Jraptor59 wrote on Jul 29, 2013, 11:57:
Are we going to get to the point that we cannot use our computers for games or anything else without being connected to the internet? I despise being totally dependent on "the cloud" to use my software.
Remains to be seen as there are yet some legal hurdles, but the average person generally is willing to give away rights for access. I guess you could liken it to giving away your privacy to use Google's services, for example, or from a political standpoint a grid-based cloud could be seen as the proper "community" thing to do. The fact that Google has its own fiber is actually pretty eerily similar to that, especially when you see their "no server" TOS rules for users. It all but implies there's already grid networking behind it, otherwise they would allow it.
Unfortunately, things are moving in that general direction. Yet I think there will remain a place in the home for desktops as servers/central hubs (for streaming amongst other things), and perhaps even for personal clouds (heck, you can run owncloud as it is). It's just that a lot of the most popular services will likely pull a "upgrade to Vista for DX10" move sooner or later...and people do love convenience.