The future of computer technology

[C0RR0SIVE]

What you seem to be forgetting though, is, with MS and Apple seeming to push more and more to the "cloud" that these caps will kill people. Yes, it is expensive, and yes, they are companies in it for money, but, when a company refuses to run a line for an entire road, that's just being lazy.

 

[Peter.Cort]

think about the average end-user who would take advantage of cloud computing. Do you think they're going to use close to 5gb of bandwidth a month? Probably not. Same can be said about big corporations who have the money and bargaining ability to sit down with the big ISP's and cut a deal and offload all their data related stuff to the cloud because having it all in house becomes more expensive than to have someone else manage it. For users like us who are stuck in the middle then no it doesn't make sense, but for a majority of paying users the cloud is of great use.

and I'm sure there's a reason that the company hasn't run a line down your street, I doubt laziness has anything to do with it.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

No, it's down my street, they actually expanded the line, after I have begged and made offers to pay to get it brought down to my home, but, they stopped about two houses down, from me.

But one thing must happen sooner or later, better high speed penetration with half decent caps, satelite is not a solution due to how heavily congested it gets, it's honestly worse than cell phone networks, and the latency does not help. And an average user can use 5gb a month, as the average users love youtube, and social media. My sister is an "average" user she eats through well over 4/5ths of our allowed download allowance. I can see caps on some things such as a satelite based ISP being good, but, when you advertise a speed, you should have to be able to sustain that speed for the customer the entire time of a billing cycle, cap or no cap.

You also, can not forget the amount of families that have children that love that DLC, and games for a console, instead of thinking of the average 50 year old person that does nothing, people should consider families with parents in the 30's and 40's with children that are teens.

 

[PP Mguire]

think about the average end-user who would take advantage of cloud computing. Do you think they're going to use close to 5gb of bandwidth a month? Probably not. Same can be said about big corporations who have the money and bargaining ability to sit down with the big ISP's and cut a deal and offload all their data related stuff to the cloud because having it all in house becomes more expensive than to have someone else manage it. For users like us who are stuck in the middle then no it doesn't make sense, but for a majority of paying users the cloud is of great use.

and I'm sure there's a reason that the company hasn't run a line down your street, I doubt laziness has anything to do with it.

The average user uses alot more than you think or else these caps wouldn't have come into place to begin with.

I won't even touch the GPU subject because alot more can be done with it and I don't have the time to sit down and prove my point.

 

[Peter.Cort]

My statement that the cloud computing user wouldn't use 5gb a month , is 5gb of data transfer too and from cloud storage (I didn't word that clearly, apologies), not like tweets, youtube videos, facebook, forums etc. I've used up close to 400mb in/out in 10 1/2 hours from twitter, forums, other web stuff and working on my own site, with some downloads thrown in there, so over the course of a month yeah I can forsee myself using a lot more than 5gb total, but in terms of the amount of data you would need for just cloud data/file transfer most people wouldn't really use over 5gb. And if 5gb isn't enough for you without going over then bump up to the next plan.

the reason that caps are in place is because people use exorbitant amounts of data, plus the added costs of maintaining infrastructure. Think of the cost required to maintain a Coax or Copper based network as opposed to a fiber network. people demanded faster speeds and took advantage of the increase in overall bandwidth available to them, it's unfair to expect that rates should remain relatively the same, while the speed increases exponentially.

And also in the past the internet was done in conjunction with the telecom backbone that had been set up years ago, and with the proliferation of the internet, dedicated backbones separately of the telecom backbones are being setup, which requires increased costs.

 

[PP Mguire]

Well I know most of the "average" users that are my friends require a hefty music selection which would be in the cloud. Streaming their own stored music constantly would easily go over that limit. That right there doesn't include Facebook, Youtube, and the such. That is with MP3's as well. Alot of my friends that come over here on a regular basis know what FLAC is and have started converting their collection. One album can easily be over 400MB which would add up as you listen by the day. These are the same kinda people that require a ridiculous MP3 player on the go and listen to that music while at home from a computer or Xbox. Course the typical average user doesn't require FLAC but do have a rather large MP3 collection on their computer if they are into listening to alot of music. I'm sure you catch my drift by now. That is just one example where cloud and limits do not mix and there are many more where that comes from.

 

[Peter.Cort]

mm that's very true. I didn't really think about music collections, especially in FLAC format. Even so once data rates are established across the board (as in all providers have them) there will be brackets for everybody to fall under, and not everyone is going to have their 200gb FLAC music collection on the cloud. The people that will pay for the higher data plan will, those who don't will keep around an old PC and use that.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

The thing is, once most things are in the cloud, everything will be pushed into it, and we could possibly say bye bye to local mass storage.

The cloud will probably be short lived, or will never become mainstream for anything except for small devices. If the cloud made it big, computers would still be here, probably not be meant for gaming any longer, thanks to the way the console market is taking up all the games. But computers will only connect to the cloud, download data as needed, and display the data to you, though, by the time the cloud reachs that point, it is possible we will reach several hundred GB worth in RAM, or some form of temporary high speed storage.

I think, in the end, we can't predict technology, we can only see what is here now, technology is only progressing due to the desire for more speed and power, sure, we will see some newer tech once in awhile, such as the change from floppys to cd drives to flash based media, or from the good ol' platter hard drives to solid state drives. But that is being done in an effort for more speed, storage, and to make it somewhat simpler to manufacture a device. Eventually, technology will have to change as a whole, or it will sit, you can no keep going forward improving on the same design, as that design, eventually, no longer will work.

A GPU has more processing power than a CPU, but, I don't think we will see applications taking advantage of a GPU properly for a long time, even software that uses CUDA has some rather nasty bugs... (I can't re-encode movies for a long period of time due to some unknown error)


EDIT: I love my never ending sentences it seems like,

 

[Oreo]

Bandwidth caps will not last long. As soon as having broadband access becomes a necessity you will see the caps dissapear. Just like we all expect electricity, gas, water and a phone line (though not so much now with mobiles), we will with an internet connection. Well people like us probably already do, just waiting for our governments to catch up with us.

We only have bandwidth caps because in many countries the infrastructure was not designed to carry data on the level it does today, so it is expensive to keep it going and repair and replace things to keep it running smoothly. But this won't last long, at some point along the line the basic network infrastructures will be ripped up and replaced with a much more modern capable system. Also telecoms are just trying to make money by charging for higher bandwidth limits, but when having internet access is seen as more of a right than a privaledge they will become much more regulated and you will see less limits.

The world is moving on line, they can't really cap it for much longer. When they stop selling films, music, games in retail stores and everything goes online, how are you supposed to tell someone you are only allowed to download so much a month. Can you imagine being told you were only allowed to buy 1 film a month from a store ? it's an absurd idea. I think in 30, 40 or 50 years we will look back and think the same, that it was ridiculous how we were limited in our online use.

Whilst i don't like the idea of the cloud i don't find the privacy part a problem. If someone wants to find information about you they will, and they will do it easily. I am sure our governments know more about us than we think they do. They already know all our names, all our incomes, our partners, religeons and beleifs. There isn't a lot more for them to know. Also, the banks know every single cent you spend, and what you are likely to spend, and Google will happily only show ads that they know you will be interested in. Facebook is the same way. Everything there is to know about someone is already out there, the only difference between that and 'the cloud' is that you didn't choose for it to be there.

 

[yzmxer608]

I've used up close to 400mb in/out in 10 1/2 hours from twitter, forums, other web stuff and working on my own site, with some downloads thrown in there,

OT, how do you track how much you've used?