Monkey infinitum

Ok, so taking my son for an after-dark walk in the woods, and after 25 mins of walking, asking him if I’d ever told him the Bible story of Abraham and Issac was not the friendliest of things to do.

But it was funny and he appreciated the humor.

I think though, I pushed it too far when he asked if we could head back a few minutes later when we’d stopped for a break and my response was, (in a dark voice), “Not yet, I have to wait for the others to arrive”

Clouds are nebulous, fuzzy-looking, fluffy things that cause airplane pilots grief since they can’t see what’s in them.

If I were above a cloud and throw things into it, the things will fall and I can’t see where they went.

So do I really want my important files, software and music I paid for stored in clouds?

Although, I can see the appeal of this type of service, both for consumers and support personnel alike.

Using Cloud Computing, one can log in from anywhere, using any interface, whether or not one is at home, at work, or at a friend’s house.

Both the software that one has signed up for and the data that one has stored in The Cloud would be available after logging in.  For the most part, it wouldn’t matter which version of operating system is on the machine in front of the logged-in user, for the Cloud Service would ideally be indifferent to the user interface (i.e. Windows v Mac v Mobile Phone and Chrome v Firefox v Internet Explorer).

For systems administrators, this would be a benefit too – since The Cloud computing devices would be linked together, acting as one big computer, and system patches and hardware upgrades would be centrally-controlled.  This means no more help-desk calls from the end-users trying to figure out why a given software package failed to run on the local PC/laptop after installing “other software” or after installing new hardware drivers.

But, for the younguns out there in cyber-cyberland, this isn’t a brand new, out-of-the-box idea…

I humbly present you some the concepts that were floating on clouds of their own about, o, let’s say, 46 years now:

• Oldspeak: “mainframe computer” (Newspeak: “The Cloud“) A thing that stored all the data and ran all the software from a far, far away place… one never had to install anything to make this work, never had to troubleshoot the drivers/hardware incompatibilities, and best of all, never had to run virus scanning software on it since the sysadmins did that somewhere, wherever they hid during daylight hours
  ^^^ OLD
  ^^^ NEW

• Oldspeak: “dumb/text terminals” (Newspeak: “Web Browser“) Places where one would log into the system and have access to all one’s files and programs – these didn’t have any “intelligence” built into them, as they only provided a way into “The Cloud”
  ^^^ OLD 

  ^^^ NEW

• Oldspeak: “CICS – Customer Information Control System” (“Newspeak: “HTTP” or “Hypertext Transfer Protocol”) A server (or protocol in this case) that controls data flow between the one’s self and “The Cloud”, organising the data and program flow even though the server doesn’t have complete and full control of the environment (like programs do when they are running on a local PC/laptop/mobile phone)
  ^^^ OLD 

  ^^^ NEW

More good and interesting links about Cloud Computing are here

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/cloud-computing.htm

http://www.thepicky.com/tech/difference-cloud-computing-vs-grid-computing/

Q:  “If the professor on Gilligan’s Island can make a radio out of a coconut, why can’t he fix a hole in a boat?”

A:  It was all a FBI/CIA plan to keep Thurston Howell III and his wife out of circulation.

The President at the time was concerned about the alarming amount of the Howells’ cartel money flowing to Cuba and assigned Anton Deppesphere (otherwise known as ‘Gilligan’) to the case.

The Professor (agent name ‘Baraxus’) actually worked for the Treasury Department and was temporarily re-assigned to the IRS to assess the actual wealth of Mrs Howell.  Mr. Howell’s wealth was well-known to the government as he was a front, and needed to look “clean” to help prepare the path for his wife’s activities.

It was MRS Howell who was under investigation.  She was the mastermind of the operation being targeted for, and actually had a far greater influence on international political sensitivities than did her husband.

The rest of the folks were just as portrayed; it was only through the cunning mastery of interpersonal interaction that Anton and Baraxus were able to continue the operation until the Cuban missile crisis had cooled off.

Lancelot Link was present too, but undercover and no one took much notice of him.  However he was vital to the success as he relayed communication between the other field agents and headquarters.  He used a coconut radio, which is actually more efficient than is widely known.

“Gloda does not protect”, bellowed Explattr, his eyes glowing with suppressed rage, “against exceptions thrown by openUnsharedDatabase on corrupt databases!”

The phrase echoed throughout the chamber, becoming eerily magnified as it shattered against the far reaches.   Bits of sparkly dust showered from the upper reaches of the booming cavern, dancing in faint mockery of the gravity of the situation.

TypeError however, held his ground, unwavering.

“this.asyncConnection is null”, he replied quietly, his limbs shivering with fear.  It had to be said.  No one could deny this was, in fact true, no matter how much no one wanted to believe it.

“But I’m afraid there’s more,” he continued on, ignoring the fact that Explattr was inching closer, his menacing limp thudding into the rocky and slippery ground, shooting shards of stone left and right, “nounDef is undefined.”

With that, the oncoming behemoth stopped, a confused look momentarily crossing his visage as he considered the possibilities.  “And what”, he mused almost to himself, “…what has become of of freetag?”

TypeError heaved a small sigh.  The worst had passed, but the path was still dangerous.  “Freetag decided to go to opt/homes/daniele.  Once he arrived, he found the NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND in the openUnsharedDatabase, component returned, failure code…” his voice trailed off, mindful of his friend’s recent and painful experience with this.

Explattr shook his giant head slowly, as if to gently shake the memory of the thing from his mind.  “0x80520012?” He asked quietly.

TypeError nodded, knowing how much this meant to the ragged and ancient giant.  “The very same.”

“Then we must go, and swiftly,” commanded the hulking mountain of a man to his trembling, fragile but brave companion, “for the time has come when gloda.everybody must begin loading resource for app/modules!  Off then to Bugzilla!  We shall bring invoke the arcane nsIXPCComponents_Utils.import to battle bug 520139 once and for all!”

TypeError smiled.  This was indeed the start of a new and better era.  He even found the strength to raise his eyes to Explattr, with a  mischievous gleam in his eye, “And also for registering indexer: ab_indexer?”

“Ha!” boomed Explattr, again causing dust to silently shower the two in twinkly cover, “Yes, indeed, for Event-Driven Indexing is now true!”

And somewhere, far away, Gloda smiled with them.

[Thanks for the underlying text from https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=520139.  I like my version better, even if it’s jumbling things all up.   I plead upon the name of Art to issue forgiveness of my Science transgressions]

(I would have linked directly to the original web page but there was associated content on the page that wasn’t family-friendly…)