"So to call something a "private cloud" means that while it's 100% under your control you have no fucking clue what hardware is running or how it is configured."
Exactly, right on the spot.
I tell Tim, my department's resident IT guy, that I'll need three servers this evening for a new project and then, Tim, using the company's web interface, triggers out those three servers as I spec'ed. These servers happen to be 100% under my company's control but you can bet neither me nor Tim have no fucking clue what hardware is running or how it is configured.
I've been told that there's a company-wide IT group that knows about all those things but, in turn, they have no fucking clue nor practical interest about knowing why the hell I need those servers nor where exactly they have been spawned.
Congratulations. Now you know how the heck a fucking private cloud looks like.
"If "cloud" no longer refers to outsourcing your computation, then it pretty much lost whatever semblance of meaning it might have had."
Maybe for you. Tap water is a commodity -even if you happen to be the owner of your local water supply company.
If it allows for spawning new systems on demand, out of a GUI and/or and API and the act of triggering a new instance is not locality-bounded, then it is cloud.
No matter if the provider is an internal party from your own company or a third party provider.
"The cloud was a stencil or icon that represented the Internet or a group of unknown hardware that was managed by someone else."
An then, within the company, all that even the business-aligned IT (not core corporate IT but division level) knows about our internal deployments it that it is "...a group of unknown hardware that is managed by someone else". They don't have to think about capacity, they just shoot some instances as they need; they don't have to think about leading times, they just go to the web interface (or the internal API), check the bolts and fill the fields for how much RAM, CPU, hard disk... they need, and their new system(s) spawn within a minute.
And then, even for the core IT staffers that do know where the iron really lives and how much iron there is in reality, they don't give a damn about which server exactly do the (virtualized) servers for the new project from the Hong-Kong group are triggered.
So, yes, it *is* a cloud.
But then, the bean counters at Finance do know how much money all those servers, and electricity and rack space cost, and they know all this are corporate assests so, yes, they are private property of the company.
"Mega-upload also owned it's own servers. And they are not the only cloud provider to have hardware inappropriately seized. You do not have control of someone else's hardware."
Maybe, but that's not the point you are making with your example.
As you already said, megaupload *owned* their servers. If this case has to show anything is that you can't control your own hardware either.
"The biggest difference is that it is still somewhat easy for companies to balance themselves against the cloud by having their own hardware running."
Regarding services, what's the real difference when using my own hardware? I think Amazon owns its own hardware too.
"They don't need full capacity capabilities, but even a small amount of capability can keep their services up, if slowed"
Slashdot effect? For so many services, if you can't go full capacity, you don't serve at lower speed, you just don't work, full stop.
And it is not even a cloud issue. It's not the first time I advised a customer not to go with an active/active scenario for high availability but active/hot standby instead and my advise being rejected because they didn't want to invest on a spare "doing nothing". Of course, the first time a failure pushed full capacity to the remaining, which couldn't stand the overload and failed too, they started thinking otherwise.
"No need to go figure anything at all. You are seeking out Linux companies."
The first one was a subsidiary of a commercial bank using Red Hat. The second, yes, it was a company centered around supporting Linux and using, well, a bit of everything. The third one was a Java dev mill using Ubuntu. The forth one, an ISP offering IaaS solutions using Debian.
"As I said above, punctuated equilibrium was proposed precisely because the fossil record largely shows stasis, not change."
You are aware that punctuated equilibrium is not contradictory with darwinian evolution but only an explaination tied to how darwinian evolution expression may be affected by the properties of the underlying genome, are you?
"Why MUST it happen? Because the alternatives are something that you don't want to hear?"
If for anything else because darwinian evolution doesn't reject other evolution means.
And darwinian evolution must happen because there's no way it can be avoided once you have a genome that affects the outcoming phenotype and gets imperfectly copied from generation to generation.
"Evolution is a well supported scientific theory. That is not the same as a scientific fact."
If you are trying to be splitting hairs against what I did say, it would be better if you did it properly.
Evolution is a damn fact.
Darwinian evolution is what it's a theory. And even then, yes, given current evidency, Darwinian evolution theory is "what common english can refer as a general fact". Disputing darwinian evolution today is just as idiotic as disputing "the spherical Earth theory".
"I think it's a good step towards the right direction. Evil or not, Microsoft at least tilts towards being... less evil with this move."
You think so.
Microsoft knows it has a hard time with Azure being a Microsoft-only platform. Linux is now considered a valid choice at least server-side so a number of companies, even if going with Microsoft servers, would reject Azure in the basis of "what if we want to go the Linux path tomorrow?" when other "cloud" companies are offering support for both platforms.
But "less evil?" I don't think it's just a coincidence that the supported Linux distritutions seems all to be corporate-backed ones: Microsoft knows how to deal with (or against) companies, so for them, supporting something coming from, i.e. Red Hat is one thing, supporting Debian, something completly different.
The question was not about support, but bug fixing.
Of course it's only stupid to suggest supporting software forever for free (i.e.: yes, I know this was delivered to work on Windows 95 but now I want it to work on Linux). But bugs are a different thing: you and I conveyed the software should do X, but it does Y instead.
"And if there isn't I imagine the only answer would be"
Well, there were two questions, and two potential answerers so go figure.
My position: How long the software should be supported for defects?
Forever. Since the software doesn't wear out, any defect was developed there from origin, it's a reasonable expectation that when someone asks for something, it is asking for something without defects, so covering for bugs forever is the only sensible way to respect the contract.
Of course, there's the grey area in real world about something being or not a bug.
"We've met the design goals as conveyed to me, and you haven't contracted me to provide infinite support"
See what I mean? A bug (a real one, I mean) is something against the design goals by its very definition, no matter if it takes a hundred years to arise, but it seems SomePgmr is only glad to find a hole in the contract not to convey to its terms.
The other question is What is the industry convention? The answer to this is, as most answers here demonstrates, for as short a time as possible; if we can extract money on our own inability to deliver from day one, much the better.
And the reality? For a taylor-made, probably easy: whatever the contract says.
" No one has in their lifetime, seen an organism give birth to a distinctly different organism (when 2 of the same organisms have mated), for example, no one has seen 2 cats mate and then give birth to a dog. "
But there have been people that put two groups of the same species of flies in two bottles, let them be about seven years and, after that, saw they couldn't interbreed individuals from the two populations.
And there are historical records about when the home mouse was introduce in the Faeroe Islands about two hundred years ago and how the different populations are coming apart from each other since then.
"Namely that there has never been an observed case of one species becoming another species (species being defined by the ability to reproduce withing the species, but not outside of it)"
But even if that wasn't the case, it so obvious that darwinian evolution *must* happen that there would be no point discussing it anyway: as soon as you know that there are random mutations (trivially probed in a lab), that these mutations affect fitness (trivially probed in a lab) and that fitness affects alleles distribution (trivially probed in a lab), speciation is nothing but an unavoidable fact.
"My point is that there are legitimate alternative theories besides evolution"
No, there aren't. There are legitimate *ideas* about evolution (i.e. lamarkian versus darwinian) already disproved that nevertheless make for a good case about how scientific ideas get concieved and accepted or rejected.
"But $100k to $120k, and not in NYC or SF should bring in a decent selection of candidates at the very least. But I'm in one of those rare fields where there very low or near zero unemployment"
So that means there *are* candidates it's only they are already happily employed anywhere else and as the very facts demontrate, well, no, 100k to 120k is not enough to bring you a decent selection of candidates.
In other words: they are already being payed what they consider to be their fair share and you want to get them out of their comfort... by paying about the same!?
I think some Mr Adam Smith already said something on that kind of situations about 250 years ago -time more than enough for you to notice. Supply and demand, or something like that... humm, yeah, I think that was the concept.
I'll save you the effort to go after Smith's book and I'll tell you his recipy: rise your offer.
I'm saying that in an strongly American-biased Internet is no wonder finding American idols being over-represented.
And I'm saying the first pilot to cross the English Channel or the first ones to flight over the Atlantic are in the same league than a woman known basically only to English/Americans and aviation freaks and certainly in a completly different league than the Wright brothers, Neil Armstrong or even Lindbergh (which already isn't the same league than the first two).
"what was the name of the Sailing Master on Columbus' ship"
A very good example about what is or isn't famous.
You basically won't find a single Spanish child that doesn't know the answer to that question.
In fact, much in the line of MisterSquid, they would have pointed their fingers at you with a "HA-HA" ala Nelson because of you ignoring who the Pinzon brothers were and (seemingly) not knowing Columbus expedition was composed by three ships, not one.
I certainly knew about Amelia Earhart, but don't fool yourself: only Americans/UK and aviation freaks know about her.
"Unless the extra storage is flash drives that you mail home to yourself periodically"
Exactly.
IT seems the engineering with the lowest ability to "stay over the shoulders of giants". It seems that not only is there the need to constantly reinvent the wheel, but that it must be reinvented in a vacuum, forgetting all the lessons from the past.
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." â"Tanenbaum, Andrew S. (1996)
"For a loooooong time the MySQL team were claiming that any library which implemented the API required to talk to MySQL also fell under the licensing terms for MySQL"
I've been around here quite a long time and I don't remember such an assert. Can you provide any link?
What I *do* remember is that MySQL position was that if you wanted to *link* code to their GPL-provided libraries, such a linked code should be under the GPL too.
"but if a company breaks a rule in the GPL they should be fully punished."
Of course it has to.
But even if you are not so 'dura lex sed lex' as I am, just an example about why it might be good to break some laws but no others: It is good to unslave people even if slavery is legal. It is still good to make sure taxes laws are applied on slave plantations.
"t's not unscientific to scoff at the idea that a teapot is floating in space beyond our telescopes' ability to see it. An it's no crime to believe in it either"
If by "crime" you mean the legal definition, no, those believings are no crime.
But if you go with an ethical definition of crime, having the supporters of some believings be rid of some taxes or having free speech banned to scorn those believings, or allowing the supporters of some believings to gain legal strengh to push their irrationalities through others' throat, well, in my book is quite near to "crime".
Slashdot Mirror
"So to call something a "private cloud" means that while it's 100% under your control you have no fucking clue what hardware is running or how it is configured."
Exactly, right on the spot.
I tell Tim, my department's resident IT guy, that I'll need three servers this evening for a new project and then, Tim, using the company's web interface, triggers out those three servers as I spec'ed. These servers happen to be 100% under my company's control but you can bet neither me nor Tim have no fucking clue what hardware is running or how it is configured.
I've been told that there's a company-wide IT group that knows about all those things but, in turn, they have no fucking clue nor practical interest about knowing why the hell I need those servers nor where exactly they have been spawned.
Congratulations. Now you know how the heck a fucking private cloud looks like.
"If "cloud" no longer refers to outsourcing your computation, then it pretty much lost whatever semblance of meaning it might have had."
Maybe for you. Tap water is a commodity -even if you happen to be the owner of your local water supply company.
If it allows for spawning new systems on demand, out of a GUI and/or and API and the act of triggering a new instance is not locality-bounded, then it is cloud.
No matter if the provider is an internal party from your own company or a third party provider.
"The cloud was a stencil or icon that represented the Internet or a group of unknown hardware that was managed by someone else."
An then, within the company, all that even the business-aligned IT (not core corporate IT but division level) knows about our internal deployments it that it is "...a group of unknown hardware that is managed by someone else". They don't have to think about capacity, they just shoot some instances as they need; they don't have to think about leading times, they just go to the web interface (or the internal API), check the bolts and fill the fields for how much RAM, CPU, hard disk... they need, and their new system(s) spawn within a minute.
And then, even for the core IT staffers that do know where the iron really lives and how much iron there is in reality, they don't give a damn about which server exactly do the (virtualized) servers for the new project from the Hong-Kong group are triggered.
So, yes, it *is* a cloud.
But then, the bean counters at Finance do know how much money all those servers, and electricity and rack space cost, and they know all this are corporate assests so, yes, they are private property of the company.
Hence, "private cloud".
"Mega-upload also owned it's own servers. And they are not the only cloud provider to have hardware inappropriately seized. You do not have control of someone else's hardware."
Maybe, but that's not the point you are making with your example.
As you already said, megaupload *owned* their servers. If this case has to show anything is that you can't control your own hardware either.
"The biggest difference is that it is still somewhat easy for companies to balance themselves against the cloud by having their own hardware running."
Regarding services, what's the real difference when using my own hardware? I think Amazon owns its own hardware too.
"They don't need full capacity capabilities, but even a small amount of capability can keep their services up, if slowed"
Slashdot effect? For so many services, if you can't go full capacity, you don't serve at lower speed, you just don't work, full stop.
And it is not even a cloud issue. It's not the first time I advised a customer not to go with an active/active scenario for high availability but active/hot standby instead and my advise being rejected because they didn't want to invest on a spare "doing nothing". Of course, the first time a failure pushed full capacity to the remaining, which couldn't stand the overload and failed too, they started thinking otherwise.
"No need to go figure anything at all. You are seeking out Linux companies."
The first one was a subsidiary of a commercial bank using Red Hat. The second, yes, it was a company centered around supporting Linux and using, well, a bit of everything. The third one was a Java dev mill using Ubuntu. The forth one, an ISP offering IaaS solutions using Debian.
So, again, go figure.
"As I said above, punctuated equilibrium was proposed precisely because the fossil record largely shows stasis, not change."
You are aware that punctuated equilibrium is not contradictory with darwinian evolution but only an explaination tied to how darwinian evolution expression may be affected by the properties of the underlying genome, are you?
"Why MUST it happen? Because the alternatives are something that you don't want to hear?"
If for anything else because darwinian evolution doesn't reject other evolution means.
And darwinian evolution must happen because there's no way it can be avoided once you have a genome that affects the outcoming phenotype and gets imperfectly copied from generation to generation.
"Evolution is a well supported scientific theory. That is not the same as a scientific fact."
If you are trying to be splitting hairs against what I did say, it would be better if you did it properly.
Evolution is a damn fact.
Darwinian evolution is what it's a theory. And even then, yes, given current evidency, Darwinian evolution theory is "what common english can refer as a general fact". Disputing darwinian evolution today is just as idiotic as disputing "the spherical Earth theory".
"PS, I love Linux as a server, and it runs my Rails stuff very well, but "Linux on the Desktop"? Seriously? Does anyone believe in that anymore?"
Well, since 2000 I've been working for four companies; all of them supported linux as their main desktop OS, so go figure.
"I think it's a good step towards the right direction. Evil or not, Microsoft at least tilts towards being... less evil with this move."
You think so.
Microsoft knows it has a hard time with Azure being a Microsoft-only platform. Linux is now considered a valid choice at least server-side so a number of companies, even if going with Microsoft servers, would reject Azure in the basis of "what if we want to go the Linux path tomorrow?" when other "cloud" companies are offering support for both platforms.
But "less evil?" I don't think it's just a coincidence that the supported Linux distritutions seems all to be corporate-backed ones: Microsoft knows how to deal with (or against) companies, so for them, supporting something coming from, i.e. Red Hat is one thing, supporting Debian, something completly different.
"If they want lifetime support"
The question was not about support, but bug fixing.
Of course it's only stupid to suggest supporting software forever for free (i.e.: yes, I know this was delivered to work on Windows 95 but now I want it to work on Linux). But bugs are a different thing: you and I conveyed the software should do X, but it does Y instead.
"And if there isn't I imagine the only answer would be"
Well, there were two questions, and two potential answerers so go figure.
My position:
How long the software should be supported for defects?
Forever. Since the software doesn't wear out, any defect was developed there from origin, it's a reasonable expectation that when someone asks for something, it is asking for something without defects, so covering for bugs forever is the only sensible way to respect the contract.
Of course, there's the grey area in real world about something being or not a bug.
"We've met the design goals as conveyed to me, and you haven't contracted me to provide infinite support"
See what I mean? A bug (a real one, I mean) is something against the design goals by its very definition, no matter if it takes a hundred years to arise, but it seems SomePgmr is only glad to find a hole in the contract not to convey to its terms.
The other question is What is the industry convention? The answer to this is, as most answers here demonstrates, for as short a time as possible; if we can extract money on our own inability to deliver from day one, much the better.
And the reality? For a taylor-made, probably easy: whatever the contract says.
" No one has in their lifetime, seen an organism give birth to a distinctly different organism (when 2 of the same organisms have mated), for example, no one has seen 2 cats mate and then give birth to a dog. "
But there have been people that put two groups of the same species of flies in two bottles, let them be about seven years and, after that, saw they couldn't interbreed individuals from the two populations.
And there are historical records about when the home mouse was introduce in the Faeroe Islands about two hundred years ago and how the different populations are coming apart from each other since then.
Darwinian evolution is a damn undisputed fact.
"Namely that there has never been an observed case of one species becoming another species (species being defined by the ability to reproduce withing the species, but not outside of it)"
Only, of course, while a rare event (it couldn't be otherwise) it *has* been observed and even produced in a lab. See i.e. http://www.sciencemeetsreligion.org/evolution/speciation.php
But even if that wasn't the case, it so obvious that darwinian evolution *must* happen that there would be no point discussing it anyway: as soon as you know that there are random mutations (trivially probed in a lab), that these mutations affect fitness (trivially probed in a lab) and that fitness affects alleles distribution (trivially probed in a lab), speciation is nothing but an unavoidable fact.
"My point is that there are legitimate alternative theories besides evolution"
No, there aren't. There are legitimate *ideas* about evolution (i.e. lamarkian versus darwinian) already disproved that nevertheless make for a good case about how scientific ideas get concieved and accepted or rejected.
"But $100k to $120k, and not in NYC or SF should bring in a decent selection of candidates at the very least. But I'm in one of those rare fields where there very low or near zero unemployment"
So that means there *are* candidates it's only they are already happily employed anywhere else and as the very facts demontrate, well, no, 100k to 120k is not enough to bring you a decent selection of candidates.
In other words: they are already being payed what they consider to be their fair share and you want to get them out of their comfort... by paying about the same!?
I think some Mr Adam Smith already said something on that kind of situations about 250 years ago -time more than enough for you to notice. Supply and demand, or something like that... humm, yeah, I think that was the concept.
I'll save you the effort to go after Smith's book and I'll tell you his recipy: rise your offer.
"Because I'm not hiring for a junior position. Is that really a difficult concept?"
You don't nurture your workforce and then you don't get the seniors you need. Is that really a difficult concept?
"Tech companies just want to pay less for foreign."
Just as you want to pay less for what they produce.
"What were you saying, again?"
I'm saying that in an strongly American-biased Internet is no wonder finding American idols being over-represented.
And I'm saying the first pilot to cross the English Channel or the first ones to flight over the Atlantic are in the same league than a woman known basically only to English/Americans and aviation freaks and certainly in a completly different league than the Wright brothers, Neil Armstrong or even Lindbergh (which already isn't the same league than the first two).
"what was the name of the Sailing Master on Columbus' ship"
A very good example about what is or isn't famous.
You basically won't find a single Spanish child that doesn't know the answer to that question.
In fact, much in the line of MisterSquid, they would have pointed their fingers at you with a "HA-HA" ala Nelson because of you ignoring who the Pinzon brothers were and (seemingly) not knowing Columbus expedition was composed by three ships, not one.
I certainly knew about Amelia Earhart, but don't fool yourself: only Americans/UK and aviation freaks know about her.
"It's like asking who Neil Armstrong or the Wright brothers are."
No, it's not. It's more like asking who were Alcock and Brown, or Blériot.
By the way, have you the slightest idea who they were?
"Unless the extra storage is flash drives that you mail home to yourself periodically"
Exactly.
IT seems the engineering with the lowest ability to "stay over the shoulders of giants". It seems that not only is there the need to constantly reinvent the wheel, but that it must be reinvented in a vacuum, forgetting all the lessons from the past.
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." â"Tanenbaum, Andrew S. (1996)
"For a loooooong time the MySQL team were claiming that any library which implemented the API required to talk to MySQL also fell under the licensing terms for MySQL"
I've been around here quite a long time and I don't remember such an assert. Can you provide any link?
What I *do* remember is that MySQL position was that if you wanted to *link* code to their GPL-provided libraries, such a linked code should be under the GPL too.
Which, AFAIK, it the FSF position too.
"It is OK to pirate Closed Source tool,"
No, it isn't.
"but if a company breaks a rule in the GPL they should be fully punished."
Of course it has to.
But even if you are not so 'dura lex sed lex' as I am, just an example about why it might be good to break some laws but no others:
It is good to unslave people even if slavery is legal.
It is still good to make sure taxes laws are applied on slave plantations.
"t's not unscientific to scoff at the idea that a teapot is floating in space beyond our telescopes' ability to see it.
An it's no crime to believe in it either"
If by "crime" you mean the legal definition, no, those believings are no crime.
But if you go with an ethical definition of crime, having the supporters of some believings be rid of some taxes or having free speech banned to scorn those believings, or allowing the supporters of some believings to gain legal strengh to push their irrationalities through others' throat, well, in my book is quite near to "crime".