There are many reasons for IT civilians depend on fine “cloud-based” web services such as anything from google, hotmail, flickr, youtube, ad infinitum. It saves them system administration effort and may improve reliability and remote access. However, there are some problems, the most basic of which is one’s conversion from a user to a product. For one’s privacy, one’s data, and one’s attention is the product, sold to advertisers or whomever, in exchange for one’s convenience. That’s just not for me. I detest such proprietary convenience, and will stomp on its grave wearing nothing but a bath towel.

At least, less and less for me. My most recent step away from the cloud was to shut down my google reader account, and install my own Tiny-Tiny RSS software at my own premises. It’s not as good as google reader: it’s a lot slower for some reason. Given that it’s free software, and it’s running right here, I may opt to dig in and try to improve it. Or maybe I’ll just accept its lesser performance, and use that to wean me off of excessive RSS research. But at least, it’s my data, my server, and my decision. And my bath towel.