Ted Rall for January 16, 2010

I’m lost on this one…..

He accidentally deleted the sum total of human knowledge. Ha ha! Whoops!

At least, that’s what I’m getting from this.

Interesting that the subject in the cartoon is using old style CRT displays on his desk. And at least he still has a clock left on top of one of his monitors, he can still tell what time it is, so I guess not all is lost.

Rall is referring to Cloud computing. Google is a great promoter of this new concept in resource sharing. That frigging worries me on a security level.

It won’t be an accident

omQ R has got it.

And we have always loved Big Brother.

If something like this happens, does this mean that all the records of crimes of government will be lost?

Is that machine/device your servant or your master?

harley’s got it right; it’s a form of distributed computing – not unlike the Internet itself in one sense, since the Internet is not a “thing” but a combination of computers, servers, and connections between them. But I don’t trust it yet. As much as Internet access crashes, I have no desire to lose access to my content, even if it still exists. I see it possibly as an adjunct – a remote safety net – but not a primary source yet. And I don’t trust Google with this, either, after their highhanded attempt to take over all of literature.

I give harleyquinn an ‘F-’ for not understanding the cartoon and an ‘F-’ for not understanding that cartoons are metaphors and sometimes are not to be taken literally.

Rall understands the concept (although the outdated tech in the background wouldn’t suggest Google offices). I’m involved in a project to provide security for virtualised IT environments for our customers. We call it “Cloud Infrastructure Services”.

It never rained this much before we started using those bows and arrows!

“The Cloud” is strictly a feel good term designed to make you feel comfortable with putting some unseen entity in charge of all of your information.

The previous name was “We have all your stuff on our servers & we can share it with anyone that pays us enough or twists our arm.”

In early marketing tests, that name didn’t fare too well….

overall I find it kind of scary too. Did anyone see this story on AT&T Facebook security glitches?

http://tinyurl.com/AT-TsezWHOOPS

The “Cloud” should be called, “The Fog”.

I think the key to interpreting this cartoon might be in the tag, “St.Aquinas:It-s All Straw.” I don’t know what that means, and the link won’t work for me, but it must be significant.

Thanks, ahab. One person shows an understanding of my first comment. People have also become incredibly lazy and dependent on machines/devices to do the simplest things for them. They are useful tools, not reasons for being.

mattro53, I’d say this toon is suggesting the device is more master than servant.

Re the Aquinas tag:

When asked why he stopped writing, he replied, “I cannot go on…. All that I have written seems to me like so much straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.”

http://www.americancatholic.org/features/saints/saint.aspx?id=1274

What exactly triggered Aquinas’s experience is believed to be some kind of spiritual experience which caused him to doubt the efficacy of logic and reason to understand God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas

The following article makes one worry about changes in information and who makes the decision. In this case there are hardcopies, however, they are not easily accessed.

This is an article concerning maps of Japan posted on Google.

http://tinyurl.com/cz7y5c