Yes, as you might guess, I want to ask about Cloud-computing. I doubt that why it's called that. Which characteristics of it made that name?
+7
A:
From wikipedia:
The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on the cloud drawing used in the past to represent the telephone network, and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents.
Darin Dimitrov
2010-04-11 08:19:47
Am I the only one who used to cringe every time I saw a complex hierarchical drawing of some internal network and then it ended with a line to a simple cloud label "web" as if it was just some sort of a small convenience, minor issue and an afterthought in the whole network :)
Esko
2010-04-11 08:24:39
@Esko. Nope, it's not just you. There was a time in around 2000-2001 when every single PowerPoint presentation had to feature that little cloud at some point. It was as ubiquitous as the puzzled Screen Bean scratching his head.
APC
2010-04-11 09:34:01
+2
A:
It means nothing. Just a nice word and now it's hot....
Here is a quote from the same WIKI as above:
Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corporation has stated that cloud computing has been defined as "everything that we already do" and that it will have no effect except to "change the wording on some of our ads"
Dani
2010-04-11 08:22:29
+2
A:
Because it's a nebulous concept? Because it has been generated by a lot of hot air? Or just because it obscures the details of the infrastructure?
APC
2010-04-11 09:30:17