Wozniak Predicts Horrible Problems With the Cloud 331
Hugh Pickens writes "'I think it's going to be horrendous,' said Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak when asked about the shift away from hard disks towards uploading data into the cloud. The comment came in a post-performance dialogue with audience members after a performance in Washington of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, monologist Mike Daisey's controversial two-hour expose of Apple's labor conditions in China. 'I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years.' The engineering wizard behind the progenitor of today's personal computer, the Apple II, expanded on what really worried him about the cloud. 'With the cloud, you don't own anything. You already signed it away through the legalistic terms of service with a cloud provider that computer users must agree to. I want to feel that I own things,' Wozniak said. 'A lot of people feel, "Oh, everything is really on my computer," but I say the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we're going to have control over it.'"
Creator vs. Consumer (Score:5, Interesting)
Woz is a creator. So was Jobs. But they both needed Consumers - Jobs was more aware of that than Woz obviously.
Woz wants to build something, own it, and carry it around in his pocket. Most modern IT stuff is designed to give you a means to consume content.
He's right (Score:4, Interesting)
you *should* be concerned. It started with hotmail when they disabled the ability to download email to your home computer, and its only going to get worse. I literally cannot archive my email to an offline store and it is, in effect, owned by Microsoft. They can do with it as they wish, and I can't stop them.
Re:Creator vs. Consumer (Score:5, Interesting)
User generated content has been a revolution. People get news and information from each other instead of central news agencies and big content providers. The whole attraction of things like Twitter and Facebook, and of course Slashdot, is the user generated content.
People are no longer consumers of content, they are creators. The shift now is that instead of creating on your PC and uploading you can create online directly. I have documents that I made entire in Google Docs, web pages and blog posts written entirely in a CMS, G+ posts that never touch my HDD. I back what I can up locally but a lot of people use them as their only storage medium, trusting that they will never go away or steal their work or otherwise abuse it. And as Woz says, no-one reads the T&Cs.
Re:Creator vs. Consumer (Score:5, Interesting)
And what happens when the cloud provider decides to start "messing" with your online creations? Just last week Amazon announced they were converting people's stored-on-the-cloud songs to higher quality 256kbps versions.
In theory that sounds okay, but what if Amazon makes a mistake and replaces a personal song (perhaps you singing David guetta's "Titanium") with the official song release. Ooops. You just lost your creation.
You can't trust other people with your data, anymore than you can trust a random stranger to borrow your CD or car and return it unscratched/clean.
Re:Incorrect -- Woz is still employed by Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
I never quit Apple. That suggestion was based on an incorrect Wall Street Journal that said I was leaving Apple because I didn't like things there. Actually, I had told the Wall Street Journal writer that I wasn't leaving Apple because of things that I didn't like and that I wasn't even leaving, keeping my small salary forever as a loyal employee. I just wanted a small startup experience and a chance to design a smaller product again, a universal remote control.
--Steve Wozniak [woz.org]
Re:The Steve at Apple everyone SHOULD listen to (Score:5, Interesting)
At home:
- no one makes backups
- no one protects from coffee spills or burglaries, for that matter
- people lose their machines all the time
- download malware, and let cats sleep on their machines
At the Office, which if you're smart, will be the same practice as the cloud:
- Backups are rarely checked for integrity
- People spill coffee on their machines, and they get stolen
- Someone forgets to pay the Symantec tax, or doesn't look at the CVE and oops-- all gone!
- Nearly 100% of networks get cracked every few years
There isn't much difference, except that in the cloud a few people have training, which they may or may not use correctly.
Cloud is management's way... (Score:2, Interesting)
...of formalizing the shifting of blame in the one area they've been unable to in the past; IT. They tried contractors...that didn't work. They'd outsource...everything would go to hell so they'd in-house again. In-house would dork it up. Out source. They primarily view cloud the same as a hardware vendor. Go with a reputable enough vendor and you're relatively safe even if they dork it up. Like the old adage says, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. If you move your stuff to, say, Google's cloud and it blows up....you're safe. No one will fault you because, well, if Google fell victim to something, no one could have foreseen such a calamity. Anyway, cloud makes no damn sense in terms of security, integrity, availability, cost or performance. It only serves to keep someone's ass out of hot water. Blame game.
Re:The Steve at Apple everyone SHOULD listen to (Score:5, Interesting)
- no one makes backups
For me, i have use the cloud for backups. My cloud is a friend a few hundreds miles from home giving me an access to a VM with 1TB of data available. I do the same for him.
- no one protects from coffee spills or burglaries, for that matter
Coffee spills are covered by backups.
Burglars don't give a fuck about my data, they want my hardware. Hackers of the cloud don't give a fuck about my cloud's provider hardware. They want my data. So, from a security standpoint, where is my data safer?
- people lose their machines all the time
Fine. See my previous point. You're better off losing your Android with NFC configured than losing your credit card. So far.
- download malware, and let cats sleep on their machines
Cats are fine on my machine. Malware, well, there is a risk. Is it greater than the risk in the cloud though?