Why not connect the PCs into a network; write some software to
schedule applications, share data, and handle security;
and scrap the mainframe? Some installations did this, only
to discover that at great time and expense, they had reinvented
the mainframe.
— Gary DeWard Brown, System 390 JCL Fourth Edition, 1998
The university that produces the most blue chip CEOs and university
professors, the most Peace Corps volunteers, and the most productive and
long-running patents isn't Stanford or MIT—it's the University of
Wisconsin.
![XKCD Comic:
[[A man finds a computer tower with a wire leading away from it.]]
Man: What's this?
Off-screen: The Cloud.
[[The man looks behind him. The wire leads to an outlet in the wall next to where the Hat Man sits at a desk with a computer. Another wire leads from that outlet to the Hat Man's computer.]]
Man: Huh? I always thought "The Cloud" was a huge, amorphous network of servers somewhere.
Hat Man: Yeah, but everyone buys server time from everyone else. In the end, they're all getting it here.
[[A close-up of Hat Man.]]
Man (off-screen): How? You're on a cable modem.
Hat Man: There's a lot of caching.
[[A close-up of the man, looking down at the tower at his feet.]]
Man: Should the cord be stretched across the room like this?
Hat Man (off-screen): Of course. It has to reach the server, and the server is over there.
[[The man turns back to the Hat Man, still sitting at the computer.]]
Man: What if someone trips on it?
Hat Man: Who would want to do that? It sounds unpleasant.
Man: Uh. Sometimes people do stuff by accident.
Hat Man: I don't think I know anybody like that.
{{Title text: There's planned downtime every night when we turn on the
Roomba and it runs over the cord.}}](xkcd_the_cloud.png)