There is very little "personal" left in personal computers. I hate the fact that I'm being forced to buy more bandwidth to accommodate the cost saving tactics of corporations. If I want a hard copy invoice for any of my utilities I have to pay $2 for it. They cut their costs and pass it on to the users.

Eventually the people that control your internet access will have you in a corner. It's almost there now.

bapu

soens


From what I've been hearing it appears that eventually (this could be way in the future though) everything will be "up there". Your "personal computer" will be nothing more than a "terminal" for accessing it.

OMG,


Back in the 70s we had "mainframes" and were connected to them via CRTs.


I hope we never get back there again.

WOW, you had CRT's???!  Now I'm really impressed!  He had glorified typewriters that we used to connect to mainframes kept elsewhere.  I used a couple of timeshares to an HP-2000 starting in either 70 or 71.  We had to dial-up the phone number then, when we heard the tone, jam the receiver into an acoustic coupler and quickly hit <Ctrl-Enter><Ctrl-Linefeed> until it (hopefully) connected.  Initially, it was only 110 BAUD (go look up that term now-a-days!), but if you could whistle at 4,800Hz into the phone, you could sometimes get a connection at 300 BAUD. 
 
Oh yeah, and those teletypes didn't have lowercase letters either.  It was considered very tricky to make programs that displayed lowercase by stringing together the correct character codes.
 
Damn... CRT's?  Nice!  I still remember keeping every sheet of green-bar paper I could for use with the teletype.  You'd print on each section four times up and down on both sides.  My friend and I used to be really nice to the people at the school and local libraries so they'd give us old printouts - that gave us three sides to use.  Ah, memories!
 
As for the actual topic, I went the other route and upgraded my PhotoShop to CS 6.  I'm not ready yet to have my software somewhere possibly inaccessible when the internet goes down.

Unfortunately that's exactly it. The cloud will be the new mainframe. It all stems from the obsession that there has to be "the next big thing" in the techno world.

No. This is more than just something new in technology. As others have pointed out this is a return to the past, before computers could be miniaturized to fit on a desk.


This is about enormous corporations owning your computing power, tying you up in long term contracts for which you will pay a monthly fee, cutting you off if you miss a payment, holding your data hostage,  never having to support stupid users who install other stuff stuff that their software is incompatible with on hardware that they do not support, and never worrying about anyone pirating their software or re-selling their "licensed not purchased" products to someone else. Control of these and other factors, and the requirement that you accept that control to get anything done is an extraordinarily valuable commodity to the few companies that will be left after the shakeout/consolidation that will inevitably come with the atrophy of the PC model.


The advantages will be the same as when Bell Telephone was the only game in town. You would take the hardware they sold you, and the service they offered at the price they demanded and get a telephone that worked every time you put your finger in the little round holes and moved the dial in a circle. No more jokes about poor reception from AT&T or the unfairness of no rollover minutes--back to the future.

I KNEW there was a reason I didn't like it!  Heh...

The day I have to lease any software rather than buy it will be the day I stop using that software. I'll have whatever I have at that point and I'll just use that. The reality is that even now, the biggest obstacle to me producing top quality music is me, not the shiny new things that I don't have. As for personal data, then I won't even go there. The only worthwhile reason I can see for that is the "what if the house burns down" scenario, but there are ways of handling that yourself. I also refuse to do internet banking as to me the more people who sign up to that brings the day when there is no other choice ever closer. Just about every time I go into the bank, the cashier will say....."you do realise you can do that online ?" I give the same answer every time........."you do realise that when everyone does that, you won't have a job any more ? "
 
 

Damnable Internest.

One day musicians from all over the world will be able to share their individual tracks for a song and complete it "as if" they were in the room together.

Wait.....

.

paulo
 Just about every time I go into the bank, the cashier will say....."you do realise you can do that online ?" I give the same answer every time........."you do realise that when everyone does that, you won't have a job any more ? "
 
 

Tell me about it. I frequently have to deposit 20 or more checks at a time at the bank. And without fail, the cashier or some other bank employee will say "did you know you can deposit those with your iPhone using the bank's app?" -- yeah and you have to photograph each check front and back and upload the photos....each check takes about 2 minutes to deposit. No thanks. 

Isn't NagBap in the Clouds?

Sharke:
Tell me about it. I frequently have to deposit 20 or more checks at a time at the bank. And without fail, the cashier or some other bank employee will say "did you know you can deposit those with your iPhone using the bank's app?" -- yeah and you have to photograph each check front and back and upload the photos....each check takes about 2 minutes to deposit. No thanks.
 
 
I heard tell there was someone actually making money in today's economy. So it's YOU. :)