Monday, June 24, 2013

Is 'cloud' the new executive speak to justify any old thing?

They tried it with sim city, saying 'it uses cloud functions - can't just do single player!'. And yet someone showed it could do single player off line.

What's up with microsoft and X-box "oh, were doing the AI in 'the cloud'! So need to be online all the time". Seriously no, you aren't doing AI in the cloud. AI processing is far easier to run than processing polygons.

Say 'cloud' and pretty much everyone will just take whatever you say next as having to be the case.

2 comments:

  1. Yes, it is the latest must-have word. Once it had actual meaning. Something in "the cloud" implied, among other things, that it was hosted at multiple redundant locations so that there was no single point of failure.

    Now "the cloud" has come to mean anything not on the end-users computer, which is as good as having no meaning at all.

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    Replies
    1. Oh yes! It's become one of those unquestioned words that people, kind of like the emperors new clothes, they don't ask questions because they think they'd look stupid to do so. So the word keeps floating around, carrying some sort of credibility that it doesn't deserve.

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