908: The Cloud
| The Cloud |
 Title text: There's planned downtime every night when we turn on the Roomba and it runs over the cord. |
[edit] Explanation
This comic is a reference to all of the companies that rolled out "cloud" services like Google's and Amazon's music service and Apple's aptly named iCloud music service around the time that the comic was released.
Also, in this comic is a reference to caching and the Roomba. Caching is the way that remote sites would locally store data from the "The Cloud" to prevent from putting too much pressure on Black Hat's non-Enterprise class cable modem. The Roomba is a round vacuum that runs automatically around the house. The Roomba begins to learn the dimensions of rooms, however, apparently it has never learned not to run over the cord.
The regular nightly downtime is a reference to an urban legend in which some critical piece of equipment (often a server) is unplugged regularly so that a vacuum cleaner or similar janitorial tool can be temporarily plugged in. Although the Roomba vacuum does not require this computer's outlet, "running over the cord" apparently causes similar interruption in service.
This comic is reminiscent of the British sitcom "The IT Crowd" in which they showcase a box that they make the rest of their non-Tech coworkers believe is "The Internet".
[edit] Transcript
- [Cueball finds a computer tower with a wire leading away from it.]
- Cueball: What's this?
- Off-screen: The Cloud.
- [Cueball looks behind him. The wire leads to an outlet in the wall next to where Black Hat sits at a desk with a computer. Another wire leads from that outlet to Black Hat's computer.]
- Cueball: Huh? I always thought "The Cloud" was a huge, amorphous network of servers somewhere.
- Black Hat: Yeah, but everyone buys server time from everyone else. In the end, they're all getting it here.
- [A close-up of Black Hat.]
- Cueball: How? You're on a cable modem.
- Black Hat: There's a lot of caching.
- [A close-up of Cueball, looking down at the tower at his feet.]
- Cueball: Should the cord be stretched across the room like this?
- Black Hat: Of course. It has to reach the server, and the server is over there.
- [Cueball turns back to the Black Hat, still sitting at the computer.]
- Cueball: What if someone trips on it?
- Black Hat: Who would want to do that? It sounds unpleasant.
- Cueball: Uh. Sometimes people do stuff by accident.
- Black Hat: I don't think I know anybody like that.
add a comment!