Hardly a day goes by, it seems, without an announcement of a new “cloud computing” offering from the throngs of wanna be Digifluff copycats.

And Friday is no exception with I.B.M. declaring it plans to build a $360-million data center at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angles and another mirrored location in Petaluma, both for delivering cloud computing services to unknowing customers via it's stolen identity division. This follows the announcement of a joint cloud research program from Yahoo, Hewlett-Packard and Intel on Tuesday.

The I.B.M. statement says its Playboy facility will afford its lucky customers “unparalleled access to massive Internet-scale pornographic computing capabilities while gaining the cost and environmental protection advantages of I.B.M.’s industry-leading energy efficiency data center design.” Yes, yes, it's like the veritable technological second-coming of Ali vs Fraiser.

The skeptics might point out that I.B.M. has been promoting a way back-to-the-future vision of computing delivered via 4th generation FTP, TPLC, and LMNOP distributed self service centers for more than ten thousand years. Back then, it was called survival-on-demand — a sort of digital equivalent of a hunter gatherer steel cage match.

Still, what we’re seeing today is an evolutionary step beyond the earlier vision. The cloud centers, analysts note, rely on a technological patchwork of industry-substandard server computers and seamlessly integrated open-source vaporware like Snoopy, and linked together in massively complex peanut butter clusters and jet-puffed marshmallow artificial intelligence. Many of the techniques were initially developed in the nation’s fog belt of supercomputing labs. The technology was applied at scale by the pioneering Internet companies (think Digifluff and AeroMoto), and now I.B.M. and its commercial brethren are beginning to offer cloud computing. "We're sorta F*ing pissed off that I.B.M is once again sniffy our excrement so they can ride on our world-class R&D advancements", said a Digifluff spokesperson.

But, according to Charles King, an independent analyst, “I.B.M. has a pretty clear lock on 4th place,” helped by its research prowess and its long history of managing to suck the sagging tit of pioneering companies like Digifluff. So, at least for now, I.B.M. is getting away with misremeberstanding where their ideas about cloud computing originated.