Two news stories that struck me as interesting:

Young boy has legs amputated voluntarily to get away from painful disease. Now happily using prosthetic legs:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/28350077/?gt1=43001

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Cloud Computing (Warning: A little bit like a Google commercial.)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28350442/


Thoughts?

those are the same kind of legs that there was some olympiclevel noise about, no?

as for cloud computing, can someone say buzzword bingo?

That company is a bunch of idiots. If they REALLY needed low cost infrastructure, they should have gone with a Linux install. An email server can EASILY be run on a last year cast off desktop machine. Also for word processing and spread sheets, they could have run Open Office. Putting all your eggs on someone else's basket is just dumb.

So you run all your own data storage with your own two hands?

You can't run an email server for 16,000 people off "last year's cast off desktop machine." Especially when you consider that, being a corporate server, it'll probably need to retain emails for a several months, and provide storage for up to 3 years. Weekly manual backups aren't economical on that timeframe and scale. I can't imagine they'd be looking into Google cloud shit just because of cost - upgrading their information infrastructure MIGHt require a great deal of upgrades to their facilities, such as better HVAC for more servers, reinforced floors for more weight in the server room. Or they might be into the idea of being able to access their data while letting Google worry about security, VPNs, and all of that shit. And I have no doubt the discount Google's offering is INCREDIBLY deep, to the point of 'virtually free', given that they're functioning as guinea pigs for Google's project.
Furthermore, the issue isn't "what's cheapest", it's "what's best bang for the buck." If you're looking to race a car, scrounging a yugo cuz it's cheapest isn't the best option. Same deal with Google's stuff. They cut really deep discounts for full companies and throw in things like Google Docs to sweeten the deal; it's not what sells them.

So call them idiots if you want, but I don't think you have even remotely enough information to make that call and not be stabbing in the dark.

Quick edit: To clarify, Google Docs is free. The way they sweeten the deal is that - like with their search solutions - they'll customize the program for your company.

and thats why sr has rent-a-cops, and that real life governments wants to rent from lowest bidder rather then run their own.

OK, I guess I deserved that.

I should have said that they could have reused their old email servers. Which I think they should have had considering there are 16000 employees at the company. That said, they were most likely running Microsoft Exchange for their mail services. I do have links showing that Linux based mail servers can run more efficiently, but those are from pro Linux sites and therefore suspect.

The reason for not going with Cloud Computing is that the data is no longer your own. You are trusting that Google can keep their servers secure. What happens when they fail. It's not a matter of if, but when. At least when kept in-house you can take steps to minimize the possibility of data theft.

Now THAT, that's probably super true, and I can get on board with that.

I'm personally pretty sure that an equal amount of Linux machines and MS Exchange servers would come out ahead in favor of the Linux boxes, honestly - at least in terms of power consumption and cycles-per-user. More with less, so to speak.

Of course, I'm basing this on the fact that the Redmond MS exchange servers ate it this past week when we all got snowed in, and couldn't deal with the 50,000 or so logins from home. Which is, quite frankly, a total embarassment. If you can't handle your own employees with the product you make and your own infrastructure... Well, that just doesn't look too good.

Putting your trust in Google isn't that crazy. A company like google lives or dies by its reputation, ESPECIALLY with stuff like cloud computing. I've also read over some fo the spec sheets for google facilities (not the real meat of it, but the non-secret stuff they share with customers). I'm impressed. They have a much better set-up than any I've ever worked with.

Granted, if you're using top-secret data, cloud computing is a pretty lousy idea, but if you're using data with low confidentiality requirements, or especially stuff with high availability requirements, it's almost always desirable. Hosting that Linux box means you have one extra guy on staff at $80k/year + benefits, and you can expect plenty of downtime with that too, plus you need to keep the system patched, get an anti-virus scanner and so on. How much does it cost to use googledocs? How often is googledocs down? If you "just need it to work" without getting into the nitty gritty of implementation, getting a third-party vendor is the way to go, and frankly, google makes more sense than most. Plus, things like open office have limited collaboration capabilities. I can say from experience, I've used google docs as a chat client, as an ongoing shared task list, as a document with multiple editors, and I've done all the same with Microsoft stuff as well. They two aren't even comparable.


That said, the article about the prosthetics is interesting. It does make me wonder what the cost of having custom-made legs replaced every couple of years as the kid grows compared to regular medical treatments until around adulthood, but I'm sure there are other considerations. I wonder if he will get into professional sports and, if so, if we'll see people remove limbs for the simple complaints of "they're too short" or somesuch. He's not the only short kid who'd love to get into basketball.

i dont think he will get into pro sport.

but maybe he will get into some disability league.

but i fear the sorting will have more to do with keeping a sport "pure" then any performance issues. those legs may even outperform a ordinary athlete...