Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs introduced their next method of revenue the iCloud yesterday but does anyone really know what this means?
I see a lot of so called “Tech Reporters” on the major networks like CNN that are just completely clueless when it comes to cloud computing. Now yes there are some slight differences but the basic structure of cloud computing is very similar to Cluster computing that has been around for what 2 decades or more?
Well I remember going to cluster training events by Microsoft back in the late 1980’s and into the 90’s and by that time the architecture was pretty stable… at least good enough for deployment.
Today’s cloud computing is basically the same structure. You have a single resource such as processing database calls. Instead of using just one computer you have a number of computers that are linked together by software. This same practice happens in Video processing where you have masters and slaves and the main application divides the work and distributes it to available slaves. As for the storage end cloud computing as provided by Amazon is somewhat different then what Apple is most likely to deploy.
Apple is said to have built a large data center in the south east I believe North Carolina. This center will be the location of all the data in iClown. On the other hand Amazon mirrors your data in various locations around the world to provide easy access and reduce latency.
If iClown is only feeding from North Carolina then it will probably work for most of the USA but not for Europe or Asia.
I don’t know …. but this technology is not really a mystery.
The mystery is what individual is willing to have all of their data stored by Apple.. or google or amazon.. or anyone.
Google is just about to finally deploy those netpads or whatever they are calling them that only have 16GB of local memory and you are expected to keep all of your files online.
The security catastrophe awaiting this stupidity is very impressive. I mean can you see it with your open eyes a 14 year old hacker in Eastern Russia launching a botnet that searches for specific data within this cloud? maybe credit card info or other personal files … maybe they want a list of all the porn you look at or music you downloaded illegally … oh wait why would a Russian hacker need that information? Maybe the recording industry or movie industry or software industry would like to know what applications you are using if they are all legal… if you downloaded that copy of Taylor Swift or just copied it from a friend.
I mean they do it to youtube every day.
Have you ever tried to upload a video of your cat with a soundtrack from a professional musician? The video gets banned before it goes public because there are signatures in the files .. patterns that can’t easily be removed simply by re-encoding the music or even overlaying other sounds.
Yea it will defiantly be interesting to see how far this goes now that everyone will be releasing everything they have to a company that will require you to release them from any damages.
Distributed processing and storage and remote mirroring of storage is not that big a deal…
Like that kid that sold his kidney for an iPad people are just too stupid to understand what is going on.
If you really need this in your life then I suggest you setup your own remote servers for $19 a month and control your data the best you can… don’t give up all your data to companies that won’t be held accountable if something goes wrong.
And news agencies hire some people with at least a tiny bit of understanding and stop filling holes to meet quotas…
