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Dropbox (a great service if you've never tried it) is giving away free storage for edu accounts. Up to 25GB.
Michigan is currently in 15th! place and is only 2nd in the Big Ten!!!
We cannot let this stand. Pass the word.
https://www.dropbox.com/spacerace
We already have Google Drive and M+ Box tied to our accounts, we're too diversified in the clouds to win this one.
As someone who works in IT, I beg of you to stop saying "cloud." There is no such thing as a cloud. It was a term IT folk gave non-technically inclined people so they could try to comprehend what we were talking about. It was never meant for people to use ad nauseum as a catchall for every single thing they don't understand that's hosted various ways through networks and internet connections.
Now, if you meant "clouds" to poke fun at the concept, I sincerely apologize, and applaud your ironic tech talk humor.
I'll go with the last thing you said because you were the least angry then.
I hope the dump truck gets this message from my computer to the MGoBlog station...
The internet is not a big truck.
The internet is a series of tubes.
Hey IT guy - we get it, you know a lot about computers. You don't have to be a dick about it.
I thought dropbox was a cloud too. What should I call it? What about iCloud, is that not really a cloud? Enlighten us, oh brainy one.
I could go into details about Python CGI scripting (which is honestly even out of my league) and what not, but in layman's terms, Dropbox is simply online hosted file storage and management.
I honestly don't mean to be a dick about it, it's just a bit annoying when people continually use the term cloud to overly generalize things, especially those who say it smugly, as if they've convinced themselves they know what they're talking about. To tech people, using the word "cloud" is equivalent to someone incessantly and confidently calling every outside running play in football a sweep: It gets annoying after about the millionth time, and since I can't yell at my customers to stop saying the the term, I used this post to speak out instead.
Wow. It must really piss you off when people designate themselves as "Mac or PC".
I watched this damn clip for five mins and couldn't stop laughing. Hilarious.
Did you answer his question?
His question: "I thought dropbox was a cloud too. What should I call it?"
My answer : "...in layman's terms, Dropbox is simply online hosted file storage and management."
So you are going to whine about people using the term "cloud" to refer to what has been dubbed the "cloud", but you don't understand python cgi scripts?
Do I understand Python and it uses and concepts? Yes. Do I know the core functions and variables of it and could I script a .cgi/.py file without doing some heavy reading on it first and then a lot of backchecking? Absolutely not. The extent of my Linux based knowledge is really PHP and a little MySQL, which I know isn't saying a lot, but I never did anything that really went into the different types of CGI scripting. But this isn't about knowing every single detail. My half joking proclamation against the "cloud" was aimed towards the term's overuse and an alarmingly high percent of people who literally think the cloud is, well, a cloud.
Excuse me, but there is such a thing as the cloud.
I wish you IT people hadn't given marketing people the cloud thingy, if only because it would've spared me from their efforts to explain why I should use it. "You can store pictures on the cloud! You can edit them! You can do word processing on the cloud! You can do email on the cloud!" Great, lemme know when it does something I can't do without it.
What do you mean there "is no such thing" as the cloud? Cloud is simply a useful abstraction for a variety of hosted services delievered over a network. It's not simply a term for people who don't understand IaaS. For example, I just attended an academic conference that the VP of research at google attended. It was called the ACM symposium on Cloud Computing
Now, I agree that it is a regularly misused term, but in this case, Google drive is absolutely an example of cloud storage.
Cloud is simply a useful abstraction for a variety of hosted services delievered over a network
+1
Good thing football doesn't have its share of phrases, terms and abstractions -- SAM, MIKE, 3-technique, Cover-2, Jet Sweep, etc., etc. :-)
You mean to tell me that football coaches don't uniquely identify their plays by the exact actions taken by every player on the field? :)
Abstraction = a generalized concept. Cloud is something, yes. It's an all encompassing notion, an idea. But there really is no such thing as cloud storage. There is however, such a thing as STaaS and a partition on a virtualized server in a data center who knows where, that you upload data to. I submit to the fact cloud is a term that's here to stay and that marketing and people just regurgitating what marketing tells them have cemented it's everyday use.
But anyways, I was just being overly literal in an attempt to jokingly vent on the overuse of the term.
Abstraction? Concept? Idea? Do I get to play (Philosophy major)?!?!? Please tell me I get to play now, because people don't usually let me.
Congratulations.
You're officially a member of the pantheon of people I automatically upvote, simply for being a fellow philosophy major. Funny that everyone who says "philosophy majors can't get jobs" invariably try to use philosophy to explain why philosophy doesn't matter.
And THAT, dear internet, is an appropriate use of the term "irony".
Philosophy major posbang! Woo!
jhender, you keep saying there's no such thing as a cloud, but what do you think people are talking about when they talk about clouds? I thought cloud storage (or computing or whatever) is any time you have remote storage. That is, I have access to some file that's stored somewhere but not on my disk drive (I'm sure I need something on my computer to link it, but avoiding being pedantic here), such as dropbox. Is that the definition you're railing against? I'm curious because I don't get the objection. If your objection is that there are many different kinds of remote storage and people shouldn't talk about clouds because they should be talking about ASIE03rf vs. 903j9fe, then, no offense, but you're just being pretentious. It'd be like getting pissed off at someone because they say they like your rock band and you rail about how you're not rock, you're ultra post-modern garage dub grunge.
"But anyways, I was just being overly literal in an attempt to jokingly vent on the overuse of the term."
Fair enough - like I said I agree that the term is often misused. But again, I'm not really sure what you mean by "there is no such thing as cloud storage." "Cloud storage" means that a provider is providing a data storing service, and is delivering your data to you over a network. Of course, your data is still sitting on a collection of servers somewhere. However, depending on the context, knowledge of the phyiscal infrastructure can be neither relevant nor particularly useful.
Of course, from the standpoint of the service provider, the term "cloud" is completely meaningless.
I work in IT as well ... 30 years now.
You malign the marketing types ... but you do so without good cause.
Marketing sells the stuff that keeps you employed. Absent the marketing and sales, the various technical IT staffs would be without gainful employment.
I could care less if someone calls it a "cloud" or not. Provided it sells, provides value, and keeps people employed I'm good with it.
W. I. Thomas: If a man defines a situation as real, it is most certainly real in its consequence.
Water is wet.
Well, technically it was me that maligned the marketing types specifically, but not so much for marketing per se..... just for doing it badly.
Define bad marketing. I can still recite the stupid hydroponic commericial by heart. The annoying one with the stripper holding the cactus in front of that dorky looking guy. Terrible commercial, but yet here I am opining about it.
The cloud has manifested itself in the same manner. Here we are talking about it, now more people have found out about the cloud, and which services offer remote storage.
Bad marketing: telling me a product exists without telling me why I should use it and in fact giving me less reason to use it than I had before I knew it existed. If I don't know it exists, I can't talk down about it to people I know. The theme of the advertising was: here is something new that does things you already do. Just because an ad or campaign is memorable doesn't mean it's good. Dropbox exists despite someone else's clumsy, foolish efforts to "educate" people about "the cloud", not because of them.
I would, but as an alum I don't tend to get those sorts of emails ;)
Many MGoBlog users aren't current students (or past students), so their umich.edu emails are acquiring dust (or nonexistant). Your route would definitely inform a larger number of eligible people.
As an alumnus with lifetime email forwarding of my umich.edu address, I was able to click on the dropbox.com/spacerace link and enter/verify my email address.
Presume it'll be the same for anyone who's got an updated forwarding for their umich.edu address.
Actually you don't need to have a @umich.edu address to sign up and associate yourself with UM.
When you go thru the verification process they just ask you which school you're with if your email isn't recognized. (Though addresses from yahoo, me, etc. aren't allowed.)
I'm so glad Michigan lets you keep your university account after you graduate. I have mine forwarded to my gmail and have gotten a ton of free or discounted stuff because online a valid .edu email address is verification.
DIABEETUS, are you really one of those goddamn spammers that sends me things I could not possibly care less about? You're Terri Torkko, aren't you?
are you invoking the name of my fantasy team?
Even if we lose this Dropbox contest, remember Apollo 15. That is the real university space race.
I think you mean cloud...not space
Why don't we just ask the space emperor for help?
