Be careful with the home automation stuff via apps. A lot of the apps run via a cloud intermediary server, so you're giving up a lot of privacy and security for a bit of convenience. The good stuff talks directly, peer-to-peer with your tablet or computer.

And anyone who has stuff like Dropcam (which can only send footage directly to Nest Labs/Scroogle) should have some sense knocked into them with a steel-toed boot.

Seriously, I'm not freakin' out over "cloud" issues . . . the NSA . . . black helicopters . . . but I will defend your right to do so. I use customer loyalty cards, I do online banking, file my taxes online, use EZ Pass when I'm back east, so as you can tell, I can live with a certain amount of "lack of privacy." ;)

There's a difference. Online banking and tax filing just sends data that was previously available on paper through the Internet. EZ-Pass has to track location by necessity (though an anonymous cash payment option is available).

Cloud-based home control has no good reason to exist. The Internet is interconnective. Devices can talk to one another directly. This will become even more possible with IPv6, when every device will have its own routable address again.

There's no technological and engineering reason why cloud servers need to be used as intermediaries, other than a foul corepirate desire for control and a desire to vomit advertising in the faces of sheep who don't know any better. I'd rather NOT go the ad-supported route and pay a bit extra for a system that preserves my privacy and my human dignity.

The peer-to-peer model also makes technology last longer. If there's no corepirate intermediary, they can't say "sorry, we no longer support your product" and turn off the servers that make it work online in five years in order to push people to buy another widget from them. Apple is already doing this in a slightly less blatant way.

1st generation iPads can't be upgraded beyond iOS 5.1.1. If an program has a version that's only supported in higher versions of iOS, you'll get a warning preventing installation on the iPad. The only way to install the older version is to FIRST download the app in iTunes, and then download in App Store, which will then offer up the older version. They made it deliberately inconvenient to install apps that haven't been already downloaded on older iPads. Even though manufacture only ceased in 2011, making the devices less than four years old!

Computing as a prison at its finest. Screw everyone who's trying to foist this model on an unsuspecting public. May they burn in a small room in Hell together with Steve Jobs.

"Hello Schwab? I'd like to up my order of Reynolds Aluminum . . . thanks." :D

Blah-blah-blah, yap-yap-yap.

Privacy issues are real, like it or not. Especially when there's no good technological reason why those systems can't be peer-to-peer.

Would you really feel comfortable with a TV that sends images or voice from the inside of your home to G-d knows whom by default? Or a camera that uploads footage online 24/7. If you are, you're far stupider and more naive than one can imagine, as is typical for people who were born in the US.

The other day, I was speaking to a university professor who deals with tech and social issues extensively. It's interesting that he noted that his foreign students are far more concerned about privacy than his American students. The Americans are all rah-rah-rah cloud yeah, doesn't matter if someone's listening as long as I'm safe. Whereas the foreigners who came from countries that are or were recently under malignant governments take a more skeptical view.

"Triple the order!"

Always funny to see someone showing their naivete and ignorance.

as do I

OK. So someone who was brought up elsewhere has a different view of things. Should we just jump on the foreign bandwagon whatever it is? What makes their opinions so worthy that we must adopt whatever is presented?