Survey Reveals a Majority Believe "the Cloud" Is Affected by Weather

It does by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 10:51 · Score: 5, Informative

When that stormy weather takes out power supplies to the data centres.

Re:It does by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 11:39 · Score: 0

I know some folks who lose their cable signal when it rains a lot. Some damaged cable covering somewhere down the line.
Re:It does by Culture20 · 2012-08-29 14:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

A friend of mine transfered his VM instances out of New Orleans datacenters yesterday.
Re:It does by slashmydots · 2012-08-29 16:18 · Score: 2

Oh come on. That's almost as stupid as saying that February 29th destroys clouds...oh wait.
Re:It does by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 20:43 · Score: 0

Isn't this question kind of moot? Real cloud computing is about distributed computing, to remove the central point of failure that "normal" server-client behavior has. I remember back when the idea was first introduced the tech document for an API I used to learn how to work with cloud based systems mentioned a specific scenario. The scenario was that your company has 100GB of data which must be processed. A data center goes down where 5GB of the data currently being processed is stored. But due to the distributed nature you don't have to halt your work and can instead reallocate that 5GB of data until a time when that data center comes back online, and instead work on some other part of the 100GB of data you have out in the cloud.
Re:It does by Melkman · 2012-08-29 20:50 · Score: 1

Also broadcast storms can really wreak havoc on the cloud.
Re:It does by scubamage · 2012-08-30 02:10 · Score: 1

Or when ionization prevents microwave transmission. Or when a blizzard causes a MAC truck to plow into a datacenter. Or when a lightning strike starts a fire in a telephony colocation center.
Re:It does by An+ominous+Cow+art · 2012-08-30 05:57 · Score: 1

Or homeless people burn a mattress under a bridge...
Re:It does by tompaulco · 2012-08-30 08:25 · Score: 1

Isn't this question kind of moot? Real cloud computing is about distributed computing, to remove the central point of failure that "normal" server-client behavior has. I remember back when the idea was first introduced the tech document for an API I used to learn how to work with cloud based systems mentioned a specific scenario. The scenario was that your company has 100GB of data which must be processed. A data center goes down where 5GB of the data currently being processed is stored. But due to the distributed nature you don't have to halt your work and can instead reallocate that 5GB of data until a time when that data center comes back online, and instead work on some other part of the 100GB of data you have out in the cloud.
That's all well and good, but most implementations aren't that scenario. Basically, what they sell as the cloud is not distributed at all. It's just outsourcing your VM from your data center to some other data center server somewhere so that instead of crashing when your electricity goes out, you crash when their electricity goes out OR your electricity goes out (since the data is still no good to you when you can't access it).

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If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.

It isn't? by Daetrin · 2012-08-29 10:52 · Score: 4, Informative

Didn't we have a story in the last couple weeks about Amazon's cloud servers getting taken out by a large storm and the resulting power outage or something like that?

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This Space Intentionally Left Blank

Re:It isn't? by Daetrin · 2012-08-29 10:59 · Score: 5, Informative

Okay, found the link: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/06/30/162250/more-uptime-problems-for-amazon-cloud

"An Amazon Web Services data center in northern Virginia lost power Friday night during an electrical storm, causing downtime for numerous customers â" including Netflix"

So the east coast has a big storm, power goes out, and the cloud goes down, and somehow people are drawing the conclusion that stormy weather can have an adverse effect on the cloud? It's possible they're confused about how big a storm is required, the article doesn't address that point, but clearly the idea isn't crazy.

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This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Re:It isn't? by sjames · 2012-08-29 11:02 · Score: 5, Insightful

Yes. The people who believe storms may disrupt cloud computing are 100% correct. Not only can they, but there is a history of it.
As for not knowing what the cloud is, I'd argue that they're in the same boat as marketing and the media that pumps out the breathless cloud stories 24/7.
Re:It isn't? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 11:08 · Score: 3, Insightful

Exactly... I'm more worried about the ones who think cloud computing is NOT impacted by weather. If some random person walked up to me on the street and asked me this, I'd say, "sure, it can", and I'm quite technical.
This seems much like the hand-writing shocked headlines announcing that most Americans think humans and dinosaurs existed at the same time... the only problem being that we DID exist at the same time. Paleontologists consider modern birds to be dinosaurs, so most people are quite correct.
Paleontologists regard birds as the only clade of dinosaurs to have survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 65.5 Ma ago> .
In both cases, this shows that most people are not as dumb as the ones giving the survey.
Re:It isn't? by xevioso · 2012-08-29 11:18 · Score: 1

Yes but in the second instance, the correct follow up would be, "Do you think birds are dinosaurs", and if a majority answered no, than the original implication of ignorance on a large part of America would be correct.
Re:It isn't? by mrmeval · 2012-08-29 11:34 · Score: 3, Funny

Don't trust the clowd clowns with your data!

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I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Re:It isn't? by ldobehardcore · 2012-08-29 11:35 · Score: 2

I'd say a large part of America simultaneously believes birds aren't dinosaurs, and that birds didn't evolve from them, since they feel in their gut that life as we know it today is the exact same as it was when created by god 6000 years ago when the earth wasn't around, but the ocean was.

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Hectice, baby, Mercator says hello to you
Re:It isn't? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 11:42 · Score: 1

Not really - the word 'dinosaur' has a specific technical meaning, but there's also a different non-technical meaning:
"any of a group (Dinosauria) of extinct often very large chiefly terrestrial carnivorous or herbivorous reptiles of the Mesozoic era "
Under that definition, birds are not dinosaurs irrespective of whether the two should be grouped together as a clade.
Re:It isn't? by SomeJoel · 2012-08-29 11:50 · Score: 3, Funny

Don't trust the clowd clowns with your data!
I certainly won't. Thanks for the tip. One other thing, how do I distinguish clowd clowns from regular clowns?

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<Complete your profile by adding a signature!>
Re:It isn't? by Obfuscant · 2012-08-29 12:01 · Score: 2

Yes but in the second instance, the correct follow up would be, "Do you think birds are dinosaurs", and if a majority answered no, than the original implication of ignorance on a large part of America would be correct.
Birds are not dinosaurs, any more than humans are single cell protozoans. If you truly believe in macroevolution, of the kind that can create new species and animals from existing ones, then you must believe that things CHANGE over time. That is, they aren't the same anymore. You must answer "no" to that question if you are to be honest.
And if you don't believe in macroevolution, just microevolution (the kind that causes birds to develop different beaks to deal with different environments, but they are still birds), then you will still say "no".
And, of course, a creationist will say "no", as well.
Your question does nothing to differentiate between what you are obviously trying to imply about the ignorance or lack thereof of a person based on a belief or disbelief in evolution.
Re:It isn't? by asylumx · 2012-08-29 12:02 · Score: 1

how do I distinguish clowd clowns from regular clowns?
They have vertical development and moderate turbulence.
Re:It isn't? by Eponymous+Hero · 2012-08-29 12:16 · Score: 4, Informative

they don't eat little kids.

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insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Re:It isn't? by The+Grim+Reefer · 2012-08-29 12:20 · Score: 5, Informative

Don't trust the clowd clowns with your data!
I certainly won't. Thanks for the tip. One other thing, how do I distinguish clowd clowns from regular clowns?
Can you really think of a situation that would require you to trust any kind of clown?
Re:It isn't? by Obfuscant · 2012-08-29 12:27 · Score: 4, Funny

Can you really think of a situation that would require you to trust any kind of clown?
Eating at McDonalds?
Re:It isn't? by digitig · 2012-08-29 12:28 · Score: 2

Er -- perhaps you don't understand the meaning of "clade". Being in a clade of dinosaurs doesn't mean that they are dinosaurs. Humans will be in the clade of some ancient eukaryote, but that doesn't make us eukaryotes.

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Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Re:It isn't? by cpu6502 · 2012-08-29 13:02 · Score: 1

At what point did a bird stop being a dinosaur? Was it when early dinosaurs developed feathers? Are those birds? Or dinos? (Yes I'm making a point: The precise delineation between two species, especially when they are in the process of changing, is not always obvious.)
It would be interesting as a thought experiment to imagine a world where the asteroid never happened. Would we now be looking at a world dominated by dinosaurs that have feathers instead of scales? Or maybe it would be half-and-half..... half scaled dinos and half feathered dinos.

--
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Re:It isn't? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 13:04 · Score: 5, Funny

Elections?
Re:It isn't? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 13:19 · Score: 1

But we are eukaryotes...
Re:It isn't? by Obfuscant · 2012-08-29 13:22 · Score: 1

At what point did a bird stop being a dinosaur?
Most birds, certainly all that are alive today, have never been dinosaurs. When did it happen in the past? When dinosaurs became extinct? Just like we don't look at alligators and call them dinosaurs, either.

(Yes I'm making a point: The precise delineation between two species, especially when they are in the process of changing, is not always obvious.)
Then you truly do believe that human beings are single cell protozoa, because there is no way to draw any line between one thing and the thing that evolved from it. You do realize that for a true macroevolutionist, this would prohibit any taxonomy at all? You could never delineate between different phyla or orders or classes, because they all came from the same intiial thing.
If a bird is a dinosaur, then a dinosaur is a fish, and a fish is an amoeba, so a bird is an amoeba. Everything is just protoplasm and there is no way to differentiate. That would save a lot of time in biology classes, wouldn't it? "What's that tree?" "It's an amoeba tree!".
The question wasn't about something that had just sprouted feathers, it was "is a bird", which means present tense. There have been many changes since they started evolving from dinosaurs, and drawing the line really isn't as hard as you make it out to be. You don't need to know exactly where the line was, just that it was a very very long time ago. A 'precise delineation', which is what you think the question was about, isn't necessary. Your point, while valid as it stands, is irrelevant in context.
Re:It isn't? by danaris · 2012-08-29 13:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

Can you really think of a situation that would require you to trust any kind of clown?
Eating at McDonalds?
And you think that's a good idea in the first place?
Dan Aris

--
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Re:It isn't? by mrmeval · 2012-08-29 13:53 · Score: 4, Funny

*headdesk* Dammit both are evil. Let me think.
Ah
Clown: promises you candy and sunshine and dishes out horror and pain.
Clowd clown: promises you a magic sky bag where you can keep all your important stuff but it fails when it gets
wet
'too full'
a warrant is issued
they're having a bad hair day
snorted to much meth
spend the money you paid them on too many hookers
forget to pay their electric bill
can't pay their electric bill
piss off the employees who didn't get any hookers or meth
just don't like you anymore. ....

--
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Re:It isn't? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 14:06 · Score: 0

Look for buzzwords...hint: this post is SAS-70 certified
Re:It isn't? by MaskedSlacker · 2012-08-29 14:35 · Score: 2

And once upon a time light was defined as a wave propagating through the lumiferous aether.
The dictionary is not evidence of ANYTHING (other than what the people who wrote the dictionary decided to write down). Dictionaries are descriptive. If the understanding of a concept has changed, and/or the term is used differently now then it is the dictionary that is wrong.
Re:It isn't? by Grog6 · 2012-08-29 14:53 · Score: 1

Gathering sewer balloons involve a certain level of trust of a Clown... ...and yes; We Do all Float Down Here...

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Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Re:It isn't? by poity · 2012-08-29 15:46 · Score: 1

the Anon is absolutely right, though. Dinosaur is more of a catch-all term. Sure, evidence links many dinosaur species to modern birds, but there are many more without such links. Biology/paleontology is science, and its terminology IS NOT and SHOULD NOT change due to popular usage (or in this case, half-ignorant pseudo-intelligence).

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your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Re:It isn't? by rolfwind · 2012-08-29 16:34 · Score: 1

I think we let Washington DC have a lot of power...... which implies a certain amount of trust.
Re:It isn't? by schroedingers_hat · 2012-08-29 16:34 · Score: 2

You are all arguing because traditional taxonomy is intensely stupid.
There is a reasonably hard point at which we can define the distinction between two creatures: the last common ancestor.
Yes it only works in hindsight.
Yes it is still a bit fuzzy (many populations cross breed slightly whilst diverging).
But it's a hell of a lot better than this stupidity.
You just draw monophyletic boundaries, rather than 'I'm including this, but not that because I think it looks funny'. Subsets of subsets and suddenly the problem goes away.
Renaming each group would help with the confusion, but personally I'm happy calling birds dinosaurs and calling both birds and humans bony fish. Draw the distinctions at what is fundamental (genes) rather than whatever some long dead biologist who didn't understand as much as we do thought.
Re:It isn't? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 17:48 · Score: 0

Exactly! Google "(clown shoes) and Pfizer"
You can't even trust them with your meds!
Re:It isn't? by Havenwar · 2012-08-29 22:33 · Score: 2

That doesn't require trust, that requires suspension of disbelief.
Re:It isn't? by ArsenneLupin · 2012-08-30 00:09 · Score: 3, Informative

Paleontologists regard birds as the only clade of dinosaurs to have survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 65.5 Ma ago
Methinks somebody didn't understand (nor look up) what the word clade means.
Basically, a clade is a group consisting of a species (extinct or extant) and all its descendants.
So the sentence "Paleontologists regard birds as the only clade of dinosaurs to have survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 65.5 Ma ago." is just a fancy way of saying that birds are the only living things to have descended from dinosaurs (as opposed to also reptiles). Indeed, the reptile species living today are not descendant from the dinosaurs, but are different lineage. However the birds are.
Re:It isn't? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 00:39 · Score: 0

Not all of us, you insensitive clod.
Re:It isn't? by cpu6502 · 2012-08-30 05:36 · Score: 1

>>>>>At what point did a bird stop being a dinosaur?
>>
>>When did it happen in the past? When dinosaurs became extinct?
That's a nonanswer. Not all dinosaurs became extinct at the same time. The smaller-sized ones survived the asteroid impact, as did the feathered ones. So we've come full circle to my original question:
When did the feathered ones stop being "dinosaurs" and become "birds". The correct answer is: We don't know. The change was gradual over millions of years, with many animals that had the characteristics of both dinosaurs & birds at the same time.

--
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Re:It isn't? by Obfuscant · 2012-08-30 06:53 · Score: 1

When did the feathered ones stop being "dinosaurs" and become "birds". The correct answer is: We don't know.
No, the correct answer is "we don't care". It doesn't matter when they stopped being something they are not today, the fact is they are not, today. The line could have been a million years ago or 100,000. Nobody was there to record it, and it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Re:It isn't? by mcgrew · 2012-08-30 07:54 · Score: 1

I'd say a large part of America simultaneously believes birds aren't dinosaurs, and that birds didn't evolve from them, since they feel in their gut that life as we know it today is the exact same as it was when created by god 6000 years ago when the earth wasn't around, but the ocean was.
You would be wrong. Most Americans don't, in fact, believe that. In fact, I have yet to meet a single person who does.

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Free Martian Whores!
Re:It isn't? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 07:58 · Score: 0

Clowd clowns are virtual, and you interface with them over the internet. They're the ones who reply to your craigslist ads and email you careerbuilder opportunities for opening up your own insurance franchise office.
Re:It isn't? by schroedingers_hat · 2012-08-31 05:05 · Score: 1

Posting to call myself out somewhat as noone else seems to have.
I did a bit of reading on taxonomy, and there are good reasons for the modern versions of morphology based taxonomies. Lateral gene transfer, difficulty of placing things in the correct clades due to lack of information, altogether missing sections of the fossil record and so on.
Having things like (or rather continuing to teach first) reptiles (include all these things but exclude these two groups because we think they're cuddly) as a group still seem a little bizarre and anthropocentric, but this doesn't mean the correct answer is to go to the other extreme.

I weep for my country by Isara · 2012-08-29 10:52 · Score: 1, Insightful

In a saner world, our educational systems would teach science and technology...

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BOOP!

Re:I weep for my country by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 10:54 · Score: 0

Instead of meteorology?
Re:I weep for my country by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 10:56 · Score: 0

You apparently missed the multiple amazon outages due to weather. Weep...
Re:I weep for my country by CanHasDIY · 2012-08-29 10:57 · Score: 5, Insightful

My uncle is a biological engineer; he was a member of the team who first managed to grow human body parts in rats.

I asked him what he knew about 'The Cloud' the other day; his response?
"How the fuck should I know? I'm a biological engineer, not a goddamn weatherman!"

In a saner world, our educational systems would teach science and technology...
You seem to be confusing "science and technology" with "marketing buzzwords."

Stop it. Stop it right now.

--
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Re:I weep for my country by causality · 2012-08-29 11:21 · Score: 4, Interesting

I asked him what he knew about 'The Cloud' the other day; his response?
"How the fuck should I know? I'm a biological engineer, not a goddamn weatherman!"
Okay, despite his confusion, at least he admitted he was ignorant about the subject. At least he didn't go and form a strong opinion and start arguing about a subject he knows nothing about.

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge'." -- Isaac Asimov

This Slashdot article may as well have said "average public school-educated Americans unable to distinguish their own (obese) ass from a hole in the ground."

Sure that may sound like I am being negative. But it's so hard not to be negative about this. Without even considering its finances, there is good reason to question the long-term viability of my nation. You just can't have this many adult people who hate thinking, who embrace anti-intellectualism, and expect to remain prosperous. It's not even just anti-intellectualism, as though that were not bad enough. Emotional intelligence is on the decline as well, and it manifests as a bunch of people who generally mean well, but are far too self-absorbed to understand things so basic as "needlessly blocking a doorway in a public place is rude".

They do mean well but they tend to be childish, indulgent, and haven't the maturity to overcome their own thoughts and their own worries. That's why when I say "self-absorbed" I don't mean it in terms of narcissism, I mean it in terms of having become so thoroughly alienated from their fellow humans that they are unable to consider how their actions affect others. Generally the USA is becoming decadent like every other great nation just before its collapse.

I am seriously wondering just how hard it is for an American to immigrate to a small Western European nation and become a naturalized citizen.

--
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Re:I weep for my country by Isara · 2012-08-29 11:21 · Score: 0

nope, pretty sure I meant what I said. But the point is taken. Perhaps if people understood both science AND technology (including popular technology, vis a vis marketing concepts), there would be less conflation of unrelated concepts.

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BOOP!
Re:I weep for my country by icebike · 2012-08-29 11:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

In a saner world we wouldn't let hypsters foist stupid names on an entire industry for things as simple to explain as "remote storage".

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Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Re:I weep for my country by Dahamma · 2012-08-29 11:29 · Score: 2

This particular problem with the US is not with technology education, it's with antiquated power and communications grids. Though fortunate not to be exposed to any wars on home soil in the last century, it means many of these systems consist of 100 year old wires strung up on wooden poles rather than buried underground like much of Europe, etc. Weather thus *significantly* affects Cloud computing in many areas of the country...
Re:I weep for my country by Mashiki · 2012-08-29 11:46 · Score: 5, Funny

In a saner world, we'd just ship all hipsters to Seattle, and be done with them.

--
Om, nomnomnom...
Re:I weep for my country by b4dc0d3r · 2012-08-29 11:55 · Score: 5, Insightful

You seem to have a severely myopic view of what is important in the world. Until very recently, even cloud providers could not define cloud computing beyond whatever their implementation was. Not knowing what "the cloud" is does not exemplify in any way anti-intellectualism. I think your rant is a generalized one, way off topic, and pretty much a knee-jerk response to any sign that someone doesn't know about something you consider important.
Reading your post history, you realize that you are part of a small minority of people who are aware of the business behind service offerings, whether it is data mining of social networking or broad categories such as cloud offerings. Based on that reading, it should not surprise you to find that people don't care how their phone works, or what powers their website. And they don't want to know. Not because of anti-intellectualism. They just have no need to know, or don't have any connection to people who do know.
Sure they lack curiosity, but we can only say that about this subject, where they may have interests in mechanics or art or cuisine instead.
So you have rated your opinion of the nation on people who don't need to know about something, being asked about that thing, and making a guess based on the information they already have at hand. Or, you used this as an excuse to jump up on your soapbox.
Either way, you are my example of why someone should pity a culture, not the people who were busy minding their own business when a surveyor gave them a pop quiz.
The actual study has a much less exaggerated title, and as far as I can tell from the actual survey, it was a true random sampling. Ask a random person what "the could" is, given no context, and I'm surprised that only 29% said it related to weather. "51%" is described as "most", and as posted above that bunch of people are technically correct that weather can cause problems, including damage from lightning and flooding or just plain power outage.
The margin of error was +/- 3% meaning it could have been as low as 48%. You can't even claim "majority" with those numbers. And this was an e-mail invitation to an online survey. Automatically, anyone who clicked on an unexpected mail to answer questions is an idiot, but my opinion aside this is self-selection. There is no description of what measure they took to ensure the sample was anything other than "too stupid not to click."
So now you got your panties in a bunch over "People who think it's okay to click on e-mail links don't care how technology works." Which everyone here already knew.
Re:I weep for my country by Delarth799 · 2012-08-29 11:57 · Score: 2

And then nuke it from orbit yes?
Re:I weep for my country by lobiusmoop · 2012-08-29 11:59 · Score: 1

Well, strictly speaking the cloud is 'remote storage and remote processing', which is a bit of a mouthful. Cloud is one syllable in place of several, which is more of a practicality than marketing hype IMHO.

--
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Re:I weep for my country by Em+Adespoton · 2012-08-29 12:09 · Score: 5, Funny

No, we'd nuke it from the cloud.
Re:I weep for my country by Obfuscant · 2012-08-29 12:17 · Score: 4, Insightful

Okay, despite his confusion, at least he admitted he was ignorant about the subject. At least he didn't go and form a strong opinion and start arguing about a subject he knows nothing about.

And, from reading TFA, neither did those 51% who thought that weather would interfere with the cloud. They were asked about it and they answered. They weren't protesting on the streets demanding something be done about the weather to protect their access to the cloud.

You just can't have this many adult people who hate thinking, who embrace anti-intellectualism, and expect to remain prosperous.
So you think that people who don't know what the rather nebulous concept of "the cloud" (which is quite appropriate since "clouds" are already nebulous and consist of many different kinds) is "hate thinking" etc. etc.? Quite a leap, I'd say.

They do mean well but they tend to be childish, indulgent, and haven't the maturity to overcome their own thoughts and their own worries.
And people who rant about others who simply don't care about technical things are grown up, mature individuals who are fastidious? By the way, I think you want to call them "self-indulgent", because most people are indugent of others.

I am seriously wondering just how hard it is for an American to immigrate to a small Western European nation and become a naturalized citizen.
I sense that this statement is much like the random movie or TV star who tries to influence voting trends by claiming that "if X wins, I'm moving to England" or similar. It's not hard to move to Europe, but why you'd want to become a citizen there is a mystery. You'd just be stuck in the same kind of situation where you'd threaten to "move to the US" if politics didn't go the way you wanted.
Re:I weep for my country by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 12:19 · Score: 0

Idiot
Re:I weep for my country by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 12:19 · Score: 0

Muahahaha! No more Facebook pictures for you!
Re:I weep for my country by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 12:21 · Score: 0

gNewSense.
Re:I weep for my country by icebike · 2012-08-29 12:21 · Score: 1

Well strictly speaking remote processing isn't necessary nor is it always present. Remote storage with redundancy and backup managed by others (Skydrive, dropbox) is really what most people see. If you get any remote processing (aka amazon, Azure) its probably more akin to scalable hosting.
Lumping all those different capabilities under one name helps no-one.

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Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Re:I weep for my country by sjames · 2012-08-29 12:32 · Score: 2

So how is it different from client-server? Other than "It's HIP, it's NEW, give me the mooola!".
Re:I weep for my country by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 12:40 · Score: 1

The Cloud is just a return to mainframe computing with the virtual mainframe being distributed computers and the connection being the Internet. The Cloud is subject to any and all limitations of those resources on both the client side and the server side.
Re:I weep for my country by Black+Parrot · 2012-08-29 13:03 · Score: 1

In a saner world, our educational systems would teach science and technology...
It's worse than that. If they're relying on intuition rather than education they should have concluded that storms make clouds better.
Truth is, I don't think cloud technology is very high on the list of things students need to learn.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:I weep for my country by cpu6502 · 2012-08-29 13:08 · Score: 2

>>>Okay, despite his confusion, at least he admitted he was ignorant about the subject.
Which is actually the OPPOSITE of what modern schooling teaches. The current method taught in education is that admitting you don't know will get scolded by the teacher ("Shame on you! Should have read the chapters!"). Plus it is better to GUESS on the typical mutliple choice test than leave it blank because you don't know.
So more of this government schooling would just lead to MORE of these types of answers from Americans: "Is cloud computing affected by weather?" Um.... well it's a cloud, haha. So I'll guess yes. (Surveyor writes down yes.)

--
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Re:I weep for my country by cpu6502 · 2012-08-29 13:13 · Score: 2

>>>strictly speaking the cloud is 'remote storage and remote processing', which is a bit of a mouthful
"Mainframe computing"
Term invented in the 1960s or 70s (not sure which). Why do people think it's necessary to come up with new terms for old concepts? The other day I read about something called a "plugin hybrid" that is supposed to be revolutionary leap forward in automobiles. Then I realized it's the same concept as the old 1920s Electric Cars that were sold with add-on generators. New term; old concept.

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My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Re:I weep for my country by roc97007 · 2012-08-29 13:32 · Score: 3, Insightful

> You seem to be confusing "science and technology" with "marketing buzzwords."
You are my favorite person for this week. And it's only Wednesday.

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Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Re:I weep for my country by roc97007 · 2012-08-29 13:36 · Score: 2

> In a saner world, we'd just ship all hipsters to Seattle, and be done with them.
I just now had a fantasy of a town without hipsters... Of being able to go into a coffee shop and not have to stand behind a skinny guy in a long leather jacket with a shaved head ordering a drink so complicated that the clerk has to take notes. ...and then demand in a screechy voice that she check "in the back" for whatever esoteric food item he wants that they don't have.
John Pinette voice: Get out of the liiiiine.

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Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Re:I weep for my country by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 13:38 · Score: 0

Mod me a troll if you must, but I'd expect someone that takes the position that they're more intellectually and emotionally intelligent to understand the difference between 'emigrate' and 'immigrate'.
That aside, I happen to agree with the points made in the parent post.
Re:I weep for my country by bws111 · 2012-08-29 14:18 · Score: 1

People come up with new terms because the old terms are no longer descriptive enough, or their meanings have changed over time.
In the early days of computing, there were several things in metal frames which made up a 'computer system'. This included things like card readers, card punches, tape drives, printers, etc. Of course, one of these things is the part that did all the work - the 'main frame'.
With the advent of microprocessors, the term 'main frame' was not useful, so people started calling the thing that did the work a CPU. The term 'mainframe' then became synonymous with very large computers that did not contain microprocessors. Over time, even that changed and today "mainframe" pretty much means machines running IBMs zSeries architecture. So when you say we should use the term 'mainframe computing', are you referring to an IBM zSeries machine, a large machine that doesn't use microprocessors, or a CPU? None of those are true, so we don't use that term.
Same with 'electric car'. Once upon a time that may have been descriptive enough. Today, it is not. Is an 'electric car' one that runs only on battery power (like Tesla), one that runs mostly on battery power with a generator to charge the batteries (Volt), or one that runs on either battery or electric power depending on conditions (Prius)?
Re:I weep for my country by bws111 · 2012-08-29 14:19 · Score: 1

Excellent post.
Re:I weep for my country by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 14:25 · Score: 0

Actually it's you that sounds like the moron. Weather takes out communication, data centers, Amazon, whatever all the damn time.
Re:I weep for my country by OakDragon · 2012-08-29 16:00 · Score: 4, Funny

"How the fuck should I know? I'm a biological engineer, not a goddamn weatherman!"
Is his last name "McCoy" by any chance?

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Dark Reflection
Re:I weep for my country by Will.Woodhull · 2012-08-29 16:57 · Score: 1

I do not think that 'remote storage and remote processing' is all that is involved in the cloud concept. There are also a whole lot of services: back-ups, security, hardware redundancy, even, usually, low level optimization.
Basically all the low level database activity is contracted out to specialists when a company goes to a cloud provider. That can have a tremendous impact on future IT costs.
One specific example: Going with a clould means having someone else deal with hassles of background checks for the rack monkeys. Most IT managers have little training in how to manage personnel security in these days of USB sticks, and probably do not want to learn that kind of crap. They are IT managers, dammit, not idjit HR managers.

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Will
Re:I weep for my country by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 17:54 · Score: 0

it isn't different.
Re:I weep for my country by Surt · 2012-08-29 18:49 · Score: 1

If you're talking what most people would consider 'true' cloud computing, it's client server with transparent failover redundancy with backup nodes in geographically dispersed regions.

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"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Re:I weep for my country by sjames · 2012-08-29 20:59 · Score: 1

If only. The infamous Amazon failures suggest otherwise. Of course, client-server can (but usually doesn't) have failover servers as well.
Re:I weep for my country by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 03:32 · Score: 0

Bravo sir... bravo.. now AFK while I clean up the coffee from my computer screen.
Re:I weep for my country by Surt · 2012-08-30 04:02 · Score: 1

Yeah, my point was only that traditional client server typically didn't have failover, particularly not geographically dispersed failover in case of local things like earthquake or hurricane (client server failover would have meant 'within the building'), whereas I think that's an essential part of what cloud is really supposed to mean.

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"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Re:I weep for my country by sjames · 2012-08-30 04:34 · Score: 1

At one time it was, but 'cloud' is such a nebulous term these days, just about anything and everything qualifies.
The term is now completely useless.
Re:I weep for my country by RevWaldo · 2012-08-30 05:00 · Score: 1

If a survey taker called me and asked if cloud computing was affected by weather, I'd say "well, obviously!", simply because the question was intended to be ridiculous, in a "should dihydrogen monoxide be regulated" sort of way. I wonder how many survey takers took the same tack, and whether it skewed the results.

.

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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!

Weather does affect it by Nightlight3 · 2012-08-29 10:54 · Score: 4, Informative

Recent outages of AWS and other providers demonstrate that weather does affect the "Cloud" platforms.

Re:Weather does affect it by quantaman · 2012-08-29 11:07 · Score: 0

By that metric weather affects everything, and you'd be asking a completely useless question.
Most people realize the actual question being asked is whether cloud computing is affected by weather more than other generic things, to which the answer is no, in fact it's less affected by weather than other generic things. What do you prove by deliberately misinterpreting the survey question?

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I stole this Sig
Re:Weather does affect it by outsider007 · 2012-08-29 11:34 · Score: 1

That's not the cloud's fault though, it happened on the ground!

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If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Re:Weather does affect it by Dahamma · 2012-08-29 11:40 · Score: 4, Insightful

Actually, no, it sounds like it WAS a completely useless question. Most people did NOT realize what the question being asked was about.
"54% of Americans do not know what the cloud is and claim to never have used it. ... also, another alarming number is that 51% of the surveyed Americans think that stormy weather can interfere with the functionality of the cloud."
So, if 54% surveyed had never heard the term, and and almost identical 51% surveyed who don't know it refers to computing services over the Internet, then it doesn't mean people are stupid, just uninformed, and the second number means nothing (of course, the survey doesn't mention how these numbers overlap, which makes it all the more useless).
And honestly, I would bet over 50% of those who BUILD network-based services that could be considered "in the Cloud" think the whole "Cloud" terminology is one of the stupidest things pseudo-technology journalists and marketers have foisted on the public in years. Based on the over-saturation of "the Cloud", I'm surprised everyone isn't starting to call the Internet "the Tubes"...
Re:Weather does affect it by Penurious+Penguin · 2012-08-29 12:00 · Score: 1

I wonder what affects the cloud more; the weather, or the temperament of government. I for one, welcome mother nature before her disaffected authoritarian underlords.

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Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Re:Weather does affect it by 19thNervousBreakdown · 2012-08-29 12:09 · Score: 4, Insightful

By that metric weather affects everything, and you'd be asking a completely useless question.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!

Most people realize the actual question being asked is whether cloud computing is affected by weather more than other generic things, to which the answer is no, in fact it's less affected by weather than other generic things. What do you prove by deliberately misinterpreting the survey question?
Rank the following in terms of likelihood:
1.) A person thinks cloud computing involves actual clouds.
2.) The people running the survey deliberately asked ridiculous or trick questions in order to get a sensational response that would drive readership and therefore profits.
3.) A person genuinely gave an over-literal response due to the weather's actual ability to take out a data center despite the question being intended to gauge whether a person thinks cloud computing involves actual clouds.

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<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Re:Weather does affect it by quantaman · 2012-08-29 12:13 · Score: 2

Actually, no, it sounds like it WAS a completely useless question. Most people did NOT realize what the question being asked was about.
"54% of Americans do not know what the cloud is and claim to never have used it. ... also, another alarming number is that 51% of the surveyed Americans think that stormy weather can interfere with the functionality of the cloud."
So, if 54% surveyed had never heard the term, and and almost identical 51% surveyed who don't know it refers to computing services over the Internet, then it doesn't mean people are stupid, just uninformed, and the second number means nothing (of course, the survey doesn't mention how these numbers overlap, which makes it all the more useless).
And honestly, I would bet over 50% of those who BUILD network-based services that could be considered "in the Cloud" think the whole "Cloud" terminology is one of the stupidest things pseudo-technology journalists and marketers have foisted on the public in years. Based on the over-saturation of "the Cloud", I'm surprised everyone isn't starting to call the Internet "the Tubes"...
People have different definitions about what it means to know what something is, if you ask me if I know what a guava I'm aware that it's a fruit, and I know it's supposed to be nutritious, but if you asked me to pick out one from a set of unfamiliar fruits my odds would be no better than chance. Should I say I know what it is or not?
We know that 54% of people feel like they don't know what cloud computing is, we also know that 51% of people are so uniformed that they think cloud computing has something to do with weather. These questions are testing different things, and while an overlap would be very nice, we can still surmise that the public is both largely uninformed, and aware of the fact they're uninformed, or there were a lot of people being smartasses and saying the cloud is affected by weather because everything is.

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I stole this Sig
Re:Weather does affect it by Obfuscant · 2012-08-29 12:26 · Score: 1

Should I say I know what it is or not?
Since you've just admitted that you know what it is, the honest answer would be 'yes'. Now, if the question was "do you know what it looks like?", you'd have to say "no".
You can ask someone if they know what a Pontiac Grand Pre is (it is a CAR), but they might have no idea how to pick one out of a used-car lot.

We know that 54% of people feel like they don't know what cloud computing is, we also know that 51% of people are so uniformed that they think cloud computing has something to do with weather.
No, we don't know that. The question was whether is was affected by the weather. A Pontiac Grand Pre doesn't have "something to do with the weather", but it certainly can be affected by the weather. (The gas milage of most cars is affected by the density of the air, and thus the weather. Icy roads will make driving a Pontiac Grand Pre harder.)
Re:Weather does affect it by Obfuscant · 2012-08-29 12:29 · Score: 1

And yes, after seeing it posted, I do know it is Prix.
Re:Weather does affect it by quantaman · 2012-08-29 12:37 · Score: 1

Should I say I know what it is or not?
Since you've just admitted that you know what it is, the honest answer would be 'yes'. Now, if the question was "do you know what it looks like?", you'd have to say "no".
"Nutritious fruit" isn't a particularly descriptive label, if I had the idea the other person knew anything about gauvas my answer to the question "Do you know what a guava is?" would probably be "not really".

You can ask someone if they know what a Pontiac Grand Pre is (it is a CAR), but they might have no idea how to pick one out of a used-car lot.

We know that 54% of people feel like they don't know what cloud computing is, we also know that 51% of people are so uniformed that they think cloud computing has something to do with weather.
No, we don't know that. The question was whether is was affected by the weather. A Pontiac Grand Pre doesn't have "something to do with the weather", but it certainly can be affected by the weather. (The gas milage of most cars is affected by the density of the air, and thus the weather. Icy roads will make driving a Pontiac Grand Pre harder.)
I was assuming that's why the gave the answer, I could be mistaken. Really I think I better questions would be "Is cloud computing related to weather?" and then we wouldn't be having this debate.

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I stole this Sig
Re:Weather does affect it by sjames · 2012-08-29 12:37 · Score: 1

It IS more affected by weather than keeping the server on the LAN. It DOUBLES the odds that weather will bring operations to a halt.
Meanwhile, NORAD and nuclear subs are quite unlikely to be seriously affected by weather.
The question was supposed to be "hurrr hurrr look what the stupid monkeys think" but in fact, it was a stupid question.
Re:Weather does affect it by sjames · 2012-08-29 12:41 · Score: 2

A ground fault can certainly be a danger...
It's absolutely shocking how often they turn up.
I'll be here all week, try the waitress
Re:Weather does affect it by Obfuscant · 2012-08-29 13:03 · Score: 1

"Nutritious fruit" isn't a particularly descriptive label,

And the question wasn't "can you describe a guava", it was "do you know what one is". "A fruit" is the correct answer, nutritious or not. The answer to the question that was asked is "yes".

if I had the idea the other person knew anything about gauvas my answer to the question "Do you know what a guava is?" would probably be "not really".
Do you judge your knowledge of something against what you think the other person knows all the time? Would you tell Mario Andretti, were he to ask you "do you know how to drive?" that "no, I don't"? Poor guy, if everyone did that, he'd never be able to use a cab or hire a limo.

Really I think I better questions would be "Is cloud computing related to weather?" and then we wouldn't be having this debate.
I'm still wondering why we're having this debate, because I'm wondering why a stupid poll intended to make "cloud" look more relevant and important and to sell "cloud services" to more IT people is worth discussing here. Worthless questions that don't say anything about anything, but can be spun to make Joe Average American look stupid by a techology based blog. That's the only "stuff that's important" I can see here.
Re:Weather does affect it by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 13:22 · Score: 0

Yes, the survey is damn useless; not hard to see that when the correct answer is still counted as an incorrect one. Something like asking if a character named Frankenstein exists in the book of the same name, and using the answers to claim most people don't know the monster's name isn't Frankenstein.
Re:Weather does affect it by quantaman · 2012-08-29 13:31 · Score: 2

"Nutritious fruit" isn't a particularly descriptive label,
And the question wasn't "can you describe a guava", it was "do you know what one is". "A fruit" is the correct answer, nutritious or not. The answer to the question that was asked is "yes".

if I had the idea the other person knew anything about gauvas my answer to the question "Do you know what a guava is?" would probably be "not really".
Do you judge your knowledge of something against what you think the other person knows all the time? Would you tell Mario Andretti, were he to ask you "do you know how to drive?" that "no, I don't"? Poor guy, if everyone did that, he'd never be able to use a cab or hire a limo.
Questions are defined by their context, if Mario Andretti was drunk at a party, and looking for a ride home, I'd say yes, if we were at a race track I'd probably say no since he was probably really asking "Do you know how to drive a race car?"

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I stole this Sig
Re:Weather does affect it by yakovlev · 2012-08-29 15:07 · Score: 1

2 is absolutely first. The question was intentionally misleading.

As to 1 or 3, I think your description of 3 misrepresents the truth. If the person being asked didn't understand that the question was meant to make them look stupid, they might have thought: "Gee, one of the problems of cloud computing is that I don't control the actual datacenter, it's nowhere near my users, and I don't control the level of redundancy. This makes it more susceptible to certain weather-related problems than if my datacenter is in-house. Thus, I could honestly answer that weather-related problems can be one of the disadvantages to cloud computing."

My guess is that about 25% of people who know what cloud computing is would answer that it's affected by the weather, and about 25% who don't would guess that it doesn't have anything to do with the weather. Since about 50% know what cloud computing is, about 50% answered the weather question "yes."
Re:Weather does affect it by Anarchduke · 2012-08-29 17:26 · Score: 1

You would probably say "yes". Then when you crashed his race car you would say, "You didn't ask me if I could drive it well."

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who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
Re:Weather does affect it by potpie · 2012-08-29 23:50 · Score: 1

If we combine the two statistics, we should arrive at a useful number. I have done the maths, and it seems that 105% of Americans are uninformed about the cloud. But now, being an American, I am forced to look at myself in this new light. I, for one, have looked at clouds from both sides now, from up and down and still somehow it's clouds' illusions I recall. I really don't know clouds at all.

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Esoteric reference.
Re:Weather does affect it by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 01:20 · Score: 0

A ground fault can certainly be a danger...
It's absolutely shocking how often they turn up.
I'll be here all week, try the waitress
California has lots of ground faults. Every so often they really shake things up.
Re:Weather does affect it by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 01:37 · Score: 0

Don't rain on my cloud parade.
Re:Weather does affect it by ArsenneLupin · 2012-08-30 01:52 · Score: 1

if Mario Andretti was drunk at a party, and looking for a ride home, I'd say yes,
Baaaaad choice. He might just pull the hand-brake on you at critical times, in order to help you make bootleg turns...
Re:Weather does affect it by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · 2012-08-30 02:36 · Score: 1

Most people realize the actual question being asked is whether cloud computing is affected by weather more than other generic things, to which the answer is no, in fact it's less affected by weather than other generic things.
I'd assume the question is, "does using cloud computing increase or decrease the effects of weather. And I would answer that it increases the effects. More components/connections, more points of failure. Given roof integrity, my UPSes and laptop batteries can keep me chugging through an actual storm. But my internet connection is more fragile than my power connectivity (modem needs power + connection).
Now, if I wasn't doing something on the computer, just running some multi-day calculation, then the Cloud would be safer. But that requires a totally arcane reading of the question.

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Your ad here. Ask me how!
Re:Weather does affect it by quantaman · 2012-08-30 05:46 · Score: 1

More likely you'd be wondering "does using cloud computing significantly increase or decrease the effects of weather", and since you're talking about events big enough to cause power outages or loss of internet connection I'd say no. Your interpretation is also very dependent on your specific use of the cloud, using Google docs would increase your dependence on the weather, but using AWS to host your site would decrease it, and the fact that Google docs lives on a cloud, and has less vulnerability to local outages as a results, also decreases it. That's why I don't think many people would use your reading, because it changes so easily depending on the scenario.

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I stole this Sig
Re:Weather does affect it by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · 2012-09-05 05:09 · Score: 1

Depends on the city. My internet (major US city) goes out several times a month for hours due to poor weather. The power does not.
And yes, I did admit the usage matters. But I don't believe anyone on the planet would refer to offsite hosting as "in the cloud". That phrase seems reserved for moving desktop activities to a client/server relationship.

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Your ad here. Ask me how!

I am more worried about the 49%... by MarcoAtWork · 2012-08-29 10:54 · Score: 4, Insightful

... that believes that the cloud is this magical place disconnected from the utility grid, immune to lightning strikes, floods, storm surges, etc. etc.

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-- the cake is a lie

Re:I am more worried about the 49%... by epyT-R · 2012-08-29 10:56 · Score: 2

Marketing can be blamed for that 49%.
Re:I am more worried about the 49%... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 11:21 · Score: 0

Thank you!! exactly! The cloud IS effected by weather...Everything is!
Re:I am more worried about the 49%... by DigiShaman · 2012-08-29 11:36 · Score: 1

Fuck the cloud. All my data is in Heaven administered by God! Nothing can go wrong. Everything is where it should be. Simply perfect.
"Heaven. Are you good enough?"

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Life is not for the lazy.
Re:I am more worried about the 49%... by vux984 · 2012-08-29 11:40 · Score: 1

Exactly... At first blush, as someone in IT, my gut would be a resounding "yes".
One of the big "risk factors" I attach to cloud and any offsite solutions is that they are by definition only accessible when internet connectivity is established.
Generally the ONLY time my office internet access goes down is during bad weather. Snow, wind, lightning can take down internet. My choices here are satellite, ADSL, and fixed point-to-point wireless. And all 3 are disrupted by enough snow, wind, rain, and lightning. All of which happen here enough to ensure that weather not merely "may" affect any cloud services we use, but absolutely "WILL".
And that's just my local internet, and doesn't get into the only slightly more abstract premise that wherever the offsite computing is actually taking place can also be hit with severe weather.
Re:I am more worried about the 49%... by PRMan · 2012-08-29 12:21 · Score: 2

Fuck the cloud. All my data is in Heaven administered by God! Nothing can go wrong. Everything is where it should be. Simply perfect.
"Heaven. Are you good enough?"
I've heard that God doesn't take care of data for people with such foul mouths....

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Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Re:I am more worried about the 49%... by cffrost · 2012-08-29 13:15 · Score: 2

Fuck the cloud. All my data is in Heaven administered by God! Nothing can go wrong. Everything is where it should be. Simply perfect.
Rationalizing disk failure won't bring your data back.

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Thank you, Edward Snowden.

"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Re:I am more worried about the 49%... by Quinn_Inuit · 2012-08-29 15:17 · Score: 3, Funny

Fuck the cloud. All my data is in Heaven administered by God! Nothing can go wrong. Everything is where it should be. Simply perfect.
Rationalizing disk failure won't bring your data back.
Just wait three days.

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Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
Re:I am more worried about the 49%... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 15:44 · Score: 0

And they believe it was created in 6 days only 6000 years ago.
Re:I am more worried about the 49%... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 16:32 · Score: 0

Your god is narrow minded? My condolences
Re:I am more worried about the 49%... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 18:13 · Score: 0

Ah, the first group of posts which actually seems to be discussing the story.
I'd like to direct everyone's attention to what was actually asked of people. Document here: http://www.citrix.com/site/resources/dynamic/additional/Cloud_Survey_What_is_the_Cloud_Responses.pdf

... reveals some creative responses when Americans are asked: “whats the first word or phrase that comes to mind when they hear the term the cloud?”
First, this "study" looks like shit, there doesn't seem to be an actual writeup just a bunch of flashy documents and press release type info.
Second, I'd like to point out that in the survey, it was not called "The Cloud" but rather "the cloud"... note the lower case letters.
Third, after the initial response was given, they then gave the people some kind of definition and asked further questions. I have not yet found anything which details their methodology or what specifically was given or asked.
Basically this is no different than some smug reporter ambushing random people on the street and asking them vague questions about relatively obscure terms, and then going "OMG, people are SO stupid!" The whole thing appears to be a steaming pile of fecal material which doesn't tell us anything more than: "Buzzwords popular among industry insiders which use common words to mean different things tend to confuse laymen."
Re:I am more worried about the 49%... by bickerdyke · 2012-08-29 19:52 · Score: 1

I believe that it SHOULD be! Virtualization is the thing that's new. One of your datacenters burns down? Transfer your VM instance to another one. High load? Automatically start a new instance (in some unknown datacenter...). Low load? Shout down instances or dynamically decrease ressource allocation to your VM and save money.
Everything else is nothing but a plain old datacenter.

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bickerdyke
Re:I am more worried about the 49%... by The+Moof · 2012-08-30 01:17 · Score: 1

All my data is in Heaven administered by God!

Yea, sure, that's great and all, until some jackass angel goes all "Why do you like humans more than us? We want free will too!" and Hell literally breaks loose and Heaven becomes a war zone.
Re:I am more worried about the 49%... by DigiShaman · 2012-08-30 02:10 · Score: 1

It's in Heaven. How can death and failure happen in Heaven?!
j/k

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Life is not for the lazy.

Also in the news by colin_faber · 2012-08-29 10:55 · Score: 5, Funny

Surveys suggest most surveys are wrong :)

Re:Also in the news by xevioso · 2012-08-29 11:19 · Score: 2

Statistics show otherwise.
Re:Also in the news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 11:42 · Score: 0

The Cloud only affects people in metallic structures.
Hence Log Cabin republicans, who have found immunity to conventional reality.
Re:Also in the news by newcastlejon · 2012-08-29 12:01 · Score: 2

Most surveys aren't wrong; they're purposefully designed to yield a particular result (usually one that sells newspapers).

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If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Re:Also in the news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 23:34 · Score: 0

However, 87% of all statistics are made up ad hoc.
Re:Also in the news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 04:39 · Score: 0

Surveys suggest most surveys are wrong :)
That's paradox

Per the newspaper of record, it does. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 10:56 · Score: 2, Informative

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/amazon-web-services-knocked-offline-by-storms/

Ehh by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 10:56 · Score: 1

It's a stupid Marketing Buzzword anyway. Call it what it really is: "Storing-your-data-in-small-amounts-spread-out-across-many-thousands-of-computers-on-the-Internet"

not so glamorous now is it?!

Cloud is affected by weather by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 10:56 · Score: 0

The 51% are right, in many cases. For instance, where I live most people are on some sort of wireless connection which goes completely to crap during lightning storms. Any data in the cloud is pretty much unavailable during those times. Ditto during snow storms. In the past /. has covered news stories about data centres being knocked off-line, some I suspect due to tropical storms.

So, yes, in several cases cloud storage and services are affected by the weather.

or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / cab by Joe_Dragon · 2012-08-29 10:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / cable lines.

Also stormy weather can take down your cable line even if you still have power in your area the cables from your place to the headend may have areas with no power and dead battery (they don't have the number of needed portable generators to cover all of them) in the nodes.

DSL works better and the phone RT's (Remote Terminals) and central offices have a better power backup system.

Ironically by JWW · 2012-08-29 11:00 · Score: 2

Ironically, one of the bigger outages we had where our AWS instances went down was due to ..... weather.

time to add to the ever growing by nimbius · 2012-08-29 11:01 · Score: 2

BOFH collection, which includes but is not limited to:
blade computing requires routine sharpening
grid computing can sometimes get out of alignment and needs to be centered and degaussed sometimes
clustered computing includes a creamy nougat center
network degradation can be attributed to stains on the network fabric that didnt come out after the last wash
the datacenter certification plaque specifies the air pressure for the tires as well as the type of oil to be used in the cloud

--
Good people go to bed earlier.

Re:time to add to the ever growing by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 11:45 · Score: 0

BOFH collection, which includes but is not limited to:
blade computing requires routine sharpening
grid computing can sometimes get out of alignment and needs to be centered and degaussed sometimes
clustered computing includes a creamy nougat center
network degradation can be attributed to stains on the network fabric that didnt come out after the last wash
the datacenter certification plaque specifies the air pressure for the tires as well as the type of oil to be used in the cloud
We might as well include chemtrails and HAARP effecting Cloud Computing as well, since these are man-made affecters of weather.
Which reminds me about another "weather" connection to Cloud Computing: NSA/Google's WC datacenter is powered by photovoltaic panels and can be seriously degraded by bad weather, including chemtrails which can reduce power output significantly. I'm waiting expectantly for a false flag terror attack directed against NSA/Google where somebody hijacks a cropduster, loads up on black paint, and destroys $millions worth of photovoltaics without realizing that the power grid and backup generators would be available, albeit at much greater expense -- think of the carbon credits NSA/Google would lose.

Bad Title by CanHasDIY · 2012-08-29 11:01 · Score: 2

should read:

Survey Reveals a Majority Know "the Cloud" Is Affected by Weather, Along With Pretty Much Everything Else

--
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese

Stormy weather DOES affect cloud computing by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 11:01 · Score: 0

You obviously didn't watch Artem's talk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ8s1JwtNas

Re:Stormy weather DOES affect cloud computing by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 11:07 · Score: 0

For the uninitiated: Bit flips in computer RAM happen at a predictable rate due to heat, cosmic radiation, lightning & other EM, and other causes. Heat & lightning are directly correlated with storms. Additionally, cloud computing causes bit errors in DNS names, an attack Artem dubs bitsquatting, to become vastly more impactful, a fact he demonstrates when a bitsquat attack affected Zynga's cloud, redirecting thousands of Farmville users to an attacker controlled site.
Conclusion, storms directly affect cloud security, and 51% of America know Artem is the bomb.

Satellite rain fade by tepples · 2012-08-29 11:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

Or when you're stuck out in BFE where cable and DSL aren't available and rain fade hurts your satellite connection. Not that people who rely on satellite would use "the Cloud" anyway because of the single digit GB/mo caps typical of satellite Internet service.

Re:Satellite rain fade by MagusSlurpy · 2012-08-29 11:06 · Score: 5, Funny

Or when the rain provides enough interference that you can no longer poorly piggy-back on your neighbor's WiFi.

--
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Re:Satellite rain fade by aurispector · 2012-08-30 00:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

Or when people find stupid survey questions amusing and deliberately answer them incorrectly.

--
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.

Obligatory Onion story... by digitalaudiorock · 2012-08-29 11:03 · Score: 4, Funny

http://www.theonion.com/video/hp-on-that-cloud-thing-that-everyone-else-is-talki,28789/

85% of the so-called by Archfeld · 2012-08-29 11:04 · Score: 1

professionals don't know what cloud computing is either, so all-in-all things are about the same as the always were..

--
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?

Re:85% of the so-called by Anarchduke · 2012-08-29 17:29 · Score: 1

Of course we know what it is. Its the thing we mention to pad our bills.

--
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain

Packet storms by WaffleMonster · 2012-08-29 11:04 · Score: 4, Interesting

Funny they list facebook, twitter, online photo sharing, online banking and shopping as "the cloud". It would be interesting to hear from TFA what on the Internet does not count as "the cloud" ?

Had noticed TFA is making fun of people who think stormy weather can "interfere with the functionality of the cloud" when just a few weeks ago an electrical storm triggered a massive outage in the Amazon "cloud".

For icing on my cloud cake we have marketeers commenting about how everyone has a favorable view of the cloud when the only thing that seems clear is too many people including the author does not seem to have a coherent grasp of what it is their talking about.

Re:Packet storms by Chris+Mattern · 2012-08-29 12:19 · Score: 1

It would be interesting to hear from TFA what on the Internet does not count as "the cloud" ?
Absolutely nothing. "The Cloud" is the in, new buzzword, and thus Marketing is making sure that whatever they're selling, it's part of The Cloud. Coming your way, Cloud-enabled galoshes! You can order them over the Internet!
Re:Packet storms by c++0xFF · 2012-08-30 03:15 · Score: 1

Considering that many network diagrams use a cloud to represent the internet, whatever definition TFA uses could be right in a way. But, the term has come to mean something else in recent years ... although the definition is still a bit nebulous (pun intended).
What bothers me is that Citrix commissioned the survey. I would think that they, of all people, would understand what "The Cloud" has come to mean (hint: not "The Internet").
Re:Packet storms by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 08:01 · Score: 0

Why is that funny? They're internet-based services provided to a large group of users, most of which all for storage.

Stupid Buzzword by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 11:05 · Score: 1

HA!

Take that stupid new buzzword for dumb terminal computing.

But they are not entirely wrong. by Nadaka · 2012-08-29 11:07 · Score: 2

Bad weather can knock "the cloud" offline or make access unreliable, Bad weather can knock down suspended power and data lines, interrupting access between you and the cloud. It can flood service tunnels, basement and first floor switches and short out improperly sealed equipment.

And if you access the cloud over wireless by Radical+Moderate · 2012-08-29 11:10 · Score: 1

stormy weather can degrade the quality of your connection.

--
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.

Rain... by Sean_Inconsequential · 2012-08-29 11:10 · Score: 1

To be fair, when it rains, the internet at my house goes out when it rains. Maybe all of these 51% of people surveyed live in the ghetto too?

I'm all metaPHOR it by Crypto+Gnome · 2012-08-29 11:11 · Score: 1

The Cloud is *such* a wonderful metaphor, especially good for Joe Average Citizen who never had any ph0rkin idea what went on "on the internet" in the first place.

Not only is The Cloud impacted by weather (lightning strikes, electrical failures, overheating Data Centres etc) but it also has a non-trivial impact on Global Climate.

Scientists are still debating whether it's a net INCREASE or DECREASE in global temperature (DCs can be MUCH more power efficient than individual businesses running their own server farms both thermally and electrically, economies of scale, power-efficient DCs, Green Power DCs etc).

--
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.

Phone and Cable Lines often go dark in storms by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 11:11 · Score: 0

Phone and Cable Lines often go dark in storms around here.

OTOH, chipmonks have brought the internet down more often and for more outages than anything else.

Chipmonks take down the cloud here!

Make sense. by Nyder · 2012-08-29 11:17 · Score: 1

I play EQ2, quite often someone will say, we are having thunderstorms, might lose power.

So, all those people who lose power to storms might just think that the cloud can lose power in storms.

I know better, but I also live in a city, and don't tend to lose power.

--
Be seeing you...

Re:Make sense. by vux984 · 2012-08-29 11:50 · Score: 1

So, all those people who lose power to storms might just think that the cloud can lose power in storms.
Anything that interferes with the internet between you and the service disrupts your ability to use the service. Weather impacts on internet links both big and small all the time. Are the actual computers running the service likely to go down? No... but a lightning strike on their internet connection... or yours... or any link between you will make them as good as down.

51% responders live in Louisiana by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 11:17 · Score: 1

51% of surveyed live in Louisiana and New Orleans.

"On Somebody Else's Computer". by wanderfowl · 2012-08-29 11:20 · Score: 5, Insightful

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Every instance of "In the Cloud", facing a naive end user, should be replaced with "On somebody else's computer". This study shows that people have absolutely no idea what The Cloud is, and that might, just maybe, be affecting their choice of what to upload to it. "I keep our business records in the cloud" sounds sane, but “Oh, don’t worry, all of our business information is backed up on somebody else’s computer” doesn't.

Re:"On Somebody Else's Computer". by TheWoozle · 2012-08-29 13:06 · Score: 1

Are you going to start adding "in somebody else's airplane" when you say "fly"? Are you going to say "place my life in someone else's hands" instead of "going to the doctor" (or "drive to work" for that matter)?
I've seen this meme about lack of control over your data "in the cloud" on Slashdot for a while, and frankly, it's ridiculous. Every day, you place your financial future, your health, and your life in the hands of complete strangers. Sometimes that trust is justified and sometimes it is not, but what you're advocating is the same as refusing to eat at restaurants, use public transportation, put your money in banks, or do just about anything else in modern civilization that requires that someone else do something for you.

--
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
Re:"On Somebody Else's Computer". by starfishsystems · 2012-08-29 13:38 · Score: 3, Informative

A useful distinction can be made between Public Cloud and Private Cloud, and it puts the matter on firmer technical ground.

Private Cloud is when the hardware is yours. It lives inside your firewall and is subject to your security practices. Public Cloud, conversely, is not yours.

Having cleared up that detail, we can talk about what makes it a "cloud" and not just a bunch of services running who-really-cares-where. Essentially, it comes about as a consequence of virtualization. There's a qualitative difference between saying, "I need to buy a server with X capacity in order to run my application," and creating an instance of your application in a cloud. Yes, they both ultimately depend on hardware capacity, but there is a separation of concerns between the abstract resources that your app needs and how they are physically provided. You tend not to think about servers any more but about instances of things. It encourages a more modular, more fluid way of solving problems.

For example, I've been talking with one of my colleagues this week about setting up a package repository. That's a server which delivers software packages for clients to install. New packages have to be added to the repository automatically, and they have to be signed. Now, this raises the awkward question of where to maintain the private key used for signing each change to the repository. We found ourselves having to rule out all of the possible algorithmic options. The essential requirement is that the signing has to be encapsulated inside something that can peform computations. What we really need is a specially hardened server that does nothing but sign changes to the repo. But who can afford to buy a whole server just for that one narrow purpose? If the server is virtual, the resource issue goes away.

Of course, other issues remain. Just as there is an inherent security risk in having unrestricted access to a physical server, there is risk in having comparable access to a virtual server. In principle, disaster recovery in a virtualized environment ought to be more robust than in a physical one, because you can maintain a perfect digital record of everything that went into creating that environment. But even if you keep that record offsite in multiple bank vaults, if you have never tried to actually bring up and test a virtual environment with it, you may be in for a big surprise.

So I don't want to do what the marketing people do and say that cloud solutions are magically wonderful. There's a useful separation of concerns in a cloud solution that, I believe, leads to a more elegant way of approaching design problems. And there's a big difference between private and public cloud that the people selling public cloud services don't really like to talk about. As to whether a cloud solution has specific advantages for you, I think one of the most surprising results is that it comes with a change of thinking.

--
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Re:"On Somebody Else's Computer". by SecurityGuy · 2012-08-29 14:29 · Score: 1

You're missing the point a bit. "The Cloud" is talked about like it's some magic, infalliable bit of technology, or from the contract side, like you simply sign a piece of paper and all the downside is now someone else's problem. There *can* be some almost magic, incredibly resilient thing called "The Cloud", but there's also it's toothless kid brother, which is simply your data or app running on someone else's server. Sometimes it's important to know the difference. Calling them both "the cloud" is deceptive.
Re:"On Somebody Else's Computer". by bickerdyke · 2012-08-29 19:59 · Score: 1

Yes. But people *KNOW* that they're putting their live in their doctors hands - and that that's the smarter choice.
But "in the cloud" tends to hide that underlying fact unlike e.g. "my data is on AWS servers" wouldn't do.

--
bickerdyke
Re:"On Somebody Else's Computer". by bws111 · 2012-08-30 02:03 · Score: 1

Oh nonsense. Everyone who is using the cloud knows perfectly well that the data is someone else's servers - it is the whole reason they use the cloud in the first place. Are you really trying to claim that people sign up for 'Amazon Cloud Services' (or whatever it is called) for the purposes of getting more storage, doing backups, whatever, log on to 'Amazon Cloud Services', upload to 'Amazon Cloud Services', and aren't aware that they are sending their data to Amazon? Bullshit.
Now, it may be perfectly true that they have not thoroughly thought out the implications of storing their data at Amazon, and maybe they are too trusting of Amazon, but claiming they didn't KNOW they were using Amazon is just plain stupid. On the other hand, they may indeed have thought it through, and decided that storing their data on somebodies else's servers is no different than dropping the days cash receipts into a little slot in somebody else's building.
Re:"On Somebody Else's Computer". by bickerdyke · 2012-08-30 02:12 · Score: 1

Amzon cloud service: yes.
Dropbox and facebook (which somehow are cloud services too, at least by the definition of TFA): no
Google Apps and other business services: not sure.

--
bickerdyke

The Root Cause of This Belief... by theshowmecanuck · 2012-08-29 11:24 · Score: 2

The root cause of this belief is what allows companies to sell cloud computing.

--
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.

Pretty Stupid, but... by fm6 · 2012-08-29 11:27 · Score: 1

Yeah, most people are clueless about the Internet. But that said, it's also true that polls are easily skewed by the wording of a poll question, or the way it is asked.

So what... by HockeyPuck · 2012-08-29 11:30 · Score: 2

ahahah let's all laugh at the ignorance of the masses... I'm sure there are plenty of lawyers/doctors/plumbers that laugh at the /. crowd for their lack of knowledge...

Most people in IT can't agree on the same definition of cloud, or what it is and what it is not. Is cloud an application, infrastructure, platform, API? It can be.

In other news...

Most Americans think RAID is a bug spray.

Re:So what... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 12:56 · Score: 0

In further news...
RAID is not a backup solution!*
*or so I've heard via absurd rants on /.
Re:So what... by Anarchduke · 2012-08-29 17:35 · Score: 1

When everyone in IT knows that a RAID is when the Feds bust in arrest Kim Dot Com and shut down the Cloud.

--
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
Re:So what... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 17:50 · Score: 0

We can't agree because we have not created the term: "the cloud".
At the moment (since the definition is getting wider and wider) the cloud basically means; another computer, or set of computers, connected to a network (not just the Internet) than the one I am currently sitting behind. And I am sure they will expand "the cloud" beyond even this definition.
Re:So what... by Neil+Boekend · 2012-08-29 21:15 · Score: 1

Well, neither of them are backup solutions so they have something in common.

--
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.

It does mine by nurb432 · 2012-08-29 11:37 · Score: 1

As weather effects my cable connection ..

--
---- Booth was a patriot ----

Re:It does mine by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-31 01:21 · Score: 0

Your cable connection is caused by the weather? You must have some really funky weather where you live...
Oh, you meant "As weather affects my cable connection ..", never mind then.

Key European Computing Hub in Ireland Outage 2011 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 11:40 · Score: 2, Informative

Yes, a huge data center in Ireland was knocked out by a severe storm last year, causing major disruptions. Why people seem to think Cloud computing = distributed computing I have no idea. See http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/08/07/lightning-in-dublin-knocks-amazon-microsoft-data-centers-offline/

Random binary distribution FTW! by conspirator23 · 2012-08-29 11:44 · Score: 2

51%? So what this tells me is that a majority of respondents didn't understand enough to care, or didn't care enough to understand and provided random answers. This is what happens when you take squishy social science methodologies and put them in the hands of even squishier marketing consultancies. Just bend the scientific method over and shove a white paper up it's ass.

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by ibsteve2u · 2012-08-29 11:46 · Score: 3, Informative

Roger that...there are still Telco lines out there that are wick...eh, I mean paper insulated "dry" core.

--
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"

Weather Schmether; What about Wilhelm Riech? by Penurious+Penguin · 2012-08-29 11:47 · Score: 1

Fear the couldbusters!

--
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012

Weather affects other tech... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 11:47 · Score: 0

The weather affects TV, mobile phones and other radio networks. It's called "rain fade". There's "sun fade" too!

Since the access network is part of "The Cloud", the local weather conditions affect "The Cloud".

Many people get their Internet over their satellite TV connection, and many more over radio networks (fixed or mobile). If their network connection goes down because of rain (or sun), the cloud goes down because of the rain.

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by MrLint · 2012-08-29 11:50 · Score: 3, Funny

I was told once by the cable crew who came to fix my cable, that because of squirrels eating at the cable, water had leaked in. As it was a 3 pole run,, some stupid amount of *gallons* of water poured out of the cable.

Half the population by Cute+Fuzzy+Bunny · 2012-08-29 11:51 · Score: 1

Half the population also believes in all sorts of things when they shouldn't.

I wonder how much overlap there is between the various stupid halves? Anyone have a venn diagram?

Re:Half the population by Anarchduke · 2012-08-29 17:36 · Score: 1

Yes. The half that is considered stupid is always the other half of the diagram you are part of. Unfortunately the venn diagram of humanity has perfectly overlapping circles.

--
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain

Really? by Cute+and+Cuddly · 2012-08-29 12:00 · Score: 0

Because I have been told that Sun Microsystems was lots of tiny hot balls of fire.....

Arthur c Clark is alive and well... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 12:02 · Score: 0

His famous quote is very true: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

We have reached, and surpassed, the point where most people understand much of how our everyday world works.

Standing up The Cloud recently by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 12:06 · Score: 0

Just recently we started bringing up an internal cloud. After we begun to bring up VM's and attach storage to it, the first thing I thought was, "1) in no less than 2 weeks this will go to production, 2) how will it behave under a power outage, and 3) why am I not being paid more now for this new company convenience when it is no less than a growing nightmare for me".

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by The+Grim+Reefer · 2012-08-29 12:14 · Score: 5, Funny

I was told once by the cable crew who came to fix my cable, that because of squirrels eating at the cable, water had leaked in. As it was a 3 pole run,, some stupid amount of *gallons* of water poured out of the cable.

I had a cable guy try to tell me that the plasma in a plasma TV was the same as the plasma in human blood. I gave up trying to explain it to him as he was pretty adamant about it. I can only imagine how he thought the manufacturers got it.

Re:Key European Computing Hub in Ireland Outage 20 by Un+pobre+guey · 2012-08-29 12:20 · Score: 2

This cloud== distributed computing. Everyone else? Not so much.

Why shouldn't they? by petsounds · 2012-08-29 12:21 · Score: 1

"Cloud" computing was always rooted in meaningless sales jargon created by the same kind of non-tech people in the tech industry who gave us all the other pundit phrases you read at VentureBeat et al. It's a snappy one-syllable name, so all the marketing monkeys at other tech companies soon caught on, then Apple introduced iCloud, and now we're stuck with this bullshit for a good five years. Until "Coconut" or something else catches on.

Expecting an average person to know that "Cloud" doesn't actually mean that data isn't beamed from satellites or something, but instead is just an esoteric, ham-fisted metaphor for centralized data storage is a tall order. Tower of Babel in the clouds tall.

Stormy Weather affects the Cloud? by RNLockwood · 2012-08-29 12:54 · Score: 2

No way! I don't know if Stormy Weather is alive but if she is she must be in her 70s. Bump, grind, BUMP - there goes another server off line! More bumps, grinds, etc and whoops there goes her top. What a rack! STACK OVERFLOW.

--
Nate

Survey Reveals Survey Flunks Statistics by sillivalley · 2012-08-29 12:55 · Score: 1

Right off the bat -- 51% of those surveyed?

That's not especially overwhelming, to start with.

But what is the sample size? Number of responses? ANY information on the statistical validity of this piece of shit "news" release?

Yeah, people are stupid; we knew that already.

And that class includes the folks who put together this steaming pile!

Re:Survey Reveals Survey Flunks Statistics by bickerdyke · 2012-08-29 20:23 · Score: 1

N=1000
RTFA

--
bickerdyke

In their defense... by damn_registrars · 2012-08-29 12:58 · Score: 1

The term "cloud" is not the greatest choice. Surely something more tangible and meaningful could have been selected somewhere along the way.

--
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.

Re:In their defense... by Legion303 · 2012-08-29 13:42 · Score: 1

Something like "The Internet," perhaps.
Re:In their defense... by SecurityGuy · 2012-08-29 14:32 · Score: 1

My kingdom for mod points!
Re:In their defense... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 14:48 · Score: 0

like, "the internet". i want credit for that one

That's not the only worry by jc42 · 2012-08-29 12:59 · Score: 2

We just had a cloudless day around here. I wonder how well cloud computing works on such days. How would parts of the cloud communicate with each other?

--
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by Obfuscant · 2012-08-29 13:04 · Score: 5, Informative

I can only imagine how he thought the manufacturers got it.

It's what's left over after they make Soylent Green. By-product.

Not surprised by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 13:07 · Score: 0

Doesn't surprise me...if anyone has the same experience I have had with my cable/internet, without being tech-savvy, then I'm actually surprised that number isn't a lot higher. If it thunderstorms, gets windy or just a rain shower comes by I can count on choppy satellite tv and an internet that comes and goes.

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 13:09 · Score: 0

A friend of mine had bad connects whenever it rained. When the repaiman arrived he got a garden hose to help look for the break in the cable. The repaiman told him he had found the problem a few houses over...a bullet in an overhead cable. My friend lived in a bad neighborhood at the time.

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by roc97007 · 2012-08-29 13:30 · Score: 5, Informative

Had I mod points, I'd mod this informative just to see people's reaction.

--
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.

Easy... by denzacar · 2012-08-29 13:33 · Score: 1

One other thing, how do I distinguish clowd clowns from regular clowns?

They spurt green ichor instead of blood when you cut their head off.

--
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by Joe_Dragon · 2012-08-29 13:51 · Score: 1

wow a real bullet in a cable line the other type is long gone after the analog days ended.

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by MaskedSlacker · 2012-08-29 14:24 · Score: 1

I told you to stop lurking at my bedroom window. I'm going to have get the gimp out again...

Reddit Repost by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 14:32 · Score: 0

Has anyone else noticed that Slashdot is just regurgitated Reddit posts?

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by overlordofmu · 2012-08-29 14:45 · Score: 1

Worked in cable once upon a time. People shooting the cables is relatively common and it is typically an intentional act. There is a large percentage of the population that hates the cable company.

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 14:49 · Score: 0

My gimp died; the defib paddles, butane, and going for distance with the gerbil finally got him.

I miss the gerbil... the butane caught a spark from the paddles, and splattered him all over the foyer. :(

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by b4dc0d3r · 2012-08-29 15:51 · Score: 3, Funny

I worked in a Fortune 115 company where the VOIP went down, and along with it all incoming calls. Root cause was Squirrel. Yes, the cute furry toothy bitches.

Official explanation was: squirrels had gnawed off the insulation. One particularly unlucky squirrel had successfully penetrated the insulation, fried itself, and everything around it.

Traditional squirrel fry was held, a good time was had by all. Also, 2/3 of this post is true.

Dangers of cloud computing by nagasrinivas · 2012-08-29 15:53 · Score: 1

This is obligatory viewing: :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApQlMm39xr0

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by gagol · 2012-08-29 15:56 · Score: 1

unmodding an error...

--
Tomorrow is another day...

Comcast by geoffrobinson · 2012-08-29 15:58 · Score: 1

They probably are used to having Comcast as their Internet provider.

--
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.

Not just in America by tanveer1979 · 2012-08-29 16:32 · Score: 1

Here is India's IT commissioner explaining the actual meaning of cloud computing which has been hidden from everybody for long.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApQlMm39xr0

--
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography

pollsters don't get it by wealthychef · 2012-08-29 17:10 · Score: 1

Does anyone taking these polls ever suspect that respondents are just plain fucking with them?

--
Currently hooked on AMP

Kim Dot Com says.. by Anarchduke · 2012-08-29 17:32 · Score: 2

You are absolutely right. There is no reason to worry about losing your data on the Cloud.

--
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by nmos · 2012-08-29 17:34 · Score: 1

Around here, the excuse the phone company uses is woodpeckers poking holes in the lines.

so 49% are wrong then? by Surt · 2012-08-29 17:58 · Score: 1

Cloud computing is most definitely affected by the weather. Rain, lightning, and hurricanes can all easily cause outages.

--
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking

It's no wonder really... by l3v1 · 2012-08-29 18:05 · Score: 1

I mean come on, the one who came up with the notion to call remote storage and computing capabilties as "cloud" should be kicked hard. It was never a good idea, and it's no wonder that common folks don't have a clue about it. Also, the name uses the notion of the cloud, presumably on purpose, to induce the idea of something non-touchable, something that is just "out there" somewhere, so it's even surprising that any average user trusts any data to such a concoction.

I think they are all better off to think weather can endanger their data in the "cloud" and urge them to have local backups and not trust some random remote data storage service with their lives' data.

--
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.

A majority is clueless. Nothing new here ... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 18:09 · Score: 1

Next you will tell us that a majority believe in any number of supernatural beings and talk or pray to them; or anything else irrational for that matter ...

Whatever you say! by mrozone · 2012-08-29 18:11 · Score: 1

I'll stop believing that "The Cloud" isn't affect by weather as soon as the Internet stops slowing down from all those clogged "Tubes" in the sewer system!

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 18:27 · Score: 0

get's

GET IS??? GET IS????

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 18:30 · Score: 0

or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / cable line's.
Also stormy weather can take down your cable line even if you still have power in your area the cable's from your place to the headend may have area's with no power and dead battery (they don't have the number of neede'd portable generator's to cover all of them) in the node's.
DSL work's better and the phone RT's (Remote Terminals) and central office's have a better power backup system.

FTFY.

Obligatory by floki · 2012-08-29 18:42 · Score: 1

http://clientsfromhell.net/post/30462016381/me-our-backup-service-is-like-cloud-hosting-you

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from the to-stupid-for-words dept.

Not so different by DNS-and-BIND · 2012-08-29 19:03 · Score: 1

Google Trends says "the cloud" has only been a going concern since 2011. What did people think of "the web" in 1996? Spiders, derp derp. TFA: "It would seem that most of them do not understand what âoethe cloudâ is and are confused when this term appears in a conversation." Well derp derp again from TFA: "For those who think of âoethe cloudâ as a fluffy white thing floating in the air, well, you are wrong." Well, what can you really say after that?

They're taking a term that's been re-purposed and making hay out of the fact that nobody knows the new meaning. Heck, if the "rain" part was left out, the story wouldn't even have hit Slashdot. Well done, anonymous marketroid. Way to get attention by doing outrageous garbage instead of real research.

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Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!

The Cloud != Remote by Dr.+Hok · 2012-08-29 19:29 · Score: 1

Well strictly speaking remote processing isn't necessary nor is it always present. Remote storage with redundancy and backup managed by others (Skydrive, dropbox) is really what most people see. If you get any remote processing (aka amazon, Azure) its probably more akin to scalable hosting.

Lumping all those different capabilities under one name helps no-one.

Well, strictly strictly speaking, the cloud doesn't have to be remote at all. Here is the NIST definition of the cloud, which we use to avoid cloudy wording when it comes to clouds. It doesn't even contain the word remote. It speaks only of availabilty, scalability and the likes.

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Say out loud: I'm an Aspie and I'm somewhat proud, I guess. Uh. Can I write an email in all caps instead? Hm...

Re:Key European Computing Hub in Ireland Outage 20 by bickerdyke · 2012-08-29 19:31 · Score: 1

Because that's what "the cloud" was MEANT to mean in the first place. To distinguish it from other kinds of co-hosted servers, Software as a Service, or plain Webservices

And now these survey clowns come out, mock people for not knowing what the cloud is, and then TELLING THEM they already use the cloud when they do online banking and facebook??!?!

It seems that the meaning of that word has severly shifted and now every frigging website labels itself "cloud service" just because it is online.

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bickerdyke

Seems pretty reasonable to me by wonkey_monkey · 2012-08-29 20:13 · Score: 1

The most interesting fact is that 51% of the surveyed persons thought that stormy weather interferes with cloud computing!

Haha, those fools, being asked to make an uneducated guess by a man with a clipboard and not knowing such an obvious thing (to us nerds)! They are so stupid, not knowing something about something they've never heard of and doesn't affect their lives in any way at all. Next you'll be telling me that 78% of people have never seen Firefly, and we shall rightly point and laugh at them, too.

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systemd is Roko's Basilisk.

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-29 23:14 · Score: 0

done!

And in other news by setrops · 2012-08-29 23:25 · Score: 1

Don't feed the trolls

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by marcello_dl · 2012-08-29 23:52 · Score: 1

> Had I mod points, I'd mod this informative just to see people's reaction.

They stare at you while you shout "Soylent green is PEOPLE!"

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---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol

sheesh... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 00:54 · Score: 0

"The most interesting fact is that 51% of the surveyed persons thought that stormy weather interferes with cloud computing!"

Fucking morons...that's like all the stupid bastards out there that think the size of the PC case they have somehow approximates the amount of storage they have!?!

Increased network load by jmrieger · 2012-08-30 01:18 · Score: 1

In addition to all of the comments about weather actually affecting the data centers that "the cloud" resides in, bad weather pushes most people inside. Instead of being out of their house doing something else, people will start browsing the Internet, increasing the network and server load in these data centers. Large enough storms might drive up traffic just enough to cause, at minimum, a small spike in loads, and at worst would force load distributors to do their work.

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by Hatta · 2012-08-30 01:25 · Score: 2

Surely they need plasma from Soylent Red and Blue too.

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Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!

Hurray for Slashdot Elitism by sunking2 · 2012-08-30 01:36 · Score: 1

Because there's never any misinformation given out here.

People are dumb or are they?? by mkkohls · 2012-08-30 02:01 · Score: 1

If there is an outage it would. So they are kind of right, but mostly its just people being stupid. I bet there are other topics where if you surveyed /. 51% or more would answer in the same kind of way these people did.

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 02:02 · Score: 0

my DSL has no power backup... power out, no internet... I have a generator on my house -- that is how I know :(

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by AliasBackslash · 2012-08-30 02:16 · Score: 2

Obviously that is the 1/3 of the comment that isn't true.

"Cloud" is a euphemism for "remote mainframe" by DutchUncle · 2012-08-30 02:23 · Score: 1

... because no modern with-it techie wants to admit that they are REINVENTING THE WHEEL by going BACKWARDS to what we had in the 1970s. Of course the computers are faster and better, and the communication is faster and better, and the switchboard is hidden in the comm system instead of dialing a different connection number for each computer you want to access, and it's so much better in so many ways. But it comes back to the same thing: Instead of your data being on YOUR computer in YOUR possession and control, you're handing it off to some remote server because you trust them implicitly (or haven't even thought about it). Typical MBA thinking: decentralize everything that's centralized, centralize the rest, claim success for having wrought change, and cash your bonus check before the next generation re-applies the same rule and reverses it all.

sometimes the weather does affect cloud computing by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 02:29 · Score: 0

I've run into instances where businesses have intermittent connectivity on windy days because they are using a wireless connection (not wifi, a microwave system) which normally works quite well except when the wind is blowing and the leaves of a tree block the signal.

but but... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 02:35 · Score: 0

How can the cloud possibly be affected by bad weather? You would think that the series of tubes would offer protection from the weather.

I don't use the "Cloud" by clam666 · 2012-08-30 02:45 · Score: 1

...AGW will get it.

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I'm a satanic clam.

what gerbil? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 02:46 · Score: 0

I miss the gerbil

Was it Hamstard?

Election by Liamecaps · 2012-08-30 02:51 · Score: 1

I know who they're voting for this fall. :-/

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by mcgrew · 2012-08-30 02:54 · Score: 1

Was he a burly redneck named Larry?

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Free Martian Whores!

Slashdot is all arrogant nerds... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 03:03 · Score: 0

The "Cloud" is a sales pitch - reality it is servers and hard drives. Weather causes power outages, and so weather can affect the cloud... especially if more than one critical data center is affected, or is, as the "cloud" service I used to work for, the cloud only one data center! How many "clouds" are really just an ISP trying to make money off of their old servers? The world may never know...

Flawed Survey, Horrible Summary by Thumper_SVX · 2012-08-30 05:10 · Score: 1

Good grief; the stats if you read the actual survey tell you everything you need to know. 51% of the survey participants think that the cloud is affected by the weather... but 54% don't even know what it is.

And this is news? When did Oprah start talking about "The Cloud"? I am not kidding either; the average person doesn't know about it because the average person doesn't care. Also, believe it or not the average person doesn't NEED to care. "The Cloud" is an industry buzzword that happens to be one in the industry that most Slashdotters work. I am in San Francisco this week at VMworld, and when people ask what I'm doing in town and I reply I'd say that probably 1 in 4 actually know about the conference (at least once you get a couple of miles from Moscone), and fewer than that actually have any idea what VMware is or what virtualization is. And they don't need to care; that's our job. It doesn't matter that more than likely almost all of them use VMware indirectly in most of their dealing with their bank or some other web site every day. They only care that they can get to the information that matters to them, they don't care about how that data gets there any more than they care about how the electricity to run their lights gets there so long as it does when they flip the switch. And believe me, I doubt many people here have any REAL clue how that happens either because it's FAR more complex than you might think. I didn't know until I started reading about it and it's fascinating.

So what's the real story here? That most people don't know what "The Cloud" is? Yeah, not exactly news to me and I'm actually surprised that the number was as low as it is. I'd also bet the survey would be vastly different based upon where they ran it; San Francisco might have a very different ratio of people who know than Topeka.

Hot air by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 05:36 · Score: 0

Of course it does! The cloud relies on electromagnetic radiation. There is, what, a 0.2 amp current flow from the surface of the earth to the upper atmosphere? Does anyone think this does not generate an electromagnetic field? Won’t the inevitable changes in this current generate a fluctuating electromagnetic field? This will always cause issues, as will changes in the amount of matter in the path of a signal. Changes in pressure, dust, water, and hot air from pundits.

Survey Says . . . by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 06:15 · Score: 0

51% of those polled are morons.

load of crap by peawormsworth · 2012-08-30 07:30 · Score: 1

All this article proves is that most people dont know what the cloud is or in what context it applies. It is very natural to think something named apon a weather occurance would be related to the weather. This is the best guess and I should hope that people who do not understand the context would naturally assume the word has something to do with this classification. If you never heard of MS "Windows", would you not hope that when people are asked about it, they would answer that windows are related to buildings and allow you to look through them from the interior to the outside? But this article gets worse... it then explains to these people who have never heard about the cloud, what the cloud is and then goes on to ask their opinions about its usefulness. What a load of crap. Their opinions are obviously going to be based on the information they just received about what it is. The information they provide next is going to be entirely based on the manner in which the cloud was just described to them. This survey is meaningless... other then to say: "most average people do not know what the cloud is and may not realize when they are using it". WOW... how informative. I would like to see a survey on how many people even understand what an operating system is. I think it is far lower then we would assume.

Mushroom Cloud? by DarthVain · 2012-08-30 07:35 · Score: 1

Speaking of nuclear clouds!

Conceptual Distinctions by DarthVain · 2012-08-30 07:38 · Score: 1

"Private Cloud"? Wouldn't you just call that your fucking network?

I mean the whole point of the cloud, is that it is external, it exists, but you don't know what is in there, or how it does it, it just does. That is why you draw a fluffy cloud around that part of the diagram, which is where all this BS came from in the first place.

The next chart I see that has that, I'm going to fix it and replace "CLOUD" with "There Be Dragons"...

Re:Conceptual Distinctions by starfishsystems · 2012-08-30 14:21 · Score: 1

You don't have very good reading skills, do you? I gave a clear explanation in the third paragraph.

However, you're welcome to celebrate your position of staunch ignorance, if that rocks your boat. Have a nice day.

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Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Re:Conceptual Distinctions by DarthVain · 2012-08-31 01:20 · Score: 1

I probably stopped reading after "Private Cloud".
You gave AN explanation in the third paragraph... One which can be explained a number of ways without mentioning anything about "cloud".
However what you think, and what a Manager might use as a buzzword are two very different things.

The Cloud Confuses by Bridg · 2012-08-30 07:49 · Score: 1

Think about what your average tech person knows and now think about the average American. Hopefully the person that you depend on as your href="http://www.jobs.net/Article/CB-49-Talent-Network-IT-Digital-Privacy-Trivia-Test-Your-IT-IQ/">technology pro will have a better clue.

All those people by okcdan · 2012-08-30 07:52 · Score: 1

will probably just put on "shake, rattle and roll" and get tomato soup delivered anyway.

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D.

Thats right by bobs666 · 2012-08-30 10:29 · Score: 1

When my phone(dsl) pedestal get full of water the Cloud goes out.

Not unless it's done physically, but... by rhalstead · 2012-08-30 20:31 · Score: 1

I do believe the cloud is one of computing's greatest mistakes. Does it work. Certainly and well, but I believe it opens your data to any agency that want's to take a look.

Re:or when rain / rain water get's in the phone / by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-31 01:54 · Score: 0

One particularly unlucky squirrel had successfully penetrated the insulation, fried itself, and everything around it
Yea an unlucky squirrel got into the buss ducts at a major DC in Atlanta. 22 floors of data centers went on standy power. We couldn't have the squirrel fry there was nothing left but a little piece of chard tail.

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Survey Reveals a Majority Believe "the Cloud" Is Affected by Weather

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