# What is your viewpoint of the "The Cloud"?



## DrTed (May 28, 2019)

I'm a 42 year old, currently unemployed, sysadmin who revelled in building large, geographically dispersed systems. I've built them with various combinations of Windows, Linux, AIX, FreeBSD & others - including Tru64 at one point. 

What interviews I've had, I've expressed mixed opinions of the cloud. Personally, I'm shocked that any company would allow their data to be housed somewhere they literally cannot point to on a map, with the fact that the business pays the bills and can do what they want with their data.

Last year, I was working for an MSP and they & all their clients used all sorts of cloud services. Office 365 should have been called Office 347 for the amount of serious downtime it had last year. Plus, major secret project data held out in cloud servers. I mean, handy... when it worked. But with less functionality. Especially with Exchange365. You deleted your email longer than 2 weeks ago? Don't have 3rd party backup? Sorry.
When I worked at one company, we had our own simple internal cloud, with VPN syncing a central file server which was replicated to all the local sites. It worked great. I duplicated that method at another job to centralise the file servers while keeping local access quick. 

I'd like to hear what other sysadmins think of "The Cloud". Is it something to be embraced? Avoided? A compromise? 

I view my position as sysadmin as protecting company data is job #1 and every other task has to keep that idea in mind. If something doesn't or cannot be assisted to made to, it has to be discarded and another solution found. Perhaps I'm missing the knowledge of those tools on the Cloud. My own experiences with AWS and Telus (in Canada) have been disappointing.

Thank you for your input.


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## Sevendogsbsd (May 28, 2019)

My company uses cloud (MS Azure) for authentication and office apps. The authentication goes down a few times a year and is annoying at best, simply because me being logged onto my company's portal is not necessary for me to work, just to check company email and do my timecard.

As for cloud in general, I use it. I don't keep anything personal other than photographs in "large" clouds. My email provider does have cloud services and I do keep my keepassxc file there so all of my devices can get to a backup copy of it. I don't run it from there though. 
Cloud is incredibly convenient, depending on your use case. It does bother me that it is an amorphous storage container, which is why I don't keep anything sensitive there, but having said that, this is almost impossible to avoid: Samsung and Google both use clouds to store account info and I use Samsung hardware and Google account services. I am not going back to the IT stone age simply to avoid this; I just do my best in limiting exposure to my sensitive data.


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## PMc (May 28, 2019)

DrTed said:


> I'm a 42 year old, currently unemployed, sysadmin who revelled in building large, geographically dispersed systems. I've built them with various combinations of Windows, Linux, AIX, FreeBSD & others - including Tru64 at one point.



Okay, that figures. Similar here, I enjoyed building things like high-availability infrastructures etc.
The idea I got from "The Cloud" is that most of the things we used to do are now done by "The Cloud", and systems management skills become more or less superfluous.

I think this is the great feature of the Cloud: business people, just like all greedy people, fear what they don't know. And they don't know systems management, so they fear it and want to get rid of it (and of the people doing it). There the Cloud comes in as a great offer: you can get rid of all the systems management, you can fire these annoying sysadmins, because all that is now cared for by "The Cloud".

Eeuwige Bloemenkraft!


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## Sevendogsbsd (May 28, 2019)

To me, I see the cloud as storage only. For applications, I am still old school as in I like web applications running on servers, or VMs and that use a tiered architecture: reverse proxy, web server, app server, db server. That's probably because I don't understand how cloud based applications work. Given my line of work, I really only need to understand the communications between the client and web server, and web server and other app components; I don't really need to understand the infrastructure, but it would be nice someday to learn this. There are just so many technologies out there, it gets a bit overwhelming sometimes.


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## DrTed (May 28, 2019)

I use cloud storage, DropBox in particular, for transferring files to people quickly. I do have a similar service with my web hosting provider, but it requires the other person to have a logon and it's usually too much of a pain in the ass. Risk vs reward, as it were.

I'm not totally opposed to the cloud, I just don't like how much control it takes out of the people resonpsisble for keeping the services running. All of a sudden I go from having to answer why is the system down, with a concrete answer of "this application failed. We are rebooting the services now" to "Not quite sure... we are still narrowing down where the failure is occurring"

When I first heard my then CEO talk about "the cloud" my first thought was to get my resume ready. That was 2010. He wasn't able to do what he wanted, because putting 250tb of data on cloud storage was hilariously expensive (and its what he wanted to do).

A friend of mine explains it as "there is no cloud, there is only 'Our computers' and 'Other peoples computers'. If you are comfortable with your data on other peoples computers, that's a risk you need to sign off on. Otherwise, we'll make it work in house."


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## DrTed (May 28, 2019)

PMc said:


> Okay, that figures. Similar here, I enjoyed building things like high-availability infrastructures etc.
> The idea I got from "The Cloud" is that most of the things we used to do are now done by "The Cloud", and systems management skills become more or less superfluous.
> 
> I think this is the great feature of the Cloud: business people, just like all greedy people, fear what they don't know. And they don't know systems management, so they fear it and want to get rid of it (and of the people doing it). There the Cloud comes in as a great offer: you can get rid of all the systems management, you can fire these annoying sysadmins, because all that is now cared for by "The Cloud".
> ...


I'm glad I'm reaching out to other like minded people. The cloud I think can have its purpose, but outsourcing everything to it just sounds like doom.
Do you remember the software company Quark? They used to be the pinnacle of DTP software. Their crown jewel was the Quark Publishing System - a database that allowed newspaper/magazine editors, writers, whoever, to check out and update their stories all in real time. For early 2000's, it was astounding. 
Then they outsourced everything. Programming, testing, QA, to various firms overseas. 
Quark no longer exists. I've been out of publishing for a while, but I haven't heard of anything even from Adobe that rivals what QPS could do.


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## Sevendogsbsd (May 28, 2019)

One other thing about cloud that bugs me is that someone else holds my data hostage. I had dropbox before and loved the functionality but realized I didn't share much and dropped the service. I bought my own NAS and set up backups for my FreeBSD box, and the wife's Mac, to the NAS. I still have my free dropbox account so if I HAVE to share something, I can. 

For office technology, I personally shun the cloud. This goes for both Google docs and Microsoft "office". I only create and use documents locally on my FreeBSD workstation. I could use the cloud apps for this (Google, not Microsoft), but find I never have to share a document. My brother shares spreadsheets with me from time to time and I just use Google docs to view them. I absolutely refuse to pay Microsoft for Office "365", or any other version for that matter, for way too many reasons to list here, plus it would be far off topic...


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## DrTed (May 28, 2019)

Sevendogsbsd said:


> To me, I see the cloud as storage only. For applications, I am still old school as in I like web applications running on servers, or VMs and that use a tiered architecture: reverse proxy, web server, app server, db server. That's probably because I don't understand how cloud based applications work. Given my line of work, I really only need to understand the communications between the client and web server, and web server and other app components; I don't really need to understand the infrastructure, but it would be nice someday to learn this. There are just so many technologies out there, it gets a bit overwhelming sometimes.


Yeah, see I'm a big fan of virtualization. I've used VMware extensively since 2005 and even got into PowerVM with IBM System p in 2010. 
You can do A LOT with loads of little VMware servers. 
Internally, it's excellent. I'd have my production app servers on a higher priority and the development servers in their own pool of limited resources, so they didn't bog down day to day operations. 

I guess out in the cloud, that doesn't happen. Everyone gets all the resources they want <tra-la-la-la-la>.


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## DrTed (May 28, 2019)

Sevendogsbsd said:


> One other thing about cloud that bugs me is that someone else holds my data hostage. I had dropbox before and loved the functionality but realized I didn't share much and dropped the service. I bought my own NAS and set up backups for my FreeBSD box, and the wife's Mac, to the NAS. I still have my free dropbox account so if I HAVE to share something, I can.
> 
> For office technology, I personally shun the cloud. This goes for both Google docs and Microsoft "office". I only create and use documents locally on my FreeBSD workstation. I could use the cloud apps for this (Google, not Microsoft), but find I never have to share a document. My brother shares spreadsheets with me from time to time and I just use Google docs to view them. I absolutely refuse to pay Microsoft for Office "365", or any other version for that matter, for way too many reasons to list here, plus it would be far off topic...


I'm totally on your wavelength. Stuff I put on dropbox isn't critical. It's just a simple way to transfer files. I don't even have my resume on there, even though a lot of job applications will ask to get to your dropbox resume.


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## xtremae (May 28, 2019)

Private and/or hybrid cloud deployments eliminate the concerns around exclusively trusting _someone else's computer_.


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## NapoleonWils0n (May 28, 2019)

Instead of using dropbox have you tried using syncthing


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## Crivens (May 28, 2019)

Cloud? Isn't that what your data (and business) look like after some server you don't own goes up in flames? 

A company I worked for once upon a time wanted to get stuff to the cloud. One branch manager reminded them to make 2 weeks of space in their appointments because that breach of NDAs would trigger some customers to show great interest at a little chat about stuff. The plan was shelved and that manager fired.

And yes, there is no cloud. Only other peoples computers. And data is either sufficiently backed up or soon lost.


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## PMc (May 28, 2019)

DrTed said:


> I'm glad I'm reaching out to other like minded people. The cloud I think can have its purpose, but outsourcing everything to it just sounds like doom.



 Well, I can afford getting a bit cynical. One needs to apply a bit of business sciences and a bit of life sciences to the matter to get a broader view - only, if I do that, then conclusions tend to appear which are not to the liking of the professionals...
I think that stance of Your friend hits the nail quite precisely


DrTed said:


> A friend of mine explains it as "there is no cloud, there is only 'Our computers' and 'Other peoples computers'. If you are comfortable with your data on other peoples computers, that's a risk you need to sign off on. Otherwise, we'll make it work in house."



I have no objections against putting my stuff on other people's computers. But I have great objections against people running computers and not being really competent to maintain and fix them, respectively, having their machines maintained by the cheapest bidder (who then again has the actual work sourced out to some sub-sub-contractor somewhere in youdontwannaknowwhere)...


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## drhowarddrfine (May 29, 2019)

DrTed said:


> A friend of mine explains it as "there is no cloud, there is only 'Our computers' and 'Other peoples computers'.


The cloud is just someone else's computer


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## unitrunker (May 29, 2019)

Cloud services make sense for small businesses that lack the staff and infrastructure to self host. I've seen some health care entities use out of state hosting specifically to avoid the medical privacy laws of their own state.

Knowing the cost of in-house vs. cloud based services (for the same function and availability) is useful to make sure someone's little IT empire isn't bleeding the company. 

In very large corporations, this can keep budgets and internal billing honest.


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## Lamia (May 29, 2019)

I am seriously interested in co-locating servers. Anyone here doing it? I would prefer to use ARM devices though. But one of those devices in the above URLs could be used in the meantime.


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## D-FENS (May 29, 2019)

For companies that cannot invest enough in IT, external cloud solutions are a sensible options. It's better to have your data in the cloud than risk it being lost due to insufficient backups or a virus infection.
Larger companies should probably be looking into owning the cloud service themselves or a more traditional landscape. But it comes at a cost.

Also, when you buy software from others, it's similar - you trust the software vendors that they won't wreck your data. When using cloud services - you trust the cloud provider to not wreck your data.



DrTed said:


> I'm a 42 year old, currently unemployed, sysadmin who revelled in building large, geographically dispersed systems. I've built them with various combinations of Windows, Linux, AIX, FreeBSD & others - including Tru64 at one point.
> 
> What interviews I've had, I've expressed mixed opinions of the cloud. Personally, I'm shocked that any company would allow their data to be housed somewhere they literally cannot point to on a map, with the fact that the business pays the bills and can do what they want with their data.
> 
> ...


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## kpedersen (May 29, 2019)

The cloud is not new and "other peoples" computers have existed since the creation of the world's second computer 

Would I store important stuff on a secure server under my control (and preferably offline)? Yes.
Would I store important stuff on my grandparent's livingroom PC or a server run by Microsoft? No.

Basically, neither my grandparents nor a consumer desktop software company like Microsoft can guarantee safety of my data.

Would I chuck a load of old cat photos on my grandparents computer or Microsoft's servers? They are already there


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## tingo (May 29, 2019)

Compromise. "The cloud" = cloud services won't go away anytime soon. So you better learn to use them, and do so in the right way. Which you know already: reliable backups, never put all your eggs in one basket, make sure you have control of your data (well, enough copies of it), learn how to do security the cloud way. This also means stuff like learn how to move your services from one cloud provider to another and so on.

The world is changing (this is nothing new - it has always been so); you adapt or you will be left behind.


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## kpedersen (May 29, 2019)

tingo said:


> you adapt or you will be left behind.



True enough, but in the apocalypse; I am quite happy being left behind. Especially if I have a couple of Thinkpads and can still play Quake.


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## Eric A. Borisch (May 29, 2019)

At least in one arena (HPC), the cloud introduces scalable compute power available via an API. Have a large problem that you need to solve (and a way to solve it that scales)? Programmatically fire up a bunch of nodes for a short period and do it. If you don't have a consistent workload, but a sporadic and time-sensitive one (you want the solution fast due to some external constraint) it can make a lot of sense vs. keeping the compute capacity on-line in house.

In other areas, it just makes things much more convenient, especially paired with mobile devices. I can have all 100k+ photos in my collection available to me just about anywhere...


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## BSD User (May 29, 2019)

Big chunk of "The Cloud" is network virtualisation too. Traditional networking is shifting to SDN. Clouds are everywhere and there's no escape


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## DrTed (May 29, 2019)

tingo said:


> Compromise. "The cloud" = cloud services won't go away anytime soon. So you better learn to use them, and do so in the right way. Which you know already: reliable backups, never put all your eggs in one basket, make sure you have control of your data (well, enough copies of it), learn how to do security the cloud way. This also means stuff like learn how to move your services from one cloud provider to another and so on.
> 
> The world is changing (this is nothing new - it has always been so); you adapt or you will be left behind.


You speak much sense and it is a viewpoint I'm trying to embrace - or at least come to terms with. I think my next tactic and personal mental exercise is to be able to give my misgivings about cloud solutions, but provide answers of how to mitigate them.

One place I worked for (this was ~2011) wanted to go cloud because they thought it would be cheaper. They had no budget and had requested internal IT to source them 160tb of storage space. We, well I, said "That's nice. That's more than we have in the whole company; SAN, servers, desktops, laptops. What's your budget?"
They had no budget and decided they could afford this pipe dream if they went to _THE CLOUD!_
I sat in on one vendor meeting where they were quoted something like $45,000/mo, just for storage.  My manager and I played our best poker faces in our lives when dude said that number.


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## DrTed (May 29, 2019)

DrTed said:


> One place I worked for (this was ~2011) wanted to go cloud because they thought it would be cheaper. They had no budget and had requested internal IT to source them 160tb of storage space. We, well I, said "That's nice. That's more than we have in the whole company; SAN, servers, desktops, laptops. What's your budget?"
> They had no budget and decided they could afford this pipe dream if they went to _THE CLOUD!_
> I sat in on one vendor meeting where they were quoted something like $45,000/mo, just for storage.  My manager and I played our best poker faces in our lives when dude said that number.


That department was hilarious. They were the CEO's brainchild and managed by half-wits. 
That initial 160tb number, we quoted them something like $200,000 for a SAN storage device big enough for their needs plus ability to expand. Their computing requirements, we could handle - think 2 blades were going to be purchased. Nothing too serious. 
They shit their pants at that number, many people would. Then, they promised they'd go back and redo their calculations to bring down that 160tb number.
We had another meeting 2 months later. I sat and listened in all earnestness and professionalisation, because I wanted them to get this done. I'm a storage nerd, having more storage to tend to, and 160tb for a mid-sized company in 2011 was big stuff. 
But then, while I was taking my notes, the number 2 of the department was telling of projects and their space requirements. When he finished, the total storage requirement was 220tb. 
I asked "Do you have any budget for this yet?"
The director answered "No. I don't think we will."
I then asked "You initially asked for 160tb. Now you are asking for 220. Do your people know how to do arithmetic?"
The scowl I got back was enough. M.Sc's in computer science do not like to be asked if they can do basic mathematics.
(This was before I was diagnosed with severe depression, acute anxiety and this job actually also later gave me PTSD.)

I'd probably be a bit more diplomatic about that situation now, but holy balls was my manager laughing his ass off for days about that. He HATED that dept.


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## Deleted member 9563 (May 29, 2019)

Large amounts of data can be sent via courier, but day to day data transfer will need a reliable and usually fast Internet connection. Fast is generally not hard to get in an area where most businesses will be located, but I've noticed that even beyond my ISP the big telcos don't seem to be able to keep things going all the time. This can be mitigated, and may or may not be an issue, but the Internet itself is a limitation.


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## DrTed (May 29, 2019)

Yeah, that's the thing - FedEx is often way faster to deliver large amounts of data than the internet. 
These data volume these guys were talking about would take days to copy locally, let along over the internet or USB. 
The manager of the dept asked "Could I show up at a warehouse with a drive and say 'Plug this in?'"
The cloud sales guys looked at him like he just grew a second head.


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## Eric A. Borisch (May 29, 2019)

Well, Amazon does offer import/export via physical disk or even via shipping container...


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## DrTed (May 29, 2019)

Eric A. Borisch said:


> Well, Amazon does offer import/export via physical disk or even via shipping container...


That was not around back in 2011. I'm glad to see that it is now.


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## Crivens (May 29, 2019)

Obligatory XKCD.


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## DrTed (May 29, 2019)

Crivens said:


> Obligator XKCD.


I hadn't read that. It was glorious. Thank you.
I've got his book "What If?" and it's lovely.


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## ralphbsz (May 30, 2019)

DrTed said:


> That was not around back in 2011. I'm glad to see that it is now.


That kind of technology has been around for ages.  The new thing the big cloud providers have done is to make this much more streamlined.  In the old days, an IBM/HP/Sun/... service technician would come to your data center, with a small rack, and spend a few hours setting up a temporary system, and then ship it back with data.  Today, the device has been optimized to where it can be shipped via FedEx or any freight company (for the larger ones), and is super easy to use.

In general, the same thing is true for the cloud.  We've used cloud computing since ... in my personal case, about 1983 or so.  That's when I had a 300 baud modem with acoustic coupler, a Hazeltine terminal, and an account on a mainframe (there was some machine somewhere that made the terminal emulate a 3277).  Even before than, sharing big expensive computers over remote access lines was common.  As an example, my dad's company (a 150-person wholesaler and distributor of automotive parts) for a while used a big mainframe installed in another city, shared with about a dozen similar-sized companies; we had about 10 terminals, all sharing a single hardwired (and very expensive) 9600 baud line.  Only when mid-sized air-cooled computers became cost-effective was this setup replaced with a computer installed on-site.  That transition must have happened somewhere in the mid to late 1970s.  And even then, the transition was not complete: Initially (for about 5 years), the on-site computer was too small to have a complete parts database, and it didn't have enough CPU power and printing capacity to do the weekly billing run, so data was transferred weekly (by courier and tapes) to a central installation, about an hour by car away, where batch processing was done on a shared machine.

In the US, there used to be a very large commercial "cloud" company called TymShare.  You could rent an account and computer time there.  I just looked it up: They were a significant sized business from 1965 to the mid 1980s.  Not conceptually different form what we do today with Amazon, Google and Microsoft.


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## Spartrekus (May 30, 2019)

DrTed said:


> I'm a 42 year old, currently unemployed, sysadmin who revelled in building large, geographically dispersed systems. I've built them with various combinations of Windows, Linux, AIX, FreeBSD & others - including Tru64 at one point.
> 
> What interviews I've had, I've expressed mixed opinions of the cloud. Personally, I'm shocked that any company would allow their data to be housed somewhere they literally cannot point to on a map, with the fact that the business pays the bills and can do what they want with their data.
> 
> ...



"The Cloud" : maybe it has something to do with free services, and how IT generations are being educated. Education is not promoting company servers for industry and companies, which are relying on Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD,... and Unix. Then, IT and admins know only one choice : Microsoft, MS Windows. Cloud will keep rising.



kpedersen said:


> The cloud is not new and "other peoples" computers have existed since the creation of the world's second computer
> 
> Would I store important stuff on a secure server under my control (and preferably offline)? Yes.
> Would I store important stuff on my grandparent's livingroom PC or a server run by Microsoft? No.
> ...


what happen if a burglar comes in and take all your harddisks?

Note:
CLI is Power. 
Not vmware.


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## Deleted member 9563 (May 30, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> what happen if a burglar comes in and take all your harddisks?



If you're doing it right, you'd need two burglars.


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## kpedersen (May 30, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> what happen if a burglar comes in and take all your harddisks?



I am fine with 'if'. When it comes to what we call the "cloud", especially ran by something like Microsoft, it becomes 'when'.

Looking at how they secure their hotmail servers; they are... not good at this stuff XD.


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## mvivirito (May 30, 2019)

I think the coolest thing about the cloud is that it puts the entire power of the data center in your hand in a scalable fashion. The services that I’ve been learning on aws are awesome. I know it may have been done differently in the past but I feel cloud platforms like aws will create a revolution in computing just like PCs did not too long ago.


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## Spartrekus (May 31, 2019)

mvivirito said:


> I think the coolest thing about the cloud is that it puts the entire power of the data center in your hand in a scalable fashion. The services that I’ve been learning on aws are awesome. I know it may have been done differently in the past but I feel cloud platforms like aws will create a revolution in computing just like PCs did not too long ago.


i just don't know any single cloud, which could of benefits.

If you are born with PDP, Unix first releases..., BSD, Solaris, you will start to think that Cloud is the most harmful thing considering network bandwidth usage. There drawbacks behind tiny benefits, and it is far less efficient and respecting users, in comparison with an (S)FTP connection.


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## mvivirito (Jun 1, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> i just don't know any single cloud, which could of benefits.
> 
> If you are born with PDP, Unix first releases..., BSD, Solaris, you will start to think that Cloud is the most harmful thing considering network bandwidth usage. There drawbacks behind tiny benefits, and it is far less efficient and respecting users, in comparison with an (S)FTP connection.


 
I guess I just like how they have been packaging it up. In all honesty I was never exposed to all the stuff that you are saying and am not opposed to that methodology.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 1, 2019)

mvivirito said:


> I guess I just like how they have been packaging it up. In all honesty I was never exposed to all the stuff that you are saying and am not opposed to that methodology.



That's just Unix


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## ShelLuser (Jun 1, 2019)

DrTed said:


> Personally, I'm shocked that any company would allow their data to be housed somewhere they literally cannot point to on a map, with the fact that the business pays the bills and can do what they want with their data.


I think that's picturing things a bit too drastically.

Which is a small annoyance I have when people talk about "the cloud" because that can literally mean a dozen different things. Mere file storage? "Cloud", virtual server? "Cloud", database services? "Cloud". Yet when they do talk about the cloud they talk as if it's all the same, which is obviously not true.

Another thing: "_they can do what they want with their data_", I assume you're talking about the cloud provider? Because that remains to be seen; there are often EULA's put into place which means that both sides have a few restrictions to keep in mind.

A cloud provider can't "just" collect whatever data is stored on their services and use that for their own purposes, that's ridiculous.

.... depending on the cloud provider. I'd definitely see Google pull of a stunt like that but you'll find all that in the EULA (one of the reasons my company hardly dealt with Google services and tried to avoid those like the plague).

But from a business p.o.v. I can easily see why a company would want this. Outsourcing. Set up a solid service level agreement ("SLA") and you'll get what you pay for. You don't need to know where the data is being stored as long as you know it'll be available if you need it and it's stored in a safe way, also in a way denoted by the several agreements.


As for me... I believe the 'Cloud' is something to be embraced but as always you need to know what the heck you're doing. If you approach the cloud as the solution to everything you're going to end up burned. But if you use your brains then cloud can become a really affordable alternative to physical servers.


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## Birdy (Jun 1, 2019)

DrTed said:


> A friend of mine explains it as "there is no cloud, there is only 'Our computers' and 'Other peoples computers'. If you are comfortable with your data on other peoples computers, that's a risk you need to sign off on. Otherwise, we'll make it work in house."



A major risk for a business buying the cloud/subscription model: one very recent example here.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 1, 2019)

Birdy said:


> A major risk for a business buying the cloud/subscription model: one very recent example here.


Data are at risks, more actually knowledge and know-how.

Since data are either in US or China, you can expect that chineese world domination will take over US in some years, faster than US president may think and he could be still waiting that Google Inc. saves US economy.

What you expect?








						Huawei executive accused of stealing trade secrets from microchip company backed by Microsoft and Dell
					

CNEX, backed by Microsoft and Dell, filed new allegations in a Texas suit accusing China's Huawei and an executive of trade secrets theft.




					www.cnbc.com


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## hitest (Jun 2, 2019)

I use the cloud and I keep multile back-ups of my data.


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## Datapanic (Jun 2, 2019)

I left my old job that did not use "cloud" and started a new one that has its own data center and uses AWS EC, Iaas, Saas, etc.  Sys admins need to know "cloud" if they want to keep up with the technology and have a better chance of getting and staying employed.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 2, 2019)

Datapanic said:


> I left my old job that did not use "cloud" and started a new one that has its own data center and uses AWS EC, Iaas, Saas, etc.  Sys admins need to know "cloud" if they want to keep up with the technology and have a better chance of getting and staying employed.



It is obvious, since largest market is powered by google (incl. android), microsoft, apple and that desktop computers are mostly android, microsoft os and apple. Less desktops are Linux or BSD.
Unix incl. BSD needs to adapt to give awesome, faster, servers for Clouds. This won't change. There were clouds, but today still there and larger.
It can somehow change after some decades, maybe, free software will take over Microsoft one day or the opposite. No one can predict future.

Clouds are definitely a good way to go for admin job.

The crap is that sometimes, file transferts are made over a graphical web browser, which is ultra slow and it is spyed, fbi, google, nsa...
About 30 years ago, people would never believe that file transfert is made with a web browser of several 100 mb or more into memory/cache


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## Remington (Jun 2, 2019)

I generally tends to avoid cloud services such as Google or Dropbox for privacy reasons.  I don't trust their privacy policies as they have the rights to change them anytime and often times they sell off their division or services to different companies that have different policies.  Instead, I use my own cloud service such as Seafile on my own in-house servers.  There are other cloud apps like NextCloud but I like Seafile as it's more reliable and stable.


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## Phishfry (Jun 2, 2019)

ralphbsz said:


> In the US, there used to be a very large commercial "cloud" company called TymShare. You could rent an account and computer time there. I just looked it up: They were a significant sized business from 1965 to the mid 1980s. Not conceptually different form what we do today with Amazon, Google and Microsoft.


Yes and I would plug CompuServe right in that hole after TymShare. At the time they not only had a large home user base but many business ran on the CompuServe network. It was very reliable over ISDN at a time when a T1 line cost $700 a month.


> The CB Simulator service was introduced in 1980 and was the first public, commercial multi-user chat program











						X.25 - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


----------



## itsthosestonesman (Jun 3, 2019)

With the upcoming inevitable adoption of 5G (notwithstanding the huawei furore) the cloud is only going to become more prevalent as the network becomes less of a barrier.  The economics of scale realised by the cloud service providers in placing orders for large amounts of hardware mean that they can compete favourably with local facilities, albeit the provders own margins are likely to be wafer thin as they compete with each other.  From the standpoint of a corporate accountant  (I'm not one, btw) the cloud has the same attraction as similar commoditisation megatrends of recent decades like offshoring the manufacturing base; you can eliminate lots of fixed cost and people at home and convert it into a leasing arrangement, and boost your bottom line in the process.  So I think the growth of cloud will accelerate and replace much of the world as we have known it.

What makes me sad is I think there will be a concomittant move to take computers as we have known them away from the general population, and the cloud facilitates that.  Instead of a user-programmable general purpose machine, which is what we have enjoyed since the advent of the PC,  we will end up with closed technology terminals that we use as consumers, in a similar model to the pstn phone companies.  The consumer has a terminal and no visibility of the infrastructure owned by the phone companies and the handset works like magic.  You can see this trend already with the replacement of PCs with smartphones.  While it is still possible to develop programs for smartphones, they are not as accessible in this way as a home micro or PC.  How long before even laptops become obsolete?  How many people actually buy desktop PCs now?  I personally believe putting general purpose computers into the hands of the population has been a force for personal freedom in western society, and replacing them with de-facto non-programmable opaque end terminals like smartphones reduces personal freedom and transfers power back to the corporations and governments.


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## ralphbsz (Jun 3, 2019)

ShelLuser said:


> Another thing: "_they can do what they want with their data_", I assume you're talking about the cloud provider? Because that remains to be seen; there are often EULA's put into place which means that both sides have a few restrictions to keep in mind.





Spartrekus said:


> Data are at risks, ...





Remington said:


> I generally tends to avoid cloud services such as Google or Dropbox for privacy reasons.  I don't trust their privacy policies ...



To a large extent, that's pointless paranoia.

If you are using the cloud just to store data (sort of the Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google GCS, or Microsoft Azure Storage), then you can store encrypted data, and you keep the encryption key.  At that point, the cloud provider has no way to look at the content of your data.  All they can do is destroy it, for example if you don't pay your bill.  Ok, there are a few theoretical possibilities: they could tamper with it and modify it.  Your decryption step will trivially detect that, if you include signature checking (some decryption software does that automatically, I don't know whether all do).  And they can notice whether you are using a lot or a little storage right now, and do traffic analysis.  That's like measuring when international tensions are rising, by measuring how much pizza gets ordered late at night by the pentagon.

So we don't need to worry about data at rest: it is reasonably secure.

By the way, if you think your data is more secure at home, think again.  Remember the scandal when disk drives were found to contain spying firmware?

Now, if you also use the cloud to do processing, it gets more interesting.  You can keep your data at rest encrypted (in the cloud), but to use it or write it, it will be decrypted.  This happens inside a computer, which in the case of the cloud is a computer you are renting.  That computer is built from off-the-shelf parts by the cloud provider.  The smaller ones buy standard motherboards, the larger ones make their own motherboards.  All use stock chips (CPUs from Intel/AMD/Arm..., memory from memory vendor du jour, IO from the standard sources).  That computer runs the OS of your choice, perhaps with a virtualization layer underneath (you can rent both a physical computer and a virtualized computer in the cloud).  The cloud provider can't become root on your machine ... they don't have that password, you do.  They can't spy on your network traffic if you use all encrypted protocols (https for example).

And within the computer (within the motherboard), the stock chips don't have any loopholes that are not also present if the computer were at your house or business.  So the only way they could spy on you would be to add explicit hardware to the motherboard, which looks at memory content or PCI bus traffic.  And they would have to keep that completely secret, and do it without any performance impact (can't steal a cycle here or there), because otherwise performance measurement would reveal the spying.  And note that the smaller cloud companies either use off-the-shelf hardware (motherboards, IO cards), while the larger ones use custom motherboards, but still have to outsource all chip manufacturing and board assembly.  So adding a dedicated spying chip would be something that lots of people outside the company would know about, and would have to keep secret.

Now, if the cloud providers could do that, the standard motherboard makers could do that to.  Oh wait, they have already been accused of doing that!  Remember the scandals about Intel's service processor, and about Supermicro (made in China) motherboards that have hidden chips implanted by the Chinese agencies?

In reality, processing data at a cloud provider is roughly as secure or insecure as doing it on your own premises.  In theory, you can make your own site more secure.  The first step is to disconnect *ALL* network wires going in and out; the second step is to control all access by humans (including computer maintenance people), and making sure those humans don't bring any communication devices (cell phone) or storage devices (USB keys, paper, pencil) in or out.  There are data centers that are run that way; they tend to exist at national security agencies, military, and nuclear labs.  I've heard stories that involve marines at the door, sites where every sys admin has an assault rifle on his back, and places where visitors have to be followed at all times by a security guard who carries a big flashing red light to announce the presence of an outside.  All this is in practice unachievable.

The real risk to data security is whether your system is well administered, and protected from the common viruses and attacks.  Compared to that, the choice of whether to do the processing on-site or off-site is secondary.


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## Crivens (Jun 3, 2019)

itsthosestonesman 
Maybe "the cloud" is a Fermi Filter.


----------



## Spartrekus (Jun 3, 2019)

itsthosestonesman said:


> With the upcoming inevitable adoption of 5G (notwithstanding the huawei furore) the cloud is only going to become more prevalent as the network becomes less of a barrier.  The economics of scale realised by the cloud service providers in placing orders for large amounts of hardware mean that they can compete favourably with local facilities, albeit the provders own margins are likely to be wafer thin as they compete with each other.  From the standpoint of a corporate accountant  (I'm not one, btw) the cloud has the same attraction as similar commoditisation megatrends of recent decades like offshoring the manufacturing base; you can eliminate lots of fixed cost and people at home and convert it into a leasing arrangement, and boost your bottom line in the process.  So I think the growth of cloud will accelerate and replace much of the world as we have known it.
> 
> What makes me sad is I think there will be a concomittant move to take computers as we have known them away from the general population, and the cloud facilitates that.  Instead of a user-programmable general purpose machine, which is what we have enjoyed since the advent of the PC,  we will end up with closed technology terminals that we use as consumers, in a similar model to the pstn phone companies.  The consumer has a terminal and no visibility of the infrastructure owned by the phone companies and the handset works like magic.  You can see this trend already with the replacement of PCs with smartphones.  While it is still possible to develop programs for smartphones, they are not as accessible in this way as a home micro or PC.  How long before even laptops become obsolete?  How many people actually buy desktop PCs now?  I personally believe putting general purpose computers into the hands of the population has been a force for personal freedom in western society, and replacing them with de-facto non-programmable opaque end terminals like smartphones reduces personal freedom and transfers power back to the corporations and governments.



What about cancers concerning it?








						Does 5G Internet Really Give You Cancer? Here's What We Know and Don't Know
					

"5G is an emerging technology that hasn’t really been defined yet."




					www.inverse.com
				




The more unefficient the internet, the more cancers ?
The more unefficient web browser usage, the more cancers ?

Is google empire responsible of unefficient networking and rise of cancers... with overuse of clouds by industries?


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## kpedersen (Jun 3, 2019)

itsthosestonesman said:


> Instead of a user-programmable general purpose machine, which is what we have enjoyed since the advent of the PC



I agree with this completely, it is quite a worry, possibly not for ourselves but certainly future generations (that said, I have enough Thinkpads stockpiled for around 3 generations XD).

What further exasperates this is that to this day normal people like you and I are unable to make an "open" computer ourselves, we are still completely reliant on a corporation to do it and that is where trust and stability ends.

I think that is pretty disappointing that the free/open communities to this day have all failed to lay a foundation of open-ness when it comes to hardware and we are instead hanging on to technology by re-purposing proprietary hardware. Yes, it is evidently hard, yes it is possibly expensive but we have had many years to solve these problems and we have not; time is running out, I actually no longer think we will.

A dystopian future of salvaging old general purpose hardware from a rusty scrap-heap wearing nothing but bubble wrap is ours XD.

And before that, computers are going to get extremely tacky; we are already seeing adverts in the Windows desktop and this is further going to devalue the importantness of a computer for the average user. I rekon people will go back to an abacus rather than be bothered clicking through countless adverts to use the Windows(C) Calculator(R) App(TM).


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## Remington (Jun 3, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> What about cancers concerning it?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



It's time to move out of the cities into countryside with less exposure to RFR.  They're not going to stop at 5G.... it'll be 6G and so on and they might as well put up XG with x-ray and it'll be time to put a tin-foil hat on.

Aside from my sarcasm, anything that put out more radio especially high frequencies increase chances of cancer.  It's known fact even phone industries will deny it.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 3, 2019)

I always find discussions of clouds to be boring and weird. It's servers on the internet and nothing else. You can do your own "cloud" by renting a few VPS. "Cloud" is a marketing term. Though one can argue it's a service, it's only a service for connecting servers together which you can do by yourself.


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## Remington (Jun 3, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> I always find discussions of clouds to be boring and weird. It's servers on the internet and nothing else. You can do your own "cloud" by renting a few VPS. "Cloud" is a marketing term. Though one can argue it's a service, it's only a service for connecting servers together which you can do by yourself.



Precisely that's why I do it myself.  I have my own server at my house using Seafile.  I find the cost much more effective and I have total control over the hardware and software setups.  I can access my files remotely.

Leasing or own a server at data center is also a good option.


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## itsthosestonesman (Jun 3, 2019)

Crivens said:


> itsthosestonesman
> Maybe "the cloud" is a Fermi Filter.


Obscured by clouds?


----------



## kpedersen (Jun 3, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> I always find discussions of clouds to be boring and weird. It's servers on the internet and nothing else.



Its strange but if it was under different circumstances, the technology behind "cloud" networks would fascinate me. However because it is all in the name of "money!" and there is nothing that innovative about remote servers; I agree it is a tad boring. We have a UNIX VM grid where I work which is really cool but as soon as it would be outsourced to i.e Amazon, I would rarely touch it and would almost certainly lose all interest in it.


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## itsthosestonesman (Jun 3, 2019)

Remington said:


> It's time to move out of the cities into countryside with less exposure to RFR.  They're not going to stop at 5G.... it'll be 6G and so on and they might as well put up XG with x-ray and it'll be time to put a tin-foil hat on.
> 
> Aside from my sarcasm, anything that put out more radio especially high frequencies increase chances of cancer.  It's known fact even phone industries will deny it.



Of course this concern applies to 5G and other microwave technologies rather than to the 'cloud' itself.  If the entire network was optical the issue would presumably not arise.  I don't feel I have enough knowledge to assess the cancer risk of 5G, but if some of the claims made in the article you linked are correct there may be real cause for concern.  The question will be how long it takes before such health effects become apparant.


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## Matty (Jun 3, 2019)

As a developer it's great that I can provision a production grade machine in minutes to test stuff or scale without going through forms and jump through hoops to get a machine.

The try things out and start small and scale as you go is a big part of what makes the cloud attractive to me.


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## Remington (Jun 3, 2019)

itsthosestonesman said:


> Of course this concern applies to 5G and other microwave technologies rather than to the 'cloud' itself.  If the entire network was optical the issue would presumably not arise.  I don't feel I have enough knowledge to assess the cancer risk of 5G, but if some of the claims made in the article you linked are correct there may be real cause for concern.  The question will be how long it takes before such health effects become apparant.



It won't take long.  Remember there are 3G, 4G and soon 5G cell towers.  The only difference is that 5G will be more clustered due to its higher frequency, shorter range and it won't extend very far like 2G/3G does.  Therefore, you will see more 5G towers than 3G/4G in the area.  Also consider there will be multiple carriers with their own 5G towers.  The exposure will be _significant_.  I wouldn't want to buy a house with 5G tower in my backyard and I will file a complaint with the city officials if 5G tower will be built near my home.

The main reason why the carriers want 5G so they can push more data to their cloud services.  That's why Amazon is pursuing to buy Sprint's Boost Mobile so their clients will use Amazon cloud services for data storage.


----------



## itsthosestonesman (Jun 3, 2019)

kpedersen said:


> I agree with this completely, it is quite a worry, possibly not for ourselves but certainly future generations (that said, I have enough Thinkpads stockpiled for around 3 generations XD).
> 
> What further exasperates this is that to this day normal people like you and I are unable to make an "open" computer ourselves, we are still completely reliant on a corporation to do it and that is where trust and stability ends.
> 
> ...



Ah yes... a pile of old thinkpads hahaha... 

I've got one like that too 

Well, let's hope things work out.  It gives me hope that after all these years, we still have commodity hardware that we can install a free operating system on.  The PC isn't quite dead yet.  And in hardware, there have been a couple of hopeful developments, like the raspberry pi and Risc-V.  The build cost of something like a Pi is a fraction of those old 80s micros we remember, and it is hugely more capable.  And the pi does demonstrate that the barriers to entry to bringing new hardware designs to market are becoming lower, compared to what they were.  So maybe there are some grounds for optimism.

What's this got to do with the cloud?  Everything.  The cloud has its entire origins in commodity hardware...


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## Phishfry (Jun 3, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> What about cancers concerning it?


One only has to look at the huge cables on cell towers these days to realize our brains are being fried on a daily basis.
All this RF is such a new phenomenon there really is no way of saying if it is safe long term.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 3, 2019)

Remington said:


> It's time to move out of the cities into countryside with less exposure to RFR.  They're not going to stop at 5G.... it'll be 6G and so on and they might as well put up XG with x-ray and it'll be time to put a tin-foil hat on.
> 
> Aside from my sarcasm, anything that put out more radio especially high frequencies increase chances of cancer.  It's known fact even phone industries will deny it.



1) So why all smart phone users do not care about ?
They'll complain, but they still buy their android smart phones, iphone,... at 6G or high-speed routers, with super HD 9999e6*MPixels TVs, and see their relatives dying.

"...it takes before such health effects become apparant."
- Likely, Never, so long medias and money exist.


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## hukadan (Jun 3, 2019)

[OFFTOPIC]


Remington said:


> anything that put out more radio especially high frequencies increase chances of cancer. *It's known fact*


IMHO, it is more complicated than that. It depends on exposure level, as always when talking about toxicity. Even high consumption of water can cause death. From the WHO website :


> Considering the very low exposure levels and research results collected to date, there is no convincing scientific evidence that the weak RF signals from base stations and wireless networks cause adverse health effects.


So if by "known fact", you mean that it is a known fact that exposure to high dose of radiation can lead to cancer, I would argue that it is also a known fact that drinking high quantity of water can lead to death. Yet, we would not gain much insight about the risk people take in their everyday lives.
[/OFFTOPIC]


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## itsthosestonesman (Jun 3, 2019)

hukadan said:


> [OFFTOPIC]
> 
> IMHO, it is more complicated than that. It depends on exposure level, as always when talking about toxicity. Even high consumption of water can cause death. From the WHO website :
> 
> ...


Water can indeed cause deaths.  There have been a couple of documented cases of people suffering from cancer who drank so much in an attempted "water cure" that they died.  Of course if you drink enough all the potassium will be drained from your body... typically resulting in a heart attack.

Just like radiation and chemical exposure, there is a dose rate and an associated risk.  In the case of microwave radiation, it is clear that if you get enough it will cook you; just look at your cooker.  What has not yet been established is what is the risk arising from the dose we are already exposed to, and is the risk from 5G significantly higher.  One thing is for sure, I already switch off my laptop wireless when I work with it on my lap, and I never hold my smartphone to the side of my head.  We gotta hope that somewhere there are some regulatory guys and gals studying this stuff!


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## SirDice (Jun 3, 2019)

itsthosestonesman said:


> Water can indeed cause deaths. There have been a couple of documented cases of people suffering from cancer who drank so much in an attempted "water cure" that they died.


They literally drowned. You can actually drink so much water that your kidneys can't handle it any more. You simply drown in your own fluids. 


itsthosestonesman said:


> Of course if you drink enough all the potassium will be drained from your body... typically resulting in a heart attack.


Common misconception is that drinking more will remove more toxins from your body. This is incorrect. Your body can only remove a certain amount on a daily basis and will do so regardless of the amount of water you drink.

There's also a common misconception that you need to drink at least an X amount of water per day. Your body will tell you when you need more water, you get thirsty. If you're not thirsty your body doesn't need water. It's as simple as that.


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## itsthosestonesman (Jun 3, 2019)

Remington said:


> It won't take long.  Remember there are 3G, 4G and soon 5G cell towers.  The only difference is that 5G will be more clustered due to its higher frequency, shorter range and it won't extend very far like 2G/3G does.  Therefore, you will see more 5G towers than 3G/4G in the area.  Also consider there will be multiple carriers with their own 5G towers.  The exposure will be _significant_.  I wouldn't want to buy a house with 5G tower in my backyard and I will file a complaint with the city officials if 5G tower will be built near my home.
> 
> The main reason why the carriers want 5G so they can push more data to their cloud services.  That's why Amazon is pursuing to buy Sprint's Boost Mobile so their clients will use Amazon cloud services for data storage.


Interesting ... I'm sure there is a mad dash for profit in 5G deployments without worrying over-much about the future consequences.  Over in this neck of the woods I'm told there is a bidding war going on for companies trying to rent space on existing lamp-posts,  to mount the 5G transceivers on.  I think you have a very valid point - the main type of leaf node of the cloud network is the mobile device / IoT device set, we will likely be exposed to higher levels of uwave than at present.

However the point I was trying to make was, do we know what is the incubation time between the increased uwave exposure from 5G and a measurable change to the cancer statistics.  I'm not saying it's negligible, just that we don't know, or at least ,I don't.  In the case of nuclear disasters like chernobyl it was something like 20-30 years before the main peak of tumours occurred.  The cancer rate in ukraine and beloruss from the chernobyl disaster fallout is still rising now, decades after the event.  But that's from radioactive contamination, once its in the foodchain, getting into kids bodies through ingestion.  So many kids there have throid cancer.  But I don't know what the equivalent incubation time is for microwave exposure to people from irradiation from nearby masts, and the appearance of additional cancers in the population.  Or what the risk is.  But there must be people researching this and modelling the effects.


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## itsthosestonesman (Jun 3, 2019)

SirDice said:


> They literally drowned. You can actually drink so much water that your kidneys can't handle it any more. You simply drown in your own fluids.
> 
> Common misconception is that drinking more will remove more toxins from your body. This is incorrect. Your body can only remove a certain amount on a daily basis and will do so regardless of the amount of water you drink.
> 
> There's also a common misconception that you need to drink at least an X amount of water per day. Your body will tell you when you need more water, you get thirsty. If you're not thirsty your body doesn't need water. It's as simple as that.



Interesting... I would have assumed the loss of vital minerals would have caused metabolic failure before they drowned, but its sounds like you've looked into it pretty thoroughly.  Potassium lost this way isn't a 'toxin', it's a vital water-soluble mineral needed for nerve function, vital for life.  If your body loses too much K you develop a condition called hypokalemia, when you start to get at increased risk of things like heart attacks.  If you ever do get to that point, you need to get some IV potassium in fast, to restore the level.  Dieuretics like caffeine and some drugs typically cause K to be leached out, hypokalemia is quite commonly seen in hospital EDs.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 3, 2019)

itsthosestonesman said:


> Interesting ... I'm sure there is a mad dash for profit in 5G deployments without worrying over-much about the future consequences.  Over in this neck of the woods I'm told there is a bidding war going on for companies trying to rent space on existing lamp-posts,  to mount the 5G transceivers on.  I think you have a very valid point - the main type of leaf node of the cloud network is the mobile device / IoT device set, we will likely be exposed to higher levels of uwave than at present.
> 
> However the point I was trying to make was, do we know what is the incubation time between the increased uwave exposure from 5G and a measurable change to the cancer statistics.  I'm not saying it's negligible, just that we don't know, or at least ,I don't.  In the case of nuclear disasters like chernobyl it was something like 20-30 years before the main peak of tumours occurred.  The cancer rate in ukraine and beloruss from the chernobyl disaster fallout is still rising now, decades after the event.  But that's from radioactive contamination, once its in the foodchain, getting into kids bodies through ingestion.  So many kids there have throid cancer.  But I don't know what the equivalent incubation time is for microwave exposure to people from irradiation from nearby masts, and the appearance of additional cancers in the population.  Or what the risk is.  But there must be people researching this and modelling the effects.



What you said is definitely not a legend or rumors, it is actually huge. Thyroid cancer or skin changes are very much, very often observed within the population few kms around this nuclear disaster, but also with much larger distance. Sad but true, and easy to see it.
It happens on time span of about 10-25 years. You did not mention skin cancer as well. Very sad.
However, ... that's why people vote green?

Once there are available stats, which are stating, that might be bad, you'll be at 6G or 7G or 10G.


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## Remington (Jun 3, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> 1) So why all smart phone users do not care about ?
> They'll complain, but they still buy their android smart phones, iphone,... at 6G or high-speed routers, with super HD 9999e6*MPixels TVs, and see their relatives dying.



Misinformations.  The governments and corporations tell people cell phones are safe and only naive people will believe it.  It just as much as government saying that vaccines are safe when it have toxic chemicals in it and pharmaceuticals are protected from lawsuits.  The governments and corporations are in bed together and ordinary people are the casualties.

You can reduce the probability of getting cancer by reducing the cellphone usages and turn it off at night.  I know some people sleep with cellphone under their pillow or on the night stand by the bed.  I keep my phone in the kitchen far from my bedroom.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 3, 2019)

Remington said:


> Misinformations.  The governments and corporations tell people cell phones are safe and only naive people will believe it.  It just as much as government saying that vaccines are safe when it have toxic chemicals in it and pharmaceuticals are protected from lawsuits.  The governments and corporations are in bed together and ordinary people are the casualties.
> 
> You can reduce the probability of getting cancer by reducing the cellphone usages and turn it off at night.  I know some people sleep with cellphone under their pillow or on the night stand by the bed.  I keep my phone in the kitchen far from my bedroom.



So. then, it is governmental lies, which is not for the good of the population. There are no evidences of clear relations between cancers and cell phones. Actually, what about long distance flights, exposed to radiations? Not so much clear evidences. When you go for a CT, you can take even more risks (10 to 20 mSv., on a very small localized area, good luck) within less than 10 min.
Anyhow, likely US do care about those things and they will react.


----------



## Remington (Jun 3, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> So. then, it is governmental lies, which is not for the good of the population. There are no evidences of clear relations between cancers and cell phones. Actually, what about long distance flights, exposed to radiations? Not so much clear evidences. When you go for a CT, you can take even more risks (10 to 20 mSv., on a very small localized area, good luck) within less than 10 min.
> Anyhow, likely US do care about those things and they will react.



Says who?  How did they know there's no clear evidence if they have not done the tests in real environment with all kinds of radiation bouncing around vs the lab controlled settings?  They may say 5G is safe but have they actually done testings with 2G/3G/4G, other radiations, radios and microwaves in our environment.  What about 50 people in the metro car with all active cellphones?  I'm saying it's a matter of time before we start seeing such an increase in cancer cases.  The more exposures we receive the higher chances of cancer occurring.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 3, 2019)

We've had radios and emissions for about 150 years. I'm sure someone, in all that time, has done plenty of studying on the subject.


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## SirDice (Jun 3, 2019)

itsthosestonesman said:


> Interesting... I would have assumed the loss of vital minerals would have caused metabolic failure before they drowned, but its sounds like you've looked into it pretty thoroughly.


Also possible. It probably depends on how much water over what period. Taking in a lot of water in a short time can definitely kill you by drowning. It happened a few times in my teens, when electronic dance music and XTC (MDMA) were pretty much synonymous. Lots of kids died, not because of bad or too much drugs, but due to the copious amounts of water they drank. 



itsthosestonesman said:


> Potassium lost this way isn't a 'toxin', it's a vital water-soluble mineral needed for nerve function, vital for life.


"All things are poison, and nothing is without poison, the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison." - Paracelsus


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## hukadan (Jun 3, 2019)

Remington said:


> It just as much as government saying that vaccines are safe when it have toxic chemicals in it


Citation needed. Vaccines (medicine in general) are about benefit/risk balance, not "safe/not safe" rhetoric, e.g. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm:


> As with any medicine, there is a very remote chance of a vaccine causing a severe allergic reaction, *other serious injury, or death*


I don't read safe when I read this.


Remington said:


> I'm saying it's a matter of time before we start seeing such an increase in cancer cases.


And you are saying this based on what ?


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## SirDice (Jun 3, 2019)

hukadan said:


> Vaccines (medicine in general) are about benefit/risk balance, not "safe/not safe" rhetoric


Besides that, lots of those "toxic chemicals" are in compounds, which drastically changes their properties. Sodium and Chloride can be, on their own, quite lethal. But everyone uses table salt. Oxygen and Hydrogen are too, yet we all drink water. Just ask any chemist student how this works.


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## SirDice (Jun 3, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> We've had radios and emissions for about 150 years. I'm sure someone, in all that time, has done plenty of studying on the subject.


I'm fairly certain there has been. 

To be honest I don't want to stand right next to an active 500W radio antenna, I'm fairly certain my insides would get cooked. From a few hundred meters however, not so much. The power of electromagnetic waves diminishes quite quickly over distance. 









						Electromagnetic field - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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## Spartrekus (Jun 3, 2019)

Remington said:


> Says who?  How did they know there's no clear evidence if they have not done the tests in real environment with all kinds of radiation bouncing around vs the lab controlled settings?  They may say 5G is safe but have they actually done testings with 2G/3G/4G, other radiations, radios and microwaves in our environment.  What about 50 people in the metro car with all active cellphones?  I'm saying it's a matter of time before we start seeing such an increase in cancer cases.  The more exposures we receive the higher chances of cancer occurring.



So, then, it is faking results.

The first phones had limited range. Let's phone with the smartphone your friends during their Virgin Galactic flight.


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## hukadan (Jun 3, 2019)

SirDice said:


> rastically changes their properties (...) everyone uses table salt.


I remember how amazed I was when I first saw the reaction between sodium and water. And yet, as you said, I put table salt in my water to cook pasta.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 3, 2019)

hukadan said:


> I remember how amazed I was when I first saw the reaction between sodium and water. And yet, as you said, I put table salt in my water to cook pasta.


ever tried to get a crystal of NaCl out of liquid solution, saturated?


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## itsthosestonesman (Jun 3, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> What you said is definitely not a legend or rumors, it is actually huge. Thyroid cancer or skin changes are very much, very often observed within the population few kms around this nuclear disaster, but also with much larger distance. Sad but true, and easy to see it.
> It happens on time span of about 10-25 years. You did not mention skin cancer as well. Very sad.
> However, ... that's why people vote green?
> 
> Once there are available stats, which are stating, that might be bad, you'll be at 6G or 7G or 10G.


This is of course now hopelessly off topic, but sadly I do know a little bit about this.  I knew a russian lady many years ago who did volunteer work with some of the poor kids from belorus, for a 'chernobyl kids' charity.  They were flying them over to london for a month, gave them lots of good food and generally look after them, and try to give them a good time.    And she told me a lot of the kids had had their thyroids removed. Some had other radiation-related problems.  We don't hear much about it in the mainstream western press.  The important point here is that at least in the case of radioactive contamination, the rise in the number of cancer cases occurs slowly over decades.

Being bathed in microwave frequency RF is rather different to ingesting radioactive cesium in your food.  So the pattern of cancer, its type and rate of development might be expected to be somewhat different.  From what I've read today, the people working on this are still essentially doing basic science to find out what happens.

I found this link, which might  be of interest:-
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cellphone-5g-health-20160808-snap-story.html
That was published three years ago.  I'm sure there is a lot of work going on in this area.


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## itsthosestonesman (Jun 3, 2019)

SirDice said:


> Also possible. It probably depends on how much water over what period. Taking in a lot of water in a short time can definitely kill you by drowning. It happened a few times in my teens, when electronic dance music and XTC (MDMA) were pretty much synonymous. Lots of kids died, not because of bad or too much drugs, but due to the copious amounts of water they drank.
> 
> 
> "All things are poison, and nothing is without poison, the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison." - Paracelsus


hahaha great quote


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## ralphbsz (Jun 3, 2019)

Water?  Harmless stuff.

You should read the information about DHMO, or di-hydrogen monoxide.  It has killed more people than any other chemical!  Yet, it hasn't been banned yet.  Recently, I saw new information that it is involved in gun violence: most people who use guns to kill others have recently consumed DHMO.

Just search the web for it ... true evil.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 4, 2019)

itsthosestonesman said:


> This is of course now hopelessly off topic, but sadly I do know a little bit about this.  I knew a russian lady many years ago who did volunteer work with some of the poor kids from belorus, for a 'chernobyl kids' charity.  They were flying them over to london for a month, gave them lots of good food and generally look after them, and try to give them a good time.    And she told me a lot of the kids had had their thyroids removed. Some had other radiation-related problems.  We don't hear much about it in the mainstream western press.  The important point here is that at least in the case of radioactive contamination, the rise in the number of cancer cases occurs slowly over decades.
> 
> Being bathed in microwave frequency RF is rather different to ingesting radioactive cesium in your food.  So the pattern of cancer, its type and rate of development might be expected to be somewhat different.  From what I've read today, the people working on this are still essentially doing basic science to find out what happens.
> 
> ...


So, why in Europe, we still keep using nuclear energy, for making electricity, at larger scale? It is not coherent, large risks. Same for clouds and 5G, 6G, or 7G,...

who care that's dangerous, the one that will make those cluster antennas happen, are the same that make the laws in given state/country.


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## hukadan (Jun 4, 2019)

ralphbsz said:


> You should read the information about DHMO


Some time ago, they spoke about the danger of this substance on French television (in French...) : 





_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-CJSlwpGM_

Very scary indeed.


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## Maxnix (Jun 4, 2019)

ralphbsz said:


> Water?  Harmless stuff.
> 
> You should read the information about DHMO, or di-hydrogen monoxide.  It has killed more people than any other chemical!  Yet, it hasn't been banned yet.  Recently, I saw new information that it is involved in gun violence: most people who use guns to kill others have recently consumed DHMO.
> 
> Just search the web for it ... true evil.





hukadan said:


> Some time ago, they spoke about the danger of this substance on French television (in French...) :
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Now let's see how people can negate that there are lobbies, hidden interests and plots against us by governments!!!


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 4, 2019)

Can we get back on topic?


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## forquare (Jun 4, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Can we get back on topic?



Stepping us back, water falls as rain, rain comes from clouds.  Clouds!

Talking with some of our platform team, the cloud looks useful from a scalability point of view.  Customers of our customers might want to suddenly stream a live event and being able to scale in seconds to accommodate more requests is a great boon.  The scalability could be done in house, but there would probably be large portions of time where a lot of your infrastructure is underutilsied.  

The restrictive nature of the cloud has brought in (brought back?) some interesting concepts (note, I don't say anything about the quality of said concepts!).  The AWS Lambda service for running bits of code and not standing up a server is kind of cool.  The eyespinningly fast release rate of products is an interesting benefit that has fostered more CI/CD type activities which I find interesting.
In a few places I've worked the infrastructure has grown *uh-hem* "organically", whereas that seems more difficult in the cloud, and more routine to define infrastructure as code such that it can be easily replicated.

I've yet to actually work "in the cloud" myself, and I worry less about "proper" computers being taken away and a little more about those administering systems understanding less about the underlying gubbins and likely reinventing things higher up the stack - but this is likely folly on my part, in the end.


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## itsthosestonesman (Jun 4, 2019)

I


hukadan said:


> Some time ago, they spoke about the danger of this substance on French television (in French...) :
> 
> 
> 
> ...


It looks pretty bad, man!  Time to put space debris on the hifi... ;-)


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## itsthosestonesman (Jun 4, 2019)

Doc - OK.  I think the cloud is a much bigger deal than anyone thinks.  It's not "just computers on a network".  The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.   A convergence of technologies that have been evolving over the last several decades and which are still evolving at an accelerating pace.  We hit moores law in silicon, but mastered the technology of mass deployment and spread it out across the world;
- data centres are pushing down the cost of compute cycles and storage to effectively free levels from the perspective of consumers; the costs to consumers  will eventually be so cheap that it will be like background noise to us
- the leaf nodes are also becoming increasingly powerful and cheaper to manufacture, another trend that will continue to accelerate; how long will it be before people start being given free leaf node devices?  When will we see the first single-chip smartphone - everything in the phone pcb integrated into one device?  It's bound to come, and when it does it will cost just a few dollars to buy;
- a ubiquitous high-bandwidth wifi network that is global in scope, connecting you personally everywhere in the developed world and much of the undeveloped world; 5G is like having a gigabit ethernet with you all the time, 6G and beyond even faster
- image sensors and audio recording can capture every aspect of our world and make it available to us wherever we are; google streetview is a very early prototype; how long before immersive VR lets you travel virtually in a way that is just like being there;
- the massive deployment of billions of microprocessors into every conceivable area of our lives; and processors being implemented in new technologies like plastic, even more cheaply than silicon, still connected to the cloud; people are already working on this stuff
- cloud is an enabler for whole new industries, like autonomous transport, always-on ever-present personal AI assistants, Bill Gates "information at your fingertips" vision on steroids
- the scope for potential new applications is astonishing; I think we have only just begun to scratch the surface in tems of  thinking about the types of things that can be done with this new infrastructure
- possibly dystopian nightmares like recording every moment of our life experience, mass surveillance, already we see China deploying a social credit system; let's hope it doesn't come to that 
- if the internet was a second industrial revolution, this might be the third industrial revolution
- as with all technological developments, the outcome could be heaven or it could be hell; that's been true since we started making stone tools
- is the singularity a real thing?  Or human augmentation?  I don't know, but it seems we're getting closer to a place where these kinds of things might be possible;
- and from a longer term perspective, will this technology help humans to survive on this little ball of rock where we appear to be engaged in the headlong wholesale destruction of the host ecosystem?  The anthropocine mass extinction is taking place during our lifetimes.

We are in the middle of a decades-long process that started arguably with the invention of the transistor.  Have a listen some time to what people like Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil have been saying for years.  And on a somewhat darker note, check out Zbigniew Brzesinski's ideas about the technotronic era.  When you're busy working in the field, sometimes it's interesting to look up from the screen and look around.  We live in interesting times


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## ralphbsz (Jun 4, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Can we get back on topic?


No.

Sorry, you asked a question, and I gave you an answer.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 4, 2019)

hukadan said:


> Some time ago, they spoke about the danger of this substance on French television (in French...) :
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Note: actually, they blame everything on french tv channels, maybe that's why they go in street, who really knows. Despite this, they look not to complain that much about their energy power, kinda nuclear at 80 pct. If they would, they could not, because there are strong lobbies and French medias.

Maybe could it be that, we just cannot accept the higher level of toxicity of changes and modern world?
- Bio maybe, return to origin?
- We use cloud and faster internet, and we want to be living in an healthy world...
It is rather irrational. Let's think about this one. This one is excellent, and it pictures well the daily reality:


> Menschen wollen gesund werden, aber nicht gesund leben.


Consequently, humans will vote yes for toxicity, pollution, and modern technologies.


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## ShelLuser (Jun 6, 2019)

Apologies for going a little bit offtopic but...  I was playing GTAO the other day and heard this on the in-game radio and it immediately reminded me of this thread. I think R*, as always, managed to create another perfect mockery:


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## forquare (Jun 9, 2019)

I've not watched it, having only heard some soundbites on the latest *Linux Unplugged*, but the *Texus Linux Fest Keynote *is an interesting listen - I think the bit about the cloud starts around half an hour in.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 13, 2019)

The web cloud is actually an pretty unefficient way of file transfert/sharing files, considering the CPU usage + required bandwith.

I tested google drive, and some data cannot be downloaded with chromium browser. It seems that it needs a high-end, machine to use web cloud aka google drive.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 13, 2019)

forquare said:


> I've not watched it, having only heard some soundbites on the latest *Linux Unplugged*, but the *Texus Linux Fest Keynote *is an interesting listen - I think the bit about the cloud starts around half an hour in.


what's that ? https://linuxunplugged.com/304


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## ralphbsz (Jun 13, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> The web cloud is actually an pretty unefficient way of file transfert/sharing files, considering the CPU usage + required bandwidth.


Nonsense.  For a secure protocol, it is actually extremely efficient.  Or why do you think the largest computer companies in the world (Amazon, Google, Microsoft) would be using it?  They really don't like wasting CPU, memory, networking, or storage.  Do you have a proposal for an alternate protocol that would be more efficient?  Do you actually understand modern networking architecture, offload engines, and protocol processing?



> I tested google drive, and some data cannot be downloaded with chromium browser. It seems that it needs a high-end, machine to use web cloud aka google drive.


Google drive is not identical to the cloud.  Far from it.
I can use Google drive from low-end Android phones and Chromebooks.  I'm using it on the 11-year old laptop on my desk (which is a 32-bit CPU with 4gig of memory).  It does definitely not need a high end machine.


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## toorski (Jun 13, 2019)

CLOUDS (digital data communication, storage, processing and retrieval)  a.k.a DPS-Data Processing Services since early 80’s. Back_then_when .. IBM had 100% monopoly in DPS industry. Now, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and few others, IBM too, offer DPS for masses.

*The name of the game and its top players may change, but the game is still the same. *
Back then, IBM held local and remote digital data service customers by their balls. Now, the IT monsters in so called Clouds hold their customers (users) by the balls with their fingers in customers (users) a*ss*s and wallets. Then, they were doing in Token Ring Networks, now they’re doing it over TCP/IP network a.k.a Internet in the Clouds 

Back in early 90’s we had to develop in a shared (Cloud) computing environment with hundreds of CATIA workstations connected to IBM mainframes with support of HPC by Cray Supercomputers, because only large Corporate entities could afford it.  Now, I can do the same on a single PC.
I have 2 computers with 4 CPUs x6 cores each,  shitload of cheap storage, 3 operating systems, tons of apps that I don’t know what to with and enough TCP/IP servers to amuse and confuse World Wide Internouts and Hacktards.  Why would I need a Cloud supported services?

LOL


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## Spartrekus (Jun 14, 2019)

ralphbsz said:


> Nonsense. For a secure protocol, it is actually extremely efficient. Or why do you think the largest computer companies in the world (Amazon, Google, Microsoft) would be using it? They really don't like wasting CPU, memory, networking, or storage. Do you have a proposal for an alternate protocol that would be more efficient? Do you actually understand modern networking architecture, offload engines, and protocol processing?


What is so much efficient with that cloud?

You may transfert with (s)ftp, you need just a small program that does the file transfert for instance.

On a PI, google drive is slow as a snail.


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## ralphbsz (Jun 14, 2019)

For transfer via https, you also need just a tiny program.  The protocol is simple enough, you can do transfers using just telnet (for http without SSL).  The size of the program has nothing to do with the efficiency of the transfer.  The design and implementation of the protocol does.  To begin with, today's TCP/IP hardware and protocol stacks are highly optimized for http(s), for obvious reasons.

And again, Google drive (and similar technologies like DropBox) are just only tiny and unimportant aspect of the cloud.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 14, 2019)

ralphbsz said:


> For transfer via https, you also need just a tiny program.  The protocol is simple enough, you can do transfers using just telnet (for http without SSL).  The size of the program has nothing to do with the efficiency of the transfer.  The design and implementation of the protocol does.  To begin with, today's TCP/IP hardware and protocol stacks are highly optimized for http(s), for obvious reasons.
> 
> And again, Google drive (and similar technologies like DropBox) are just only tiny and unimportant aspect of the cloud.



http should be used for web, not for all whatever file transferts. There are sufficient ports that are available. Order and coherence first.

yeah, but what about cloud google drive, do you use a tiny file to make it work properly? - Web browser, and resource and memory wasting.
SCP is far more efficient and free.


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## ralphbsz (Jun 14, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> http should be used for web, not for all whatever file transferts.


Why not?  It is practical, available everywhere, well debugged and understood, and very efficient. It works much better than ftp and scp protocols.



> yeah, but what about cloud google drive, do you use a tiny file to make it work properly?


Honestly, I don't use Google Drive (or DropBox or similar services) very much. But I do use them for small and big files (sometimes just a few lines of text, to securely transfer them to other people, sometimes for multiple GB as a backup mechanism). As far as I can tell, its performance is purely limited by the bandwidth of my connection, so performance is "trivial", as good as it can be.



> Web browser, and resource and memory wasting.


First, you don't have to use a web browser to use cloud in general, cloud storage in particular, and Google Drive/Dropbox as specific examples. You can do it with wget, curl, and http(s) libraries from your favorite programming language (I'm particularly fond of doing it in Python, but tastes on that vary).

Second, you are likely running a web browser on the platform anyway, to read the news, find out what the weather is, and chat on the FreeBSD forum. Asking that web browser to do one more thing (upload and download a file) is very efficient, because it is already being run and in memory. No need to fire up a whole separate process groups, with shells, context switches, shared libraries, and all that gunk.



> SCP is far more efficient and free.


I've yet to run a browser that is not free.

And scp is really not efficient at all.  Look at the protocol, look at the number of packets that are required, look at how security and dependability are implemented, look at the CPU footprint. It is a bad design, being a hybrid of the very outdated rcp protocol with ssh stuff tacked on. And finally look at the fact that modern production implementations of networks and TCP stacks are optimized for the most common protocol, which is http(s), which is one of the reasons it just runs better than most other protocols.

Im not saying that scp is bad and should never be used. There are good use cases for it, for example involving strong crypto. But making it the default for all file transfer cases is insane.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 15, 2019)

I am a bit surprised by your post, actually, from you. What's going on, *ralphbsz?*

First, you are likely not to run a browser with a desktop.
That's Unix. This is much more.
It means that you haven't discovered Unix sufficiently. Maybe you forgot. But, it will come back, this very surely. FreeBSD is likely the most attracting OS today. This can even take >20 - 40 years to learn how to take advantage of all power tools, that are available, even how to read the news and to chat with others, in an efficient, user friendly way without a single desktop.

You don't want to write SCP in Python, right? Do you?

http is of course good for reading a webpage (html 3.x or 4.x), but understand that the use of port is of primary importance.
SCP was an example.

Likely let's see that all things have a right place. It is usually good to use what works, without looking for superficial.
Eg. Socks are in the drawer, not lying all around.
Likely, you don't go to mac donalds to eat for both  lunch time and in the evening daily.
Same for file transferts.

Feel free to have a look in this direction, you can't find better way to start a small, efficient connection...

```
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <arpa/inet.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
...
```

Think UNIX:


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## Spartrekus (Jun 16, 2019)

Which scp, small executable will download all my files from google drive ?

I would like to remove all its content from cloud google drive.

How to do all files of google drive without a browser with FreeBSD under a console, ideally with wget ?


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## jasonvp (Jun 18, 2019)

My opinions on the cloud are as follows; but before I get to them a full disclosure is warranted.  I'll be going to work for a company that provides public/private cloud services.  _Which_ company isn't material to the discussion, but I felt it necessary to at least get that out there.

With that out of the way:  The cloud is called a bunch of things by a bunch of different folks.  The most amusing of them is, "It's just someone else's computer."  And, to an extent: it is.  At its core, you're using time on someone else's server(s) versus your own.  This has a lot of benefits depending on the circumstances you and/or your company find yourselves in.  For one: you can stay out of the real estate business.  That's basically what data centers are these days: real estate.  If you don't need your own data centers (for larger companies) or your own racks in someone else's data centers (for smaller companies) you begin to save buckets of money.  No longer do you have to manage the physical hardware, the support contracts, the RMAs when they inevitably break.  You don't have to manage floor tile space, electrical loads, and cooling.  All of that is handled by: someone else.

Second, with "someone else" focusing on the hardware, power, space, networking, etc: your teams can focus on designing and building your system and/or application.  There are a few mindset shifts that have to happen when migrating to the cloud and that's one of them:  "It's all software, man..."  That can be a benefit and a cost at the same time: the folks you have on staff that already "get it" with respect to software will make an easy transition to this paradigm.  Those that are more anchored in the hardware side of things are going to need to learn a new set of skills.

Third, with very few exceptions, a cloud provider's infrastructure is going to be vastly larger and far superior to yours.  These guys generally build whole new data centers as if it were a "just add water" sort of thing.  They have the technical know-how to get these new data centers up and running, complete with full network connectivity to the world, in no time.  And with that expanded footprint, they can offer you the ability to build a very robust application or system.  YOU have to do the work there, though.  It's not automatic in any way.  Your application needs to spin up (and spin down!! ($$)) when it's needed, and you need to put the intelligence in it to say, "part of it can live over here on this coast, part of it can live over there on that coast, and another part of it can live way over yonder, in that country."  In other words: a distributed app.  The cloud provides the expensive part of that: the distributed infrastructure.  YOU need to provide the distributed application(s).  Things may happen to that infrastructure that are completely out of your control.  For instance: a data center could go offline due to a power problem.  Or some evil back hoe slices yet another bundle of fiber as they're so wont to do.  Your app needs to be written in such a way that it can deal with those issues and continue functioning.  That's another of the mindset shifts.

Fourth, as I mentioned earlier, the cloud makes it easier to spin up resources as you need them and then spin them down when you don't.  This is yet another mindset shift that has to happen; otherwise your monthly bills will be exceptional.  It generally makes little sense to move something to the cloud that needs ALL of its resources running ALL of the time.  That will get costly, quickly.  A better idea is to have apps that can scale as requests and requirements come in.  We need a few more Apache servers here.  We need a few more app servers over there.  OK, those VMs are done doing their thing; shut them down.  Spin up a couple more of there.

Moving to this new world is challenging.  Far more so for us network guys, for instance, because we're out of the loop for the most part.  All of those years we spent architecting and engineering scalable networks are, for the most part, not needed any longer when it comes to a company moving to the cloud.  Different skill sets are required, which is actually OK; it just means we continue to grow.  And we're still around should the company decide to do a hybrid or mixed setup.  Ultimately, I expect that's what's going to win out in the end.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 18, 2019)

jasonvp I completely agree with everything you said--it's what some of us have already said--but you collected it into one nice post. The only thing I would add is that there are some services "cloud" companies offer but you touched on those, too. What bothers some of us is that people are led astray into thinking "the cloud" is somehow different from "a bunch of servers" and, other than services that might be provided by a cloud company, they are one and the same.

What really gets me is reading technical people's writings where they, too, have gotten sucked into the "cloud" marketing term, which, originally, was for lay people to help them understand the internet  by using a nebulous term.


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## PMc (Jun 18, 2019)

jasonvp said:


> The cloud provides the expensive part of that: the distributed infrastructure.



The more interesting point seems to be the distributed workforce: since all the skill is now provided by The Cloud, all the jobs that require skill can now be done in India. So the local workforce can be reduced to those highly qualified guys who are able to count money (called "managers"), and some on-site support hired for minimum wages, that way guaranteeing the customer 100% skillfree service, as required by ITIL. Brave New World at it's best.


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## jasonvp (Jun 18, 2019)

PMc said:


> The more interesting point seems to be the distributed workforce: since all the skill is now provided by The Cloud, all the jobs that require skill can now be done in India.



I think that's a rather cynical and incorrect way to interpret what's going on.  You still need geeks who understand the guts of an operating system as well as the guts of your application.  You still need geeks that can think about how to best distribute your digital work load as well as what parts of the work loads get moved to the cloud.

To be perfectly honest, if you're a professional sys admin, this move to the cloud should be relatively easy thing to do _assuming_ your apps are ready for it.


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## PMc (Jun 18, 2019)

jasonvp said:


> I think that's a rather cynical and incorrect way to interpret what's going on.



It's my personal experience, as a customer as well as somebody seeking employment. As a customer I hardly rememeber the time when I got anything else than skillfree service. Nowadays the customers are only filler stuff for the business, counted and averaged by metrics - everything else becoming crap, the people are now the product.

But then, this now is a wonderful world for the zuckerbergs and the scrumbag consultants. But there are the others, those of us who started in 1985 or 1990 to build up the Internet, out of passion, just because it was a damn great thing - while making our living by serving burgers at donald. Those of us who then figured that the companies, trying to go client/server, struggled with exactly the same problems we had already solved (the only difference being that the companies employed an unintellegible obscure language, making things appear needlessly complicated, and smoke-screening by buzz-words that what would really count: reliability and proper engineering).
Those of us are now superfluous, and usually too old to go back to the burger serving business.



> You still need geeks who understand the guts of an operating system as well as the guts of your application.  You still need geeks that can think about how to best distribute your digital work load as well as what parts of the work loads get moved to the cloud.



In India, maybe.



> To be perfectly honest, if you're a professional sys admin, this move to the cloud should be relatively easy thing to do _assuming_ your apps are ready for it.



I have nothing to do with that, I'm just an ordinary guy.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jul 2, 2019)

I keep my head in the clouds.

My data stays on redundant USB sticks with passwords encrypted by security/bcrypt. That works for me. I'm not a movie star and don't have any nude pix or I would use the cloud.


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## Spartrekus (Jul 2, 2019)

Trihexagonal said:


> I keep my head in the clouds.
> 
> My data stays on redundant USB sticks with passwords encrypted by security/bcrypt. That works for me. I'm not a movie star and don't have any nude pix or I would use the cloud.



There is a way that you can replace your USB.

There is www and ssh for replacing your clouds on microsoft and google. Know that those two use all your data on the clouds and make huge profits *dollars*.

So here is the good trick for your FreeBSD Data Solution.
Caution those commands are Free, Libre, quick, portable and working.
Bonus: It works on any today Unix installations.
Extra Bonus: it is fast, and it is recommended to protect environment, for a sustainable solution.

what about fun tunnel to get so anywhere?



```
echo easy sshfs tunnel for the newbie
    ssh -p 6222  username@distantsshopenport  -L   3000:192.168.1.2:22
    cd ; mkdir drive ; sshfs -p3000 username@localhost:/  drive
```

PC anywhere ->   wwww -> distant gate pc with router, open port  on port 6222  ->   192.168.1.2 on port 22 this is your harddisk on freebsd server - libre - free and with ZFS or UFS or Raid. 
3000 is like a virtual one, used to connect.


----------

