The Internet is NOT your next Hard Drive
Bullshit is what came out today when Web 2.0 service advocates claim that in the name of synchronicity, your next hard drive will be online. Web 2.0 (another name for “shit we can continually charge you for online rather than sell you once for you PC”). But there are several limitations never mentioned.
First, this is for the business crowd who house large data on their own servers back at the BAC — big-assed corporation. An online HD would not really be an online HD; e.g., it won’t include an OS (yet) that will boot your computer. Second, an online HD would not be feasible for large amounts of data. I collect lots of porn and photos. No online HD is going to store my terabyte-sized porn collection and no broadband is wide enough to transfer it. (My ISP only allows me a piddling 128k upload speed, like most other stingy ISPs.). You may collect music or movies, both of which quickly eat up disk space. Finally, I will never ever trust another company, entity, or person with my data. I have documents and data that date back more than 20 years now. And these jackasses want me to transmit that to their servers and feel safe in that? Anyone paying attention to the nutcase conservatives in the US know that they are obsessed with spying on people — in their homes, businesses, their medical records, their financial records, on the phone, and especially on the computer. So the issue of personal security will never allow this to go far, or as far as online HD advocates want it to.
In the end, money once again explains this story. Right now, 95% of Web 2.0 ideas are about extracting money from your pocket on a monthly basis for things that are free now if you do them yourself, such as backup and synchronize your own data. The fat fuckers on Wall Street are salivating at the bullshit being sold to them as Web 2.0. Sure some services — even backup solutions — are sensible options. But they want to create entire companies that will be mini-googles. Ain’t gonna happen.
Synchronizing RSS feeds and email is quite different than online storage. The next billionaire will be the coder who creates a simple synchronization tool anyone can use through their own domain. Note the word simple. Still, HDs are becoming smaller, cheaper, faster, and provide far more capacity than ever, with terabyte drives coming as soon as 2007. Hard drive portability, modularity, and mobility are easier than spending three weeks uploading data, and it solves the problem of privacy. You don’t want to see my porn, and I don’t want you (or some government agency) to see it. And for that matter, I don’t want you to see the letter I wrote to Grandma last week either.