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0 pointswavephorm14y ago0 comments

  Browser cache is around 1GB and web developers are itching
  for vast landscapes of local storage systems.

We're moving toward a computing world where hard drives don't even exist. Within 3 years we may see devices that have only persistent RAM. And for large files, I bet we'll see some nice competition between Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, and others which may eventually lead to making hard drives obsolete.

  Nah, don't think so; the computer is the computer. 
  Network... is not reliable, responsive, or resilient enough to.

Not yet, but I think we are steamrolling toward this conclusion.

Apple might have successfully convinced everyone into thinking that downloading software and installing it is some fancy new thing, but really just it's old-fashioned nonsense that is only necessary for their arcane software platform to work.

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14 comments · 5 top-level

vacri14y ago· 5 in thread

We're moving toward a computing world where hard drives don't even exist.

That will only happen when my pipe hits SATA speed.

nl14y ago

That will only happen when my pipe hits SATA speed.

I dunno.

GMail is orders of magnitude faster in every way than my work Outlook installation.

Google Docs is much quicker to start & use than Office.

I've often used online image editors rather than start Photoshop.

Yes, if I had a SSD on my work computer it might help, but still I think there is an important principle here..

hdevalence14y ago

Sure, but compare your pipe speed today with your pipe speed ten years ago. I don't think that it's out of the realm of possibility that we will begin to see devices with no local storage within three years.

Take Google Music, for instance. You can have 200 GB of music "on your phone", even though none of it is actually stored on your phone.

w1ntermute14y ago

> Sure, but compare your pipe speed today with your pipe speed ten years ago.

Actually, things haven't improved much in this department for the vast majority of Americans.

1 more reply

commandar14y ago

>Sure, but compare your pipe speed today with your pipe speed ten years ago.

You mean the 3Mbs DSL I had 10 years ago versus the 3Mbs DSL that's still the fastest thing available at my house today?

vacri14y ago

and then we also run into contention - the more people wirelessly streaming, the less bandwidth each gets. Add in that with the cloud, there are more links in the chain that can go wrong, plus you frequently get transient outages (instead of the rare catastrophic ones with local storage), and it's not a zero sum game. Some things are fine in the cloud. Some really aren't.

kristopolous14y ago· 2 in thread

No. Even if we assume a magical device that stores nothing, cloud storage is still backed by guess what? hard disks. And this time, heavily redundant to ensure low latency and high availability.

So no, moving everything to the cloud, tomorrow, would vastly increase hard drive sales permanently. Oompff! http://allthingsd.com/20111005/it%E2%80%99s-all-about-conten...

Here's an example. I upload a video to youtube. youtube converts it into about 8 formats (depending on the initial quality; (mobile + flash 8/10 + html5 ogg/webm) * multiple resolutions), stores the original, generates dozens of multiple sized thumbnails for the seekbar, farms these out to multiple data centers, and then stores a bunch of metadata along with that (every like/dislike, comment, playlist, landing source, geoip of user). You are looking at something like 15 times more space needed for the cloud architecture.

FooBarWidget14y ago

> Even if we assume a magical device that stores nothing, cloud storage is still backed by guess what?

You store that in the cloud too, of course! It's turtles all the way down.

robryan14y ago

Depends on the content, something like a movie that is on millions of hard drives around the world today could be replaced some redundant cloud storage in a handful of formats.

Flenser14y ago· 2 in thread

You're conflating two different things: Local Storage/caching, and the medium it is stored on, spinning disks.

The data may live in the cloud, but it will be heavily cached locally. We'll still need several GB or TB of local storage, be it spinning disks, SSDs or permanent RAM.

Grandparents won't want to be without the home video of their grandchildren just because their WiFi router stopped working or their ISP is having problems. And it will be a long time before mobile coverage reaches everywhere you might take your computer: communications black spots, rural areas, Planes, Tunnels etc.

wavephormOP14y ago

  We'll still need several GB or TB of local storage, be 
  it spinning disks, SSDs or permanent RAM.

Yes I should have clarified -- I expect memristors to be on the market within a few years. Once they're ready I bet we'll see all laptops and mobile devices move over to them. Between memristor based local storage/cache, and large/cheap cloud storage, I don't see much reason for having hard disks, software, and data in our local computers for very long. Just keep all your data and apps on the cloud, and use web-based apps for accessing them. The foundation for this type of computing world is absolutely being built right now by thousands of companies. It's definitely coming.

Flenser14y ago

Between memristor based local storage/cache, ... I don't see much reason for having hard disks, software, and data in our local computers for very long.

These apps will still be stored (permanently cached as a web-app) and running on the local box and able to run in an offline mode. We won't be installing pre-packaged software that we have to upgrade manually, but we'll still need a powerful machine to run them; not a thin client.

The mechanisms whereby the software gets on our machines may change, but it's still going to be on our machines.

haberman14y ago

> We're moving toward a computing world where hard drives don't even exist.

How do you think that "the cloud" stores data? Maybe you meant "hard drives in consumer devices."

eddington14y ago

Why is this comment being downvoted? It's not aggressive, rude or otherwise mean. It's also not factually incorrect (because it's talking about a possible future).

I agree that I don't believe this future is likely, but that's no reason to downvote him.

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