Benchmarking Amazon EC2: The wacky world of cloud performance

Before turning to the world of cloud computing, let's pause to remember the crazy days of the 1970s when the science of the assembly line wasn't well-understood and consumers discovered that each purchase was something of a gamble. This was perhaps most true at the car dealer, where the quality of new cars was so random that buyers began to demand to know the day a car rolled off the assembly line. Cars built on Monday were said to be a bad risk because everyone was hung over, while cars slapped together on Friday suffered because everyone's mind was already on the weekend. The most paranoid buyers would scrutinize the calendar to see if the car emerged from the factory when midweek descents into bacchanalia like the World Series would fog the brains of everyone with a wrench.