Virtual Purgatory on the Path to the Cloud? | Renegade XS Member Now Bloggs

[m^2]

C. I actually believe my client is more vulnerable than Google. Certainly true of the average, relatively unsecure client.

Sure. But there's little gain from hacking your machine.

Cloud service is unrealiable at best.

More reliable than what most people have. Google stores all files in 2 copies in different locations. And a checksum to prevent silent data corruption. It's not great because they don't use ECC memory and file can be corrupted before it's sent, but it's still more reliable than what most people use.

Plus you are fully depending on a certain vendor and their ability. Both in terms of security and backup.

You can use several vendors and store data in several places. I use online disks as additional backup location already. Well encrypted, obviously.

At best cloud computing can be used for some non important personal stuff.

At corporate level we'll be seeing hybrid clouds - use your own for important data and public for what's insignificant. I think (and hope) that with home users it will be similar. But if cloud catches too well we may be unable to buy own computers.

Its like trying to make everyone use terminal services...

Exactly. Old idea, isn't it?

Added:

Sure,

A lot like the web today, expanding the functionality of the client through very powerful online apps which can live online, not necessarily bound to a single domain or server. And those applications can inter-operate further extending the functionality.

If you add rendering, you can theoretically play Crysis (latentcy problems aside) on a cell phone. The promise is to be able to simply span a lot of clients - because the client interface could be very simple or a web browser. However, even browsers can get complex - FLASH and plug-in support for example. Rendering is an extension of core cloud concepts.

I don't think that Crysis is a good example. It's too fast. Solitaire is more like it.
But MMORPGs should be fine too and they can benefit from graphics even better than Crysis.