3 things that IT professionals won’t tell you (but I will…)

For a lifetime I've been up with commonplaces and publicity stunts.

Sadly there are people who just can't help them and create new definitions for things that have already been around for ever, because they have to sell you a new product and create a new need from nothing. Here's a short list, but there are many more examples I could quote.

1. "Cloud computing" is b*sh*t:  everything is in the cloud today, people talk about it, worry about it and don't even know that it's been around since the 1990's. You know what the cloud is? Something you all know, the Internet! You store a file on a provider's server, for free or paying a certain amount of money and so you can access it from the web, how simple is that? You want to talk turkey? Call it NAS (Network Attached Storage) if you just want to use technical terms to look better. At least, if you happen to spot an IT guy, he'll appreciate your learning effort. Cloud is nothing but the glorification of an external hard drive and, if you don't believe me, have a look here (I don't mean to promote the product but I think this is very clear example). 
2. Internet of Things isn't the thing: Recently they're making a big deal out of having "intelligent" devices connected to the internet, which can be accessed from mobile devices. Well, what's the Internet? You'd answer: a network. Good, here's the deal, who told you that only computers can connect to a network? A network is formed by several devices other than computers (such as routers, switches, network printers, hardware firewalls,  etc.), which are assigned an IP address. In computer networking there's a specific name for these devices: hosts. A host is any device connected to a network that has an IP address, be it a computer or not. Internet of Things doesn't means a thing, while Internet of devices or Internet of hosts would make much more sense. Would you like an intelligent fridge that played commercials every time you open the refrigerator door? No thanks, not sure I want to engage a conversation with a metal box. By the way, in the "things" list are featured nuclear facilities, power stations and other critical installations and I'm not sure I'm glad they can be accessed from anywhere. Biometric implementations can have for sure important reflections on security, but the core concept remains the same.
   
3. Big data? So what?: Another example of hot air vastly promoted by media. What does this overused word mean? According to somebody, the larger amount of data available today for analysis would allow science and technology to achieve much more than before, which justifies why companies and public institutions track customers' surfing habits, preferences, etc. They do it to help us better..how noble is that! Well, I don't say that's completely wrong and it's clear that the more you know on a process, the more you can improve it but...there's an objection. If you had studied statistics, you'd know that when you talk about data analysis there's a big deal: determine an unbiased (or representative) sample, i.e. focus the analysis on a group of people having uniform characteristics that can be considered like the "average" subject. In other words, if you want to study something on a large population, e.g. all U.S. consumers, you choose with scientific methods a group of people that have average characteristics and extend the results to the whole U.S. population. The problem is that the bigger the data to be analyzed, the least representative the sample and you can't guarantee data is unbiased. Look here for more details.