I remember when this so-called "Cloud" technology was brand spankin' new and everyone had the usual responses to it....

Tech Clueless End User - - Uh...yeah, you want a sandwhich? Maybe we shold put that on the cloud. Can't find your car keys? Maybe they're on the Cloud! "Chief" "Chief's not here because he's at McDonalds on the McCloud!" Seriously, I'm pretty sure Adam Corolla even had a joke about it similiar to his joke from "The Man Show" involving Internet being the secret to Basketball.

Tech Geek Stereotype - The cloud is going to be our future! You no longer will need hard drives. You will no longer need to replace your computer every 3-5 years - just every 3-5 months, because every piece of tech will be recyclable/diposable, as it will only need to host the O/S and nothing else. You will be able to reach your data anywhere in the world - on your phone, on your watch, in your car, on your work laptop, personal laptop, TV, anywhere! It'll be wonderous! It'll be just like Bladerunner! The future is here! The Cloud!

All I.T. Teams Everywhere - Oh crap, another new thing that Microsoft/Amazon/Google/Musk/whoever has proposed is "the future" - now we'll implement it, six months later find the end users are **abusing** it, and then we'll have a bunch of security things to throw down! What? Software licensing? SaaS? Seriously!?!? Our Legal department is going to have a FIELD DAY with that nightmare from hell! Seriously, why can't we just keep using the usual \\servername\sharename\ that we have been doing for the last 40 years, it works well enough, it's too technical for the riff raff to do jack shit with it, it's administered in AD and regulated by group policies and access groups in AD? So why change this. Oooh. what's this new "Sharepoint" thing - you mean we can all work on documents at the same time, how the hell is that EVER going to work...christ, why the hell is this file still locked by the guy we fired six months ago for borking the receptionist!?!?

C-Suite Executive Types of Tech Companies - (evil gryn) yeeeeesss, we can "sell" people software they don't actually own, grant them storage space, then change the space limit through the "we reserve the right at any time to change our product" clause, and hike up prices unexpectedly to their agonizing bank accounts to get more money? Why, because I want that brand new Yacht! A 900 foot Schooner with Solar Power and a cornmeal powered rotary engine (supplimented by a 7.3L Cummins Diesel). My cousin Elon is making me look like a fool at the Yacht club!

Let me tell you, i've been skeptical of the cloud since day one. Because just like the internet, lamestreamers don't understand it, geek-culture wants to revel in it to hope that the Starship Enterprise and Millennium Falcon become a reality, I.T. guys - like myself - are in a friggin panic over it because we know it's not going to be as easy, secure, nor as nice as is promised if previous tech trends are any indication, and I knew that the executives were already counting the billions of dollars they were going to make shilling people into non-tangible "property" that they "lease" to "have access to".

Seriously - FUCK the cloud!

The Cloud is not even really that new of a thing - it's just your basic client-server relationship with an overlay of the capability of simultanious file editing and being able to be reached over the internet. Seriously,. I could make my own cloud too - by hosting all my files on a password protected server over port:80 on the internet with a series of webpages coded to render all my "data" as pretty webpages instead of this open-directory mess. Heck, I could even just download an OpenSource cloud program and host my own cloud...so why in the absolute fuck should I pay a bunch of wannabe-nerd fuckboys host my data on their glorified SAS network? And why should I let them control my access to anything I create....

This is why I own this (left) - a Dell PowerEdgeT610 with a firewall the size of the Great Wall of China! 2TB of data storage that costs me only in electricity a month, complete with my own streaming service, and even file access for my vintage PC's, all administrered by me! Running Linux - because I hate Kids (Windows Update, because Windows update acts like a unruly, moody, teenaged kid).

I think the first one that screwed me (and pretty much everyone) Is Microsoft and their SkyDrive - to continue to be antagonizing - Microsoft USED to call OneDrive "SkyDrive" - just like they used to call the "New Style UI" the "Metro UI". I was given something like what? 30-50GB or something off the bat to store data on. So of course I use their cloud first, but sometime after that, they cut EVERYONE - including Microsofties - free data down to 15GB. Of course, I did not get upset, I was not at all surprised - this is what I KNEW these companies would do as soon as they got their data posted.

When Photobucket moved to "The Cloud" in the 2000's, I remember I had an old graphic making fun of Microsoft with some, uh, very un-P.C. imagery - well, that mysteriously dissappeared, for reaosns unknown, but I suspect that it's the "EULA" or "Policies" of these companies - like the bullshit policies of the Opelika school system - making them root through my personal data and decide what I get to keep and what not to keep! THIS is EXACTLY why I REFUSE to put my data outside a last resort, on a unattended server owned by a bunch of buearucratic C-suiters who likely have yachts and drinking problems!

Meanwhile.....back at Google.....the place that once said "do no evil", but has since retracted that "tagline" (and I hold about as much faith in taglines and catch phrases as I do in Donald Trump's ability to be a good president - if it were a number, it'd be a negative number, aka less than NONE!!)...anyway, back on track. So I run out of space on Google because Google wants me to buy 100GB of storage from them - WTF? Why should I pay you for 100GB when I have TWO FREAKIN TERABYTES at my house for free!?!?

WHY do I run out of space? Oh yeah, I backup our photos to Google Photos, and with each new Android phone I buy, I need to go ahead and put on space saver tweaks and root out videos every so often I make with my phone. It's a royal PITA because each phone goes up a few megapixels and now I'm looking at a picture that can't fit on a fuggin 1.44MB Floppy Diskette. Seriously, who the fuck needs anything higher than 1080p?

But then you get the eggheads in here - "But...but...there's apps that RUN ON THE CLOUD" - yes, but they STILL have to make some local cookies, caches, and other stuff, to actually work. Sure, there is SOME "streaming" capability, but for the most part, maybe about 75%, the data needs some kind of local cache to smooth out the up and down and all around of the average modern day TCP/IP Computer network.

Seriously, the cloud doesn't impress me. It just irritates me. Like "ooh, cloud, this is the "future". Just wait till I weight in on A.I.