MS:

Surely there are better places to discuss this, but perhaps Daphne will let us torture her and her tennants a short while longer.

1. I might not agree fully that it’s just a marketing buzzword. I think it’s an approach more than anything. That said, the lack of definition does incur a problem.

In terms of your list of properties they seem a bit over-defined. The idea is to offer a network infrastructure where services, products, data and processing can be done outside your own network, with great scalability and, as you very correctly point out, offers great elasticity.

Even looking at the Wikipedia article shines very little light on the concept. The paragraph I find most apt in that article is:
“The concept of cloud computing fills a perpetual need of IT: a way to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software.”

It doesn’t have to be multi-tennant, nor does “Cloud Computing” encompass a specific price model or demands an api. (in my opinion)

Again, a very fuzzy word, so hard to pinpoint and if you asked a hundred users of Cloud technology you’d get a hundred different definitions, but in my book I still highlight Seti@Home and Folding@Home as the prime archetypes of Cloud Computing.

Lastly, virtually all technology is a mere way of re-using old technology. An auto-mobile is just a combustion engine with four wheels added, but that doesn’t make Karl Benz any less important as an engineer and an entrepreneur.

2. Microsoft protects their intellectual rights, as would any corporation. I really don’t want to stray away too far from the original discussion, so let’s stay a bit on topic.

This just highlights what I originally said, that there are (to re-phrase somewhat) very few other players who would have any vested interest in setting up said computer centre.

A Copyleft licensed product would, in reality, only be set up by an internal IT work force and as there doesn’t seem to be one with the right competence inside Mita it just won’t happen. I passionately want to see a Cloud Computing centre in Malta and I can’t see a better way to get it done. I have grown quite sentimental of this mad little island I now call home and seeing it progress brings joy to me. Gatt needs to get this right, especially after his double screw-up in the transport sector (the completely failed Taxi reformation and the partially failed Bus reformation). That said, I think he is one of the few people who can actually pull this kind of projects through.

3. I find it hard to dig deeper in this without getting more condescending about Maltese learning in general, but alas. The problem, as I hinted about earlier, is the lack of creative problem solving.

Maltese teaching seem focused on getting students to read something over and over again until they know the texts and data by heart, just so they can score well on a test (I’m simplyfying and generalising at the moment, so bare with me). Such an approach means they will pass their courses, probably with a good result if you measure it on grades alone.

Even on a University level the tasks (or what I’ve seen of them at least) seems to be to say:
“You have Problem A. Now you need to use Language B and Database C, with the approach of Concept D to get Product E.”

They literally pass out a blueprint of what they need to do and then just review coding standards etc. You partly confirmed this yourself in your last sentence. The quality of the code is, of course, important, but actually quite easy to teach (and in general this is not what I have a problem with from University students – their code, I have to admit, is often greatly more “up to standards” than my own). What I’m missing is a little bit of thinking outside the box.

The assigned should be:
“You have Problem A. You need to solve it.”

Or, if you are studying a certain technology:
“You have Problem A. How can Technology B help you in solving this problem”

I’m not a teacher or much of an expert in education, nor do I have much to substantiate my claims with. What I have is 8 years of experience in working within this sector in Malta and the problem is highly endemic.

As a tiny disclaimer I have no problem saying that I have met some absolutely brilliant developers along the way, but my fear is that they are the exception not the norm.

Is it an armed drone? I hope so.

Patrik, yes, it’s a good discussion. Probably it’s a bit out of place on this blog but … sorry, Daphne.

Anyway, here are some further thoughts on the subject:

(1) Yes, I agree there’s a lot of mist around Cloud Computing, probably because it’s more of a marketing buzzword than a technology or an architectural style. Suddenly, people “realised” they are already using Cloud Computing and have been doing so since they started using the Internet. That surely didn’t help clear the mist.
To my mind, for an IT infrastructure to qualify as Cloud Computing, it has to have the following properties:

– Virtually unlimited resources and scalability
– Elastic (you know what I mean)
– Multi-tenant
– Utility based pricing model
– Web based API

Of course, there may be other properties which I’m missing, while others may not be regarded as essential.

Technology-wise, I particularly like the notion of “elasticity”. Even though it’s not a new technology but just a new way of using an existing technology (as in the case of AJAX), the idea of allocating and releasing computing resources on demand in near real-time is a splendid one.

Regarding Seti@home and Folding@home, yes, they do fall under the umbrella of Cloud Computing, as all Internet-based computing does, but I tend to think of such infrastructures more as Grid Computing rather than Cloud Computing—I’m still trying to figure out the difference though :-)

(2) Microsoft and Open Source is a complicated matter. Microsoft does support some open source projects, yes, but then shows aggression towards others, especially free (as in Freedom), open source projects that adopt copyleft licenses like GPL (as I write, Microsoft Word keeps underlining the word “copyleft” in red). Take for example jQuery; it has a dual-license model: MIT and GPL. I guess Microsoft have a hand in that odd licensing setup.

(3) The problem you highlight is, unfortunately, present in all courses, not just IT. There will always be good and bad students no matter how much you refine your curriculum and improve the way you deliver it. It’s just a fact of life.

Still, I think our university’s IT curriculum provides a good-enough platform for a motivated student to succeed. What I have noticed though is that new graduates, even the good ones, while their logic is OK, sometimes lack the discipline for producing production-quality code, for example, they swallow exceptions, don’t collect metrics, no logging, improper use of profilers and debuggers, no version control, etc.

[Daphne – Silvio, the commuters waiting for ages on bus-stops wait for ages on bus-stops because they haven’t yet taken on board the novel concept of reading a time-table before heading out to wait for a bus. So they turn up at the stop at 3.35pm (having just missed the 3.30pm bus) then wait for an hour short of five minutes for the next one, and complain about the outrage. The system has changed but they haven’t. They still turn up randomly at bus-stops waiting haphazardly for buses to turn up on an ad hoc basis. One question The Times reporters fail to ask their complaining interviewees: “Madam, did you look at the time-table before you left home?”]

I remember Austin Gatt using bombastic words about the revolution in our bus service.

[Daphne – He’s damn right it’s a revolution. The last time I got on a bus I swore to myself that next time I’d walk. And only Austin Gatt could have dealt with those ghastlydrivers and squashed them.]

Also he quoted Mao Tse Tung from all people to say ‘the revolution must go on and not stop. Daphne you yourself know that in an other democratic country Austin would have been booted out.

[Daphne – Where did Austin Gatt quote Mao? Please cite chapter and verse and don’t heed gossip. Gatt is not the sort who would quote anyone, still less Chairman Mao, for heaven’s sake. ‘In any other democratic country Austin would have been booted out’. Wrong. It is precisely because Malta is a democratic country that he is there. The people elected him, and only the people can remove him, if they so wish. His capabilities as a government minister are not in doubt. Nobody else could have handled the bus drivers, and in fact, nobody did. Now if you are going to carp about bus-routes, and see the glass half empty instead of half full, and feel nostalgic for the recent past of stinking dumps on wheels piloted by savages who turn up when they feel like it, go ahead.]

No, Baxx. The moderator has been replaced by a drone and the knee-jerk ‘delete’ button is malfunctioning.

MS:

Good discussion. Some replies to your points.

1. I think the problem we are facing here is that “Cloud Computing” is, as one editor put it, full of mist. There is no clear definition of what Cloud Computing really is. But regardless, Seti@Home was deployed as a large scale Iaas project half a decade before Google.

2. To be clear, I didn’t mean for Microsoft to set up an Open Source based center, I meant there are no other players with enough vested interest to set up a centre at all – Open Source or not. Microsoft is traditionally not into Open Source, as you so correctly point out, but the last few years even they have started supporting several Open Source project, most interestingly for me JQuery.

3. Here is where we part. Perhaps the curriculum covers those areas, but the students produced are not of the right caliber to use those skills in a real scenario. The point is that a student studying IT for 3+ years without knowing how to actually produce something with the skills they have acquired is a joke. Of course fundamental ground-laying concepts have to be taught, but instead of teaching them to do well on tests, teach them how to bloody think. The reliance on text books and structured tests, rather than challenging problem solving is the root cause of it.

4. I didn’t say they had to, I said they are the only ones who really can change the status quo of licensing in Malta. Also, understanding the business models used in deploying software, services and projects is a must. Planning a software means you need to understand where it will end up. It’s tantamount to making a car that runs really well on the moon and trying to sell it in a car showroom. Development is as much about real-life usage as it is about knowing how to code.

The latter kind of thinking is also where Open Source can really shine. There is as much skill in applying other people’s techniques in your project, as it is developing yourself, but without understanding the full scope of the project – including it’s licensing model – you won’t be able to assess when to do what.

Patrik, I disagree with some of your comments. Here’s why:

(1) Chris is right about Google being somewhat the first provider of cloud computing services, if you accept that one of the principles of Cloud Computing is virtually unlimited resources. To some extent, you’re also right about Amazon, but only if you are talking about IaaS, which is just one of the several layers of Cloud Computing.

(2) No, it does not feel natural having Microsoft build an open-source, cloud-based data centre for the government. Microsoft is NOT into Open Source. On the contrary, it’s rabidly against Open Source. Have you ever heard when Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer drew a similarity between GNU/Linux (a free, open source operating system with a copyleft licence) and cancer? That should give you an idea of where Microsoft stands as regards Open Source. Microsoft has also a poor track-record with regard to Open Standards (though it’s showing some signs of improvement), which is arguably even more important than Open Source. The closing comment on Microsoft is that, unfortunately, it’s only interest here is to lock us into its proprietary products.

(3) Regarding our IT education system, in contrast to the opinion you expressed, I think the curriculum adopted by our university is very relevant and of high quality, especially when compared to other offerings by private institutions. Our university teaches students the foundations of IT, e.g., data structures, algorithms, programming paradigms, Computer Engineering, Discrete Mathematics, Compiler Theory, Operating Systems, AI, to name a few. These are much more important than product-specific skills, which most private institutions focus on. Those skills can be easily acquired later once the fundamental concepts have been grasped.
Yes, some graduates are better than others—OK, some really suck—but that’s only because they’re in it for the money, not because our university’s curriculum isn’t good enough.

(4) Finally, I fail to see why universities should focus on promoting Open Source. Open Source is neither a technology nor a science: it’s a business model, a great one, yes, but still just a business model. It’s not something universities should be concerned about; rather, their concern should be preparing students for whatever technologies and paradigms they go on to work with after they have graduated.

Having said that, Open Source does play a crucial role in universities simply because it means the source code is available to anyone who wants to study it—perfect for a university scenario.

Nah. That’s Borg in-Nadur.

Baxxi s-sound, kev. Ghandek ir-reverb.