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Dilbert on Cloud Computing

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77 pointshardtke25 comments

I know an account manager at a major telco. He talks regularly about how his bosses tell him to push "the Cloud" and that "the Cloud is the future", and other silly nonsense like that.

It's definitely a fad that non-technical people don't understand. They've been told it will save them hundreds of thousands of dollars (virtualized servers) and make data instantly accessible from any computer-machine. They mostly heard they would save a lot of money and told everyone to push it.

Funny how buzzwords hypnotize.

The term cloud was already here in 2007... So this fad is there for the fifth year. I'd rather consider it a long time trend. In the end, like client-server or mainframe, it will stay in the background but be masked by newer trends.

Every company has a vastly different definition of cloud computing. By far the worst I've seen is Microsoft's "Delayed at the Airport" commercial. She remote desktop's into her home computer and watches a video - is this really the Cloud?

Yeah, I think so. The "cloud" is the part of the network you don't have to care about. She doesn't care whether the video is on her home computer, or MS servers, or her laptop. It pretty much all works the same.

It's nothing more than a buzz word now. In the commercial they say "To the cloud" and then he uses remote desktop. This is something that could have been in a commercial 10+ years ago but is only appealing now due to the word "cloud" ("to the internet" isn't nearly as cool).

Really? Cheap laptops, high-bandwidth wireless, and first-party free file hosting (on Windows Live Mesh in this case), 10 years ago? The "cloud" may not have changed, but it is suddenly relevant (read: marketable) to a lot more people than it used to be. Hence the advertising.

Tell that to the Amazon and VMWare CTOs. It is also a buzz word, but there is a real underlying change in it - which is the change of IT from a former "custom setup" to standardized automated processes. And it's making waves in companies IT departments because it shakes the old model.

That's the exact reason it's a particularly horrible commercial though.

She says "cloud" to refer to her machine. If she had turned it off before she left the house, would "the cloud" have gone away? It sticks out as being egregiously nonsensical because it violates the only remaining common property of what "the cloud" might ever have meant.

The hackneyed and (mis)appropriated uses of "cloud" are almost innumerable at this point. But up until that commercial, at the very least they all agreed that data "in the cloud" doesn't become inaccessible if your home machine or ISP is non-functional.

Based off several interactions I have had with people who are not in a technical industry, I don't think the concept of the Cloud has hit mainstream. The fact that Microsoft is driving the first real advertising campaign for the Cloud is both good and bad. The bad, imo, is that Microsoft is such a giant and has such a large advertising budget that people will begin to associate "The Cloud" solely with them. The really bad, imo, is that they aren't doing a very good job explaining what the concept of cloud computing really is.

The concept of the "cloud" will never matter to non-technical types, because, fundamentally, the only defining feature of what people are calling "cloud" is that it is an abstraction away from individual machines.

Abstractions only matter to techies. End users shouldn't have to care either way.

Being able to just type in my name and password on some new laptop and having all my stuff immediately available to me has a pretty cloudy feel to me. I’m not sure whether you should call it “cloud”, though, that only seems to be unnecessarily confusing.

By the way, using my definition you would be perfectly justified in calling some pretty old technology “cloud computing”. A Gmail account you access with IMAP (vintage 1986) would be the prime example.

What might be new is that the users usually don’t have to care about the technical details. When you are using IMAP you have to enter server names and other yucky stuff, that’s not the case with Dropbox.

Cloud computing is not all that different from old mainframe setups. It's just a lot more interactive (and with 40 years of technological advancement). So the still-relevant artifacts of that era are at home in the 'cloud'.

Another comparison: Netbooks marked a definite return to the thin client. Only now it's wireless.

Same comic on the fast link: http://dilbert.com/fast/2011-01-07/

(Dilbert has a "fast" link at http://dilbert.com/fast/ to load just the comics without all the extra stuff)

Does anyone know why the link to the fast version is called Linux/Unix? Is it just to make it salient to nerds?

From Scott Adams old blog post on the redesign of the website:

"The fascinating thing about the responses is that it revealed three distinct types of Dilbert readers:

The first group is the ultra-techies who have an almost romantic relationship with technology. For them, the new site felt like getting dumped by a lover. Their high-end technology (generally Linux) and security settings made much of the site inconvenient. Moreover, the use of Flash offended them on some deep emotional level.

The second group objected to the new level of color and complexity, and the associated slowness. They like their Dilbert comics simple, fast, and in two colors. Anything more is like putting pants on a cat.

The third group uses technology as nothing more than a tool, and subscribes to the philosophy that more free stuff is better than less free stuff. That group has embraced the new features on the site and spiked the traffic stats.

For you first two groups, if you promise to keep it to yourselves, we created a stripped-down Dilbert page with just the comic, some text navigation, and the archive: www.dilbert.com/fast. This alternate site is a minor secret, mentioned only here and in the text footnote to the regular site as “Linux/Unix.”"

(source: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/04/dilb...)

A recruiter friend asked me how much a company should pay a cloud developer. I had no idea what to say.

I would have told him that it doesn't matter as long as they are paid in cloud dollars.

Cloud seems to be the ultimate Rorschach Test, both in the real world and the IT world. (From http://blog.labslice.com/2010/09/wispy-cloud.html).

Reminds me of the Penny Arcade comic: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/25/

"God. Let me break this down for you. It's server-side. It's like, over here? Servers."

"philosopher and technologist": ACM offers a paper on "Ontological approach toward cybersecurity in cloud computing". Evidently the PHB is more on target than usual.

It causes me a great deal of stress when I hear non seasoned developers discussing "the cloud". Even talking about it now is annoying me. The people with the loudest opinions are usually managers who have only a basic concept of what it is and what it might be good for.

Agreed. My next app will be HTML5 and on the cloud. In other words I'll make it pretty and it'll live on a server rather than at the office.

Don't stress, man, you can slap "cloud" on whatever you're currently working on and call it done. Easiest achievement-inflating buzzword trend ever.

Like water under the hot sun. your software turns into vaporware. thats what cloud means right now, Its magic.

at least when some congressmen calls your service provider.

The Orb - Fluffy clouds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHixChYgGRI Sums it up.

You lost me with the video.

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