

Ex-NASA Man Squeezes Cloud Onto USB Stick - ukdm
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/09/piston-cloud-computing/

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joss82
Is it just me or this article is built on the fact that "cloud" has a very
vague definition?

If I try to anchor the information in the article onto the real world, I got
this: the combination of a magic usb key and a compatible switch gives us a
fully automated installation system, complete with PXE boot-over-network and
remote OS/software installation and configuring.

But I'm only guessing, because this article lacks technical details, don't you
think?

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nknight
I think the "private cloud" concept can be restated as "Big blob of semi-
automatically-managed computing resources onto which diverse applications can
be easily deployed."

They're basically giving you a way to easily bootstrap your own little EC2
zone.

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kylek
This is genius. I'm going to start putting an nginx installer on usb drives
and sell them as full fledged web servers.

(Incoming downvotes...but really, this is silly)

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EmmEff
The guy who created this has great cred, but geez, this is gimmicky as hell!
Hardly something to be taken seriously in the large enterprise datacenter.

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gvb
We're going to look back with fondness to the days when USB sticks only
carried passive viruses that required a vulnerable Windows computer to
activate. Now they can carry dataloggers, sniffers, active attacks, ...

Stuxnet on steroids. :-O

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kokey
I'll hold off until they implement a cloud in Javascript.

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jbbuck
Does the whole "onto usb stick" really mean much these days? I'd hope you
could get a software stack onto 8 (16, 32, ...) GB of storage.

Also, that article is quite light on details (as has already been stated)

