Quality Nest
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Cloud Computing is a Bad Idea
The message to the right and the text in blue within it appeared on a Web page on the Google Docs site. I like Google a good deal as they do a ton of things very well. My beef here is not with Google, but rather with the concept of "Cloud Computing" and the term itself.Google Docs is a great set of services and Google implements these services well. And any clear-headed person knows that when they upload a document to the Internet, even if there is a reasonable expectation that that document will be maintained in a private fashion, there is necessarily a fundamental risk of the document being compromised. This is precisely because it is stored within the Internet. Nothing is fully private on the Internet. I accept this.Cloud Computing... Right, I should just upload a bunch of documents to something called "the Cloud" and feel very comfortable doing so? The Internet to a non-technical person is ambiguous enough, but is still a concrete thing denotatively. The Internet is a world-wide set of computers all connected together. It really is that simple. A computer is something you can see and touch. It does exist, at least somewhere.Oh but the Cloud... the Cloud, where the hell is the cloud? What is it?  How does it work? Who owns it? By its very definition it is ambiguous and none of these questions can be answered.Is the cloud that Google touts separate from the one offered up by any other business? Or is it just one big cloud? If a service comes along with some element of security, how can everything be lumped together into one network? There is no good answer here.Is the cloud just a part of the Internet? You would like to say simply that in principle it is, but you can't answer this question fully because "the Cloud" is undefined.My point you ask? The Cloud is a buzz word and a bad one. It pushes aside anything real and tangible. It necessarily abdicates ownership and custody. And by the very nature of its namesake, those things in the sky, its designed to sound good and fluffy. But its anything but. It just isn't and will never be.The concept of The Cloud comes along with the expectation that this "cloud" is something you should feel good about and trust. But will you really feel good and trust something when you can't even say what it is?If you understand computers and care about how things actually work, especially those you cannot see, you will understand what I am saying.
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Thursday, March 31, 2011
Nuclear Power Plants - How They Work
Purpose of this blog post:To share some information about how nuclear power plants work.Here you go:Since the recent crisis in Japan began, on at least a few  occasions I have found myself wondering how exactly a nuclear power plant works.  Well, one of the Vlog Brothers does an excellent job explaining this:
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