not allowed? Can't access Mysql DB from outside? I'm asking honestly - I'd love to know.
Now back to the subject...
I just asked another poster if it's easy to move from say one database to another. Say I'm using MySQL but find out I need Oracle instea
No, quit asking for depth! (Score:2)
Can someone give a little depth to the vague and unsubstantiated comment in TFA
No one can give you any depth, because it doesn't exist -- this article is fluff and the only supporting posts on this board sound like the old-world IT crowd spouting off, "Nothing beats having your own data!". They also bury their money in their own yard, so as not to avoid outsourcing their money with in-the-cloud financial providers (aka banks). After all, it's almost as difficult to switch "banks" as to go from MySpace to Facebook, i.e. the sky is falling.
I'm being sarcastic, but the point is that it's
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What would stop you from taking your data out of the cloud? SFTP not allowed? Can't access Mysql DB from outside? I'm asking honestly - I'd love to know.
I agree, this whole article sounds like an end user rant. There is nothing to prevent one from using the available Facebook Web services [facebook.com] to move data to whatever it is that you want to move it to say like MySpace. The problem being the marshalling and unmarshalling [wikipedia.org] of data between services. If you really feel that it is a bad rub, then push for a standard in Social Networking protocols using whatever happy technology you want.
I really think that the guy is bitching that when you put data up on the "cl
Re:Google or EC2 a "closed data service?" (Score:4, Interesting)
Uh, yeah.. maybe your data wants to be free, but my data is staying right the hell on my computer, where it belongs.
First, define cloud computing (Score:5, Interesting)
As I understand it, cloud computing can be a cloud application, like google. Or you can actually run your own servers in the cloud, to which you would have complete control of the data and could dump it at will.
Of course using Software as a Service will lock you in... even if there aren't nefarious reasons behind it. But if your going to provision several cloud server instances, load Redhat on them, and put everything in mysql... then your free to do what you will with your data.
Software as a Service Cloud Computing. If anything SAS is just a small segment of the Cloud Computing movement.
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Of course that is what you should do. It is also what just about everyone has been doing before some marketdroid caught a whiff of the 'cloud' and the current cloud-craze started. Just call it the net and be done with it.
Webservers, mailservers, database servers, groupware servers, terminal servers, fileservers... all attach to a network... which can be connected to the internet... which on the whiteboard is drawn as a cloud...
Yuck. They should have drawn
Why not Roach Motel? (Score:2)
Why on earth would they do that (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever tried getting your Facebook data into, say, MySpace? Good luck with that.
From the "but-you-can-never-leave dept?" More like from the "no-shit-sherlock" dept... Why on earth would a company allow customers to automatically populate another company's website with your data? What I've found with social media sites is that if you invest so much time into inserting your data into their site, you are going to be much less inclined to go to the same thing again and again on other websites. Even if you don't like the interface as much as you may like some other site, you may feel a bit lazy and stick around. Whereas if the company said "here you go, click this button to transfer your profile to !" people would be jumping ship all over the place and it would be much more difficult to retain customers.
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That I've found with social media sites is that if you invest so much time into inserting your data into their site, you are going to be much less inclined to go to the same thing again and again on other websites.
Ermm.... I disagree. I know plenty of people that have duplicate social media pages that are basically mirrors on Facebook, Livejournal, Myspace, and Twitter.
There are software tools out there that simply update all of them at once, but I'm not sure if that is either here nor there about your argu
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Ever tried getting your Facebook data into, say, MySpace? Good luck with that.
From the "but-you-can-never-leave dept?" More like from the "no-shit-sherlock" dept... Why on earth would a company allow customers to automatically populate another company's website with your data? What I've found with social media sites is that if you invest so much time into inserting your data into their site, you are going to be much less inclined to go to the same thing again and again on other websites. Even if you don't like the interface as much as you may like some other site, you may feel a bit lazy and stick around. Whereas if the company said "here you go, click this button to transfer your profile to !" people would be jumping ship all over the place and it would be much more difficult to retain customers.
I'm having a hard time even understanding what would move from Facebook into MySpace.
Are they just talking about moving your friends over? Wouldn't that be as simple as doing a screendump of your friends on Facebook, and then inviting them all on MySpace? Are they complaining that there's no automated way to do this?
Are they talking about moving your wall/posts/whatever over? Isn't there an API that lets you view a lot of that stuff from a client? Couldn't you use that API to pull that information into
Capitalists? (Score:5, Insightful)
"For the capitalists, it's just like Software 1.0 all over again, with fat profits waiting to be had."
At the risk of stating the obvious, isn't the whole idea of the straw-man capitalist (as opposed to an individual in a capitalist society) that he/she treats everything as a profit opportunity? I mean, for the greedy, there are fat profits in rubber band manufacture or book binding or air fresheners, to choose three items I can see from my chair. It's necessarily not some intrinsic aspect of cloud computing/web 2.0/web 1.0/whatever.
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Yeah, but the rubber band makers, book binders and air freshener peddlers have a harder time accomplishing vendor lock-in.
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Obviously. However I'm not sure why the article pointed out that those practicing vendor lock-in are trying to make money. It's kind of implicit in "vendor".
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well... If you want that smell of air freshener then you are locked in.
In general the completive advantage is a lock in mechanism. Software tends to have a diverse set of different competitive advantages. Others sectors have less. Say Intel Processor vs. AMD processor, or Dell vs. HP, or Brand X rubber bands vs. Brand y.
However they all try to give themselves a competitive advantage.
Say Brand X rubber band has the fastest shipping then any other brands, and your business depends on that fast shipping...
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shhhh.
Engineers need to be slaves only working to benefit humanity.
They need not concern themselves with petty issues like earning a living, having stable employment, protecting their trade...
Let me know when society gives me a guaranteed income, and I'll write open source code and all the bruhaha that comes along with it.
Oh how I think this financial collapse will force some reality into these naive folk.
Ever tried ... (Score:3, Funny)
No, and I never tried fucking a styrofoam sheep while doing underwater welding either.
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You obviously need to get a life!
For the freedom-inclined among us... (Score:5, Insightful)
HAHAHAHAHAahahahahahahahahahah excuse me
ahaahaahha oh man im so sorry i just cant stop laughing at this idiotic comment
Perhaps not the best analogy. (Score:5, Funny)
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget. This is not what I look for in hardware.
Hotel California (Score:2)
My interpretation of "Hotel California" has always been as a particular and unusual vision of Hell.
I guess cloud computing fits in that.
They're working on it. (Score:2)
http://www.dataliberation.org/ [dataliberation.org]
For the non Eagles fans here (Score:2, Insightful)
We are all just prisoners here, of our own device
You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave
And
They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can't kill the beast
Psshaw (Score:2)
Thanks to this open format known as HTML, it's not too hard to build a screen-scraper and get your data back out. Not to mention that the google and facebook APIs will help you pull quite a bit out.
Compare that to a client GUI program with no copy-and-paste capability. As someone who's done a lot of data extracation from closed systems, I'll take a terminal first, and a web client second, everything else is a distant third.
wtf? (Score:3, Informative)
this article is total garbage. slashdot needs some new editors who has a little common sense of the things they are publishing.
Is there any good alternative... (Score:2)
The example of moving your facebook page to myspace Is the best example you can think of... Even with non-coud computing.
Converting you Informix Data to SQL Server. Converting you C++ code to java. Converting your Flash to HTML... It is not a problem with could computing it is a problem that systems programed by different people and don't follow the same sets of standards don't work with each other.
Data conversion is always expensive and bound to have errors unless it is done so often that there is a clea
Data sticks where it lands... (Score:2)
how many Googles in a Facebook? (Score:2)
Prolific blogger and open source enthusiast Matt Asay ponders whether cloud computing may be the Hotel California of tech. It seems that data repositories in the form of Googles and Facebooks are very easy to dump data into, but can be quite difficult to move data between.
Mentioning Google specifically may not be terribly helpful with their Data Liberation Front [dataliberation.org] project...
And with the APIs available for Twitter and Facebook it probably wouldn't be too hard to dump most of the important information to some kind of file.
Or is he talking more about the Amazon-type [amazon.com] cloud stuff? But isn't that already fairly portable? Amazon is just running a pile of VMs running Linux/Windows/Apache/MySQL/whatever...
Granted, there's all sorts of hickups and loopholes and oddities with various h
What worries me... (Score:2)
What really worries me about cloud data storage is, can you delete it ?
I would assume not.
I am not being snarky, and I have no evidence, but I would assume anything written to the cloud will be available to anyone with any interest and persuasion to get it. Persuasion in this case include both court orders and anything available to a national intelligence service.
Atonomo.us? (Score:2)
Why do we care what has been "recently noted" on some mailing list we haven't ever heard of?
Same mantra as Storage virtualization (Score:2)
In the past few years we've seen storage virtualization appear on the market. This is where you have some appliance that sits in front of your heterogeneous disk arrays and in turn presents a single type of lun/disk to all of your hosts. That way all the hosts will use the same loadbalancing software (powerpath, sdd, hdlm etc..) regardless of what type (brand or model) of back end storage you have. While this seems great in that you can buy IBM one month, EMC DMX the next, followed by HDS the third as wh
Re: (Score:2)
There is somewhat of a lock-
Article Breakdown (Score:2)
There are two key problems with this article:
Apples and Oranges
From the perspective of data being stored in the cloud there are several unique cases. I'll pick two examples, but, as other posters have pointed out, the issues facing each are vastly different:
So...who really likes this "cloud" anyway? (Score:2)
Like pen-based computing before it, Cloud computing is a movement created and sustained by the hive-mind of the pundit class, eagerly supported by the hucksters, with everyone trying to make a buck.
The personal computing revolution was all about control. Taking control away from the glass-walled priesthood of the mainframes, and giving it to the people.
I, for one, will never give up control over my important data. To me, the cloud is a nightmare where you have to pay your computing bill, just like your
Accept your future: the cloud. (Score:2)
Why would you ever give up control of your money, but not your important data? Or are you saying that you don't put your money in banks or investments? Perhaps you're comfortable with the balance of control that you have over your money vs. the financial institution when combined with the protections afforded to you by various regulations, government agencies, and legal precedent. Do you suppose this would be impossible to put in place for in-the-cloud applications?
If people spent as much time exploring how
Depends on the cloud... (Score:2)
I guess I don't consider things like Facebook true cloud computing.
Take AWS for example. Getting data out could not be simpler.
Have a EC2 instance? Snapshot it, or snapshot an attached EBS and drop the data on to S3. Download it to your hearts content.
Have data in SimpleDB? Its a DB, designed for querying, that outputs XML...
The real problem is that "Cloud Computing" has become a big tent that is coming to include a lot of things it shouldn't. I don't see why facebooks API is included in it. Webservices !=
You could be the Editor-in-Chief at CNET! (Score:2)
The best part is that you're 100% correct -- and the only reason you're questioning yourself is because it's just so obvious that you're confused as to why it's a discussion. I suggest CNET publish your post as a cover story.
3 Things You Need to Know About Cloud Computing
THC? Thought that was myspace... (Score:2)
Myspace reminds me of THC, and I kinda get the munchies when going there too.. Face book, not so much...
Wait, we were talking about personally identifiable information here, not drug songs? My bad..
Not really. (Score:2)
Not quite the same everywhere.
Let's take google for example. I can export my google calendars in XML or iCal format. GMail is accessible via IMAP where I can pull all my messages off of it. Google reader has an API, so it would be pretty simple to pull the RSS feeds and the read/unread/shared/starred articles out. Pretty much the same with MobileMe.
GPL3 and AGPL (Score:2)
Think what you will about RMS, but if the man was handing out stock tips (and indirectly he is) you'd be a fool to dismiss out of hand where he thought the market would be going in 3-5 years time.
Just like file formats (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Facebook/Myspace != cloud computing (Score:4, Funny)
It's the warm smell of colitas, a plant, not of coitus. ;)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Social Networking != Cloud Computing
Yes you can run some applications from facebook's/myspace's severs, but they are hardly the scale you'd need for say, a cloud based OS.
Until I can store/edit documents, compile code, host my own virtual server, run complex applications (GIMP, Blender Publisher) and basically do everything else that I use a computer for from what is basically a thin client connected to a gigantic central cluster, then it isn't cloud
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, though... Matt Asay is comparing cloud computing to Facebook/Myspace data? Very, very different beasts.
It's different until you try to move Facebook or MySpace data to another platform. The data isn't that portable, which I think the writer tried to get across.
Falcon
Re:Your official guide to the Jigaboo presidency (Score:5, Informative)
He forgot to hit the anonymous button on his last post. I still don't understand what the point is... these guys never even respond when I ask.
Re: (Score:2)
How bout the obligatory car analogy? (Score:2)
Sorry, tht's the best I got, and I've got stuff to do.
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