Posted on 01/11/2021 9:25:27 AM PST by MercyFlush
I've been in the technology industry for over twenty years and I've seen fads come and go. When I got started in 2000 I oversaw the migration of data from old tape drives to modern 1GB hard drives. Then at my job I oversaw the end of the mainframe and the ascendancy of the PC and server as the new form of decentralized network infrastructure.
From 2001 through to around 2010 the internet and internet access were present in the government agency I work for but most people were prohibited from using it. And if they did their access was strictly limited.
In the space of ten years my agency went from all but prohibiting internet access to mandating it as mission critical. The massive amount of personal and corporate data my agency holds used to be zealously guarded on our own highly secure server farm. Not even our oversight agencies could penetrate our defenses and our access protocols.
Then starting around 2010 that all changed. Outsourcing of internal jobs had already started in earnest despite state laws prohibiting such outsourcing. That led to outside firms having more access to public data than the government agency itself had.
Then upper management started getting courted by the people who came up with the idea of using remote servers to host (and harvest) data in supposedly cheaper server farms. To make this concept palatable to upper management types they gave it a trendy name and called it, "The Cloud".
The Cloud, you see, was a miraculous gift from Jesus Himself and it was going to save humanity, end global warming, cure cancer, and make kittens happy again. Criticism of The Cloud was not permitted. It was an unspeakable heresy to challenge the bureaucratic orthodoxy and point out that The Cloud was simply moving data and services from our servers to someone else's servers.
In due time The Cloud became an unstoppable force. As The Cloud began to dominate the IT landscape the cheap introductory prices started to increase. And over the last few years even the last vestiges of independent network control, on premise Active Directory, was migrated to The Cloud in the form of Microsoft Azure.
We have now reached the place where Microsoft can shut off our access to our own network by disabling our Azure Active Directory. I consider this a massive existential threat to our agency and frankly, if Microsoft is compromised by politics or cybercriminals then almost all services in my state can be brought down within minutes.
I say this now because the first tentative steps are being made by the tech oligarchy to seize the controls of our society and our government. The censorship and shutdown of politically incorrect organizations over the past year is but a foretaste of what can happen.
The tech giants are now in a position to shut down states, cities, police agencies, and to some extent even our military. The recent actions of Amazon Web Services (AWS) prove that these assaults on our sovereignty can be arbitrary and capricious. And I expect it will get worse when the new Marxist regime in Washington DC cheers from the sidelines as the tech giants seize more and more power.
A handful of leftist, globalist tech oligarchs has control of our data and internet and they are right now proving they can't be trusted with such power. If they choose to they can shut down our communications, our power grid, and many other of our utilities such as water supplies. What happens when Microsoft or AWS decides to shut down an entire state because that state refuses to bow down to the leftist mob? What then?
How many individuals now host their data on web services that would all be lost if someone on the left arbitrarily decides to deplatform them? You store your family photographs online? They can be removed from your access. What about your banking? Your passwords? In some cases you could even be denied the use of your 'smart' home or your wifi connected vehicle if the technocrats decide to deny you access.
The AWS attack on Parler should come as a warning to everyone that The Cloud is not and never was the Miracle from Jesus that we were told it was. It is instead a means to effect a coup d'état without needing significant military force. Whole states can be shut down if needed and it can be done in the blink of an eye simply by denying internet access.
Parler has been deplatformed but before this Year of Our Lord 2021 is out I am certain that we shall see individuals deplatformed. I won't be surprised at all if Donald Trump is the first and his companies and his family will find themselves unable to obtain internet access anywhere. Thousands and perhaps millions of Deplorables will then face the same disconnection from the technology so many of us now take for granted.
What's the solution? I hate to say but we need to step back from our collective dependency on a very few technical chokepoints and become data and service independent again.
Our critical government agencies MUST be wholly independent from the political trends of the technocracy. Our personal data and our collective ability to converse with each other MUST NOT be held hostage to people who would demand that we only express politically acceptable views in order to have access to public forums, banking, and etc.
It is now time to move away from our dependence on these tech oligarchs lest we wake up one day and find them our masters. THEY are The Cloud and The Cloud can't be trusted!
The cloud can’t be trusted?
REALLY? I’m shocked.
Yep, even my cat knows that.
See post 40.
I’ve been saying for years that the ‘cloud’ is just someone else’s computers. If you outsource your data, you not only don’t own it, you don’t control it either.
They didn't really understand the danger. People are also really lousy at data management.
I'm religious about backing up my data. One of the first things I do whenever I upgrade my desktop is to check that the backup program is scheduled and operational.
You dumba$$. Ask Parlor. If Parlor had is own severs they would still be up now.
Parlor is learning this the hard way.
The cloud is not the internet. The cloud creates a huge server farm to run apps and store data and it is run like utility. It is like electricity, you can generate your own with a generator or hook into the grid. Ask Parlor if they know the difference.
FTA: The AWS attack on Parler
Sounds like: The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor....
Assuming you're talking about Parler then if Parler had to have their own servers then Parler wouldn't be in business.
For a Deep State totalitarian dictatorship, having people's pictures online is an intelligence gathering gold mine.
Most people don't think about it, but with facial recognition software, all those pictures provide a way to map your network of friends and family.
That network of associations can then be used to draw up a list of places to look if the Deep State ever decides it wants to hunt someone down.
This article is correct.
People not allowed to post messages, have their books printed, websites blocked and payment shopping carts being blocked is going on right now!
At work we have moved to the “Cloud”. Many many people have lost their jobs at my company and at other companies that went to the “cloud people”. Usually in India.
My dept is transitioning to temp people and overseas support which means days of waiting for the callers to get their issue fixed instead of being fixed that day.
Part of an email to me from a big regional boss who has fired managers and a Help Desk person one time and closed offices so you want to be on his good side. He emailed this and some more detail to our managers> directors> boss
“Since the implementation of the new software and procedures, there have been serious degradation in the service levels from the folks in the Help Desk, I don’t think it’s a human issue, but maybe systematic. Before we would get call backs and most items would be resolved quite quickly”
Everything is much slower and we have had outages too many times from those companies we deal with. Microsoft, Oracle are the big ones.
Thousands of people sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting for those companies to fix the issue.
If the servers with the software were in use as before in our own building the issues would be fixed right away.
#5 Onedrive is a separate program listed in Programs & Features. You can uninstall if you want. I did as it intercepted any files I was saving say to my desktop and I had to take extra steps to save to where I wanted the file to go. I use Office 2016 and Windows 7 on my desktop pc.
Windows 10 is always extra steps to do the same thing you did with Windows 7 and earlier versions.
Wiki page. No bias there....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Loomer
Laura Elizabeth Loomer (born May 21, 1993[1]) is an American far-right and anti-Muslim political activist,[a][b] conspiracy theorist,[2][3] and internet personality.
#25 You can get a large external hard drive cheap.
https://www.amazon.com/External-Hard-Drives-Storage-Add-Ons/b?ie=UTF8&node=595048
I’ve always been suspicious of cloud storage, particularly for personal stuff. They got people hooked with “free”. Then once all their photos and music were downloaded, the fees started.
The techies love to get you into regular payments.
I know what the cloud is. I am a cloud engineer on a HUGE platform run by the world’s major software vendor.
My point is the cloud is just another part of the Internet.
Do you even read what I say or just focus on a few words?
I teach people who are longtime, decades-long server administrators who do not want the cloud as the think it is something evil, or at least they cannot control all of it.
These same people don’t bat an eye when the run dozens of web front ends into their business critical databases. They don’t even realize their business HAS to be on the Internet but, hell no, we don’t want no cloud!
The cloud is an overused name anyways. It is an Internet service. Period. When we all went to VMs as servers it didn’t matter whether they were down the hall or across the country. But no one called their server rooms or datacenter a cloud. That’s a hype name. A gimmick.
That makes no sense.
Parler got lazy and out sourced it’s IT infrastructure and got burned. Going in-house IT will make a came back. Good.
After watching the rush to move to "off prem," how long will it be before a company like Workday tells Exxon they will no longer process their HR until Exxon supports global warming initiatives?
Or Salesforce won't process orders that come from fracking, or SAP won't process materials management for mining operations?
-PJ
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