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In Reply to: RE: owning my 'own' information....cloud computing and web 2.xx is out of control posted by Tom Schuman on October 21, 2014 at 09:21:51
Your complaint is like buying a regular phone but complaining that you have to connect it to the wall and use local and long distance phone providers.In Win 8.1 you need to create account and password for your system that gives you access to the Cloud. After that you can disconnect from the Cloud. I have been disconnected for 2 years now with no problems.
Android phone: point of having one is to have everything synchronized and therefore you have to be connected to some service - for Android it is Google. Further, you do not have to synchronize anything - you can turn it off item by item, account by account and type by type. I let Android synchronizes e-mail/Address book/Calendar, and keep everything else local.
Also, I do not know about your phone, but several different Androids I have let you back up everything locally. As your e-mail/calendar/address book are already on the web, I see no point of not using what is already saved, but photos documents, etc. I keep local and copy to computer when I want.
So to summarize, if you do not want features of the smartphone do not buy one. If you want to use them, you have to be connected to internet and you have to have account. No one forces you to use the Cloud.
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"One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane."
Edits: 10/21/14Follow Ups:
"As your e-mail/calendar/address book are already on the web"
that's exactly what I was concerned about. i hope my calendar is not on the web. and i see no reason why my 'address book' should have to be. there is plenty of storage space on the internal / external chip on my mobile phone, for example, that doesn't get used and could be used for this purpose. Sure, my e-mail gets sent over the internet, and even the www, but it SHOULD be SSLed somewhere on the way, which I am no longer sure about.
Besides my local PC login password, I have not created a Cloud account with Win 8.1 as far as I know. Maybe I need to read the instructions/ Terms of Use of Win 8.1 again.
The point of having an Android phone was not to have everything synchronized, but to use the functionality, like internet access, which these mini computers enable. I do not see why that fundamentally committs one to sharing everything about what I do with the phone with my provider, or Google, or whoever else decides to pay for that information. Like I said, I might pay twice as much for a phone/provider that didn't constantly tap into my information.
The phone is to some extent configurable (I can disable apps) but why should information disappear when a synch app is disabled? It doesn't make sense. There is tons of storage space on the internal and external chip slot which doesn't get used, meanwhile the RAM is constantly being hijacked by apps working in the background to upload and update, etc.....
Basically, I'm troubled by the fundamental move in the IT business towards providing software services in return not for payment that fits the service, but for unlimited access to the information that you create, manage and use. Once you get people hooked on technology they don't understand or can manipulate, even if they didn't pay for that technology, then you've really got them. Try living without the A/C power that comes out of the wall for a day, and you'll see what I mean.
To me, it sounds like you long ago drank the koolaid and are fine with it, but I'm not. Although I did also drink a lot of koolaid in the last 15 years.
How do I get off the Win8.1 Cloud (as you said you did 2 years ago?)
The point of having an Android phone was not to have everything synchronized, but to use the functionality, like internet access, which these mini computers enable. I do not see why that fundamentally committs one to sharing everything about what I do with the phone with my provider, or Google, or whoever else decides to pay for that information. Like I said, I might pay twice as much for a phone/provider that didn't constantly tap into my information.
Like Facebook, the true valuation is not in what you pay to use the device, but the data points you make by using it everyday. That's where the money is, so making it impossible to collect that info would just be bad business for them.
I try to keep as much locally as I can, but I'd be lying if I said I don't benefit from that level of integration.
Jim J.
If you do not want your callendar, addressbook, etc. on the web, do not synchronize them, your choice (Call me what you think about that choice when your phone dies or get stolen).
If you connect to internet, what you do can be seen by others if they really want to, no matter what software you use, if you sync or not...
If you send e-mail, recipient and your addresses with all the content you are aware and not can be seen by others.
If you think that you can protect yourself from it you are obviously clueless about state of the current information technology.
Also, with the apps you have choice to use them or not. Some collect data, some not. Some will collect data always, some not if you pay, your choice.
"why should information disappear when a synch app is disabled"
Have no idea what App and in what context. I keep sync off for most of the apps most of the time so that they do not drain a battery and they work fine.
I did not drink cool aid, I just live in a reality. Like where having a smarphone is not luxury but need. I do not know what you do for a living but I would not keep my job for long if I would not have and use my smartphone.
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"One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane."
They're now calling sky drive 'one drive' and I've ignored it from the beginning, since I've been using the old UI on 8.1, not the new one.
i don't think i'm clueless about the state of IT, just philosophically question the motives behind it. where IT and software goes, seems to be ruled by profit decisions, and not necessarily by what people want to see in software apps. it doesn't have to be that way. Innovation is not always 'good' though I see the need to constantly change shape when the 'competition' is hot on your heels.
on the whole, though, I'm amazed, in a positive sense, by all the functionality. even though google can seem a bit spooky, there's no bigger fan of google maps, for instance, than I.
cheers
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