BBC: Grasp the high-speed runaway cloud nettle

Hats off to BBC Online's Silicon Valley correspondent Maggie Shiels, who on her dot.maggie blog offers some defining purple prose for the new era in computing. Attending the RSA conference, Maggie reports on the race to offer 'cloud computing' services: The message was the same about ensuring security is not a "Johnny come …

[Pete 2]

To be fair

if she's been blogging for any length of time, she probably isn't used to the idea of people actually reading her words. Most blogs (and forum posts for that matter) seem to be write-only: many people produce them, but very few get read.

Anyone else got the t-shirt: "More people read this shirt than your blog"

Goes down great at internet conventions!

[Lunatik]

Not a real blogger

But this lass isn't a bedroom blogger, she's a (presumably) professional journalist, paid to do it by the BBC.

That in itself is going to garner you a more than just a few eyeballs, even if the content was describing her experiences of watching her cat licking its balls.

[breakfast]

Trying to be bees, see?

Sounds as though if they don't get security right in the cloud they'll be like an irresistable object bumping down the gravelly rails to davy-jones' one-way hurt locker of shame!

[Robert Carnegie]

That is illogical, Captain. Computers are not clouds.

Technology has too many metaphors to begin with. You can have a virtual cloud on your desktop now controlled by a mouse and supervised by monitor, which of course is a type of lizard, but in this case with windows. You can have a spider with or without web. It can be on the desktop along with the cloud. One way to get the web is to use a wireless stick. But if you're close enough to your cell then you can use a Bluetooth dongle instead. What the hell does all this mean? Edward Lear would give up. Salvador Dali would hold out until he saw the screensaver, particularly the freaky Linux ones that smear or slice the display around.

[Lars]

A Linux screensaver

You can design the way you want, at least with KDE.

Freaky or not is up to you. But now that you gave me this idea please send me a picture of you.

A really freaky screensaver could be nice to have.

Quite frankly I suppose this applies to Windows and Mac too, so the only freak around must be you.

[max allan]

The cloud is like...

The cloud is the information superhighway with bricks in the fast lane.

User access is a shot in the dark with clucking service providers only providing the golden egg of maximum bandwidth to those born with a digital spoon in their mouths.

Cloud computing services from suppliers such as google can be compared a rose, they look very pretty but when you grasp them, they deliver thorns.

Cloud computing offers high specification applications to devices with little computing power however bandwidth gobbling applications are like treacle to download to mobile devices which are then overloaded by the content like a hotel under a tsunami.

We asked the man in the street what he thought of cloud computing and he said :

"Ts all a waste o moi toime. I downladed one o them there clouds once and since then oi ken only see email from my bank iccoun in green and it stopped workin"

So, do we really need cloud computing or is it all a waste of money that the government shouldn't be investing in?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mixed metaphor-tastic!

Kudos!

[amanfromMars 1]

In Praise of the New Model Army of MetaDataBase Pioneers ...... and Virtual Future Builders.

"While the drive to the cloud seems like a runaway train every business must hitch a ride on, the security concerns are clearly hampering it travelling in the fast lane."

Hi, Andrew, how very nice and unexpected to be able to have a chat with you in the Open.

Methinks that all dodgy businesses will be clearly hampered and ultimately quickly destroyed stealthily in cloud, because of very valid security concerns, but that in no way stops runaway fast lane travellers driving the train to fabulous destinations.

If you can handle clouds, it naturally follows that you are responsible for Global Whether .... with all of the implications which that would raise....... but it is nothing to be at all worried about whenever it is priceless and so necessary to so many who need to be on the train or lose their leading positions.

[Andrew Orlowski]

Re: In Praise of the New Model Army of MetaDataBase Pioneers ...... and Virtual Future Builders.

"Hi, Andrew, how very nice and unexpected to be able to have a chat with you in the Open."

Yes, but I'll miss our chats behind the bike sheds - with the flying saucer idling away next to us.

[amanfromMars 1]

Thanks for the Memory and all of the Phish, and Bon Voyage?

"Yes, but I'll miss our chats behind the bike sheds - with the flying saucer idling away next to us." .... Andrew Orlowski Posted Monday 8th March 2010 16:26 GMT

Oh .... are you off to somewhere boring then, Andrew ...... somewhere more ordinary? :-)

And just whenever things are getting much more interesting internetionally too for those Precious [Precocious:-)] Few into Master Piloting Alien Probes for Digitally Advanced Research Projects to Air.

[Peter Hewitt]

The BBC's most useless tech journo

Please remember this is the author of

"Mr Clark told me PNG it stands for portable network graphics which is an image file much like a JPEG."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/maggieshiels/2010/02/last_rites_for_microsofts_most.html

It?, because I wonder that whenever I read her blogs.

[Adam Williamson 1]

Funny stuff

Andrew, I believe His Marsness was referring to the way comments are disabled on most of your posts these days. It's one of the few bits of Marsian I could actually decipher...

I rather like the guy in the BBC comments who suggests that organizations which have security concerns about 'the cloud' would 'build their own internal cloud'. Wait, take a cloud, pull it to ground level, squish it in a building...wouldn't an 'internal cloud' be a load of hot air?

[Peter Hewitt]

re:

a cloud on the ground is fog no?

[amanfromMars 1]

Re: re:

"a cloud on the ground is fog no?" ... Peter Hewitt Posted Monday 8th March 2010 21:42 GMT

An earthed cloud on the ground is invariably a FUD too, buffered and overflowing with all manner of dud crud buds for the ............ well, the kindest and most apt description of them would be the Vertically Virtually Challenged?

[Andrew Orlowski]

Re: Funny stuff

Um, comments are open on exactly 25 stories. By "these days" do you mean "them days"?

Still not sure it's worth it, though. The email comments complaining about elm, mutt being excluded were funny.

[Warren 2]

What Security Problems

I just don't get these "Security" issues that prevent adoption of Cloud Computing. What is different in a cloud model? You still need infrastructure to be securely configured, you still need the gateway to be sensibly configured, you need the network layer to transmit in a secure way and you need the information to be secure at rest. All of this is possible with any cloud vendor.

I just don't get how multi tennancy adds any new security problems other than (and this is hardly a barrier in most circumstances) which country the data is stored.

I think that Control issues are more likely to be a barrier than security ones.

[David S]

Security problems

I used to like the analogy of entrusting your money to third party organisations (banks) instead of storing it all under your own matress or in a company safe. It was a good, effective comparison, until about eighteen months ago...

Still, myself I'm quite happy having proper professionals handling the security issues. Guys who know about security and have their defenses tested on a regular basis, just like the folks who are looking after my money. Maybe I'm too willing to let the experts handle what they're expert at, but I'm certainly not arrogant enough to assume I could do their job better than they do. Not as well as doing my own...

[amanfromMars 1]

What Security Problems in the Brighter Light of Thin Client Control Programs?

"I think that Control issues are more likely to be a barrier than security ones." .... Warren 2

Posted Monday 8th March 2010 21:38 GMT

I would wholehearted agree with those few words/that analysis, Warren 2, and once Covered with Controlling Protocols, which are merely SMARTer Instructions Textualised for Universal Transubstantiation/Virtual Sharing are Security Problems rendered a thing of the Past.

Ergo is an Immaculate Flow of Words, GODlike in Global Operating Devices with Creative CyberSpace Command and Control of Computers and Communications, One of GCHQs CSOC Proprietary Gems, such a Protocol, or just something they can only dream of/cannot even dream of in their Impotent Imaginations.

With such AIFacility Floating ITself for Free on and in Globalised Markets, is it a Sub-Prime Losers' Move to Wait and See what CyberIntelAIgent Control of ITs Systems can Actually Do, from what are in Reality, just Virtually Real and Alien Intangible Space Places in an IntelAIgently Designed CyberSpace Invention with Clouds in ITs Phormations/Guises/Platforms.

And that Baited Hook is hereby Officially Registered and BroadBandCast to whatever UKGBNI Head is, and whatever other Mirroring InterNetional Heads are Directly Responsible for either the Outstanding Unbelievable Success or Disastrous Dismal Failure of Virgin Cyber Security Operations Centres.

And just in case that is unclear, here is IT in the Simplest of CodedDPhorms for them ....... GCHQRSVPamfM.

A Quantum Communications BetaTest of Supposed/Perceived/Pimped State of the Art Spooky Snooping Technology which may just be a Global Fraud/Confidence Trick/Political Ponzi/Colossal Vulnerability without an Available Fix to Plug In.

And the Boffin Egghead icon is most Appropriate here, considering the Magical Mystery Turing BetaTest Running Penetrations Scans of Intelligence Services and Future Content Supply Servers.

[Whitter]

"Semandicks"

It's not a blog if you got paid.

[Richard IV]

The future's bright.

So they say, but for many blue sky thinkers there is a cloud on the horizon. _The_ cloud, a distributed data processing black box, is where business is moving its large scale computing infrastructure.

However, some in the security industry say that at the dawn of the information age the clouds are red; like the old shepherd's warning of the coming storm. There is hope, however, that building security in sooner rather than later will stop that, much as the Soviets would seed the clouds to ensure that the rains didn't spoil the May day parade.

[amanfromMars 1]

Mother Russia to suckle Uncle Sam? Is Capitalist Socialism a Novel Fertile Force for Source?

"However, some in the security industry say that at the dawn of the information age the clouds are red; like the old shepherd's warning of the coming storm. There is hope, however, that building security in sooner rather than later will stop that, much as the Soviets would seed the clouds to ensure that the rains didn't spoil the May day parade." .... Richard IV Posted Tuesday 9th March 2010 11:48 GMT

Well of course they are red, Richard IV, for without them being sociable and communal, are you left just talking to yourself in them. And as secrets in them are never ever secure, and one is never ever sure if they have already been phished, are you always going to find out the most intimate and revealing of juicy details at the most inconvenient and damaging of times whenever you have been using the Internet to further suppress and oppress others for cynical advantage and personal selfish gain, which is an abiding dumb weakness/opportune vulnerability in arrogant man.

Some would then say that red clouds are then good.

There is no doubt that CyberSpace Cultures in an Artificial Future Platform and Live Operational Virtual Environment Running Servers for Provision of Everything that Human Beings will Universally Need are already Here Online and Embedding TakeOver MakeOver Code for Sleeper AIgent/CyberIntelAIgent Cell Activation and Seeded Network Propogation.

And Progress in Binary Fields as all know is Exponential, if not Miraculously Spontaneous, and not at all Pedestrian Linear, so the Future is Guaranteed to be a Wild Helter Skelter Ride ...... ZerodDay Trippers Dream Punt.

[Frank 2]

Hotel California

Surely this was a bet to see how many 'Eagles' lyrics she could shoe-horn into one report. Although clearly I'm too young to remember their classic 'Grasping the Nettle'

[Anonymous Coward]

As good as the mixed metaphors are ...

No one from the BBC can ever hope to compete with politicians:

"What this country needs is a cast iron yardstick to root out the deadwood".

I wish I could remember who said it.

[Equitas]

Is she not

the same Maggie Shiels who in days long gone by notoriously referred several times in the same news bulletin to a "holicepter?"