Nuke, I completely agree with your points about cloud computing, perhaps it is the Northern climate? I personally think the whole cloud thing is a rather bad idea and cannot understand how companies look forward to seeing it. But not everybody does the stuff I do.
It really isn't that different from the old terminal system (2002 btw) that was used in the University. I really hated that system from the bottom of my heart - it never allowed doing any real work. Not that surprisingly, the university has grown out of it (happened after 2006) and provides everyone with a real PC. What I recall from my user "experience", with a centralized server there is always annoying amount of lag (even in the text interface FFS), opening MATLAB took forever (it does so also on PC, but that's even more forever with the terminal based system). The comment about running it on "peak efficiency" is well placed, "peak efficiency" being defined by the service provider and not the actual user.
One of my colleagues recently proposed a cloud based server that would run optical design optimization. Needless to say, I shot the idea down immediately before it had a better chance of taking off, some idiot in the middle management probably would have bought it. Seriously, cloud server doing heavy computing is the last thing I want to see, providing little additional computing aid but increasing the upkeep costs exponentially. This sort of center actually used to be there, but when there are no investments on it, the hardware quickly becomes outdated and still sucks a huge amount of upkeep money. And it turned out that a single laptop bought two years later provided the same computing power than a cluster of sixteen older ones. Very useful indeed... I think his reason for this was that running the optimization on a server would allow him to use his computer to do something else. But the problem is, he really should be the maestro who conducting the optimization and not the other way around. The solution was found by assigning a lower priority to the optimizing program, restoring normal computer operation but causing no perceivable slowdown on the optimization - that's human interruption speed for you.
Floating licenses are an invention straight from hell - at least from my point of view. I just don't get what's the ****ing point when you can have a small and handy USB dongle providing you a localized license that is available at any place, any time. In my current working place there are CAD software and MATLAB floating licences now, and it's always the same thing: some *********er is just holding that last license by keeping the programs open (cause he might need it later) and you need to run through every fricking office in the building to ask if any person suspected using it is using it or is REALLY using it (try saying that when you're drunk!). Or that corporate network is down (again). Or there is a local disturbance in the network traffic on your corridor and user support is looking into it - apparently from completely different location and they are doing it through network... Come to think of it, cloud based server systems are just another form of subsidizing, you don't actually own the production tools any more. It is really equivalent to trying to sell a centralized CNC machine center to several CNC machine shops and expect them to transfer all their business on that one center.
What it comes to intellectual property, let's say I'm not surprised by the decision to shut down MegaUpload. However, I really don't see this helping against piracy, what happens next is a huge surge of USB hard disks and there you have it starting all again, but this time it becomes even harder to tackle and impossible to detect. And who wants to pay for an expensive net connection that is still slower than the USB hard drive if the sole reason for that fast connection is piracy? I'd expect to see profit warnings from HDD manufacturers as well, they are quite dependent on piracy to sell their biggest HDDs.
Still related to this, I have actually been thinking of running photography business (not my main job), and after thinking a little bit about the image hosting services, I would never put full resolution images there. Ever. For preview photos (30 % of original size, or even less) that could be feasible, but not with the originals. It was also interesting to think if I wanted to sell digital photographs, but I quickly came to the conclusion that if I start this business, I'll be restricted on paper reproductions only.
