海天英语2010年春季大学英语四级考试强化讲义.docVIP

海天英语年季大学英语四级考试强化讲义Google plans to make PCs history Industry critics warn of danger in giving internet leader more power Google is to launch a service that would enable users to access their personal computer from any internet connection, according to industry reports. But campaigners warn that it would give the online behemoth unprecedented control over individuals personal data. The Google Drive, or GDrive, could kill off the desktop computer, which relies on a powerful hard drive. Instead a users personal files and operating system could be stored on Googles own servers and accessed via the internet. The long-rumoured GDrive is expected to be launched this year, according to the technology news website TG Daily, which described it as the most anticipated Google product so far. It is seen as a paradigm shift away from Microsofts Windows operating system, which runs inside most of the worlds computers, in favour of cloud computing, where the processing and storage is done thousands of miles away in remote data centres. Home and business users are increasingly turning to web-based services, usually free, ranging from email (such as Hotmail and Gmail) and digital photo storage (such as Flickr and Picasa) to more applications for documents and spreadsheets (such as Google Apps). The loss of a laptop or crash of a hard drive does not jeopardise the data because it is regularly saved in the cloud and can be accessed via the web from any machine. The GDrive would follow this logic to its conclusion by shifting the contents of a users hard drive to the Google servers. The PC would be a simpler, cheaper device acting as a portal to the web, perhaps via an adaptation of Googles operating system for mobile phones, Android. Users would think of their computer as software rather than hardware. It is this prospect that alarms critics of Googles ambitions. Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Foundation, a charity defending computer users liberties, did not disp