I love "Dilbert"

[Monkeyleg]

Today's Dilbert cartoon had me laughing with tears in my eyes. Dilbert is one of the few comic strips that has managed to stay funny after running for years.

[Boomhauer]

Especially for the past two weeks, Dilbert has been a scarily accurate depiction of my job.

[Nitrogen]

Ditto.  They even went into "Cloud Computing", which, my company is one of the top players in this newly created,  buzzworded term.

[Monkeyleg]

Avenger, I'm really sorry.

I have no idea what cloud computing is, but my hosting company is sure set on getting me to switch to a cloud VPS.

[Boomhauer]

My coworker actually saved this one when it came in the paper because it matched what had happened the week before all too well.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

read "the way of the weasel"

[Harold Tuttle]

I used to be micromanaged by a pointy haired Boss

I think he thought that if he could get me to document all my time in processes,
He could teach others how to be as effective.

[MechAg94]

[Nitrogen]

Remember how mainframes let a whole lot of people use a small cluster of computers?
And then remember how the PC changed all that?

readers digest version of cloud computing:
It gives people the control over their application that a PC/individual server would give you with the economy of scale of having just a few huge computers.  Basically it slices that huge computer cluster up into small pieces, giving someone full administrative control over each slice they are given.

[Monkeyleg]

And how is that different from a VPS?

[Hawkmoon]

And how is that different from a VPS?

And with netbooks selling for $250 that have more computing power than what NASA used to put men on the moon, why is it suddenly looking good to put groups back to being tethered to one (or two) large computer(s)?

[RocketMan]

And with netbooks selling for $250 that have more computing power than what NASA used to put men on the moon, why is it suddenly looking good to put groups back to being tethered to one (or two) large computer(s)?

Control.  Someone will control the large computers, thereby controlling your access to them.
I suspect that once folks fully grasp the concept, they won't want to do it.  My preference is to keep other folk's hands off my machines.

ETA:  Control also means those with the large computers will be selling time on them.  Subscription computing.

[Regolith]

And with netbooks selling for $250 that have more computing power than what NASA used to put men on the moon, why is it suddenly looking good to put groups back to being tethered to one (or two) large computer(s)?

My guess is, for large companies, it will save them money (won't have to buy as much hardware or software, etc).  For everyone else, I think it'd be a non-starter.

[zahc]

It makes sense for very seasonal businesses, whose computing resources might be left idling a good part of the year. That's the only good scenario I've ever heard of for cloud computing.