Re: Cloud Computing with Octave

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 19 October 2012 15:52, Georgios Kousiouris <address@hidden> wrote:
> And it is very convenient to reply in a dogmatic way to the 1% of the
> response, without actually answering the other parts.

You begin with flawed premises, so it's just a matter of attacking the
flawed premise, namely that "cloud computing" is a meaningful term.
Once the flawed premise is dealt with, the rest of your argument which
hinges on that premise does not follow, so it's not necessary to
attack it carefully. From a false assumption anything follows.

But fine, as you wish. Let's do this, let's assume that cloud
computing is meaningful. Let's begin with a few attempted defintions
on the internet:

Wikipedia:

    Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and
    software) that are delivered as a service over a network
    (typically the Internet).

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

>From SearchCloudComputing:

    Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves
    delivering hosted services over the Internet. These services are
    broadly divided into three categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service
    (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service
    (SaaS).

    http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/definition/cloud-computing

>From Infoworld:

    Cloud computing is all the rage. "It's become the phrase du jour,"
    says Gartner senior analyst Ben Pring, echoing many of his peers.
    The problem is that (as with Web 2.0) everyone seems to have a
    different definition.

    
http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/what-cloud-computing-really-means-031

>From GNU:

    The real meaning of “cloud computing” is to suggest a
    devil-may-care approach towards your computing. It says, “Don't
    ask questions, just trust every business without hesitation. Don't
    worry about who controls your computing or who holds your data.
    Don't check for a hook hidden inside our service before you
    swallow it.” In other words, “Think like a sucker.” I prefer to
    avoid the term.

    https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html

Let us assume that despite the difficulties that all of these have in
defining cloud computing, we can infer a definite meaning at any rate.
If that is so, the only meaning I'm able to infer is that there is a
network connection and the remote end is performing some computing
tasks. But this is the case of absolutely any computing network, they
all have to communicate with each other and the different ends do
specific computing tasks. So this cannot be the intended meaning that
we can deduce from all four of these definition.s Let us assume, then,
that everyone else on the internet is wrong but you're not.

Let us be charitable to you and instead use your own definition:

> "Cloud computing" means combination of virtualization issues,
> resource sharing and scheduling issues, concurrency and
> multi-tenancy issues, performance interference at cpu,network and
> storage, and that's just at the infrastructure layer. At the
> software and platform layers there are many more even more
> challenging aspects like elasticity, application scaling, data
> integrity etc.

You have conflated quite a few differing topics into cloud computing
that the other definitions haven't, but let us assume that unless
there is virtualisation, resource sharing, scheduling (more generally,
concurrency), then it's not cloud computing.

So, given your definition, which of the following are cloud computing
and which are not? After all, the point of a definition is to set
limits, to "de-fine" what you want to talk about. My attempt to answer
this question follows.

   * Remote virtual machines hosted as a service -- Yes, a virtual
     machine has an OS, and any modern OS has concurrency, resource
     management, and a measurable performance, so it's cloud
     computing.

   * Google docs -- Probably, Google probably uses a virtual machine
     and uses an OS.

   * A web server serving only static pages -- Only if the server
     itself is hosted as a virtual machine. If there is no
     virtualisation, then it's not cloud computing.

   * An IRC daemon: Yes, but only if the daemon is hosted in a virtual
     machine, but there must be other daemons also running in this
     virtual machine so that the other elements of cloud computing
     (resource sharing and application scaling) can also exist.

I am not sure your definition actually works here, but I think it does
at least determine the cloudness of these four examples.

Let us treat your other arguments independently of your definition of
cloud computing, in order to avoid the possible danger of arguing from
a false premise.

> Have you ever been given an account on a server or system in general
> without root privileges? I guess you have, I have plenty of times,
> either as a student or afterwards. Did you have ability to control
> that system? Did you use that system even though it was out of your
> control? Should you have the ability to control it? What if you
> didn't have the necessary knownledge and did something that messed
> up the entire configuration?

I have been a guest in other people's machines, yes. This is just a
network service. My hosts have always used free software, and given me
enough resources to install and run my own software so I have never
felt restricted while I was their host. I independently have trusted
my own hosts because they are usually my friends.

> What is more, there is also the case of a private cloud

This term needs to be defined. Does that simply mean a private network
server or does it also need all of the elements of cloud computing you
included above?

> run by a single entity (e.g. company or university) that may give
> the capability to its members (employees or students) to use these
> software and hardware resources as a service, without having to know
> (in most cases they don't want to know either) anything about what
> is going on in the backstage. Isn't this helpful?

Encapsulation is helpful only if it can be sidestepped by those who
don't need it.

> Is there a trust issue involved?

Depends on the individuals and entities in this relationship.

> Isn't the code you write as an employee of a company already on an
> SVN or something similar?

I assume you're trying to argue about the trust that exists between
an employee and an employer. Yes, there is usually some trust there,
but not a whole lot. Because people don't trust each other, they draft
contracts to be enforced through legal means. This is disappointing in
some cases. I do not see what this has to do with the meaning and
utility of "cloud computing", unless again you are conflating all
network use with clouds.

> Furthermore, should all of the users be computer experts in order to
> have access and usage of scalable resources or exotically installed
> applications?

If they want to be treated like suckers, they can act like suckers and
accept sucker terminology like "cloud computing".

> So even if you see it from a business model point of view, cloud
> computing gives the democratic ability

There is usually no democracy here; we are not all publicly voting
what to do with each other's servers.

> to the individual to actually matter and create something from
> scratch without having the extended knowledge or capital that would
> otherwise be needed to compete with existing, long standing
> companies.

So you see "cloud computing", whatever that is, as enabling
disadvantaged people from participating in computing. The extent to
which this is true is doubtful, but it seems to me like you are
promoting a serfdom of technically incapable people because they are
unable to do their own computing on their own machines.

> Again, I am not arguing on using Cloud computing for everything.
> There are cases where it offers significant benefits and other cases
> where it has drawbacks (security-wise or otherwise). It is all up to
> the use case, but discarding the technology as a whole is not the
> answer.

I insist that "the technology" is a vague and meaningless term and
that cloud computing by itself does not constitute a technology, but
according to your own definition, constitutes a variety of different
technological advances that in isolation are interesting (concurrent
programming is interesting, network topology is interesting,
virtualisation is interesting), but to bundle all of these together
under your definition as a "technology" is a broad and overly general
term, which leads to overly broad statements that confuse the
individual cases.

- Jordi G. H.