The Effects of the Cloud On Business, Education

g8orade points out two recent articles in The Economist about the rise of cloud computing. The first discusses how software-as-a-service has come to pervade online interactions. "Irving Wladawsky-Berger, a technology visionary at IBM, compares cloud computing to the Cambrian explosion some 500m years ago when the rate of evolution sped up, in part because the cell had been perfected and standardised, allowing evolution to build more complex organisms." The next article examines how the cloud will force a "trade-off between sovereignty and efficiency." Reader pjones contributes news that the Virtual Computer Lab will be supplementing more traditional computer labs at North Carolina State University, and adds, "NCSU's Virtual Computing Lab and IBM are offering the VCL code as a software 'appliance' for use in schools to link to the program. Downloads are available at ibiblio at UNC-Chapel Hill. The VCL also is partnering with Apache.org to make the software available and to allow further community participation in future development."

Comments

Visionary?

[BorgCopyeditor]

I'd like a job as a visionary. I once dreamt I would find a $20 bill on the street, and then several months later, I DID! Is that enough of a qualification? I've also had numerous hunches, premonitions, and vague senses of foreboding. I think with the passage of time that these powers will only increase, and within 5 to 10 years, I could be up to Nostradamus-level prognastication.

Re:Visionary?

[blueZ3]

If you can manage to get bitten by a radioactive spider, or otherwise exposed to unusual radiation, you're hired. Though for slashdotters, I suppose sunlight qualifies as "unusual radiation"

Re:Please?

[MrMr]

Easy.
Mainframes are extinct dinosaurs.
The cloud is a completely new paradigm of gigantic primitive reptilian computing.