Tired of relying on Big Tech to enable collaboration, peer-to-peer enthusiasts are creating a new model that cuts out the middleman. (That’s you, Google.)
That’s true in the same way as you are nothing else but molecules and some biochemical reactions.
It’s reductionist, and otherwise not a useful description of a human, tells nothing about interaction possibilities, lifestyle or lifespan for example.
It’s also not an accurate description, because “molecules and biochemical reactions” describes very very many life forms, just as “a computer” could be your smartphone. But aside from both being a computer, a smartphone is quite distinct from a cloud.
It’s reductionist, but it gets to the point that it’s not an abstract everlasting resource, it’s a system that’s not under your control, so it might not be always reliable. So people should be wary of service discontinuations, rules and price changes.
The point can be distilled even further, the cloud is someone else’s.
For some definition of cloud. You also have on premises cloud. When Amazon runs their e-commerce site on AWS, are they running it on someone else’s computer or not in cloud? (putting aside some tax-wise separation of individual Amazon subsidiaries)
On the other hand there are still providers that will rent you an server in their DC, but you don’t get any API or anything else. At best they’ll plug in HDDs that you sent them. This server hosting existed before “cloud” was a thing and it continues to exist.
I’d say that more accurate definition of cloud would be “someone else’s computer with an API that customer can access”. And if I’m really strict about that definition I’d drop entire first part, because it’s the API that matters - computer might as well be yours.
Source: I’ve been on both sides of cloud from the very beginning.
That’s true in the same way as you are nothing else but molecules and some biochemical reactions.
It’s reductionist, and otherwise not a useful description of a human, tells nothing about interaction possibilities, lifestyle or lifespan for example.
It’s also not an accurate description, because “molecules and biochemical reactions” describes very very many life forms, just as “a computer” could be your smartphone. But aside from both being a computer, a smartphone is quite distinct from a cloud.
Have a listen to alan watts some time. We’re all just molecular patterns.
The cloud is a series of clustered computer resources sitting behind load balancers, segmented by IP and DNS.
The cloud is very much someone else’s computers, maintained by someone else’s employees.
Source: a decade of big cloud consulting
Technically, clouds and “clouds” are also molecular patterns.
again, while true that description is neither complete nor distinguished. It would get maybe 1 out of four possible points in a high school exam.
Not helpful for most things.
It’s reductionist, but it gets to the point that it’s not an abstract everlasting resource, it’s a system that’s not under your control, so it might not be always reliable. So people should be wary of service discontinuations, rules and price changes.
The point can be distilled even further, the cloud is someone else’s.
For some definition of cloud. You also have on premises cloud. When Amazon runs their e-commerce site on AWS, are they running it on someone else’s computer or not in cloud? (putting aside some tax-wise separation of individual Amazon subsidiaries)
On the other hand there are still providers that will rent you an server in their DC, but you don’t get any API or anything else. At best they’ll plug in HDDs that you sent them. This server hosting existed before “cloud” was a thing and it continues to exist.
I’d say that more accurate definition of cloud would be “someone else’s computer with an API that customer can access”. And if I’m really strict about that definition I’d drop entire first part, because it’s the API that matters - computer might as well be yours.
Source: I’ve been on both sides of cloud from the very beginning.