I think most of the European regulators have long been concerned about the U.S. SAS providers (note that I say SAS — Software As a Service — rather than “cloud” because I use the term “cloud” to refer to the infrastructure that these services run upon, not the services themselves). It is quite clear that none of the US-based providers truly comply with EU privacy laws and it was likely assumed that they were all being snooped by the NSA all along. The main problem with the EU is fragmentation, both linguistic and cultural. Parisians may be issued handbooks instructing them on how to not be snobby about a Facebook-like service written by Germans, but said handbooks would soon litter the streets of Paris, unopened. Germans, similarly, would refuse to use a Facebook-like service run by those effete Frenchmen. And so forth. The end result is that none of the services originating in the EU have managed to get the scale to be competitive in the world market. (Estonia — Skype — is *NOT* in the EU, though they incorporated in Luxembourg to get the European market).

Like it or not, the English-speaking market is still the largest single market on the planet, so services that originate in the English-speaking countries have significant advantages over competitors from places like Germany or France. The EU is going to be hard pressed to get their users to not use Facebook… its international reach is unsurpassed by any of the parochial services that they’ve tried to create themselves. Facebook is like the Microsoft of social media… you can’t live with it, and, if you need that kind of connectedness, you can’t live without it.

So it goes…

Oh, yes, the US telcoms are all trying to milk the last penny out of their existing systems, rather than modernizing or expanding them.

We both know that companies have had concerns about US providers for a while, and this just crystallizes the problem for many corporations based around the world. It isn’t just the spying, it is also the aging infrastructure. Until the backbone companies get serious about upgrades, US vendors are at a serious disadvantage. I have a feeling that the reason I can’t get fiber is because it doesn’t belong to the duopoly, is probably belongs to the military and their contractors.

EU VP thinks NSA spying undercuts U.S. cloud companies

“European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes warned U.S. cloud hosting companies that NSA spying might weaken their appeal”

Bryan, as bad as your Internet/Phone service is, it could be a lot worse (if Verizon get’s it’s way):

“Verizon’s Voice Link ploy running into its own superstorm”

There are some other items on the SM blog this week that should be of interest to some here.

“Blog wrap up for the week of 07/08/2013

Verizon’s plan to eliminate landlines in parts of New York state has raised the ire of groups like CWA and the AARP, as well as the attorney general’s office and hundreds of individuals. FCC commissioners voted unanimously to approve Sprint’s acquisition of Clearwire stock and SoftBank’s merger with Sprint. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Cablevision’s request for a stay of the National Labor Relations Board hearing in its dispute with Brooklyn workers wishing to join CWA. The European Commission’s vice president Neelie Kroes warned at a conference that U.S. cloud hosting companies are harmed in the European market by the revelation that they’re being used by the NSA to spy on individuals around the world. And Acting FCC Chair Mignon Clyburn aims to “close our education system’s bandwidth gap” by improving the E-Rate program.”

Link to the above blog articles:

SpeedMatters

I don’t doubt for a minute that China don’t want a war. They are winning quite well without the hassle. I also don’t doubt that they have contingencies. They have, after all, been doing this for many centuries longer than the USA, and most of the World for that matter. 🙂 They have decided to play the long game, and it’s working quite well, too well actually. 🙂 And that a problem for them. There is such a thing as winning too easily, and being too successful. As the USA is discovering, albeit slowly. If the USA does descend into chaos, China will have to ensure all that hostility is directed elsewhere, perhaps the Mid-East (though China want to stabilize that region as it’s probably their next biggest market), Nth Korea or Russia. My guess would be NK & Russia. China would have to (secretly) help Putin & Russia grow to be a credible threat once again, then sit back and watch you all duke it out and pick up the pieces. Assuming there are any pieces left, which is the downside of any such plan given the state of the crazies running the USA and Russia & NK! 😀 So no, I doubt very much China wants a war. Because they know the nuts are in charge of enough weaponry to turn the Earth into asteroids. Not a good thing for China. And let’s not forget the crazy Israel, Pakistan & UK. It seems everyone with nukes these days is crazy. The only thing stopping any of them from using Nukes, is they are not yet completely suicidal. Give it time… There are plenty of hints that self-preservation is slowly becoming less important.

Now there is a cheery thought before everyone goes to bed! 😆

Doesn’t bother me. *shrug* I’ve known the World is mostly insane for decades, and getting worse each generation. It’s one of the reasons I got out of the game… There wasn’t any point.

The only way China can win, is to figure out some way to stabilize or control the crazies. Good luck with that.

Why pick through what would be left from a war when Western corporations will build them on your land, and train your people, and then you can just take them with a piece of paper. The Chinese have figured out the corporate mindset and have been using it effectively for years.

Everyone who points this problem out to upper management at US corporations gets marginalized for having no ‘vision’ and being unable to think ‘outside the box’. After the assets are seized upper management gets really annoyed if you walk into their office and start covering their desks with the memos you wrote telling them this was going to happen.

Bryan, I think the Chinese right now are operating on a “beat them with capitalism” strategy. They have (perhaps correctly) identified significant weaknesses in today’s crony capitalism environment in the West and are exploiting them. As far as South Korea goes it’s unlikely that they’d be interested in invading even if North Korea wasn’t in the way, because their current game plan calls for South Korea (and everybody else in the region) to be assimilated economically, not militarily.

Kryten, China wants to build their own ship-building industry. Conquering South Korea for their ship building industry would be dumb, because those facilities would not survive the war (the Americans would blow them up if the South Koreans didn’t) and the remaining workers would disappear, leaving China with so much rubble to ponder. China thus far is not making many dumb moves… and that would be a dumb one.

OTOH, if they nuke North Korea, South Korea becomes a target. They really want land more than industry. They can easily con Western capitalists into building modern construction facilities and training Chinese workers before they are thrown out. The South Koreans need to import more of the necessary raw materials than China does, so South Korea isn’t a serious target at the moment.

I came across this interesting article in San Jose Mercury News:

Silicon Valley long has had ties to military, intelligence agencies

Nothing some of us didn’t already know. 🙂

Making an opposed landing without the proper vessels is pretty much just another form of suicide. It would take a long time to build the navy needed to invade any of the islands, and there is no way of hiding that kind of construction and the necessary training. They know how to cross the Amur River.