The referenced article was fine. It was the author's recollection of an era he/she experienced. It's interesting to me as an American, to see a British representation of 80's gaming-driven personal computing. surprisingly similar experiences. I refuse to be drawn into the argument that "gaming drove computing". It's one of a number of causal agents. I don't care today, to rank those agents, or to arbitrate their merits. Reasons not to, will become apparent in a moment. But what about neglecting pre-1980 or pre-"gaming" vintage computing? Simply put: the author very likely entered personal computing at that point in time with that class of hardware and software. He/she didn't know what happened before that. It's really that simple. We remember fondly our early days of discovery; we each start at some point in time. The article is a personal recollection of a time and place in personal computing. Many others share that set of experiences. The brands of software and hardware establish the bounds of that set. Most with interests in vintage computing, represent their own experiences, of their own era. An additional consideration. Many tens of millions played 1980's video gaming computing, because there were that many systems. The audience for 1970's computing was on the order of a few million; many from business, academic, industrial activity. And of course, some of us aren't around to report about it. Circumstances account for the differences between the decades. And so, any "vote" for "what drove computing" will skew accordingly, by count and by circumstances. I didn't take a vote, for my interests. Another reason I work at preserving MY computing era, is that before long there will be one less vote for it. I'm busy enough with that, not to argue the merits with others. Herb -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net preserve, recover, restore 1970's computing email: hjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT com or try later herbjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT info
A lot of people would like to see advanced forms of what we used to call client-server technology do away with the traditional idea of a stand alone personal computer.
Funny for this old guy to read this. In MY generation, the "traditional" idea of computing, was mainframe. The company and the government, owned ALL the computers, all the data, all the programs. Most people were powerless and computer-illiterate, and could not control or access their own data. "A lot of people" - real people, not corporations - in that era, saw personal computing (even time-share terminals) as a way to gain economic and personal power, access to tools and knowledge, building of communities. MOst 1970's microcomputing was about empowering people and freeing information for personal and small business use. It started from the bottom-up; IBM was late to the game. Now, who benefits when all the data is "on the server"? And access is limited not just by person, but by content? Not you and I! I'm not ignorant of the power of big algorithms across big data. But I'm not ignorant of my own previous experience, when personal computers enabled so many people to do so many things, for themselves. And that's *another* reason to preserve 1970's vintage computing. To remember when that was true. Herb Johnson -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net preserve, recover, restore 1970's computing email: hjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT com or try later herbjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT info
On 4/14/17 11:55 AM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
A lot of people would like to see advanced forms of what we used to call client-server technology do away with the traditional idea of a stand alone personal computer.
Funny for this old guy to read this. In MY generation, the "traditional" idea of computing, was mainframe. The company and the government, owned ALL the computers, all the data, all the programs. Most people were powerless and computer-illiterate, and could not control or access their own data.
"A lot of people" - real people, not corporations - in that era, saw personal computing (even time-share terminals) as a way to gain economic and personal power, access to tools and knowledge, building of communities. MOst 1970's microcomputing was about empowering people and freeing information for personal and small business use. It started from the bottom-up; IBM was late to the game.
Now, who benefits when all the data is "on the server"? And access is limited not just by person, but by content? Not you and I! I'm not ignorant of the power of big algorithms across big data. But I'm not ignorant of my own previous experience, when personal computers enabled so many people to do so many things, for themselves.
And that's *another* reason to preserve 1970's vintage computing. To remember when that was true.
Reminds me of Stardock CEO Brad Wardell telling me that when in 1993 they released the then OS/2 only based game Galactic Civilization and it not only sold a large number of copies but got a lot of people to buy IBM's OS/2 Warp operating system to play it. Enough to get IBM's attention. IBM then paid several game companies to port games to OS/2 to tap the pc game market. IBM never followed through and cancelled or just never released any of the games they contracted for. They just flat out gave up. All OS/2 users got at the time was a beta version of Doom that somehow leaked out. Not much of a big deal as it was the same as the native DOS version which also played already on OS/2's DOS box. Stardock released a few minor games on OS/2 then they moved to Microsoft. Mark
Reminds me of Stardock CEO Brad Wardell telling me that when in 1993 they released the then OS/2 only based game Galactic Civilization and it not only sold a large number of copies but got a lot of people to buy IBM's OS/2 Warp operating system to play it. Enough to get IBM's attention. IBM then paid several game companies to port games to OS/2 to tap the pc game market. IBM never followed through and cancelled or just never released any of the games they contracted for. They just flat out gave up. All OS/2 users got at the time was a beta version of Doom that somehow leaked out. Not much of a big deal as it was the same as the native DOS version which also played already on OS/2's DOS box. Stardock released a few minor games on OS/2 then they moved to Microsoft.
Mark
Taking this thread to a new rail...DEC's Rainbow had a lot of sames ported there, does anyone have any? I have a few InfoCom games that they ported to the Rainbow, but my Rainbow at the moment does not work. Spending more time to get VENIX disks running first, that to me is more important. Working with a guy in Colorado who has a working system.
On 04/14/2017 11:55 AM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
A lot of people would like to see advanced forms of what we used to call client-server technology do away with the traditional idea of a stand alone personal computer.
Funny for this old guy to read this. In MY generation, the "traditional" idea of computing, was mainframe. The company and the government, owned ALL the computers, all the data, all the programs. Most people were powerless and computer-illiterate, and could not control or access their own data.
"A lot of people" - real people, not corporations - in that era, saw personal computing (even time-share terminals) as a way to gain economic and personal power, access to tools and knowledge, building of communities. MOst 1970's microcomputing was about empowering people and freeing information for personal and small business use. It started from the bottom-up; IBM was late to the game.
Now, who benefits when all the data is "on the server"? And access is limited not just by person, but by content? Not you and I! I'm not ignorant of the power of big algorithms across big data. But I'm not ignorant of my own previous experience, when personal computers enabled so many people to do so many things, for themselves.
And that's *another* reason to preserve 1970's vintage computing. To remember when that was true.
Yes. With people jumping in droves to put everything in/on "THE CLOUD!!", without a thought or a clue as to the consequences, I can't help but sit back and laugh. It's the same centralized model, except that it's, as Matt Patoray so aptly puts it, SOMEONE ELSE'S COMPUTER. At least the company mainframe was owned by an entity whom you ostensibly had some sort of a connection to. Oh well. People will learn when all their stuff just up and disappears. And companies will figure out what happens when they store their customer lists and other business-proprietary data on computers owned by some of the world's largest data mining companies. B-) -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
I'd argue instead that the "THE CLOUD!!" is a natural and amazing evolution that everyone should embrace. I use Dropbox (primary), Evernote, OneDrive (secondary), Google Drive (secondary), etc., and have perfect redundancy across a wide range of platforms. Not only do I have all of my data stored locally, but it's also obviously sync'd to the cloud and available both from there and locally on all my other devices that happen to have some type of Internet connection (which these days is pretty much everything). There's also version/revision control and an ability to restore anything that gets accidentally deleted. It's transformed the way that I work from anywhere, at any time, from any device. If any of those services went kaput one day, big deal, I have literally half a dozen or more copies on various devices. And if one of my systems loses a drive or corrupts data, no big deal. There's really no downside there. In fact. this is especially good because most people don't have a backup plan in place. With this, it's near instantaneous backup. Since this is all automated, there's very little to think about. I personally don't have to manually back up anything because of it. This is all a far cry from using computing devices in the past, where you were one corrupted disk/cassette or drive away from losing everything (and goodness knows I've had that happen to me more than once). I love vintage computers as much as anyone, but that's one thing I'll never miss about them. ======================================================== Bill Loguidice, Managing Director; Armchair Arcade, Inc. <http://www.armchairarcade.com> ======================================================== Authored Books <http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Loguidice/e/B001U7W3YS/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_1> and Film <http://www.armchairarcade.com/film>; About me and other ways to get in touch <http://about.me/billloguidice> ======================================================== On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 7:09 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Yes. With people jumping in droves to put everything in/on "THE CLOUD!!", without a thought or a clue as to the consequences, I can't help but sit back and laugh. It's the same centralized model, except that it's, as Matt Patoray so aptly puts it, SOMEONE ELSE'S COMPUTER.
At least the company mainframe was owned by an entity whom you ostensibly had some sort of a connection to.
Oh well. People will learn when all their stuff just up and disappears. And companies will figure out what happens when they store their customer lists and other business-proprietary data on computers owned by some of the world's largest data mining companies. B-)
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Yes. With people jumping in droves to put everything in/on "THE CLOUD!!", without a thought or a clue as to the consequences, I can't
help
but sit back and laugh. It's the same centralized model, except that it's, as Matt Patoray so aptly puts it, SOMEONE ELSE'S COMPUTER.
At least the company mainframe was owned by an entity whom you ostensibly had some sort of a connection to.
Oh well. People will learn when all their stuff just up and disappears. And companies will figure out what happens when they store their customer lists and other business-proprietary data on computers owned by some of the world's largest data mining companies. B-)
-Dave
Dave - If you know what you're doing using cloud computing gives a person/company the competitive advantage vs. physical, dollar for dollar. Money is a big thing especially if you're willing to spend the same money you were before towards things like load balancing etc. For my business I have a cloud network with a robust backup and recovery process, multiple server OS's. It has proven to be faster, cheaper to support and more reliable than physical servers over time. With cloud things can go wrong, I agree. In particular if you did dumb things with physical servers and simply moved your process into the cloud. BTW I am not talking about simple drop box type storage, I am taking server/dbase/private subnet/process/object backups etc Physical has its place and there are cases where it's better than cloud, and if your networking is not set up correctly cloud is not going to fix a poor design. My underlying point - The refs throws the yellow card on any blanket statements saying CLOUD is not good just because it's someone else's computer. Bill
I have to agree with Bill. Given the proper use case, cloud (true cloud, which is not just "someone else's computer", a common misconception) can be an advantage. Moving some of our compute and storage resources to the cloud allows us more agility to react to changes and liberates our limited IT resources to engage in higher value strategic work. On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 11:49 AM william degnan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Yes. With people jumping in droves to put everything in/on "THE CLOUD!!", without a thought or a clue as to the consequences, I can't
help
but sit back and laugh. It's the same centralized model, except that it's, as Matt Patoray so aptly puts it, SOMEONE ELSE'S COMPUTER.
At least the company mainframe was owned by an entity whom you ostensibly had some sort of a connection to.
Oh well. People will learn when all their stuff just up and disappears. And companies will figure out what happens when they store their customer lists and other business-proprietary data on computers owned by some of the world's largest data mining companies. B-)
-Dave
Dave - If you know what you're doing using cloud computing gives a person/company the competitive advantage vs. physical, dollar for dollar. Money is a big thing especially if you're willing to spend the same money you were before towards things like load balancing etc. For my business I have a cloud network with a robust backup and recovery process, multiple server OS's. It has proven to be faster, cheaper to support and more reliable than physical servers over time. With cloud things can go wrong, I agree. In particular if you did dumb things with physical servers and simply moved your process into the cloud.
BTW I am not talking about simple drop box type storage, I am taking server/dbase/private subnet/process/object backups etc
Physical has its place and there are cases where it's better than cloud, and if your networking is not set up correctly cloud is not going to fix a poor design.
My underlying point - The refs throws the yellow card on any blanket statements saying CLOUD is not good just because it's someone else's computer.
Bill
On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
I have to agree with Bill. Given the proper use case, cloud (true cloud, which is not just "someone else's computer", a common misconception) can be an advantage. Moving some of our compute and storage resources to the cloud allows us more agility to react to changes and liberates our limited IT resources to engage in higher value strategic work.
I don't have a argument here, other than to say their reliability factor is a total crap When you have 1,000's of businesses that rely on commerce and this all travels thru these cloud computing providers, And the majority of commerce is done online these days Yet they are a single point of failure - when Amazon goes down because some nitwit type in the wring command line - just recently POOF went all business for every one of those companies -- in the Millions !! When I worked in engineering at Bell Labs for ATT and Lucent, You are >>>>required<<< to implement Fault tolerance mechanisms into your design down to the bare metal. This was a long die-hard tradition from the days when the majority of commerce was done over the telephone - ie.before the Internet. Availability was the competitive factor in the 5ESS and previous models, also the BWM Network Transport systems for the backbone, so it's not just a FCC requirement. Networks have no regulations for Availabilty Dan
That's why you need to be careful what cloud provider you choose, and look at their average downtime. If you're not trading stocks and a few minutes of downtime won't lose you much money, then you can go with a provider that only sees a few minutes of downtime a year. You also need to look at what your reliability is going to be by keeping your servers in house, as well as how much it will cost. It's very possible that a cloud service can provide you better reliability, redundancy, and immunity to natural disasters than you can get in house, at least without spending a good deal of money. That's when you go with the cloud. On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 12:24 PM, Dan Roganti via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
I have to agree with Bill. Given the proper use case, cloud (true cloud, which is not just "someone else's computer", a common misconception) can be an advantage. Moving some of our compute and storage resources to the cloud allows us more agility to react to changes and liberates our limited IT resources to engage in higher value strategic work.
I don't have a argument here, other than to say their reliability factor is a total crap When you have 1,000's of businesses that rely on commerce and this all travels thru these cloud computing providers, And the majority of commerce is done online these days Yet they are a single point of failure - when Amazon goes down because some nitwit type in the wring command line - just recently POOF went all business for every one of those companies -- in the Millions !! When I worked in engineering at Bell Labs for ATT and Lucent, You are >>>>required<<< to implement Fault tolerance mechanisms into your design down to the bare metal. This was a long die-hard tradition from the days when the majority of commerce was done over the telephone - ie.before the Internet. Availability was the competitive factor in the 5ESS and previous models, also the BWM Network Transport systems for the backbone, so it's not just a FCC requirement. Networks have no regulations for Availabilty Dan
Most companies lost money in the face of downtime. The specifics vary from company to company, and analyzing/weighing the risks is a part of the process. This is what Bill Degnan and I just exchanged email about..."people who know what they're doing." Sadly a lot of these cloud migrations are happening without the benefit of people who know what they're doing. And another problem is that those downtime averages aren't etched in stone, they vary over time. Then you're faced with weighing the expense and risk of a different provider, in addition to the expense and risk of the actual move to that new provider. The company my main contract is with has been in the process of moving their services from Rackspace to AWS for about three months now. It has been more expensive than anyone ever thought it would be. I'm glad I don't work on that side of the company! But as Bill said, and you have supported, it's all about knowing what you're doing and figuring out what's the best approach for your company. If YOU (or Bill Degnan) as a technical professional with subject matter expertise decide that it's the best path, go for it. But most of these companies just jump blindly, issue a directive to "MOVE TO THE CLOUD" and turn a blind eye to the risks because they see dollar signs. -Dave On 04/19/2017 01:09 PM, Drew Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
That's why you need to be careful what cloud provider you choose, and look at their average downtime. If you're not trading stocks and a few minutes of downtime won't lose you much money, then you can go with a provider that only sees a few minutes of downtime a year. You also need to look at what your reliability is going to be by keeping your servers in house, as well as how much it will cost. It's very possible that a cloud service can provide you better reliability, redundancy, and immunity to natural disasters than you can get in house, at least without spending a good deal of money. That's when you go with the cloud.
On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 12:24 PM, Dan Roganti via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
I have to agree with Bill. Given the proper use case, cloud (true cloud, which is not just "someone else's computer", a common misconception) can be an advantage. Moving some of our compute and storage resources to the cloud allows us more agility to react to changes and liberates our limited IT resources to engage in higher value strategic work.
I don't have a argument here, other than to say their reliability factor is a total crap When you have 1,000's of businesses that rely on commerce and this all travels thru these cloud computing providers, And the majority of commerce is done online these days Yet they are a single point of failure - when Amazon goes down because some nitwit type in the wring command line - just recently POOF went all business for every one of those companies -- in the Millions !! When I worked in engineering at Bell Labs for ATT and Lucent, You are >>>>required<<< to implement Fault tolerance mechanisms into your design down to the bare metal. This was a long die-hard tradition from the days when the majority of commerce was done over the telephone - ie.before the Internet. Availability was the competitive factor in the 5ESS and previous models, also the BWM Network Transport systems for the backbone, so it's not just a FCC requirement. Networks have no regulations for Availabilty Dan
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
I agree with that, too. Internally, our average uptime is much better than most cloud providers standard offerings. Cloud provider diversity should beer a critical part of any cloud system architecture. On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 12:24 PM Dan Roganti <ragooman@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
I have to agree with Bill. Given the proper use case, cloud (true cloud, which is not just "someone else's computer", a common misconception) can be an advantage. Moving some of our compute and storage resources to the cloud allows us more agility to react to changes and liberates our limited IT resources to engage in higher value strategic work.
I don't have a argument here, other than to say their reliability factor is a total crap When you have 1,000's of businesses that rely on commerce and this all travels thru these cloud computing providers, And the majority of commerce is done online these days Yet they are a single point of failure - when Amazon goes down because some nitwit type in the wring command line - just recently POOF went all business for every one of those companies -- in the Millions !! When I worked in engineering at Bell Labs for ATT and Lucent, You are >>>>required<<< to implement Fault tolerance mechanisms into your design down to the bare metal. This was a long die-hard tradition from the days when the majority of commerce was done over the telephone - ie.before the Internet. Availability was the competitive factor in the 5ESS and previous models, also the BWM Network Transport systems for the backbone, so it's not just a FCC requirement. Networks have no regulations for Availabilty Dan
On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 1:11 PM, Dean Notarnicola <dnotarnicola@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree with that, too. Internally, our average uptime is much better than most cloud providers standard offerings. Cloud provider diversity should beer a critical part of any cloud system architecture.
uptime has become such an abused term there's "uptime" and then there's ~uptime~ If you never suffered a failure, yea of course, your uptime is good a true measure is if you can >>recover<< from a failure to *retain* your uptime and not in hours or days as these cloud providers suffer, but in minutes I even noticed that wireless providers are becoming prone to this. But yes, trust is also a significant factor, at work they moved our email and wiki to the cloud, thankfully not our design and production servers
On 04/19/2017 11:58 AM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I have to agree with Bill. Given the proper use case, cloud (true cloud, which is not just "someone else's computer", a common misconception) can be an advantage. Moving some of our compute and storage resources to the cloud allows us more agility to react to changes and liberates our limited IT resources to engage in higher value strategic work.
It is in fact "someone else's computer". Dean, please don't make the mistake of assuming that, because I don't use "cloud" services, that I don't know what they are or how they work. I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I was directly involved in some of the earliest such efforts in the 1990s, and I'm not exactly out of touch today. So, in your definition of "true cloud", who exactly owns the computers? If your answer isn't "me" or "our company", then my assertion stands. Based on my (admittedly somewhat combative) reply to Bill, I'd say the problem your company has addressed by using cloud services wasn't a lack of agility or lack of services, but lack of sufficient IT staff. I wish you the best of luck with those services, but I think we both know what'll happen when one of them goes tits-up without warning. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Dave, My argument with "It's just someone else's computer" isn't with that it's someone else's computer; of course it is. I know you know this, but the misconception is that cloud is no better than a simple co-lo or hosted service (until recently, many offerings were no better than that.) There needs to be elastic, redundant, geographically diverse resources that are tied together to provide fast, transparent access to services. And as I previously mentioned, any good strategy goes beyond using a single provider, because shit happens. This goes beyond simple money saving excercies (most good cloud deployments DO NOT save money) or resource constraints, it's about being able to procure a class of service that would normally be beyond the reach of typical internal IT department. Dean On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 12:59 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On 04/19/2017 11:58 AM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I have to agree with Bill. Given the proper use case, cloud (true cloud, which is not just "someone else's computer", a common misconception) can be an advantage. Moving some of our compute and storage resources to the cloud allows us more agility to react to changes and liberates our limited IT resources to engage in higher value strategic work.
It is in fact "someone else's computer".
Dean, please don't make the mistake of assuming that, because I don't use "cloud" services, that I don't know what they are or how they work. I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I was directly involved in some of the earliest such efforts in the 1990s, and I'm not exactly out of touch today.
So, in your definition of "true cloud", who exactly owns the computers? If your answer isn't "me" or "our company", then my assertion stands.
Based on my (admittedly somewhat combative) reply to Bill, I'd say the problem your company has addressed by using cloud services wasn't a lack of agility or lack of services, but lack of sufficient IT staff.
I wish you the best of luck with those services, but I think we both know what'll happen when one of them goes tits-up without warning.
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Agreed 100%. In network administration, having mostly gotten my start in a gov't agency, where loss of control of data directly and literally impacts national security, I operate from a slightly different philosophy. I am very distrustful of external entities, and a bit of a control freak as a result. Whether that philosophy or a different one is right for your organization is something only you can decide. If the typical internal IT department can't provide great services, then they are understaffed, inappropriately staffed, or underfunded. Yes, that's an idealistic view in this world of "every dime must go toward executive compensation". But I don't lose data. ;) -Dave On 04/19/2017 01:19 PM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Dave, My argument with "It's just someone else's computer" isn't with that it's someone else's computer; of course it is. I know you know this, but the misconception is that cloud is no better than a simple co-lo or hosted service (until recently, many offerings were no better than that.) There needs to be elastic, redundant, geographically diverse resources that are tied together to provide fast, transparent access to services. And as I previously mentioned, any good strategy goes beyond using a single provider, because shit happens. This goes beyond simple money saving excercies (most good cloud deployments DO NOT save money) or resource constraints, it's about being able to procure a class of service that would normally be beyond the reach of typical internal IT department.
Dean
On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 12:59 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On 04/19/2017 11:58 AM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I have to agree with Bill. Given the proper use case, cloud (true cloud, which is not just "someone else's computer", a common misconception) can be an advantage. Moving some of our compute and storage resources to the cloud allows us more agility to react to changes and liberates our limited IT resources to engage in higher value strategic work.
It is in fact "someone else's computer".
Dean, please don't make the mistake of assuming that, because I don't use "cloud" services, that I don't know what they are or how they work. I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I was directly involved in some of the earliest such efforts in the 1990s, and I'm not exactly out of touch today.
So, in your definition of "true cloud", who exactly owns the computers? If your answer isn't "me" or "our company", then my assertion stands.
Based on my (admittedly somewhat combative) reply to Bill, I'd say the problem your company has addressed by using cloud services wasn't a lack of agility or lack of services, but lack of sufficient IT staff.
I wish you the best of luck with those services, but I think we both know what'll happen when one of them goes tits-up without warning.
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
We live in New Jersey. If there's a natural disaster that affects your servers, your IT department can't necessarily do anything about that. If you have servers in Arizona instead, you don't have to worry. On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 1:31 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Agreed 100%.
In network administration, having mostly gotten my start in a gov't agency, where loss of control of data directly and literally impacts national security, I operate from a slightly different philosophy. I am very distrustful of external entities, and a bit of a control freak as a result. Whether that philosophy or a different one is right for your organization is something only you can decide.
If the typical internal IT department can't provide great services, then they are understaffed, inappropriately staffed, or underfunded. Yes, that's an idealistic view in this world of "every dime must go toward executive compensation". But I don't lose data. ;)
-Dave
On 04/19/2017 01:19 PM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Dave, My argument with "It's just someone else's computer" isn't with that it's someone else's computer; of course it is. I know you know this, but the misconception is that cloud is no better than a simple co-lo or hosted service (until recently, many offerings were no better than that.) There needs to be elastic, redundant, geographically diverse resources that are tied together to provide fast, transparent access to services. And as I previously mentioned, any good strategy goes beyond using a single provider, because shit happens. This goes beyond simple money saving excercies (most good cloud deployments DO NOT save money) or resource constraints, it's about being able to procure a class of service that would normally be beyond the reach of typical internal IT department.
Dean
On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 12:59 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On 04/19/2017 11:58 AM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I have to agree with Bill. Given the proper use case, cloud (true cloud,
which is not just "someone else's computer", a common misconception) can be an advantage. Moving some of our compute and storage resources to the cloud allows us more agility to react to changes and liberates our limited IT resources to engage in higher value strategic work.
It is in fact "someone else's computer".
Dean, please don't make the mistake of assuming that, because I don't use "cloud" services, that I don't know what they are or how they work. I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I was directly involved in some of the earliest such efforts in the 1990s, and I'm not exactly out of touch today.
So, in your definition of "true cloud", who exactly owns the computers? If your answer isn't "me" or "our company", then my assertion stands.
Based on my (admittedly somewhat combative) reply to Bill, I'd say the problem your company has addressed by using cloud services wasn't a lack of agility or lack of services, but lack of sufficient IT staff.
I wish you the best of luck with those services, but I think we both know what'll happen when one of them goes tits-up without warning.
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
*"**But I don't lose data. ;)" * You're damn right on that one. I'm in pharma, so we are heavily regulated and must adhere to GxP and other regulatory practices. This included not losing control of our data. It means we tippy-toe into the cloudscape, but the offering are starting to improve. Dean On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 1:31 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Agreed 100%.
In network administration, having mostly gotten my start in a gov't agency, where loss of control of data directly and literally impacts national security, I operate from a slightly different philosophy. I am very distrustful of external entities, and a bit of a control freak as a result. Whether that philosophy or a different one is right for your organization is something only you can decide.
If the typical internal IT department can't provide great services, then they are understaffed, inappropriately staffed, or underfunded. Yes, that's an idealistic view in this world of "every dime must go toward executive compensation". But I don't lose data. ;)
-Dave
On 04/19/2017 01:19 PM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Dave, My argument with "It's just someone else's computer" isn't with that it's someone else's computer; of course it is. I know you know this, but the misconception is that cloud is no better than a simple co-lo or hosted service (until recently, many offerings were no better than that.) There needs to be elastic, redundant, geographically diverse resources that are tied together to provide fast, transparent access to services. And as I previously mentioned, any good strategy goes beyond using a single provider, because shit happens. This goes beyond simple money saving excercies (most good cloud deployments DO NOT save money) or resource constraints, it's about being able to procure a class of service that would normally be beyond the reach of typical internal IT department.
Dean
On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 12:59 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On 04/19/2017 11:58 AM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I have to agree with Bill. Given the proper use case, cloud (true cloud,
which is not just "someone else's computer", a common misconception) can be an advantage. Moving some of our compute and storage resources to the cloud allows us more agility to react to changes and liberates our limited IT resources to engage in higher value strategic work.
It is in fact "someone else's computer".
Dean, please don't make the mistake of assuming that, because I don't use "cloud" services, that I don't know what they are or how they work. I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I was directly involved in some of the earliest such efforts in the 1990s, and I'm not exactly out of touch today.
So, in your definition of "true cloud", who exactly owns the computers? If your answer isn't "me" or "our company", then my assertion stands.
Based on my (admittedly somewhat combative) reply to Bill, I'd say the problem your company has addressed by using cloud services wasn't a lack of agility or lack of services, but lack of sufficient IT staff.
I wish you the best of luck with those services, but I think we both know what'll happen when one of them goes tits-up without warning.
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
If the typical internal IT department can't provide great services, then they are understaffed, inappropriately staffed, or underfunded. Yes, that's an idealistic view in this world of "every dime must go toward executive compensation". But I don't lose data. ;) -Dave
As much as I dislike AWS, they have many redundant paths and when you store data on their storage it's replicated in multiple places. Their game is tight. Granted, my $100/mo colo seems to be worth $440 in AWS server costs a month, but to be honest my host doesn't get used that full tilt. Then a few months ago when I was in Utila the disk array / Linux kernel barfed and the host went down. Had it been engineered around AWS it wouldn't have been such an issue. The issue seems to recur, and it seems to be a kernel bug of some sort. KVM / SmartArray / Linux / etc. Also, AWS has 32+ datacenters here in Northern VA. The data centers are nuts. This area is now #1 in USA, beating all. There are 5 more buildings or so under construction around the corner (I work out of a datacenter for a streaming music company, and no we don't use AWS we run our own stuff.) - Ethan
On 04/19/2017 11:49 AM, william degnan via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Dave - If you know what you're doing using cloud computing gives a person/company the competitive advantage vs. physical, dollar for dollar. Money is a big thing especially if you're willing to spend the same money you were before towards things like load balancing etc. For my business I have a cloud network with a robust backup and recovery process, multiple server OS's. It has proven to be faster, cheaper to support and more reliable than physical servers over time. With cloud things can go wrong, I agree. In particular if you did dumb things with physical servers and simply moved your process into the cloud.
BTW I am not talking about simple drop box type storage, I am taking server/dbase/private subnet/process/object backups etc
Physical has its place and there are cases where it's better than cloud, and if your networking is not set up correctly cloud is not going to fix a poor design.
My underlying point - The refs throws the yellow card on any blanket statements saying CLOUD is not good just because it's someone else's computer.
(I don't know what that means, but I can infer; I think it's a sports reference.) But yes Bill I see and agree with your point...people who know what they're doing can understand the risks, and hopefully find ways to mitigate them or at least minimize the exposure. I'm all for that. This, however, seems to be the exception rather than the rule. The problems come for people who don't know what they're doing. They, usually management, just look at these services and see an opportunity to get rid of all those expensive employees who (gasp!) don't wear ties to work. This, as I'm sure you'll agree, is a recipe for disaster. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 04/19/2017 11:49 AM, william degnan via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
For my business I have a cloud network with a robust backup and recovery process, multiple server OS's. It has proven to be faster, cheaper to support and more reliable than physical servers over time.
I forgot to address this part. They are still "physical servers"...just SOMEONE ELSE'S. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 04/19/2017 01:10 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 04/19/2017 11:49 AM, william degnan via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
For my business I have a cloud network with a robust backup and recovery process, multiple server OS's. It has proven to be faster, cheaper to support and more reliable than physical servers over time.
I forgot to address this part. They are still "physical servers"...just SOMEONE ELSE'S.
Technically they're virtual (on physical that can be swapped dynamically). That can present some interesting challenges unto itself. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
On 04/19/2017 02:47 PM, Neil Cherry wrote:
For my business I have a cloud network with a robust backup and recovery process, multiple server OS's. It has proven to be faster, cheaper to support and more reliable than physical servers over time.
I forgot to address this part. They are still "physical servers"...just SOMEONE ELSE'S.
Technically they're virtual (on physical that can be swapped dynamically). That can present some interesting challenges unto itself.
...and technically they're physical servers underneath. (I don't run much of anything on bare metal either, other than hypervisors!) -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 04/19/2017 02:50 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 04/19/2017 02:47 PM, Neil Cherry wrote:
For my business I have a cloud network with a robust backup and recovery process, multiple server OS's. It has proven to be faster, cheaper to support and more reliable than physical servers over time.
I forgot to address this part. They are still "physical servers"...just SOMEONE ELSE'S.
Technically they're virtual (on physical that can be swapped dynamically). That can present some interesting challenges unto itself.
...and technically they're physical servers underneath. (I don't run much of anything on bare metal either, other than hypervisors!)
Very much so, there is no virtual without the physical but many of the customers now purchase the virtual and it doesn't live where they think it lives. Which is now basically any data center in the world. BTW, much of the LTE network is now virtual (functionality has shifted out of having specific device, when general will do). Still not possible to make antenna or transport vitual (though you can make the upper layers virtual). Overall I like the idea of virtual, but I bet the regulatory side is a nightmare. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
On 04/19/2017 03:03 PM, Neil Cherry wrote:
I forgot to address this part. They are still "physical servers"...just SOMEONE ELSE'S.
Technically they're virtual (on physical that can be swapped dynamically). That can present some interesting challenges unto itself.
...and technically they're physical servers underneath. (I don't run much of anything on bare metal either, other than hypervisors!)
Very much so, there is no virtual without the physical but many of the customers now purchase the virtual and it doesn't live where they think it lives. Which is now basically any data center in the world.
BTW, much of the LTE network is now virtual (functionality has shifted out of having specific device, when general will do). Still not possible to make antenna or transport vitual (though you can make the upper layers virtual).
Overall I like the idea of virtual, but I bet the regulatory side is a nightmare.
Yes it is. I design stuff in the cellular data space. It's awful. LTE was very much a "protocol designed by committee"...it works pretty well, mostly, but that's a miracle. Fully 2/3 of the protocol deals with regulatory requirements and billing! -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
An unsurprising response. I'm not talking about having redundancy vs. not having redundancy. I'm talking about trust. Do you trust those companies? If so, why? Many situations have arisen over the years when services, especially free ones, get canceled on board members' whims. What usually happens is the data goes away without warning. If you had a copy of it, great, but most people don't. But it doesn't stop there. Those servers get rolled out of the datacenter and into a closet somewhere, and then they show up on eBay, GovDeals, or the scrapper on the other side of town who has discovered that most of this hardware is still worth money. THEN who has your data? I've gotten insurance records and payroll data that way. Maybe even yours...but you'd never know it. (For the record: I immediately delete such data using DoD secure deletion guidelines.) So, while the services are still available...do you trust these companies not to do anything untoward with your data? Does that trust extend to every single employee of that organization who has access to the servers? If you're talking about pictures of last weekend's BBQ, that may not be an issue. But what if it's your tax records, or the source code for that software you just got hired to write? Is that trust still rock-solid? If so, why? Some have paid services with contracts that they say protect them from these sorts of things happening. But such contracts don't keep them from happening; they simply provide recourse, usually monetary, and only then if you think you can win in court against an army of corporate attorneys. Either way, the damage is still done. So why do people flock to "the cloud" like moths to a flame? Many people jump on it because they've been told it's "the next great new thing", while in fact pretty much all of it is technology that we've had for 25 years or more. For example...WAN-based file-sharing as some sort of a new thing? Please. One could mount the archives of SunSITE, for example, via NFS over a WAN link in 1993. Sure, we sometimes format the bits differently now, but the premise is nothing new. Other people jump on it because they feel it gives them some advantage. Yours seems to be off-site backups and WAN availability. Great functionality and value. I have those too...on servers that I own and control. Yes, it took some extra work. But I don't store BBQ pictures there, I store material that I generate (which, as such, can't just be "downloaded again" if it disappears) which constitutes my livelihood. I don't trust that to anyone, much less a greedy American corporation. Much of my visceral reaction on this subject is due to the fact that I find both laziness and greed deeply offensive. Most people who use the cloud do so because they're personally lazy; they don't want to set something up or learn how to do it. Most corporations do it because they're greedy; they don't want to shell out money for a proper staff to manage the infrastructure that they need to conduct business. Corporations even get a double greed benefit because employees are very expensive (much more than just their salaries) and they can usually write off the cost of paid cloud services as an operating expense. That's great "look at how much money I saved the company!" fodder for when bonus time comes around, but there are more honorable ways to make money than exposing one's company infrastructure to vulnerability by selling out the control of it. Part of what has made the Internet work since day one is decentralization. Yes, it's harder, but it just plain works better. If those services work for you, more power to you, and good luck. I've been there and done that, and I won't touch them with a ten-foot Cat6 cable. -Dave On 04/19/2017 11:31 AM, Bill Loguidice via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I'd argue instead that the "THE CLOUD!!" is a natural and amazing evolution that everyone should embrace. I use Dropbox (primary), Evernote, OneDrive (secondary), Google Drive (secondary), etc., and have perfect redundancy across a wide range of platforms. Not only do I have all of my data stored locally, but it's also obviously sync'd to the cloud and available both from there and locally on all my other devices that happen to have some type of Internet connection (which these days is pretty much everything). There's also version/revision control and an ability to restore anything that gets accidentally deleted. It's transformed the way that I work from anywhere, at any time, from any device. If any of those services went kaput one day, big deal, I have literally half a dozen or more copies on various devices. And if one of my systems loses a drive or corrupts data, no big deal. There's really no downside there. In fact. this is especially good because most people don't have a backup plan in place. With this, it's near instantaneous backup.
Since this is all automated, there's very little to think about. I personally don't have to manually back up anything because of it. This is all a far cry from using computing devices in the past, where you were one corrupted disk/cassette or drive away from losing everything (and goodness knows I've had that happen to me more than once). I love vintage computers as much as anyone, but that's one thing I'll never miss about them.
======================================================== Bill Loguidice, Managing Director; Armchair Arcade, Inc. <http://www.armchairarcade.com> ======================================================== Authored Books <http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Loguidice/e/B001U7W3YS/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_1> and Film <http://www.armchairarcade.com/film>; About me and other ways to get in touch <http://about.me/billloguidice> ========================================================
On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 7:09 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Yes. With people jumping in droves to put everything in/on "THE CLOUD!!", without a thought or a clue as to the consequences, I can't help but sit back and laugh. It's the same centralized model, except that it's, as Matt Patoray so aptly puts it, SOMEONE ELSE'S COMPUTER.
At least the company mainframe was owned by an entity whom you ostensibly had some sort of a connection to.
Oh well. People will learn when all their stuff just up and disappears. And companies will figure out what happens when they store their customer lists and other business-proprietary data on computers owned by some of the world's largest data mining companies. B-)
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 04/14/2017 11:45 AM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I refuse to be drawn into the argument that "gaming drove computing". It's one of a number of causal agents. I don't care today, to rank those agents, or to arbitrate their merits. Reasons not to, will become apparent in a moment.
But what about neglecting pre-1980 or pre-"gaming" vintage computing? Simply put: the author very likely entered personal computing at that point in time with that class of hardware and software. He/she didn't know what happened before that.
It's really that simple. We remember fondly our early days of discovery; we each start at some point in time. The article is a personal recollection of a time and place in personal computing. Many others share that set of experiences. The brands of software and hardware establish the bounds of that set.
Most with interests in vintage computing, represent their own experiences, of their own era.
An additional consideration. Many tens of millions played 1980's video gaming computing, because there were that many systems. The audience for 1970's computing was on the order of a few million; many from business, academic, industrial activity. And of course, some of us aren't around to report about it. Circumstances account for the differences between the decades.
And so, any "vote" for "what drove computing" will skew accordingly, by count and by circumstances. I didn't take a vote, for my interests. Another reason I work at preserving MY computing era, is that before long there will be one less vote for it. I'm busy enough with that, not to argue the merits with others.
This is a very good point. One reason that I end up personally at odds with assertions (and obsessions) about playing games, and the importance of games to the earlier years of computing, is that I've pretty much never done it myself. Yes, I had an Atari 800 back in the day, and while I used the machine constantly, I had precisely ONE game for it (Asteroids) which I almost never played. I also had an Assembler/Editor cartridge, which was in the machine much of the time. I didn't have any games for the PDP-11 either. Games just weren't a part of my formative years, or my first experiences with computing. As a kid, I was working toward building a career in computing, and I knew it. My parents (actually mother and grandmother) taught me early on about the value of being self-sufficient and being a productive human being. Playing games just doesn't really fold into that. (Yes, before someone waxes pedantic on this, I am well aware that people get paid for playing games these days, but the reality is that, while they do exist, there are very, very few of them.) So my early years were spent learning programming languages, tools, and techniques, knowledge gained in my early teen years that still feeds me all too well at the ever-ripening age of 48. So yes, I must agree strongly with Herb, perspective counts. All of my other childhood friends who were into computers played games on them, all day every day. So that's what they remember, and that's what they'd say drove the technology. Because it did...for them. Well put, Herb. I'll spare you the usual barb about most of those guy still living with their parents. ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
participants (10)
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Bill Loguidice -
Dan Roganti -
Dave McGuire -
Dean Notarnicola -
Drew Notarnicola -
Ethan -
Herb Johnson -
madodel -
Neil Cherry -
william degnan