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Darth.Titan

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Oct 31, 2007
2,905
753
Austin, TX
http://www.techspot.com/news/49980-majority-of-americans-believe-bad-weather-affects-cloud-computing.html

tumblr_m9jw7u54S01rvflot.jpg
 

rdowns

macrumors Penryn
Jul 11, 2003
27,397
12,521
I'm Director of Sales for a company offering cloud-based solutions, my team got a good laugh out of this. Always gfood to laugh at sales meetings.
 

strider42

macrumors 65816
Feb 1, 2002
1,461
7

Well, bad weather can knock out power to your house, knock out your internet, knock on something on your ISP's side, or knock out something the the company hosting the "cloud" needs, so bad whether certainly can affect cloud computing. Dependingn on how the question was asked, people may have been thinking along those lines sometimes. And that really underscores one of the issues with having everything in the cloud: there are more points of failure when it comes to accessing that data.
 

velocityg4

macrumors 604
Dec 19, 2004
7,329
4,717
Georgia
Well, bad weather can knock out power to your house, knock out your internet, knock on something on your ISP's side, or knock out something the the company hosting the "cloud" needs, so bad whether certainly can affect cloud computing. Dependingn on how the question was asked, people may have been thinking along those lines sometimes. And that really underscores one of the issues with having everything in the cloud: there are more points of failure when it comes to accessing that data.

That's along the lines of what I was thinking. A flood, well placed lightning strike, hurricane or tornado could certainly affect cloud computing from your end or theirs. If you use satellite internet much milder weather could affect it. Solar weather could affect it too a good solar storm could knock out satellites, electronics and/or the entire power grid.

Although the bit about people thinking it actually has something to do with clouds or the sky is funny.
 

chown33

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 9, 2009
10,750
8,421
A sea of green
Summary: 54% of Americans have no idea how any of this tech stuff works, while 57% of them like to act as if they do.
 

G51989

macrumors 68030
Feb 25, 2012
2,530
10
NYC NY/Pittsburgh PA
There was a point in time when the majoirty of people didn't know the difference between " Pentium " and " Intel ". And many people thought " Intel Inside " was the name of the company.

I **** you not.
 

Orange Furball

macrumors 65816
May 18, 2012
1,325
6
Scranton, PA, USA
Summary: 54% of Americans have no idea how any of this tech stuff works, while 57% of them like to act as if they do.

Summary: you don't know how to add.


This is kinda like when I was at my girlfriends house, we were watching TV and there was some artifcating on the screen. Just little bits every so often. And she said it was from the bad weather. When I told her she had cable, and the weather only effected satellites, she was extremely confused. Eventually I gave up and said yes! Terrible weather! -_-
 

thewitt

macrumors 68020
Sep 13, 2011
2,102
1,523
Summary: you don't know how to add.


This is kinda like when I was at my girlfriends house, we were watching TV and there was some artifcating on the screen. Just little bits every so often. And she said it was from the bad weather. When I told her she had cable, and the weather only effected satellites, she was extremely confused. Eventually I gave up and said yes! Terrible weather! -_-

Um, except the cable company pulls the feed from a satellite....and is impacted by bad weather as well....
 

snberk103

macrumors 603
Oct 22, 2007
5,503
91
An Island in the Salish Sea
Summary: 54% of Americans have no idea how any of this tech stuff works, while 57% of them like to act as if they do.

Summary: you don't know how to add.

...-

Actually, those two groups aren't exclusive, so the math is not the issue. Of the 54% who don't know how the stuff works, half or so of that 54% group don't know and act as if they do. The other 43% don't know and admit it.
 

APlotdevice

macrumors 68040
Sep 3, 2011
3,145
3,861
Summary: you don't know how to add.


This is kinda like when I was at my girlfriends house, we were watching TV and there was some artifcating on the screen. Just little bits every so often. And she said it was from the bad weather. When I told her she had cable, and the weather only effected satellites, she was extremely confused. Eventually I gave up and said yes! Terrible weather! -_-

I used to have satellite. The only kind of weather that ever really affected it was snow, and only after the dish had collected about an inch of it. In fact the signal quality was better than the digital cable I have now.
 

Toltepeceno

Suspended
Jul 17, 2012
1,807
554
SMT, Edo MX, MX
Here where we live it definitely affect's it, we have a lot of thunderstorms and lose power regularly.

The moral is that maybe many live where this happens.
 

DrNeroCF

macrumors 6502
Sep 2, 2004
276
0
'Cloud Computing' is a stupid, useless buzzword. The only reason it's used is to intentionally obscure its true meaning.

So yeah, mission accomplished. No one to blame but the idiots pushing that PR bulletpoint.

And yeah, that's crazy, my Internet and cell service always takes a hit when it's raining. So, maybe they're more right than you think? Heh.
 
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gnasher729

Suspended
Nov 25, 2005
17,980
5,565

In that case, the majority of Americans is right. Just ask Amazon how they were knocked out by some severe storm recently. Ask yourself how well cloud computing works when the phone poles are first covered by ice and then crash down under their own weight, as has happened in the past.


This is kinda like when I was at my girlfriends house, we were watching TV and there was some artifcating on the screen. Just little bits every so often. And she said it was from the bad weather. When I told her she had cable, and the weather only effected satellites, she was extremely confused. Eventually I gave up and said yes! Terrible weather! -_-

Wise move. First, because it is the right thing to do anyway. Second, because quite possibly she was right. Once your cable connection is not perfectly insulated from everything, it can easily be affected by bad weather. And since she lives that the house, it is quite possible that she noticed good picture whenever the weather is good, and bad picture when the weather is bad.
 

iMacFarlane

macrumors 65816
Apr 5, 2012
1,123
30
Adrift in a sea of possibilities
This incredible and unbelievable non-science understanding of general populace reminds me of the time I told someone I worked in nuclear power and they told me that they feared that all electricity generated from a nuclear power plant was radioactive. Yep. Radioactive electricity. Watch out for that . . . :rolleyes:
 

gnasher729

Suspended
Nov 25, 2005
17,980
5,565
This incredible and unbelievable non-science understanding of general populace reminds me of the time I told someone I worked in nuclear power and they told me that they feared that all electricity generated from a nuclear power plant was radioactive. Yep. Radioactive electricity. Watch out for that . . . :rolleyes:

Well, before we feel too clever, what about a reality check: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2586...ds_downing_netflix_instagram_other_sites.html

From the article: "Severe storms that wiped out power to more than 2 million people across the eastern United States Friday night also took down Netflix, Pinterest, Instagram and other sites due to an outage of Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud in northern Virginia"
 
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LethalWolfe

macrumors G3
Jan 11, 2002
9,370
124
Los Angeles
As others have said, weather events can certainly disrupt connectivity with data centers and/or ISPs which would impact a user's ability to get online and/or access their documents stored in the cloud.
 

kylos

macrumors 6502a
Nov 8, 2002
948
4
MI
Well, before we feel too clever, what about a reality check: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2586...ds_downing_netflix_instagram_other_sites.html

From the article: "Severe storms that wiped out power to more than 2 million people across the eastern United States Friday night also took down Netflix, Pinterest, Instagram and other sites due to an outage of Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud in northern Virginia"

I had to redo a week's worth of work on a shared hosting provider because of that storm and a bad backup plan. It affected more than just amazon.

So I definitely agree that cloud computing can be affected by weather!

----------

Wise move. First, because it is the right thing to do anyway. Second, because quite possibly she was right. Once your cable connection is not perfectly insulated from everything, it can easily be affected by bad weather. And since she lives that the house, it is quite possible that she noticed good picture whenever the weather is good, and bad picture when the weather is bad.

Also, local cable may still receive their programming from microwave repeaters upstream. Weather can affect those signals as well, causing issues even though local distribution is by cable.

Edit: just saw thewitt beat me by quite a bit on the second point.
 

Macintosh-HD

macrumors member
Feb 2, 2012
60
0
Knoxville, TN
'Cloud Computing' is a stupid, useless buzzword. The only reason it's used is to intentionally obscure its true meaning.

So yeah, mission accomplished. No one to blame but the idiots pushing that PR bulletpoint.

My thoughts exactly. The "cloud" has always been there since the beginning of the internet (i.e. computers sharing data over a wide area network).

The term "cloud" is just another piece of marketing bullcrap for ignorant consumers to get all caught up in.

I bet the survey the OP posted was based on the same people who couldn't even tell you who the first president of the US was; but, could tell you every American Idol winner since its beginning....
 

Synchromesh

macrumors 6502a
Jul 15, 2009
619
121
SF
In theory it is a possibility. Example: all the servers your data is stored on (including backups) suddenly went offline because of power outage or internet providers being down all over the world due to very bad weather. Then your cloud would indeed be affected by bad weather.
 

msimpson

macrumors regular
Sep 5, 2007
118
0
Blame the stupid marketing people

Just because you read IT rumor and news websites all day, does not mean the average American does, and that does not mean they are idiots.

"Cloud computing" is just a stupid marketing term for a bunch of stuff that has been around for a while that some people are trying to repackage and sell.

If you ask the average American about the "the web" or "the Internet" they would understand.

If we could take a baseball bat to the head of anyone who uses the term "cloud computing" we would be a lot better off as a country.

And anyone who uses the phrase "use case"..

My favorite use case for my Louisville slugger is caving in the skulls of morons who make up stupid names like "cloud computing"
 
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