MakerGear Forum

Matt_Sharkey wrote:Not the best outcomes, but I don't believe you would be left high and dry.

I commend to your attention:

http://www.everpix.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Reader
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_GeoCities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat

Not saying it will happen, but being left high and dry happens a lot...

ednisley wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_GeoCities

That one sucked. I remember googling for my geocities site one day and found, *poof*, it disappeared. Looking through my email logs, apparently they sent an email notice about a year ago that I never saw. That kind of sucked because it was the only one of existing writings from when I was in highschool, a critical part to a complete history.

There's another one.

Student.com

Abruptly pulled the plug a year ago, now it's a "London school apartment search site". All I have of its existence is a webscrape from years ago (My first foray into developing webcrawlers).

I dont get the gripe with cloud processing.

My main issue is something like this:

I have a deadline to deliver a product on Friday. It's an easy project so I start it on Wednesday. My DSL goes down and the telephone company says sure we can fix it -- next week.

Or, the internet goes down. Don't believe me? You obviously don't use Century/Link.

If I were just messing around for a hobby I probably wouldn't care if I couldn't do any productive work for a few days.

But, seriously, a $2500 product that won't work without the internet. It just sounds like a lock-in ploy to me.

I think you'll be able to add Quirky to that list soon. I was very tempted by one of their products, but didn't go for it when it needed their servers to do anything for just this reason. The Glowforge depending on their cloud hosts makes it a total nonstarter for me, and I agree with Ed that just because they open source the firmware doesn't mean you have anything even close to working.

I've been wondering whether a laser engraver or a CNC would be next for me. My finger was hovering over the buy button for the 40W Chinese laser engraver, but then the bad software issues moved it from an impulse purchase to being on hold until I was willing to put serious effort into it. I also haven't quite figured out what my usecase is for it yet, though I'm sure there's something.

When you explain it like that, Ed, it makes it seem like a no-brainer to have cloud processing as an add-on. If you're computer can do it, let it. no need to make things complicated. But alas, with cloud processing they would control all of the chips...sounds familiar.

Interesting article:
http://phys.org/news/2015-10-d-laser-pr ... maker.html

Can't believe two people sold their cars to buy one.....
(Wonder how true that is?)

They must not have been very nice cars.

I don't think having in-house internet service goes down is a major issue these days. This is 2015 and most folks have a phone that can function as a wi-Fi hotspot. I would say if you are technerdy enough to own a laser cutter, your phone is probably fine for the demands of serving up a few data transfers.

Although I totally feel you on the Centurylink Internet service. I have rarely felt so happy as the day we ended service with them.

I keep coming back to this thread and the Glowforge site. If the words Bre Pettis had not been uttered, I probably would have one of these on order right now.

This is 2015 and most folks have a phone that can function as a wi-Fi hotspot

Nope.