Cloud Computing: Boon or a Bust?

Back to the Future, Marty McFly! - Larry

No.

Lol!!! I'm kind of naiving about this -Cloud Computing- stuff but explain me a little more how it is kindly if you have a chance later, please! Sound interesting anyway, definetly. Good to stay on the page eventually, I agree. One of the things that I noticed regard these advances in technologies is the lot of devices proliferances all around, awesone, lol little way off the hook for me here, but I'll follow you some how down the avenue, Hopefully! I'll catch -up too. OK...? Let See.

Compu Cloud Time,

MC

Many years ago, when I first started using computers, the procedure was to key-punch all of the data on a special machine that punched out IBM cards. These cards were then fed into another machine that converted the data to a serial stream and transmitted it to the real computer in some other part of the world. Usually, one sent the data at night, because telephone rates were lower. Next morning, in your in box would be several thousand sheets of printout that was totally useless, because somewhere in that deck of cards was a misplaced comma. If you were lucky, it wasn't too hard to find the typo, but then the whole process was repeated. Typos only showed up one at a time- if you had a 1000 card deck, chances are you would have a number of typos, which would equate to the number of times you had to submit the deck to the computer before you got meaningful results.

Next, you were totally dependent on the unseen computer for the calculations. If the results were not as expected, was it possibly a glitch in the computer program, or a problem with your model? And you pretty much had to take the word of the owner of the computer as to which version of the software he was running.

We all were really excited about getting control over the computer by putting PC's on our desk. Of course, back in those days, it still took over night to get results out of those slow boxes, but one felt one had CONTROL. One had a better chance of understanding the program being used for the analysis (often because one had to write one's own program, since there weren't many packaged software products available. What we call a spreadsheet today was called a matrix back then...)

So now the industry has this bright idea to take us back to the good old days of remote computing. Sending your data over links that can not be secured, to be manipulated and stored on a system over which you have no control, with virtually everyone in the world potentially having access to your secrets. They can change the software at will, and lo and behold- that problem you solved six months ago comes back today with a different answer, because they "upgraded" the software and forgot to mention this fact to you...

No, I don't see cloud computing as a solution to any issues I have today, or any I can conceive of in the future. My current computers seem to have the same capacity that old remote computer had, maybe more, and all of them together cost but a fraction of what I paid for my first computer. I have enough computing power on my desk at a very reasonable investment- why would I blow it all and go back to an imperfect system of the past?