Ellison appears to continue the 1990s brand of techno-comedian -- continuing where Sun's McNealy left off – figuratively and literally if the merger goes through. It made little difference if these CEO cum jokers were stand-up self-contradictions. There was a time when making fun of Intel, IBM, Microsoft was "cool" but that got old as the dot come era fizzled out. Speaking of the past, Ellison’s Oracle, has just been slapped a fine for bragging about a Sun+Oracle performance benchmark in the NYTimes, a benchmark that Sun had been badmouthing for a decade. People indeed have short memories!
Consumers already operate much of their "computing" in the cloud, and most of the selling of cloud computing for scalable storage, computing, and "disposable" environments will be for businesses.
Gee Ryan, looks like you're on my page today, being a killjoy. Can't have the drones waking up to the reality that not only is is everything old 'new' again, but we're running out of 'new' ideas and really scrounging:
In much the same way that I don't believe that folks will fall for Job's new mythical shiny Newton ^h^h iPud ^h iPad, I don't think folks are falling for the hype of cloud computing. Unless it's 'free'.
The problem right now is that there are more 'marketers' and 'technologists' in tech than Engineers who truly innovate on this side of the pond. And India and China don't innovate the way Silly Valley did pre-Offshore-Boom time.
And now all the bot ^h offshore herders have to fight over is the table scraps, tired ideas from 10 years ago that didn't work then and won't work now. Leading us to this:
But...PCs generally are too complex for most of the tasks that most people do on them, aren't they?
I didn't know of Larry's circa-1996 position on Network Computers so I'm just thinking about this now...but isn't he kind of right? Doesn't much of the complexity of PCs go underutilized as a feature, and instead just contribute to user problems (resource conflicts, maybe virus infections)? Doesn't much of the code of any operating system or application just lie there dormant and unused...kind of like those endless lists of drivers that WordPerfect used to provide for printers that no one would ever own?
I think you missed Larry's point...and note that I'm not his biggest fan. In the 1996 clip, he was talking about the advantages of having computers networked (via the nascient Internet) together and the feasibility of non-PC-based computers to employ distributed apps (and you could certainly argue that his vision was wrong as Apple and the PC makers and Microsoft are selling more of the same today when compared to units sold in 1996 where net applicances are still not even really on the radar), where in the 2009 clip he is simply critical of the term "cloud" computing and that it's a nearly meaningless term, and indistinguishable from the concept of networked computers and the advantages thereof.
The person who wrote this article seems unable to differentiate a "forward looking" vision of what will be "big" vs. his critique of just a another relatively new computer term (of which he's heard countless ones like it before).
Find another reason to pick on Lawerence; there are plenty.
I don't understand your article. Ellison is ranting against marketers and asshole investors, not against true technologists. He clearly states that he has always embraced the tech behind what people term 'the cloud'. In fact, he states that we all have, and that's why he finds the use of some kitschy branding so fucking ridiculous and annoying.
@FaceMelter: Ah, so calling stripped down computers "NCs" wasn't kitschy, and saying they were going to replace PCs wasn't ridiculous, because Larry is a _technologist_ and not a marketer. I wonder what the last thing he coded was.
@Ryan Tate: I don't think the branding of NC was kitschy. In fact, the blunt name probably scared away consumers who were timid to interact with computers, let alone networked ones. After all, wtf is a network to your Average Joe? People still don't even understand the difference between a browser and the internet. The cloud on the other hand ... now that is some approachable shit. Dude, you get to fly.
I concede that the use of the term technologist was some bullshit. Replace that with engineer. Also, even though Larry runs a huge business and doesn't get dirty in the grunt work, the guy is and will always be an engineer.
@Ryan Tate: The same type of person who abuses the term 'platform' from marketing hour to marketing hour every marketing day. They live a life of smells and pretty colors, mostly rendered in Flash, on their 'network computers.'
As we move toward a society where all media is digital, and all computer functionality is web-based, I get more and more scared that something will make the satellites fall out of the sky, and we will be back to the stone age.
One hacker will be all it takes to delete forever the words of Shakespeare from our digital library of congress. People, hold onto your books, records, and vhs tapes. I'll hold onto my tin foil hat.
If it was really piddly why would flickr bother with the pictures or closing down insignificant 'bitchy' discussion, and we certainly would be discussing this.That's a huge paradox and the real irony of those who seek to diminish these incidents.
Obvously flickr is a private entity and under no legal obligation to support or promote anything, they are free to be despots and tyrants but then how many folks would support a company of this nature.
The big elephant in the room here is that Yahoo as a company has issues with free speech and they should be open about it. The hypocrisy of claiming to support free discussion and closing down discussion at the same time is spectacularly silly.
Yahoo gave up a blogger to the Chinese government so all these issue ultimately tie back to issues of free speech, freedom and democracy so one can choose to be blase about it but please let not pretend its business as usual.
Yahoo, Google and Microsoft have all collaborated with the Chinese government to limit freedom, and this cannot be a good thing.
@LouiseGoolay: Apparently a lot of folks will support a company of this nature.
I think you have a great point about Yahoo's dealings in China, but to act like they're in any way connected to Flickr taking down some pictures and ending discussion threads kind of trivializes that in a way that's not too appealing.
About China: it would seem that that type of thing actually is "business as usual," if you want to tap into the Chinese market. I can assure you that Yahoo and Google, in particular, are not in that market otherwise. It's either play ball with the government and you're in, or resist the government and you're out. Breaching ethical boundaries in return for access to huge markets isn't exactly new territory for corporations.
I didn't know it was "blase" to not be absolutely shocked or make exaggerated claims about the broad significance of piddly things like Flickr removing a picture that, quite honestly, should have been removed anyway, or shutting down threads full of bitching about it. As usual, leave it to the bored-as-hell, reactionary internet masses to complain that their constitutional rights are under attack simply because Flickr won't let the put up any old picture they want.
Whao, that's audacious! Free speech is clearly an alien concept to you, incase you didn't realise its not a privilege provided by kindly souls, is a right and when denied there better be a good explanation unless you are in Iran or Saudi Arabia or something.
If flickr wants to be a censoring overlord then why provide forum discussion or in that case photo services, let them tell their customers if we don't approve of your photos, according to not some well defined parameters but arbitrary judgement we will delete them. This sort of small mindedness and petty tyranny cannot suit any free system.
@LouiseGoolay: Flickr censoring speech on its site doesn't = first amendment violation. I think the problem is more that people have come to believe that they are participating in "free systems" just because these systems are on the internet, when in actuality they have been subject to moderation from the outset.
10/02/09
10/01/09
10/01/09
[mindtaker.blogspot.com]
In much the same way that I don't believe that folks will fall for Job's new mythical shiny Newton ^h^h iPud ^h iPad, I don't think folks are falling for the hype of cloud computing. Unless it's 'free'.
The problem right now is that there are more 'marketers' and 'technologists' in tech than Engineers who truly innovate on this side of the pond. And India and China don't innovate the way Silly Valley did pre-Offshore-Boom time.
And now all the bot ^h offshore herders have to fight over is the table scraps, tired ideas from 10 years ago that didn't work then and won't work now. Leading us to this:
[mindtaker.blogspot.com]
The USA is really heading into a lost decade. And there truly is 'no App for that."
10/01/09
10/01/09
I didn't know of Larry's circa-1996 position on Network Computers so I'm just thinking about this now...but isn't he kind of right? Doesn't much of the complexity of PCs go underutilized as a feature, and instead just contribute to user problems (resource conflicts, maybe virus infections)? Doesn't much of the code of any operating system or application just lie there dormant and unused...kind of like those endless lists of drivers that WordPerfect used to provide for printers that no one would ever own?
10/01/09
The person who wrote this article seems unable to differentiate a "forward looking" vision of what will be "big" vs. his critique of just a another relatively new computer term (of which he's heard countless ones like it before).
Find another reason to pick on Lawerence; there are plenty.
10/01/09
10/01/09
PS What the heck is a "technologist?"
10/01/09
10/01/09
I concede that the use of the term technologist was some bullshit. Replace that with engineer. Also, even though Larry runs a huge business and doesn't get dirty in the grunt work, the guy is and will always be an engineer.
10/01/09
10/02/09
10/01/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
One hacker will be all it takes to delete forever the words of Shakespeare from our digital library of congress. People, hold onto your books, records, and vhs tapes. I'll hold onto my tin foil hat.
09/15/09
09/15/09
/b/ is going to love this.
09/15/09
08/25/09
08/26/09
08/25/09
The big elephant in the room here is that Yahoo as a company has issues with free speech and they should be open about it. The hypocrisy of claiming to support free discussion and closing down discussion at the same time is spectacularly silly.
Yahoo gave up a blogger to the Chinese government so all these issue ultimately tie back to issues of free speech, freedom and democracy so one can choose to be blase about it but please let not pretend its business as usual.
Yahoo, Google and Microsoft have all collaborated with the Chinese government to limit freedom, and this cannot be a good thing.
08/25/09
I think you have a great point about Yahoo's dealings in China, but to act like they're in any way connected to Flickr taking down some pictures and ending discussion threads kind of trivializes that in a way that's not too appealing.
About China: it would seem that that type of thing actually is "business as usual," if you want to tap into the Chinese market. I can assure you that Yahoo and Google, in particular, are not in that market otherwise. It's either play ball with the government and you're in, or resist the government and you're out. Breaching ethical boundaries in return for access to huge markets isn't exactly new territory for corporations.
I didn't know it was "blase" to not be absolutely shocked or make exaggerated claims about the broad significance of piddly things like Flickr removing a picture that, quite honestly, should have been removed anyway, or shutting down threads full of bitching about it. As usual, leave it to the bored-as-hell, reactionary internet masses to complain that their constitutional rights are under attack simply because Flickr won't let the put up any old picture they want.
08/25/09
If flickr wants to be a censoring overlord then why provide forum discussion or in that case photo services, let them tell their customers if we don't approve of your photos, according to not some well defined parameters but arbitrary judgement we will delete them. This sort of small mindedness and petty tyranny cannot suit any free system.
08/25/09