Greetings, I recently read an article about the future of computing. Apparently one of the possibilities of computing in a near future is "Cloud Computing", this theory states that personal computers will lose all of their computing power, becoming mere terminals, all of their actions will be executed by supercomputers (which the PC's are connected to). Apparently there is already an "arrangement" between IBM and Google for this to happen, IBM supplies the supercomputers and Google the easy-to-use, user-friendly tools. I was quite shocked when I read this, this will make all of us (computer users) entirely dependent to other computers and I assume the access to these servers isn't free. Suppose there is a server problem, all of our working data could be lost. Besides, some time ago I read that some scientific investigation facility had placed on their site a program that when executed "loans" some of the computer's "power" for that facility's data processing. It's a nice "divide and conquer" method, instead of having their own supercomputer spending resources (using up electricity, maybe even requiring water cooling) they use a little bit of everyone's computer power and achieve the same result without more resource consumption. This should be the future! Cooperation of ALL computers, not concentration of ALL computers in a bunch of supercomputers! I think this cloud computing thing is for making the people on top richer and us, at the bottom of the computer food chain, poorer! This is my opinion but what do you think? Best Regards Deimos AMD ATHLON X2 5200+ 2.6GHz ASUS GeForce 8600GTS ASUS M2N-E SLI MB 2xKingston 1GB DDR2 800

I guess it might be ok for some laptop/notebook users. I don't see many home users with desktops going for it.

This is here and now and goes some way to what I expect the future to be: http://franticindustries.com/2006/1... I have launched several from a Linux Boot CD on a PC with no hard drive

It is here already. See GEOS OS. A live cd, set up to boot and run google apps. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10

New name, old concept. People are not very willing to give up control over their own data. That's why I've never understood web apps. Who would want to give up control over their information to an unknown entity? Do people really think that someone they have never met can be trusted with their vital info? Are we to believe that these companies that host web apps are the purest of hearts and would never do anything that would damage us in any way? People with that kind of blind faith probably never heard of Enron and other such entities. Merrill-Lynch, CitiBank, FEMA,HUD,Tyco and so many others etc. No thanks. I'll take care of my own stuff. If something goes wrong, at least I'll know who to blame. Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen. -

Distributed Computing already exists and has been around for at least five years that I know of. The idea is that you download a program that takes normally unused CPU cycles and does some work with them. Protein folding is one I am familiar with. Below is a link showing the various projects currently under way or completed. In addition Peer to Peer is used to distribute large files to many users very effiecently. Things like game patches are one such use. The idea is that if you download the patch you also act as a host for others to download that same patch from you. While this isn’t quite what you referred to, it is similar, and from the sound of your post I didn’t think you were aware of these things. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...

i think the technology might be in the future because it might make sense for certain environments, but i sincerely doubt it will "take over." One reason is that the "dumb terminal / mainframe" model isn't the future, it's the PAST: Many older computer setups used remote terminals for input/output, but most of the number crunching and storage happened on a central "mainframe" (a legacy term that many people still use...incorrectly...to refer to "servers"). The other reason i doubt this ever taking over is the discrepancies in hardware support: for example, processing power has exploded in the last few decades, but we still have copper lines running under all of the streets to connect people's PCs together. There's no way we (society) will ever design and maintain an infrastructure that could support everyone's "terminal," without becoming the bottleneck. In the end, most things act as a pendulum (or a sine wave, if you prefer). We moved away from the mainframe/terminal model, so I wouldn't be all that surprised to see people moving back towards it again in search of solutions to today's problems.