"Software is simply bloated up until you're forced to buy a new one."

I do this weird trick, I don't upgrade the software. If I was happy with the software on my phone in 2011, why wouldn't I still be happy with it in 2014 ?

it helps that I don't go online much or install a lot of third party software, I understand sometimes security fixes are necessary. (otoh, I was saved from the heartbleed bug on my laptop because it was such an old copy of debian)

I know how to make a rope making machine with sticks and a nail. While I'm a software engineer right now, I think I could make a pretty good living as a rope maker, this assumes if rope suddenly becomes a lot more valuable than it is now.

It's good to have a fallback career because it would probably be quite a while before anyone makes computers for me to program.

Please replace XXX by any kind of job title. Cook. Car repair. Teacher. CEO. Anything fits, really.

If you learned anything from Stuxnet, you would no that no data is secure whenever it's online. No data at all. Stuxnet had zero-days for all OSes that noone knew about before it was discovered, and not just one of them. Chances are your system is already compromised and nobody even knows about it. And if it is not, it could be at any time. We closed a door with Heartbleed, but there are countless doors still open, just waiting to be discovered.

I honestly don't know what you're talking about. There's been a vulnerability disclosed. Fixing it is trivial. Regenerating your keys is (or should be) trivial. End of story.

Yes, this vulnerability is scary, and even more scary thing is that there are probably other vulns that bad in the wild, and most likely plenty of them. But this is over.

When I first saw Stuxnet and the extent of this shit, I lost all confidence in online data, for good. Heck, Stuxnet even infiltrated an offline network. Heartbleed is shit compared to this. The point is that everything that is online can be breached. End of story. We closed one door yesterday, I'm sure there are still 100 others open. So you see? No big deal really.

Ubuntu did provide apt patches for all affected versions, including those not supported anymore (12.10 comes to mind). They did it right. If you had configured your security patches to install automatically, it was even transparent. I don't see a problem there.

If you care so much about all that windows crap, why are you running Linux at all?

I'm not saying it's a bad reason, I'm saying the odds of that succeeding in a reasonable timeframe - say in the next 50 years - are just nonexistent. What I'm saying is that there is no way anyone would convince enough people to make this project even examined, hence the project is doomed. The adventures of the last millenium are vastly different - I think you'll give me that, after all they had air to breathe and water to drink - and so the comparison is at best irrelevant. Also, I didn't imply we would need to carry everything there. What I said is that the project would need support from earth for dozens of years (and a lot of them) before the colony could survive on its own. During this timeframe the whole thing could fail at any point and the goal of self-preservation would not be met until then. Those are the reason you will have trouble convincing anyone of doing it.

At last, my example of humans being unable to preserve their own climate is just here to illustrate that if noone (or let's say not enough people) cares about our planet, how are you going to convince them to care about another?

Huh? Are you on crack? Who in their right mind is going to invest in those things?

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to spend a week on the moon or mars if I could afford it, but I just don't see this happening.

As for a reason, you gave none, not answering the GP at all. And no, self-preservation really is a pitiful reason as no such colony could exist without earth's support. For such a colony to be independent would take decades if not centuries of constantly pumping big money without any kind of return.

We can't even fix our climate, so imagine terraforming Mars !!!

Of course, they did hire new people. But tell me, how many hardware companies do you know that produces high quality software and/or services?

Well, there is one: Apple. And this is IMO the key to their success. They do both well (whether or not you agree with their policies/strategy is another matter, both their software and their hardware are top-class in their respective fields, and nobody even questions that.)

The rest of them? All hardware manufacturers I can think of makes software that sucks big time (graphics, printers, scanners, all those devices - and their drivers - come to mind)

So is it possible for WD to do a good service online? Of course it is. But in my view, it's extremely unlikely.

If you want me to restate my previous comment, here it is: The point is, HD manufacturers probably suck at networking.

There. It's down, proving my point at this very moment.

Choose your vendor carefully. HDD manufacturers are probably not good at cloud services, just because it's not their core business, nor is it close to their core business. I could've told you that. You want cloud storage? Go DropBox, Amazon, Google. These guys know what they're doing.

Now, don't treat this storage as safe or secure. It's cloud storage. Safe is copied over to at least two different remote locations plus at least two local storage devices. Secure is encrypted and offline. Cloud is neither, but it is convenient.

The key here is to know what you are doing, which isn't always obvious.

Of course we are, just a different kind.

They couldn't care less about a legal smack-down as long as they're afloat. The only thing they understand is money. It will stop only with bankruptcy.

No, no, not by the bible, only by the "good parts" of the bible, or in other words, by other people that chose those good parts. The Bible has nothing to do with it.