From jason.dusek at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 01:16:37 2009 From: jason.dusek at gmail.com (Jason Dusek) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 01:16:37 -0700 Subject: [USENIX] The Cloud Minders Message-ID: <42784f260904020116n12a83eb8v895f5b06e7799a13@mail.gmail.com> The author's comparison of cloud computing to the banking system is poorly made; their portrayal of cloud computing is incorrect and borders on intellectually dishonest. The author makes repeated reference to the financial infeasbility of cloud computing, suggesting that it is "artificially cheap" and that when many providers enter the pool the price will rise. The first claim is unsupportable. Amazon's history of gradual and measured price reductions suggests they have kept a reasonable margin for themselves. It is also entirely unreasonable that pulling together your own team and facility to manage a bunch of servers (or even one server) is going to be cheaper in any sense, global or individual -- it is a waste of air conditioning, of people and of cement. Of course, we've all known this for a long time -- which is why there are colos. The second claim, that many providers will enter the market and raise prices, is ridiculous. They don't get to enter the market if their prices are not competitive. More generally, an excess of supply does not increase price. An author's whose understanding of market economics is so basically flawed can not be expected to draw fluent parallels between cloud computing and the banking system; and indeed, the author's remarks are survivalist ranting. Their approach to data security is the moral equivalent of keeping one's money at home under a mattress. For the author, a professor of mattress-moneykeeping, it is no trouble to rig sentry guns and radars to protect his money; rather than offer this as a service to others, though, he instead insists we try to acquire this same level of expertise. Being honest with myself, I realize I am far more likely to wipe out my own mail server with `rm -rf /` (which I have done once, actually) and burn down my house at the same time than I am to lose my mail in GMail. In one thing and one thing only has the author brought something of value to our attention -- cloud services with a storage element, such as Amazon's S3, are more like banks than they are like utilities. However, on-demand CPU and RAM are utilities; and any tiered architecture is already able to take advantage of them as such. In calling for greater concern about data integrity and privacy, the author has indicated a valuable direction for future evolution of cloud services; however, the author confounds a number of issues in their deprecation of the cloud, sinking in to slander. I would go on but this letter is already long; I'd like for other people to have a chance to speak before I say any more. -- Jason Dusek From dpuryear at puryear-it.com Thu Apr 2 14:29:44 2009 From: dpuryear at puryear-it.com (Dustin Puryear) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 15:29:44 -0600 Subject: [USENIX] [SAGE] The Cloud Minders Message-ID: <43452C495F09D048BF7CE9F96B65688E08A77C@sbs.Puryear-IT.local> So what you're saying is that you disagree with the article? ;-) -----Original Message----- From: sage-members-bounces at mailman.sage.org [mailto:sage-members-bounces at mailman.sage.org] On Behalf Of Jason Dusek Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 3:17 AM To: usenix-discuss at hoshi.usenix.org; sage-members at sage.org Subject: Re: [SAGE] The Cloud Minders The author's comparison of cloud computing to the banking system is poorly made; their portrayal of cloud computing is incorrect and borders on intellectually dishonest. The author makes repeated reference to the financial infeasbility of cloud computing, suggesting that it is "artificially cheap" and that when many providers enter the pool the price will rise. The first claim is unsupportable. Amazon's history of gradual and measured price reductions suggests they have kept a reasonable margin for themselves. It is also entirely unreasonable that pulling together your own team and facility to manage a bunch of servers (or even one server) is going to be cheaper in any sense, global or individual -- it is a waste of air conditioning, of people and of cement. Of course, we've all known this for a long time -- which is why there are colos. The second claim, that many providers will enter the market and raise prices, is ridiculous. They don't get to enter the market if their prices are not competitive. More generally, an excess of supply does not increase price. An author's whose understanding of market economics is so basically flawed can not be expected to draw fluent parallels between cloud computing and the banking system; and indeed, the author's remarks are survivalist ranting. Their approach to data security is the moral equivalent of keeping one's money at home under a mattress. For the author, a professor of mattress-moneykeeping, it is no trouble to rig sentry guns and radars to protect his money; rather than offer this as a service to others, though, he instead insists we try to acquire this same level of expertise. Being honest with myself, I realize I am far more likely to wipe out my own mail server with `rm -rf /` (which I have done once, actually) and burn down my house at the same time than I am to lose my mail in GMail. In one thing and one thing only has the author brought something of value to our attention -- cloud services with a storage element, such as Amazon's S3, are more like banks than they are like utilities. However, on-demand CPU and RAM are utilities; and any tiered architecture is already able to take advantage of them as such. In calling for greater concern about data integrity and privacy, the author has indicated a valuable direction for future evolution of cloud services; however, the author confounds a number of issues in their deprecation of the cloud, sinking in to slander. I would go on but this letter is already long; I'd like for other people to have a chance to speak before I say any more. -- Jason Dusek _______________________________________________ sage-members mailing list sage-members at mailman.sage.org http://mailman.sage.org/mailman/listinfo/sage-members -- This message was scanned by ESVA and is believed to be clean. Click here to report this message as spam. http://esva.puryear-it.com/cgi-bin/learn-msg.cgi?id= From jason.dusek at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 16:19:13 2009 From: jason.dusek at gmail.com (Jason Dusek) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 16:19:13 -0700 Subject: [USENIX] The Cloud Minders In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <42784f260904021619n6d119627p80ca132969d90bd7@mail.gmail.com> 2009/04/02 Christopher Schneider : > I recently joined the USENIX list and cannot find anything in > the archives that appears to be the source of this > conversation. Can you please provide me with a link to the > original article/document that you are referencing? I am very > interested. It's in the April issue of ;login: http://www.usenix.org/publications/login/2009-04/pdfs/burgess.pdf -- Jason Dusek From jason.dusek at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 16:33:24 2009 From: jason.dusek at gmail.com (Jason Dusek) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 16:33:24 -0700 Subject: [USENIX] [SAGE] The Cloud Minders In-Reply-To: <43452C495F09D048BF7CE9F96B65688E08A77C@sbs.Puryear-IT.local> References: <43452C495F09D048BF7CE9F96B65688E08A77C@sbs.Puryear-IT.local> Message-ID: <42784f260904021633j153c6a71vca2ee24061ad811f@mail.gmail.com> 2009/04/02 Dustin Puryear : > So what you're saying is that you disagree with the article? ;-) Not in so many words :) -- Jason Dusek From jason.dusek at gmail.com Thu Apr 16 20:20:31 2009 From: jason.dusek at gmail.com (Jason Dusek) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:20:31 -0700 Subject: [USENIX] Linux is Not Windows Message-ID: <42784f260904162020r57c6a26fo93b7c1d3c804b0f0@mail.gmail.com> An amusing quote from the article: " Vi is a good example of software deliberately created for a user who already knows how it works: It's not unheard of for new users to reboot their computers because they couldn't figure out how else to get out of vi. -- Jason Dusek |...the article...| http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm From brontolinux at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 07:12:39 2009 From: brontolinux at gmail.com (Marco Marongiu) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:12:39 +0200 Subject: [USENIX] Linux is Not Windows In-Reply-To: <42784f260904162020r57c6a26fo93b7c1d3c804b0f0@mail.gmail.com> References: <42784f260904162020r57c6a26fo93b7c1d3c804b0f0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49EB3157.2090302@gmail.com> Jason Dusek wrote: > An amusing quote from the article: > > " Vi is a good example of software deliberately created for a > user who already knows how it works: It's not unheard of for > new users to reboot their computers because they couldn't > figure out how else to get out of vi. That's so true. Actually, I have a similar short story from the opposite bank of the river. I was new to PCs and I installed a DOS version of Emacs. Soon after I tried a few things, I had to turn off my PC since the usual exit sequences (q, ALT-q, CTRL-q, ALT-F4...) didn't work :) Ciao! --Marco -- Marco Marongiu System Administrator - Technical Author - Perl Programmer From ashulinux at yahoo.com Fri Apr 24 12:57:38 2009 From: ashulinux at yahoo.com (Ashutosh Narayan) Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:57:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [USENIX] New joinee Message-ID: <945551.27019.qm@web111413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Hi List, I am a new joinee in USENIX mailing list. Just wanted to say a big HI to everyone. ASHUTOSH NARAYAN Bangalore INDIA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jason.dusek at gmail.com Fri Apr 24 17:50:10 2009 From: jason.dusek at gmail.com (Jason Dusek) Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:50:10 -0700 Subject: [USENIX] New joinee In-Reply-To: <945551.27019.qm@web111413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <945551.27019.qm@web111413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <42784f260904241750t63f42234t774572b0972c20de@mail.gmail.com> Hello. -- Jason Dusek From ntwrkd at gmail.com Fri Apr 24 21:25:53 2009 From: ntwrkd at gmail.com (ntwrkd) Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:25:53 -0700 Subject: [USENIX] New joinee In-Reply-To: <42784f260904241750t63f42234t774572b0972c20de@mail.gmail.com> References: <945551.27019.qm@web111413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <42784f260904241750t63f42234t774572b0972c20de@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Welcome On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 5:50 PM, Jason Dusek wrote: > ?Hello. > > -- > Jason Dusek > _______________________________________________ > USENIX-discuss mailing list > USENIX-discuss at lists.usenix.org > http://lists.usenix.org/mailman/listinfo/usenix-discuss >