Now they've resorted to trying to scare people into upgrading for "Security" reasons...
IT is becoming / has become a commodity product. The "IT fan boys" that experiment and learn lots of applications, graphic arts, programming, etc., are now a tiny minority.
The mass adoption of IT by everyone and their grandmother means they just want to be able to to do their everyday shopping and other errands online with as little confusion and hassle as possible. So, we end up with massive whiteout on the whole monitor, with a single checkbox in the middle: "Would you like fries with that?"
Well, at least we own our terminals, a nice shinny glass back smart phone... and, we no longer need an acoustic coupler to use the phone line for data.
How many of us actually own even that... how many are on some kind of monthly paid plan?
Most people.
And regular cash flow is what subscriptions and monthly payments are all about.
...
I suppose the idea of Personal Computer that one owns running software that one owns is indeed thing of the past.
I suppose the idea of Personal Computer that one owns running software that one owns is indeed thing of the past.
I suppose the idea of Personal Computer that one owns running software that one owns is indeed thing of the past.
And in the future or even already happening (not sure), these so called Smart Medical Implants or IOT Body Implants thingy and similar stuffs, that are hooked up to the net/cloud, made me cringe and had goosebumps every time I think about it.
Now they've resorted to trying to scare people into upgrading for "Security" reasons...
[...]As there are veritable and independently discovered vulnerabilities in the software it's not "scaring".
Now they've resorted to trying to scare people into upgrading for "Security" reasons...
[...]As there are veritable and independently discovered vulnerabilities in the software it's not "scaring".
Fair point, but are there any products, systems, services, or beings with no vulnerabilities?
We know our cars or front door locks are not 100% invulnerable to theft. Yet we still use them - we accept a degree of imperfection.
Is it totally wrong to take the same approach with software, in the right circumstances?
We know our cars or front door locks are not 100% invulnerable to theft. Yet we still use them - we accept a degree of imperfection.
Is it totally wrong to take the same approach with software, in the right circumstances?
Yes it’s about “attack surface”. The attack surface needs to be minimised and that is extremely difficult on cloud platforms even with proper architectural design. All it takes is one fuck up on an S3 bucket policy and you’re screwed. There is no isolation late r in front of that, no physical separation, even if you use the subnet endpoints only because the S3 API is exposed everywhere. You are instantly up shit creek.
Eventually as customers learn to fear this they pay for people, processes and software to manage this and then the cost savings shrivel up.
But most of the time, mid size enterprises actually cost more up front in “the cloud” on operational expenditure. It’s easier writing off a monthly credit card bill than a capital expenditure though. And this isn’t helped by the cloud proponents and sales folk constantly buzzing around like flies around shit selling the overall cost savings lie.
One comedy thing here I experienced recently is a £165k SQL server box that lasts 3 years costs £890k a year to run in AWS without any other infrastructure considered. There’s enough cash left over by not using AWS to fix the rest of the company’s problems but you know, death march...
Yes it’s about “attack surface”. The attack surface needs to be minimised and that is extremely difficult on cloud platforms even with proper architectural design. All it takes is one fuck up on an S3 bucket policy and you’re screwed. There is no isolation late r in front of that, no physical separation, even if you use the subnet endpoints only because the S3 API is exposed everywhere. You are instantly up shit creek.AWS provided late last year an additional isolation layer to help customers from making that particular mistake (because it was a common one, as you observed). Sort of a set of suspenders to go with the technically OK, but sometimes misused, belt that was always there.
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-s3-block-public-access-another-layer-of-protection-for-your-accounts-and-buckets/
Eventually as customers learn to fear this they pay for people, processes and software to manage this and then the cost savings shrivel up.
But most of the time, mid size enterprises actually cost more up front in “the cloud” on operational expenditure. It’s easier writing off a monthly credit card bill than a capital expenditure though. And this isn’t helped by the cloud proponents and sales folk constantly buzzing around like flies around shit selling the overall cost savings lie.For my day job, we're in the cloud for development speed and agility, not cost savings. It costs slightly more in total, but I also know damn well that our dev teams can launch services to the public in days not months, no one has to negotiate queueing up to get their project delivered, and we've more or less eliminated the annual "scale up for next holiday" project that we used to start in Feb and run through September each year. Our monthly AWS bill has two commas and it's totally worth it.
For my own personal work, I also mostly host in AWS on my own nickel. Not having to think about a lot of the randoms ops tasks is freeing.
One comedy thing here I experienced recently is a £165k SQL server box that lasts 3 years costs £890k a year to run in AWS without any other infrastructure considered. There’s enough cash left over by not using AWS to fix the rest of the company’s problems but you know, death march...I tried to find the comparison server you're talking about. I think you've chosen an example which is apples to watermelons by choosing a high-availability multi-AZ server (which your single box obviously is not) and by not contemplating/comparing the purchase of the AWS box as a reserved instance (which is financially analogous to buying your own 3 year hardware), and not counting any of the ping, power, cooling, security, and maintenance costs to run the on-prem server.
I have no AWS financial interests (other than owning mutual funds, so I own some Amazon shares indirectly). They are simply the best game in town in cloud computing and likely to remain that way for the next half-decade. If you're moving an existing operation into the cloud solely to save costs, you're probably going to be disappointed. How much could you possibly be saving over whatever you're doing that's already working? Why spend the effort, dollars, and risk to move something that works?
If you're going to the cloud for speed and agility, you're much more likely to achieve your goal.
I still run and use "vintage" software. For much of it, the original developer isn't even in business anymore. Just this week I was playing the game Spiritual Warfare that came out in 1992. It's great fun and doesn't matter that it is old.
The sad thing is that in 10-20 years people won't be running much of today's software as vintage software. Everything has a cloud connection that won't be supported or exist anymore. There is far less emphasis on backwards compatibility than what existed in the early days of PCs. And forget about phone apps, they won't be able to download their ads / send spying data on you or run much past a few years.
One thing I don't get is, why is it so hard to catch some of the Internet crooks and make examples of them? They have to be leaving "fingerprints" everywhere... (Heads on spikes along Tower Bridge in London sounds appropriate... assuming we can get to them for all the pocket thieves etc. that like to hang out there and pluck the tourists).
One thing I don't get is, why is it so hard to catch some of the Internet crooks and make examples of them? They have to be leaving "fingerprints" everywhere... (Heads on spikes along Tower Bridge in London sounds appropriate... assuming we can get to them for all the pocket thieves etc. that like to hang out there and pluck the tourists).
I'm sure what you'd see happen is they would catch some low hanging fruit, dumb kids that did something minor that could conceivably be called internet crime and throw the book at them, ruining their lives for no real gain. Even when I was in school there were some kids who got in a lot of trouble for "hacking", ie silly and largely harmless stuff like bypassing the password on the Macs to change the screen saver to say something naughty. Meanwhile the real crooks that pull off the big stuff are mostly in other countries and largely out of reach.
they played when they were kids in the 2010s and most of that stuff is just going to be gone