The entire article is one long strawman argument
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tracyanne Jun 14, 2011 4:24 AM EDT |
He sets up a bunch of strawmen and proceeds to knock them down, well done I say. Things like Quoting:“OMG, that guy is right. What’s wrong with me for thinking that virtualization and cloud computing are anything but the government’s attempt to get at my valuable data?” He appears to be conflating Server virtualisation, which can be done on one's own hardware, with Cloud "services", where one places all of one's data eggs in a single basket owned by someone else, and hopes for the best. |
| mortenalver Jun 14, 2011 5:22 AM EDT |
"Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference." -Mark Twain (?) |
| keithcu Jun 14, 2011 5:24 AM EDT |
I have a Linode server. $20 / month, and it handles ton of load. If I ever run out, I buy another $20 slice with 15 minutes of downtime. It also works great for large compute loads. Some people need their own supercomputers, but many can share with something like Amazon. I agree with Ken Hess on this point. |
| tracyanne Jun 14, 2011 5:46 AM EDT |
@keithcu clearly your data is not as valuable to you as mine is to me. |
| TxtEdMacs Jun 14, 2011 7:51 AM EDT |
ta,Quoting:He appears to be conflating Server virtualisation, which can be done on one's own hardware, with Cloud "services" [...] I think you are confused. Your implicit assumption is that KH actually knows what he is talking about. Shame, 5 switch strokes behind the shed for you. YBT |
| tracyanne Jun 14, 2011 8:18 AM EDT |
@txt, you do know how to give a girl a good time. |
| khess Jun 14, 2011 10:27 AM EDT |
I do actually know what I'm talking about. But, I will take Mark Twain's advice on this. Feel free to debate me on any technical issue. You'd better have your guns loaded. |
| tuxchick Jun 14, 2011 10:57 AM EDT |
What mortenalver said. Remember that ZDNet cares only about clicks. They don't care about quality, usefulness, or accuracy. |
| dinotrac Jun 14, 2011 11:03 AM EDT |
@khess - What is there to debate, though, about "Gee, I don't know about handing over my data?" Where do technical issues end and contractual issues begin? When you deal with the cloud, you start entering into an arena I worked 20-30 years ago when I was at EDS: outsourced IT. Nothing wrong with that per se, except that EDS deals were contracted between savvy folks on both sides, with clear SLAs, penalties for failure to deliver. Not only that, but the staff and EDS was a clear part of the package. Wish I knew how many times people were paraded past us on the way to a data center control room patterned after those at NASA mission control. We sold a form of cloud, too, but we called it the "fuzzy blob": you shouldn't care about where your work ran, only that it ran and ran well. How many cloud users really know what they're getting into? How many cloud providers provide the kind of service and guarantees their customers might just assume are there? For that matter, how cost efficient is the cloud? For whom is it cost-effective and under what circumstances. An acquaintance of my uses and likes Heroku, the Rails cloud provider. He does, however, talk about its ability to open up and suck money from his account if a campaign hits well. At any rate, I'm not sure these are points of debate so much as business decisions a potential cloud user should be pondering. They are easily waved off as non-technical, but data security and system performance/availability are most definitely technical issues. |
| vainrveenr Jun 14, 2011 11:23 AM EDT |
Quoting:I do actually know what I'm talking about. But, I will take Mark Twain's advice on this. Feel free to debate me on any technical issue. You'd better have your guns loaded. Excellent! Then continue to re-visit Martin's penetrating and technical 'On Virtualization and The Cloud: The Most Ridiculous Article I've Read in a Very Long Time' found at http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2011/06/the-most-ridiculous-art... Martin poses this issue there specifically regarding Cloud services: Quoting:How about the issue of having your confidential data mined? Hmmm... I'd call that bad.The "strawman arguer" then blatantly proceeds to absolutely ignore this Cloud services' issue of confidentiality (and its related data-mining/data-security). Will this arguer continue to ignore Cloud services' issues as he does in Martin's piece and here with starter of this LXer thread?? In other words, will this Cloud advocator continue to gloss over real world concerns, continue to deflect questions and major concerns regarding issues such as these, and continue his strawman arguments?? -OR (even better) - Does this author of 'Physical Server Dumpster Dive, Round Two' actually have the alacrity and integrity to maybe directly and accurately ADDRESS the major concerns of Cloud services that are posed here and elsewhere?? |
| caitlyn Jun 14, 2011 11:58 AM EDT |
While I've had some issues with Linode when a client used it, I have no problem with VPS style hosting in general and use it for my websites. I've never argued that websites shouldn't be virtualized or externally hosted. The point that virtualization and the Cloud are not one and the same is lost on Mr. Hess. He claims all the big players in IT agree with him. They and I agree with him on the importance of virtualization, not his original nonsense that all physical servers are as obsolete as the horse and buggy. (His analogy, not mine.) He ignores the fact that sometimes it is simply more cost effective not to virtualize. Mr. Hess also ridicules and dismisses anyone who disagrees with him as "sophmoric" and paranoid. He compares RMS and anyone raising concerns to survivalists with a "cache of duct tape and dehydrated water." (How do you dehydrate water?) I am alluded to as semi-technical so I guess he dismisses an entirely technical 31 year long resume. There is no arguing with this man. There is no reasoning with him. He knows he is right and don't dare confuse him with little things like facts. |
| dinotrac Jun 14, 2011 12:03 PM EDT |
@caitlyn - It's easier to call names than to discuss. Always has been and always will be. |
| caitlyn Jun 14, 2011 12:11 PM EDT |
Yep, dino. Notice I did not write an article in reply to this latest Hess offering. There is nothing of substance to reply to. I don't particularly enjoy repeating myself. If he needs to get the last word and use ZDNet's imprint to do it, well... that's fine by me. |
| jdixon Jun 14, 2011 1:24 PM EDT |
> I do actually know what I'm talking about. I suspect that's actually true, given some of your other articles. But what does that have to do with the click bait you write for ZDNet? |
| hkwint Jun 14, 2011 6:17 PM EDT |
The reasoning in this article is: "There are many good reasons to use Windows, OK, it's not secure, but you should look past that! TCO and power usage are huge and astronomical features in comparison to the tiny little atomic-scale detail of security. Moreover, most Fortune 500 companies use Windows, so we should all accept it and follow like true brainless iSheep". Come on, everybody knows "the cloud" is as secure as an unpatched Windows-box! Most LXer users don't trust Windows boxes with their personal valuable data, let alone the cloud. Technical issues: Hmm, Danger lost lots of clouddata and no backup, tons of credit-card no's "trusted to the cloud" are sold on Russian e-bay, the Dutch "Electronic Patient Document" cloud-like system was aborted because almost everybody was able to look at my medical data, Facebook screws me over because it sells my data to third parties, Google screws me over because they are the biggest spy on the net and know more about me than NSA, Mossad, FSB and MI6 and BSA together, Microsoft screws me over as MSN is ridden with social engineering efforts which they do absolutely nothing about - so I receive requests for free holidays / iPhones which try to steal my password and send me text messages of 3 euro per day, Sony lost lots of credit card info, and that's only the stuff I remember. So yeah, please discuss the technical issues of the cloud with me! You're welcome. I can summarize the whole technical problem in one phrase: You know why sometimes it's raining? Because a cloud is less water-tight than a sieve. |
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