Monday, July 27, 2009

how to sound stupid to tech people

Jolicloud.
Let's review it using a couple choice sentences.

"At Jolicloud we believe a movement has started. A movement that will change the computer industry forever"

Well, dang, i'm sure glad you're here to tell us about it! Here I was just sitting around Twatting wondering when the next big thing in the computer industry will come along. Thank god you told us on your "/idea" page.

"Jolicloud is an Internet operating system."

The Internet is a general term used for millions upon millions of interconnected networks and the infrastructure that allows it to seamlessly function. An Operating System is software that is designed to allow people to use programs easier. How the fuck do these things have anything in common?

"It combines the two driving forces of the modern computing industry: the open source and the open web."

Nothing purifies the fact that you're bullshitting like using simple buzz words in a nonsensical way.

"Jolicloud transforms your netbook into a sophisticated web device that taps into the cloud"

There. RIGHT THERE. See that last word? That's where you killed it. A web device I can deal with. Technically something like a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is a 'web device', but a netbook *can* be a 'web device' so i'll drop that. But assuming I was stupid enough to buy the idea that your provision of a backend of scaling virtual allocations of disk, bandwidth or cpu power is going to be so amazing that my netbook's traditional OS will be obsolete...

"We feel privileged to witness this rebirth of the computer culture"

WOW! Finally people are using computers for more than just Twitter! It's a dream that those of us actively engaged in computer culture have had for a million years.

"We come from the web"

I come from a land down under.

"With our API, developers will have the ability to let their website communicate with the computer directly with no need to code specific native applications."

Kickass! Now we can just own machines directly through your shitty API's 0-days instead of writing shellcode or exploiting some setuid binary on the local system! Thanks Web Operating System!

"Netbooks are very new. They are still bulky"

They come in sizes as little as 7 inches up to 12 inches and weigh about 2 pounds. With a hard drive. What the fuck do you want? Any lighter and they'll fly away in a brisk wind. I do not want to buy a fucking paper weight for my laptop.

"No one has yet entirely switched his or her life online"

This isn't fucking Ghost In The Shell. Even in Surrogates or The Matrix they don't completely "switch online". Protip: don't talk in terms of actions that are either impossible or nonsensical.


So my first question is: why do I need this bullshit to replace my operating system? If it's really all run off the internet why can't I just download your client and run it inside my normal operating system? Assuming I turned off most of the useless bells and whistles of a common desktop environment like KDE or Gnome it's really not using many resources at all.

Are you telling me you've discovered a magical way to get Flash apps to stop sucking up 99% of my CPU, or to get misbehaving JScript to stop locking up the browser, or to get Firefox to stop eating half my RAM due to multiple tabs? If so BY ALL MEANS gimme. But if this is just some accumulation of wireless drivers, 3d acceleration and a pretty GUI wrapped around a user interface to web pages: keep your operating system. Mine works fin^H^H^Hacceptably. And I can do more with it than your 'cloud' will allow.

No comments:

Post a Comment