Will the cloud ever replace the desktop?

I don’t think so. Security will always be a problem, speed another and lack of internet yet another one.

Everyone with a state of the art computer knows that nothing can match the speed of the SSD hard drive combined with 16 GB of RAM and an 8 core computer. No matter how fast the optic fiber is or the servers, there will always be more delays in the cloud than in your own machine.

I think that as the amount of data and information explodes inside companies, they will tend to use bigger and faster hard disks. Companies simply don’t want to give all their data to a cloud solution no matter how cost effective it may seem. The desktop system will always be faster than any cloud system even with 1GB internet speed. There are always delays when it comes to travel thousands of miles to reach the server.

One indicator of how people prefer to have their data inside the hard disk is the Chrome Notebook. People didn't mass buy them (at least yet) because they are not comfortable giving so much power to Google. They want to choose what operating system they want to have, what browser and what search engine and email solution. They don't want to be attached to Google forever nor to online services.

The clould storage is quite limited in mobility and file edition. You can't simply open and edit files inside the cloud, unless the service has applications installed for that end. You have to download the files to the computer, edit, then save again in the cloud. That's a problem I have not seen a solution yet.

The importance of desktop search

Google Desktop Search was the best software to search your computer. The results were super fast, faster than any other technology at that time. Ther results were very accurate. You could even search your web history which was perfect to find a page you visited but forgot to save and wanted to visit again. You would see the results in the browser with Google search results style. It was the perfect desktop search tool. Unfortunatelly Google decided to stop the development of this software. People who still want to search the computer have to buy the Google Enterprise Search. The reasons given by Google were that people have less information inside the computer and more in the cloud so it made no sense to continue the development of Google Desktop Search.

I don't agree.

Desktop search continue to be one of the most important tools in the computer. To have a small idea of how important search is, just go to your Windows 8 machine and try to find a file you don't know where it is. You can't find it. Windows 8 does not have a general desktop search engine. You need to open the folders one by one and search inside them. It's true people have more and more information inside the cloud and not inside the computer, but security problems, lack of speed and support make most people continue to use their computers for file storage, especially companies. Big companies probably don't live without enterprise search. They have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of documents to search and without search, their productivity would be wasted. Google has a product for them.

Let's see if Windows 10 comes with a better search engine with the new Start Menu because if it doesn't because it's trying to make people use One Drive, I think Chrome OS and Linux will be the operating system of the future.

How will Google be able to index the internet of the future?

Google is probably the smartest company in the world. More than 60 trillion pages indexed and the number grows every second. It is estimated that in 2019, 4 years from now, the internet will double in size every three days. Hard disk sizes don’t double in size every three days. They double every 2 years. Google can’t build more and more data centers every day to keep up with all this size. What will happen? I think that Google will be even more selective about which sites or blogs are indexed and which remains out of sight and from the index. It will be impossible, even more Google, to handle trillions or maybe quadrillions of pages with content. 

Google has its limits.

I think the internet of the future will be even more caothic than what it is today. The competition to get web traffic will go from extreme to insane. Most blogs will simply get no traffic. Human writers will be replaced by machine articles. I read about one company called Wordsmith that says their goal is to get one single visitor to each page they write. In 2014 they published 300 million unique pages of content, written by robots, in order to get 300 million visitors to their articles. In 2015 they want to write one billion unique pages.

Can you see how the future is going to be like on the internet and for search engines? Machines will be able to write interestinf stories based on all the numbers published across the internet. New statistic numbers? The robots are ready to interpret and express with words what those numbers mean.

Let’s wait and see what happens.

Should you buy a computer or configure your own?

This is a quite popular topic. Most computer experts prefer to make their own computers buying the parts individually than buying a new computer. I would say the best optin depends on your computer experience and also on how well you can configure one and how much patience you have. 

Computers directly from the store come working perfectly (most of the times at least). If you prefer to configure your own computer you may have a hard time putting all the parts together without damaging anything. Still it’s a pleasure to work with something you made yourself.

Another thing to consider is how long you can be without the computer in case something fails. If you buy from a store the whole computers, you have to wait up to a month to get the machine back working. If you configure everything yourself, that wait does not apply. You just have to open the machine, send the damaged part to the warranty and install a new until the old part comes again.

Making your own computer is something to be proud of. Few people can do it. Making your own machine means not only you will have to learn a lot about IT (very important in today's world) but also you will have to put that knowledge into real world practice.

Make your own machine and be free.

Google CEO says we don't need to fear artificial intelligence

Eric Schmidt says that according to the numbers, people who work with computers see their wages going up, productivity going up and have a better life generally. He also says it's normal that people fear artificial intelligence.

http://www.newsweek.com/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-says-artificial-intelligence-will-make-world-not-break-290778

Artificial intelligence is making progress almost exponentially according to Tesla's CEO Elon Musk. He fears that artificial intelligence could be the biggest threat to human kind. We also fears that artificial intelligence could soon become more intelligent than humans and that we might do something very foolish.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/27/elon-musk-artificial-intelligence-ai-biggest-existential-threat

He is not alone in this fear. Last week, Stephen Hawking who is considered one of the biggest living minds say that general artificial intelligence could design improvements to itself, outsmart us all and that it could be the end of man kind. He also says that artificial intelligence could be the ones leading in the future.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/richard-stacy/artifical-intelligence-st_b_6293732.html

Right now artificial intelligence is so advanced it can write reports just like human beings. It's also doing things that were considered impossible just ten years ago. Robots are already being used by Nestle to act as sales men in their stores in Japan. Artificial intelligence already can drive cars, trucks, race in real world cars and even play ping pong.

How to continue to use Windows Xp without many security problems

Since Microsoft stopped updating Windows Xp in April, people rampaged buying the new Windows 7 and 8. Xp saw the market share drop. Funny comments on the web said that Microsoft could not end Windows Xp with new Windows versions, but now hackers are the ones who will "destroy" Xp.

Can you still use Windows Xp without worries? It's certainly less safe. Now there are probably security holes not patched, but for some basic uses Windows Xp still works. Just don't do serious stuff with the computer and follow these tips.

1. Install Google Chrome. Internet Explorer for Xp is no longer updated. New bugs and security holes are not patched. Google Chrome is faster, lighter and safer.

2. Install a new firewall. Xp's firewall again is not updated. Zone Alarm or Comodo firewall gives the best protection a free firewall can give. You will just have to allow or deny access to applications the first time they request access to the internet and then you will be safer.

3. Don't download files from places you don't know. Based on what I read on the internet, hackers are probably looking for Xp security problems not patched and exploit those holes. If you get an infected file that targets Xp holes, you might get problems. Software downloads? Only from sites like Softpedia and Cnet and similar trusted sites.

4. Never leave Xp connected to the internet very long. The longer it connects to the internet, the higher the chances of getting affected. Using a real time Firewall alert shows that as soon as the internet is connected, viruses and malware will start trying to enter even when the browser is closed.

5. Download the latest Xp updates from Microsoft site if you did no already and...

6. Just don't connect Xp to the internet and use it forever. If you are like me and like to play DOS game using DOS box you need a Xp. Win 7 and 8 don't support most DOS games or Windows xp games. Xp is the only OS that runs these lovely oldwares. Just don't connect the computer to the internet and Win Xp might run forever (as long as there's hardware for it).

Firefox is the best browser for reading

Recently when reading a couple of articles with Google Chrome I noticed I had a hard time trying to read. The letters had a low resolution and low contrast compared with the page background. I thought glassed would be needed because of too many hours working with the computer.

Then I tried to open the same page with Firefox and the difference is amazing. The text has much better quality than with Google Chrome. The words have such a high resolution that you have no problems reading for hours and hours. It's the perfect browser for reading and to digest information.

Is this a problem with Chrome's character size? Not at all. You can modify the character size, the font and some more options and get the same end result. Chome is not a browser to read. It's fast in my cases but for long hours of reading and browsing the internet it loses to Firefox by a longshot.