Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Cloud Client and Cloud Computing

This another blog piece from my mobile,
I am physically (owning a mobile phone) late to mobile world.
But I was very much into mobile technology in spite of my Linux lineage.
When Google's Android came in I had been very critical of its commercial incline and intent since Google was essentially Linux base but a commercial enterprise.
I had been very explicit of my opinion in my book Cloud Computing.
In fact, I had said why Google will fail with Android and Chrome if it go solo.

Coming from Open Source Community going solo and making money and disregarding greater interest of the community especially in the third world where UNO has failed to protect and foresee the emerging trends in IT technology was my concern
.

But Google had realized its implications and put the code open and in mobile world Androids rule.
A decade or so ago when O.L.P.C (one Lap Top per Child) was proposed it was killed in its inception by the corporate.
Unfortunate credit crunch also came at about the same time and it never took off the ground.
Then when tablets hit the market and Apple dished out iPads to schools in America in preparation for its exploits.
Kindle came in but only India in this region was interesetd.
Sri-Lanka under Single one sided Mahinda Chinthanaya failed to take note of application of tablets in Schools and the NaNa Sala was used for political propaganda rather than IT Technology and I gave up especially military type of training was introduced to university entrants.
Under Mahinda Chinthanaya we loss an enormous amount of Technology that could have been used in primary, secondary and higher education.
Instead of gunny load of books given FREE (30 years outdated) could have used a Pendrive to load all the e-books in English (Sinhala and Tamil if due recognition for e-bboks were instituted a decade ago under Chinthanaya) could have been dished out as in Singapore.
I think Singapore dishes out millions of books for their kids free in English and in Chinese.
We missed the bus under political megalomania.
The tablets could have been installed in schools and the kids have to carry a Pendrive only (cost is less than Rs.1000/= now).
We need to phase out free books as and when the digital content is increased to appropriate levels which is much much cheaper than printed books (heavy too).
I do not believe the UNPers will do anything since I know for sometime when copyright law was introduced by Ramil and the combo without debate (in 8 hours and even the JVP voted in support) in the parliament and few of the top UNP guys bought the franchise for Microsoft,  Design Studios and what not before passing the bill.
They are ministers in the current coalition government and they have not given up their vested interests.
I fought a lone battle to promote Linux in University (their are spoilers in the higher education too) and schools and miserably failed.
So I went out for the outside world and this blog site is a monument to that effort.
Even here only a few from Sri-Lanka visits (this site promoting Linux)  and the majority come from Russia, Ukraine and USA.
They have given the education ministry to a very young guy and I do not think he has a local or global vision.
Now I have almost stopped talking about Linux (it is too late to start) but very much interested in the smart-phone Androids and WiFi world.

In a nutshell what we have to invest is for few servers and an educational cloud with free WiFi access.

Can the UNP in power do it?
I do not think they will.