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Deprecating the Datacenter?
m0smithslash writes "The blogging CEO asserts that that datacenters are doomed. Computers are showing up in everything from drill bits, to cargo ships to tracking devices in stuffed animals at Disneyland. With computers becoming so small and easy to distribute over a wireless network, do we really need data centers to house computers or are the computers going to be placed where they are really needed?"
How many drill bits will I need to buy for the company toolbox to run our email service? And does anyone know where I can get a toolbox with redundant power and cooling? Thanks.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
As long as you're not concerned about minor issues like physical security, data and communications security, maintainability, scalability, and availability.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Seriously - I am 26, and I use a pen to write something on paper perhaps once every 3-4 days. I also use the printer at my office or home maybe once every 3 weeks at the most.
Any time I have to do something over the phone or by mail, that I know as a programmer I could be easily be doing online, it pisses me off to no end.
I know I am not in an uncommon age group either. As I see my nieces and nephews go through school, they use less and less books. They hand in their assignments in USB keys.
The only people I know of who use paper in any amount are people who are 40+, the type of people who like to print off any website longer than a page because "it is easier to read". How is reading paper easier on the eyes than reading a TFT LCD? Answer? it isn't - it's all psycological.
The whole "myth" of the paperless world is not a myth, it was just misconstrued - you can't create a paperless world until all the people who are used to using the paper everyday are gone.
With more and more embedded computers, and easier and faster networks, datacenters could become more important than ever.
.CEOs, who belittle "theory" in favor of "pragmatism."
.the feature most requested by buyers in their fastest growing geography (India) was an LED flashlight. Edison would never have guessed (obviously). Nor that electricity would one day be on airplanes, lunar landers or deep sea submarines. "
.or both.
Bingo! Just as with more and more books being more widely distributed the need for public libraries as a central repository grows, not shrinks.
Now the fact is that most datacenters, as they are spoke, are almost literal clusterfucks, but it is most often because the data technology clueless CEOs make decisions about issues they know nothing about. Even relying on the technologists no longer works in most cases, because most of the technologists are now "trained" at the bequest of . .
So how clueless is this particular CEO? Let us examine the record:
". .
The fuck he wouldn't have. Edison made flashlight bulbs, batteries and portable generators: a novel was published (perhaps you've heard of it) in 1870, when Edison was only 23 years old, that had an electric submarine as its primary subject. Edison built submarine engines and electric generators for WWI. The First Men in the Moon was published in 1901, the protagonists relaying their situation back to Earth by radio; and it became a commerical movie, using Edison technology, in 1919, more than a decade before Edison's death.
Good Lord, Edison not only guessed these things, he was instrumental in making them happen. That's why we know his name.
I don't care what company Schwartz is the CEO of (how are they doing, by the way?), he's either clueless, selling something . .
KFG