Author Topic: Proof that software as service/cloud based, will never work for long term ...  (Read 93806 times)

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Online ebastler

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Sony did that to me years ago. YouTube went. Now I just steal all my content.

Where do you steal your Youtube content?
 

Offline bd139

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Offline rdl

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They've been doing that here for a long time now. The three strikes rule has been in place for years. I got my first claim of infringement in 2014.  I switched to a proxy service in 2015 just for torrents and haven't had a claim since.


That’s good to hear. Getting quite litigious here. The media companies are tracking peer IP addresses on torrents these days and contacting the ISPs who send you an email. Three strikes policy apparently.
 

Offline james_s

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VPN isn’t really a solution. They’re all shonky as fuck and run by morons. Also your behaviour on the end of it betrays you (cookies etc)

There's always the option of using VM's for specific purposes and avoiding any cross-pollination between them. You can have a VM that you *only* use for accessing a specific website for example.
 

Offline SilverSolder

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VPN isn’t really a solution. They’re all shonky as fuck and run by morons. Also your behaviour on the end of it betrays you (cookies etc)

There's always the option of using VM's for specific purposes and avoiding any cross-pollination between them. You can have a VM that you *only* use for accessing a specific website for example.

I do that with Facebook, for example (I wouldn't use it, but my whole family is on there...).

Do you think that stops the f@ckers from trailing me with ads?  I think other sites (eBay, Google, etc.) are feeding Facebook with information behind the scenes.
 

Offline james_s

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I don't even know, honestly other than the unobtrusive banner ads in this forum which I leave because they don't bug me and I figure it's doing Dave a favor, I don't remember the last time I saw an ad anywhere on the internet. I run adblock and noscript religiously and have for years. It reduces both my annoyance level and my likelihood of getting infected by some kind of malware.
 
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Offline SilverSolder

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I've started using a local DNS server that has a block list for the worst offenders,  it has helped a lot.
 

Offline madires

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Osram will switch off Lightify cloud servers on August 31th 2021: https://www.osram.com/cb/lightify/lightify-home/lightify-home-faq/lightify_home_faqs.jsp

The smart lights won't become e-junk but lose a lot of features.
 

Offline PlainName

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That's a bummer, but they have at least unlocked them so they'll work with other Zigbee systems. Got to give them credit for that.
 

Offline SiliconWizard

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Offline Karel

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Quote
After April 30, 2020 no software updates will be made available for the Philips Hue Bridge v1 and compatibility with our online services will be terminated at that time.

https://www2.meethue.com/en-us/support/end-of-support-policy#3
 

Offline BravoVTopic starter

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Wish one day in the future, there will be a regulation or law, that force manufacturers of cloud based gadgets, that they must provide any necessary details "in advanced", that the details will be opened and will belong to public domain, should they decided to stop their cloud's side business that was supporting their sold products.

So the owners/customers can keep practicing their right to keep owning and using the merchandise they've fully owned and paid.

Guess I'm asking too much or day dreaming, am I ?  :palm:

Online tszaboo

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And I have a Nest smart thermostat. Well, it was smart until a few days ago the wifi died in it. 250 EUR for the thing, and they couldnt build it to last for 4 months. I'll RMA it, but I already wonder, what am I supposed to do until they send a replacement one. Burn wood?
 

Online ebastler

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Well, this is not an entirely new, internet/cloud-based phenomenon. We have had end user products which depend on a central infrastructure for a long time:
  • Since the 1960s, the German television system has undergone three different systems transitions. They managed to keep the first one backwards-compatible (black&white to color), but the next two (DVB, then DVB-T2) required new reception devices if you wanted to continue watching.

  • We have gone through three generations of analog more-or-less-mobile phone networks (A/B/C networks). I believe none of them were backwards-compatible, and neither was the eventual transition to digital GSM networks (D network), of course.

  • AM radio is slowly fading away, so most old radio receivers are of very limited use now. But the big change will be the eventual replacement of analog FM radio with digital DAB transmission. Politicians are understandably procrastinating that unpopular decision, but eventually all analog receivers will become obsolete.
Having said that -- in all of the above products, exchanging information with some central infrastructure was their key functionality. So I can understand that their function critically depends on the availability of the backbone, and eventually a technical generation change will break that functionality.

The annoying thing about many of the cloud-based services, in my mind, is that the cloud backbone appears almost like an arbitrary add-on, or a dongle, for a product that could function offline quite nicely indeed. Switching and dimming your lights at home comes to mind, or streaming audio from your player to a few wireless speakers... Essentially the cloud dependence is just another mechanism for planned obsolescence here.
 

Offline SilverSolder

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[...]
The annoying thing about many of the cloud-based services, in my mind, is that the cloud backbone appears almost like an arbitrary add-on, or a dongle, for a product that could function offline quite nicely indeed. Switching and dimming your lights at home comes to mind, or streaming audio from your player to a few wireless speakers... Essentially the cloud dependence is just another mechanism for planned obsolescence here.


This^.

People are waking up to it, though.  Even many non-technical people are seeing it for what it is.
 

Offline PlainName

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The problem is that the cloud is a simple way of achieving access from anywhere, which is what normal people want/expect. They're not going to dick around punching holes in their router's firewall, and their eyes will glaze over if they see that on the first page of the manual (they're unlikely to make it to the second page anyway).

The beef I have is not the cloud per se but the lack of anything else. My DVR, for instance, can be accessed from 'outside' but I can also connect direct over the LAN without touching the router if that's what takes my fancy. I think that's the kind of thing we should be pushing for, not just be rabidly anti-cloud.

Of course, better would be to know the protocols, etc, so one could roll one's own if desired.
 
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Offline bd139

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Very true.

There are two cloud models you had to consider which is where the distinction needs to be made on good versus bad. One enables people to do more with that they have (OneDrive/Dropbox are a fine example of this) and the other is to assert control and lock people in (fusion 360 for example). The former is a good thing because at any time you can pull the plug and just carry on like it never existed or migrate to a new provider. The latter is not good at all.

Top level evil on the latter is the cloud SaaS providers like AWS/Azure/GCP. Once you’re in, you’re in, and fucked.
 
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Offline Karel

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Amazon Removes E-Books From Kindle Store, Revokes Ownership

Quote
Today, Amazon removed George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from its Kindle e-book store.
The company also went ahead and removed any digital trace of the books, too-striking them
from both users' digital lockers and from Kindle devices. This disturbing, Orwellian move
underscores how, in spite of comments otherwise, a purchase in the digital realm can't be
compared to physical ownership of content.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/168654/kindle_e_book.html
 

Offline Karel

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Amazon Removes E-Books From Kindle Store, Revokes Ownership

Quote
Today, Amazon removed George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from its Kindle e-book store.
The company also went ahead and removed any digital trace of the books, too-striking them
from both users' digital lockers and from Kindle devices. This disturbing, Orwellian move
underscores how, in spite of comments otherwise, a purchase in the digital realm can't be
compared to physical ownership of content.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/168654/kindle_e_book.html
Not that it makes the argument and reality any less true, but I can find 1984 for Kindle without issue?

At the moment, yes.
But the point was that, even after buying and having it on your e-reader,
they can revoke it afterwards and you will not be able to read it anymore.

 

Offline madires

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That was a DRM issue, but the impact is similar to SaaS/cloud issues. There's also an overlap when DRM servers are shut down causing the users to lose access to the DRMed content they bought. The book printed on paper, the music CD, the vinyl, the board game or what have you don't suffer from that.
 

Offline SilverSolder

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That was a DRM issue, but the impact is similar to SaaS/cloud issues. There's also an overlap when DRM servers are shut down causing the users to lose access to the DRMed content they bought. The book printed on paper, the music CD, the vinyl, the board game or what have you don't suffer from that.

I have an app that I use on an old Android tablet in my car to view OBDII diagnostic information from the CAN bus.

Every couple of months, I get a pop-up "Application not owned"...  I then have to take the tablet into the house, connect to wi-fi, and let the app store talk to the "mother ship" before I can continue to use it.

This is for an app that is no longer supported (no longer being updated) for the ancient version of Android running on that tablet (which cannot be updated, not that I would want to - it just works!).

I really don't like the control freakery that digital products are converging towards.
« Last Edit: March 24, 2020, 03:21:25 pm by SilverSolder »
 

Offline bd139

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Another steamer. Azure is full  :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/24/azure_seems_to_be_full/

Also entire MSFT SSO in UK went down this morning for about an hour. Couldn't even save stuff in Excel if it was cloud connected  :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm:
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Another steamer. Azure is full  :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/24/azure_seems_to_be_full/

Also entire MSFT SSO in UK went down this morning for about an hour. Couldn't even save stuff in Excel if it was cloud connected  :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm:
I was so far surprised that things seemed to work out remarkably well.
 

Offline bd139

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Depends on the provider. AWS / Google are ok. Azure, nope!

Had some problems with Zoom but they went away quite quickly.
 

Offline Karel

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"End of Service Announcement for Smart View app (Oct. 5, 2020)

Dear Samsung Smart View app users,

Thank you for using Samsung Smart View app.

Unfortunately, Smart View app will no longer be supported from Oct. 5, 2020.
Please note, if you delete Smart View app from your mobile device, you will not be able to download it again. You can continue to use Smart View app unless you delete the app.

For models over K5500 in 2016, M5500 in 2017*, and The Frame, you can enjoy a new mobile and TV experience by installing the Samsung SmartThings app from Google Play Store, Samsung Galaxy Store, and Apple App Store.

Thank you for your support and understanding.

Sincerely,
The Samsung Smart View App Service Team


https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.smartviewad

965816-0
 


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