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Darth.Titan

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Oct 31, 2007
2,908
754
Austin, TX
http://www.techspot.com/news/49980-majority-of-americans-believe-bad-weather-affects-cloud-computing.html

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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.
 

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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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! -_-
 
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....
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
'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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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.
 
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:
 
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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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.
 
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!

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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.
 
'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....
 
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.
 
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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