Cloud Computing

Was just thinking about how much I love cloud computing, and how some people are still opposed to the idea.

The advantages as I see it are not having to store countless GB of data on your own computer, and being able to access your data anywhere. Not to mention leveraging the huge computing grids it's hosted on to perform CPU intensive operations like searching your data.

The disadvantages I think are moot, namely that an active internet connection is required to access your data. To draw an analogy, I think it would have been like arguing against the introduction of the motor car by saying they're only useful wherever there are paved roads.

Internet access will become ubiquitous. The limiting factor is bandwidth. Using the motor car analogy again it's like the number of lanes limits the traffic bearing capacity. It will be a long time before we can store our entire digital libraries online, but for now I'm happy keeping my media locally, and my email, RSS feeds, notes, and bookmarks online.