Is cloud computing a trap?

When I read this article on the web [1] (Richard Stallman said that cloud computing is a trap) I just said, woow!!!, I didn’t see that point.  Why?, because I am so on the cloud, I store all my data and use web’s apps every time.  I even argued with my colleagues and friends the need of an operating system designed for the cloud computing (I still think that companies could save a lot of money and computer resources if they could have a cloud computing OS that use all the power of all the computers of a company, because normally the employees use apps that run on servers, many tasks that do the servers could be done by lazy computers on the company’s net) and to be used for the common users,  I think that Google might be developing one and that makes sense, all their products are for the web, they already have hundreds of thousands of computers, this type of OS need to bootstrap and manage a few local tasks in the pc, the strong part of this possible new OS is the connection with the cloud and manage to use the huge power of the cloud to assign tasks to be performed there (like rendering a bunch of pictures to make a movie, lot of resources is needed for that specific task).

We need to access to our information everywhere and with any kind of devices, that’s true,  but is to risky to upload all our data on web servers owned by a specific corporation, that’s a trap,  what could happen if one of those companies go off?, who is the really owner of the information, the cloud computing company or the users?, and there are plenty of questions related to that issue. 

"It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign," [1]. "One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control," he said [Richard Stallman]. "It's just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software." [1]. Those sentences summarize the fact that is a trap and our digital footprint could be there forever.

UPDATE: I was thinking that Stallman has a lot of reasons to believe that cloud computing is a trap, but the information (data) has to be 'ubicuity', is there another model beside the cloud computing? . 

[1]http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.computing.richard.stallman

Is the war between Microsoft and Yahoo over??

Now that Microsoft has walked away from Yahoo, it'll probably try to buy a famous social network (it has already 1.6% in Facebook), it might buy verticals search engines and many apps. It'll get into the cloud computing business, mobile's arena and so on… in order to be active on the Web 2.0. Yahoo will try to survive (it has open its platform) and we all know that Google will be wining.

This really impressed me: “The software giant had wanted to do a deal to be able to compete with Google, which dominates the lucrative market for internet advertising…. This market was worth $40bn in 2007 and is predicted to double to $80bn by 2010. ” [1]

Definitively the money is there, on the Web's arena. I have been thinking about this: how long do people will still believe/trust in traditional mines?? (like the gold's mines, is there a mine that's worth $47.5bn??), I mean why they buy stocks there??, I understand that gold is used as a backup, but this might change because the new important mines are information's mines??, don't you think that??

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7382572.stm

How will be the Web 3.0??

We’ve seen a lot of changes on the Web during the last 10+ years, I remembered my first queries on the net were ‘simple’, basically my question was, what’s on the net?. Then came a lot of great stuff on the Web like: better emails free services; chats; newspapers and TV channels were putting their news and stories on websites; the rise of the e-commerce; companies moving their business’ apps onto the Web, etc. Now there is so much of the West’s knowledge on the Web, for example Wikipedia.org is doing a great job it’s a starting point when I research a topic.

The net has like one billion of user and it’ll increase in one more billion in the following years and most of the new users will come from India and China which are countries and civilizations at the same time, that mean new features according to them. The Web is always changing/morphing, we heard/read words like web science, web intelligent, web semantic, cloud computing, China wide web, walking web, social networks, etc, all those words represent this wild, cool and open (at least for now) environment Web 2.0.

Mobility will be the future, the numbers of handsets will soon hit the 4 billions [3], and those devices are becoming little laptops, so the net will have to be ambiguous, must run on both environment with no differences, that mean the mobile Web experience is going to be the same as if you were surfing the net in a desktop.

An important and interesting phenomenon is going on, in the early days of the Web, almost all of our relation with the net was anonymous, we didn’t care if we were chatting with unknown folks that was part of the fun, met new people, now that has changed radically, because we want to be connected with folks that we know, we want to play with our family and friends, we want to interact with them in the virtual worlds, almost all the net experience has become social, because of that social networks are so famous, they are becoming a new platform/layer on the net. We were used to know that apps were running on servers and those ones were implemented on operating systems, that might still an important platform, but what is changing is that now apps are running on social networks and those are on the clouds. This have a lot of issues, like who own the apps (the developer or the social network)?, what will happen if some apps is shut down on a social network?, who own the data?, etc. We’ll have to wait to see how those issues will be worked out.

Many stuff is being said about the future of the net: Web 3.0 might be the result of the mobile merging with the regular apps, with social networks, virtual worlds, games, etc ; or it might be an intelligent Web who will know us, will interpret our queries and give us exactly what we want (knowing our web's patters behavior, story, personal log, etc); or it might be the process of ordering all the Web and eliminate all the trash; or it might be the Web that will have to retrieve our entire past digital footprint, or...??

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7364901.stm
[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7368387.stm
[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7366403.stm

Día de la Tierra y reflexiones

Hoy 22 de abril se celebra el Día de la Tierra [1,2], nuestro HOGAR.
Cada día son más los problemas que tenemos: la presión demográfica y la pobreza; el consumo de energía e hidrocarburos que son los motores de nuestras civilizaciones industrializadas; el calentamiento global. Son problemas muy complicados porque cada día somos más complejos, nos hemos desarrollado bastante pero a la vez tenemos limitaciones. Cuando menciono limitaciones me refiero a la conquista del espacio, cada vez que investigo más en el tema veo que hay una infinidad de problemas que todavía nos falta investigar y resolver.

Desde la perspectiva de nuestro desarrollo tecnológico que ha sido impresionante desde la revolución industrial hasta el día de hoy, es fácil emocionarte y decir que estamos en camino a conquistar el espacio, pero en realidad, ¿estamos preparados?. Cuando leo que se esta optando por los biocombustibles para seguir impulsando el desarrollo económico y tecnológico, veo que parece que se esta perdiendo de vista nuestro desarrollo humano, es decir el sacar de la pobreza y dar educación a los millones de personas que co habitan en este mundo, si el precio del desarrollo económico y tecnológico son los biocombustibles, estamos optando por un camino erróneo, ya que la alimentación básica se esta volviendo más cara. Hoy creo que es un día para reflexionar, si bien somos una civilización inteligente que habita en este planeta, debemos pensar también en cuidarla y velar por el desarrollo de todos sus habitantes. Todavía no hemos descubierto otro planeta semejante a la Tierra y tampoco tenemos los recursos disponibles para conquistarlos, por ahora es nuestro único hogar.

[1]http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dia_de_la_Tierra

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day

Googlelization

I’ve been asking this question many times, are we in the process to become a Googlelization??, maybe those facts could answer.

This stuff is from here.

The Gartner researchers have estimated that Google technology can address 100 exabytes of data (an exabyte is equal to a billion gigabytes). “Their infrastructure has unprecedented scale,” said Hunter, “and what is even more impressive is their ability to connect vast quantities of information… Google is sitting on the biggest pile of information that has ever been collected in the world.”

Hunter stated, “We believe Google’s information security will be a political issue worldwide by the end of the year in 2010.”

“Google is disruptive and disruptive technologies produce big winners and big losers,” Hunter said, “One of the big losers is potentially traditional IT departments.”

What Gartner is arguing is that Google’s database and data center magic is creating a massive cultural movement and a competitive advantage that is going to sweep away businesses and industries and transform the technology world. In fact, Gartner sees Google becoming so large and powerful from a data storage and access standpoint that it is going to attract scrutiny - and potential regulations - from governments.

Nevertheless, Google is obviously on the leading edge many of the trends that are powering the next breaking waves in the technology industry, and the effects of these trends will fundamentally change the way corporate IT departments are organized, operated, and financed over the next decade.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=659

Israel and the VCs ...

Today I read a post from Robert Scoble where he said that there is a trend: (he’s noticing that) “…the further away a tech area is from Silicon Valley the less respect that area will get”. [1] I agree with him, you have to research more if you want to know what’s going on in different places away from the valley. Another issue is coming up from that, if you are not in the famous valley, how can you reach the VCs??. If you want to try out some idea to work in latin America, you will find the lack of a real platform to lift up an idea and become a success company (as far as I know there are some tech areas in Colombia and Brazil), that have to change in order to decentralize this issue. I made a research today about the tech world in Israel and found out they have a lot of VCs there, good for geeks and the economy there. This website has like 90 VCs [2] located in Israel, in the list is Sequoia Capital one of the VCs that help Google. To put it more interesting this issue I will put it this way: Israel have 7.22 millions of people [3] and that website [2] has like 90 VCs, so let divide 7 millions into 90 VCs, we got that they have one VC per 77777.77 habitants (if I’m wrong let me know it) , I guess that’s a perfect environment for the start-ups, for science and the economy. Latin America should go that way!!

[1] http://scobleizer.com/2008/04/15/
israel-a-country-too-far-from-mike-arringtons-house/
[2] http://www.science.co.il/Venture-Capital-Funds.asp
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel

The decision to conquest the exoplanet Yecta (Fiction – chapter 1)

This post is the first one about how could be the conquest of new exoplanets, is complete science fiction (if its possible to call that), I made up everything. Why I am writing this type of post?, because I believe next century will be the space conquest.

We are a little more than half of the twenty-second century AD, to be more precise in 2157 (200 years after the start of the space’s conquest by the Soviets’ Sputnik in 1957). We have created a multi-civilization commission in order to organize the conquest of five habitable exoplanets for humans. These are called Yecta, Presina, Bacs, Trepid and Zapit, they were discovered in 2050, 2085, 2105, 2115 and 2130 respectively. The closest planet is at 300 light years which is Yecta with a mass twice the Earth and with 65% of its surface with water. It gravitates around a star that is half of our sun, but large enough to heat the planet, it’s located in the Retfer-508 galaxy. Yecta has a highly developed wildlife but there are not intelligent neither developed life than humans, what exist is an animal called Yectabulus which is the most intelligent and according to the research that has been done, it could develop in an intelligent and dominant creature if nothing or nobody intervene, but that is discarded, because humans are willing to colonize the planet and turn it into the second Earth. Why we want to go to another planet?, there are many answers, but the main ones are: we are without resources to feed and provide work for the more than 20 billion humans, problems with the climate and there is a latent fear of a global epidemic outbreak .

The coalition of all civilizations has reached the consensus that now we are one mega-civilization prepared to go to conquer planets, and make the step to immortality as a species and ensure that humanity will continue to grow. The coalition has already been working together in collect all technologies that every civilization has been developing over the last 100 years. It is amazing how some societies have develop very sophisticated technologies, such as in the computer field where the bits are represented at a sub-atomic level, and also being able to represent the data and make highly complex calculations through chemical concentrations (chemistry computing) that could be amorphous robots (gel type) with the ability to separate and become mini-robots and work independently, the Web and virtual reality have converged and have given us a new complex dimension; the robotic with artificial intelligence have achieved in build robots that continuously learn and make decisions and help us in a variety of tasks; nanotechnology; human hibernation; spacecraft flying at supersonic speeds doubling every minute.

It is 15:00 hours in the city of Brussels, the convention to define how is going to be this conquest that compete to all the humanity will begin.