Bugged by US spying, EU may sever ties with American internet providers

[defacto7]

36. What is their response?

Usually it's just dead space and no action. People want what they want. They fall for any seeming luxury that comes along without any knowledge of the problems they can face in the long run and that is what the software companies want; they want people dumb and pacified, unable to take care of themselves or their machines. The only way software companies can control their products and protect their income is to control the data and from control of the data, they can control the hardware and you own nothing. The Pandora's box? Through that system all our information is vulnerable to loss, unlawful or unconstitutional scrutiny, and about anything you can imagine that our information could be used for. All of a sudden, people have given away control of their own personal information to whomever or just the ethers.

Just for a short example of one of my own experiences, I have run the tech systems for 2 private schools in the past. Both wanted to move to cloud based systems where all student, teacher, family, grading, behavioral, personal administrative notes and comments were to be stored up in "clouds ville" with no locally stored mechanism for ownership of their entire operation. This was about 3 years ago and I gave them the full backdrop of what they could be walking into. I also gave them several options for security and backup. Their response? Rolling eyes, Deer in the headlights look, that, "what an idiot, behind the times, not up with the cutting edge look". I refused to offer my services past that point. Now, they are so entrenched in their cloud system, they have no idea how to take care of their own property or the information of some thousand students without the extremely expensive help lords like Pierson and the like who are glad to help them with their ignorance for $20,000 a year or more. But they still don't have their own data. And they are stuck with it!

I've been running systems and servers for years and I have watched people run over the proverbial sheep cliff and it is most bizarre to watch people get stupider and more dependent when it comes to Internet and the business of technology that it's just a face/palm a minute. It's like the whole country is jumping off the cliff just because corporate media tells them it's the cutting edge of computing pleasure.

Just for the record without expanding, M$ and Apple are definitely on my shit list where the dumbing of the masses is concerned.

All I can say as a general warning... don't put anything of a secure nature on the Internet that you can't stand to loose or post anything on the Internet that that you don't want the human race to know about. Keep hard copies on site (so old school) and know your systems and how it works so your stuff is not vulnerable to some software savior that has no other purpose but to make you even more vulnerable. Vulnerability pays.