Google and IBM to Provide Cloud Computing to Students

John "butter/oreo" Bajana-Bacall writes to tell us that IBM and Google have decided to team up to provide cloud computing resources to participating college students. "Most of the innovation in cloud computing has been led by corporations, but industry executives and computer scientists say a shortage of skills and talent could limit future growth. 'We in academia and the government labs have not kept up with the times,' said Randal E. Bryant, dean of the computer science school at Carnegie Mellon University. 'Universities really need to get on board.' Six universities will be involved in the initiative. They are Carnegie Mellon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Maryland and the University of Washington."

Students Response

Students to ask what the hell that means.

Many busy contemplating brand new concept: 'clouds of porn.'

I refuse to answer this...

on the grounds that the Rolling Stones will sue me and everyone else for the use of the word, cloud.

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on the grounds that the Rolling Stones will sue me and everyone else for the use of the word, cloud.

Pfffft! Get offa my cloud!

What if & modern computing

I often wonder what form modern computing would be in today if the personal computer had not been so wide accepted. Look around you at the walls. Some of the things you see are very ubiquitous. People take electrical outlets and phone jacks for granted. It is just part of the infrastructure we are used to. Now imagine a computer port next to all the rest. All you need is simple input(keyboard,mouse) and simple output(monitor,printer) devices attached to an adapter that plugs into this outlet. That is all you would need to know about computing. Computing power would be offered by a "Computer Utility" company. They would handle all the technical details. You simply pay your bill and the "technical goodness" comes down the line.

Sure, you certainly pay thru the nose for your time slices of CPU power. But to those of us fortunate to be "Computer Wizards" who live and work at the Computer Utility, life would be grand!

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In that "grand" alternate universe Lily Tomlin would have done a different character [youtube.com], perhaps, and we'd be accepting abuse from the computing utility company.

That was Thomas Watson Jr's vision.

Originally the IBM machines were strictly lease-only [little money upfront, big money down the road].

Then sometime later they moved to the sales model [big money upfront, but little money down the road], and Thomas Watson Jr always felt that that was a disastrous mistake.

In fact, the entire industry [M$FT, Oracle, IBM, Sun, HPQ, Unisys, Google, pretty much everybody] has been working desperately for the last ten or fifteen years to get away from the sales model, and back into the rental/services model - everyone seems to agree that that's where the big $$$s lie.

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But to those of us fortunate to be "Computer Wizards" who live and work at the Computer Utility, life would be grand!

And here you have identified what I believe is the root cause of the Microsoft hatred around here. The "Computer Utility" is not really any

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often wonder what form modern computing would be in today if the personal computer had not been so wide accepted. Look around you at the walls. Some of the things you see are very ubiquitous. People take electrical outlets and phone jacks for granted. It

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In this case access to cloud computing and you could be paying through the nose for it. Google is a strong supporter of patent first, not invent first legislation, with google's history I would stay will clear of running any possibly patentable work an a c

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Computing power would be offered by a "Computer Utility" company. They would handle all the technical details. You simply pay your bill and the "technical goodness" comes down the line...

... as you wave goodbye to your freedom. [gnu.org]

My experience with cloud computing

I got very very hungry afterwards.

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Dude, wait... what???

i keed, i keed

industry executives and computer scientists say a shortage of skills and talent could limit future growth

That doesn't seem to have stopped Microsoft.

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By definition industry needs something different from what universities provide. That is so because universities teach about things that do exist already not about things that are being developed now (some of them do research too but that is not teaching).

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Last I heard, Universities taught the underlying theories and underlying principles, the science behind the practices and the maths behind the science. At least, that is what happened at the University I went to. And, as Inmos mostly worked with recent gra

But...

...I wanted Squall computing!

Chris Mattern

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$ telnet d4thc.cloud.computer.lan
Trying dead:beef:deca:fbad:ba5e:ba11 ...
Connected to dead:beef:deca:fbad:ba5e:ba11
Escape character is '^]'
user: root
password: ********
Welcome the the Cyclone Beowulf Cluster. Please don't blow up the world.
#
# hack whitehous

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I would rather have Tempest, personally. You can get more power from it (although, admittedly, it tends to overload whatever I/O device you use, and capsize^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcrash your computer).

John "mayo/chip" Banana-Recall

John "butter/oreo" Bajana-Bacall

Are you kidding me? Is this some kind of inside joke or is this guy's name really that messed up?

Open to the public

While I'm glad they're opening this up to top universities before businesses, I would think that both companies should probably open this up to open source development as well. While dealing with real hardware is ultimately a must for any serious package,

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Hadoop is already free and EC2 isn't that expensive.

Cloud computing?

Sorry guys, I missed the memo. WTF is cloud computing?

Re:Cloud computing?

From wikipedia:

Cloud computing is a term used to describe applications that were developed to be rich internet applications. In the cloud computing paradigm software that is traditionally installed on personal computers is shifted or extended to be accessible via the internet. These "cloud applications" or "cloud apps" utilize massive data centers and powerful servers that host web applications and web services. They can be accessed by anyone with a suitable internet connection and a standard browser.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing [wikipedia.org]

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Examples: Google Maps, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, etc., and, to greater or lesser extent, Google Earth. All rely on massive computing power connected via the Internet and HTTP.

IOW, didn't the students already have cloud computing? Or is this an imp

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Does that really need a new buzzword? Sounds like the same old shit that people have been doing with the internet for 10 years now. At the very least, isn't that basically the definition of "Web 2.0"? What's the difference?

I was a little worried I h

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I think it's because the internet being represented as a cloud in most diagrams, so it means "internet computing". I think "internet computing" might be better, but then someone would decide it takes too long or isn't cool to write "internet computing" and

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How is this different from the concept of SOA? "...software that is traditionally installed on personal computers is shifted or extended to be accessible via the internet". I was under the impression the idea of Grid processing was more about sharing computing tasks...

I don't think there's really a difference. "Cloud computing" strikes me as basically a sexed-up name for SOA, directed towards end-users rather than corporate implementors.

That and SOA is pretty vague. I don't know where you're getting your particular def

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yes.

A Little Confused

I am confused about the concept of cloud computing. Is it supposed to be similar to that of the famed beowulf cluster, as in making a supercomputing platform out of regular computer networks? Or does it use more powerful computers and cluster them together?

Furthermore, what would be the point of doing this exactly?

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It's basically an on-demand ad-hoc supercomputing network.

Almost like clouds appearing where "needed" most according to meteorological parameters.

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So how is it different to Grid Computing?

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It's not. They want you to come back to the central mainframe too.

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So how is it different to Grid Computing?

To use it, you have to put a Care Bear sticker on your PC.

Terminology? Marketing?

This sounds an awful lot like what grids do (and have been doing for a while). I did rtfa and I didn't see much defining "cloud computing" other than "large data centers that students can tap into over the Internet to program and research remotely". Is "

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Cloud computing is the new name for mainframe computing. It's a marketating word, devised by some marketating person.

Now is that the cloud that has the...

letters 'PFM occurs here' in it ???

Hangon...

Does this "Cloud computing" require "Tags" in anyway? I mean were talking "Web 2.0" right, someone did mention this in the "Blogosphere"?!

Either way, as long as this stuff does not run on a "Hypervisor" I don't want anything to do with it!

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Sir, I believe you are trivializing this breakthrough concept. In actuality, "cloud computing" involves a direct high-bandwith fiber optic connection to Cloud-Cuckoo Land. Perhaps the greatest benefit of this new concept is that it supports greatly simplif

Meta question

Presumably these clusters are for really hard problems - folding proteins, or simulating nuke explosions, or searching for exotic primes, or classifying Lie Groups, or proving Four Color theorems, or whatever - i.e. presumably these programs are expected

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Or tried anything in signal analysis without the benefit of O(nlog(n)) algorithms?

O(n*lg(n))

nitpick, i know, but "log" w/o specifying the base usually means base 10, and i assume you mean to say base 2 (which is usually written "lg")

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It's irrelevant, since lg(n) is a constant multiple of log(n) -- more generally, a logarithm of any base is a constant multiple of a logarithm of any other base -- therefore O(lg(n)) = O(log(n)).

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What does "meta question" in your subject line mean?

-b

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Easy. Just ask the student for their graduation date, If the app hasn't reported by then, either terminate or send an e-mail asking if the results are going to form part of their post graduate studies.

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So if you are one of the lucky few who gets chosen [or at least pre-selected] for this sort of thing, then will you have to submit a "proof" of the finiteness of your program before you're given the green light?

The halting problem is actually tractable

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Is there a name to this function?

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your reply looked like it would never end

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I thought the issue of the halting problem wasn't for a *particular* program of whether it could be halt, but rather the problem was to come up with a single, general algorithm (or program if you want) that would decide for *all* programs on a given input

Google and IBM recruit top scientists for FREE!

What a great way for IBM and google to get the best and brightest to solve all kinds of problems for FREE! Well, it costs them $30 million a year, but that's probably nothing compared to having their OWN employees develop something. Industry has been rapin

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> I'll have to hand it to IB-Goo (sick forshadowing???) Don't you mean, "GooBM"?

Free is hard to beat... but I have to wonder

How much to rent a bot net to do "real work"?

Hey, results are results, right? And if it lessens my spam, oh well.