Information security and adhering to all manner of certification, both in terms of physical security and compliance to information management regulation, is usually a lot more stringent in a decent (professional) cloud environment than in people's own data center.

I'd be inclined to disagree with your assessment of hosted infrastructure, although quite honestly I am apprehensive about going to the cloud myself.

Maybe it's a psychological thing.

Sorry to burst your bubble there.

I'm afraid to say I've been bleeding blue (HP Blue, not Dell, IBM, eh... never mind) since the dawn of time.

Yes they are. I work in the Information Management software division as a pre-sales, and I'm pretty much paid to tell subsets of the above to customers.

- We are our own reference customer for Connected backup for end-points.
- We are our own reference customer for TRIM, now known as HP Records Manager 8.0
- We are our own reference customer for Database Archiving, now known as HP Application Information Optimiser

So all of that is publicly available in white-papers and case-studies.

The fact that we're building a public cloud infrastructure per country in Europe is also very much not a secret. If we want to get or retain EU based cloud customers, we need to be able to guarantee that their data remains their data and that it won't fall prey to third parties, chiefly amongst which the US government.

In terms of data center consolidation and cost savings associated with that, the strategy internal IT is following is largely in line with the Data Center concept we sell as Converged Infrastructure, Cloud System Matrix and Cloud System One.

Moreover our external web presence is run on the newly launched project Moonshot, in which you can currently cram some 45 servers in 5U rack space, which will soon get uplifted to 180 servers in 5U rack space.

All of this is a clean cut case of eating your own cooking, and then using that fact to market the underlying technologies.

So yes, I am very much convinced HP is comfortable with me sharing this publicly.

We've consolidate all office application servers to 5 data centers, one per continent. Then we've rolled out end-point backup for some 80.000 laptops in the field and some 150.000 more PC's around offices across the world which includes legal hold capabilities. Each country in which we're active has a number of mobile device options for telephony, most of them being Android and Win8 based nowadays since WebOS got killed.

Then we're in the process of building a European infrastructure where we have data centers for managed customer environments in every major market in Europe. I am currently not aware of what's going on in APJ or South America. This is important in Europe however, because managed European customers don't want to see their data end up in the States, and the same goes for those that use our cloud offerings.

physical local IT staff presence in all countries has been minimized to a skeleton crew, not only because of data center consolidation but also because of the formation of a global IT helpdesk in low cost countries, and the rise of self-service portals.

The plethora of databases we had internally has been Archived using Application Information Optimizer for structured data archiving. We are our own biggest reference customer in this regard. On top of that we've beefed up our VPN access portals across the world so as to accommodate road warriors logging in from diverse locations.

Lastly, we use our own Records Management software suite to generate 8.000.000. unique records per day. These are archived for a particular retention period (7 years I believe) for auditing purposes.

Why not Luxemburg? Liechtenstein? Andorra? Monaco? Tonga?

Personally I wouldn't mind being spied on intensively by Ancilla Tilia, but that just makes me sound sexist and / or desperate. Plus she's not into that kind of thing.

Well, I hate to say this, but while corporations are just greedy entities that seem only care about expansion and profit, not in that order, governments actually should be somewhat ideological in nature.

As such I'd rather have particular governments spy on me. At the moment, I could deal with the Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Swiss, Dutch, possibly maybe the German, Belgian, French and Finnish governments spying on me. As for the rest, I am not so sure.

Conceptually speaking I do endorse governments before corporations.

I am assuming that whole post should have been modded up +5 Funny, but for those that don't get the sarcasm it represents I would like to add my two cents to the mix.

Let alone the fact that the good old US of A violates the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Convention and a whole slew of international and sensible treaties on Human rights and rights in general faster than you'd be able to say porridge, I must also point out the sheer arrogance of many US citizens when they indeed trumpet their nation as the birthplace of anything that's democratic (a Greek word) and free (an old Saxon/Frisian/Germanic/Scandinavian word).

Firstly, the United States are not the only country on the planet that has a Constitution. it might behoove people to remember that (amongst others) the Dutch Unie van Utrecht out of 1579 and the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish served as inspiration for Jefferson et al when they were looking to write their constitution and declaration of independence. So no, the US did not invent humanism, the enlightenment, the notion of an inalienable freedom to believe what you wish and other core things. Those have been around far longer than the US across many cultures on this globe.

Hell, I use a shaving soap from a factory that was started in 1565. My shaving soap is actually older than the US itself.

Secondly, given the levels of poverty, incarceration, the amount of annual executions, the lack of healthcare or even access to education many of your citizens suffer do point in the direction that the USA is actually becoming an impoverished, brutish, oppressive and uncivilized nation. As we all know paranoia, poverty and an unlimited supply of guns for the largest army on the planet are hardly a mix I would call "a jolly good idea".

Having said all that, for those that still don't get the sarcasm of the poster I'm replying to: I do indeed suggest you let the Canadians spy on you. They do seem more civilized than the other options in the poll.

Why thank you. I really try, so it's a nice compliment.

The poster you just replied to took the words right out of my mouth.

While I agree with you, and not a lot of people seem to disagree here, that vaccinations against dangerous diseases are a good thing, I think over-medication is the bane of our health care systems.

In the Netherlands, doctors have a reputation for not easily medicating people. We're cautious about antibiotics, we're cautious about many types of drugs. The usual response of a Dutch doctor to fever is that as long as it's not over 40 degrees C and doesn't last for longer than three days, it's nothing to worry about. Of course this can be nuanced based on symptoms seen, but you get the gist of it.

This means that the amount of people that develop an immunity to antibiotics and whatnot is much lower than in countries such as Israel and Bulgaria, where people tend to be over-medicated in my view.

To get back to vaccination, I do think it's our collective responsibility to weed out things like polio, diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus as much as we can, not getting flu shots is hardly morally offensive for the reasons already stipulated by the poster above.

In the Netherlands there's a huge debate over religious freedom vis a vis the vaccination of children from families that are religious to the point where they don't vaccinate. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's a collective responsibility to make sure these children don't fall victim to their parents' backwards views.

What you believe should be your prerogative, but as soon as you let it endanger unsuspecting minors your belief should be a secondary concern relative to the safety of those unsuspecting minors.

Either which way, a degree of nuance is called for in any such debate, so I don't think you should make messaging as simple as a blanket statement of "please get vaccinated" any more than you should advise people not to get vaccinated at all.

You are so right. "Ruminations" can be interesting, but for video presentations I vastly prefer TED talks. They have it nailed down 9 out of 10 times. This video presentation is boring beyond belief, which is a shame because the topic in and of itself is interesting.

Then what this guy is saying is directly opposed to what Tesla is saying on combustion engines. Also he doesn't seem to have a good grasp of what a cab company does. I don't know about the US, but taxi's here are used to transport the elderly to hospitals and doctors for check-ups and whatnot, and also to allow for mobility of elderly. This includes longer trips on the municipality's dime. As such "only one station" to fuel up taxi's is absolute poppycock.

Cut a long story short, I don't think Peter Wayner sounds like he can predict shit from shinola.

Why was this comment not modded +5 Sarcastic? Or at least +3 Funny?

Lord knows we've all got our opinions on Big Brother, Jersey Shore (Oh Oh Cherso, anyone?) and quite a few of these so called "Reality" shows.

Quite honestly, and this question can be asked about bloggers, facebook users, twitter feeds and quite a few people that published memoirs over time, I wonder what makes someone think their life is so earth-shatteringly interesting that they need to record it all for posterity.

The average life contains a lot of very, very dreary and dull moments. In between the interesting bits, insofar as there are any, most of us lead a life that is decidedly mundane and uninteresting, present writer included. The notion of recording it all not only suggests narcissism to the point of being megalomaniacal, but is also in jolly bad taste.

Have we, as a species. evolved to the point where we are prone to such self-important wind-baggery that we need to subject our environment to every brainfart that crosses our mind? Quite frankly, the last thing I want to subject my son to is the image of me as a kid or teenager. I'd settle for raising him to be wise and kind, and the rest is irrelevant gravy.

The fact is that when I die, I cease to be. And people will remember me for a variety of reasons, be they good or bad. A recorded lifetime takes a lifetime to watch, which seems to me a gigantic waste of one's life.

In my home country, we've legalized weed. And for many years, there were fewer junkies and drug-related crimes in the Netherlands than in surrounding countries. Then we introduced a measure that wouldn't even make it illegal, it's more like a membership required to smoke dope. That spurred crime alright... Within no-time we had street sellers occupying the corners of every street in towns that previously didn't have this issue.

So they reverted to the old system. And the peace returned.

The same goes for prostitution. In Sweden, they're on a moral high horse about prostitution, but there you get Eastern European and Russian girls that are forcibly kept in dodgy apartments as a default, while only a percentage of prostitutes in the Netherlands are actually forced into the business.

My point is that bad stuff will always happen to good people, but draconian measures, prohibition and even harsh punishment have all been proven to exacerbate whatever problem they're aimed at. Time and time again.

As a result I would argue that a ban on porn is just plain obtuse. It is a limitation on the right to free speech and congregation for those that are consenting afficionado's of filmed exhibitionism, it derives all manner of people of a way to release sexual tension and it's just not effective.

I do wonder what would happen to the rape and violent crime statistisc in a society if they went overboard in sexual conservativism.

I just did a ctrl-f on this thread and nobody mentions the word woman.

I've been married for slightly over 2 years now, and quite frankly I would love to explore the hot body of a woman outside of my marriage more so than outer space. I've had good experiences with Russians, but then I am curious about Brazilians and Moroccans. I'm a liberal man, I can swing many ways.

Seriously. People. The *only* reference to sex I spotted was Natalie Portman's Beowulf cluster with Cowboy Neal.

We are a sad, sad forum.

I was inclined to start this post with "The only thing I care to shove up my ass...." but then I thought the better of it.

Food is nice though. It's an experience that I think is worth something.

And suppositories aren't big enough to tickle my prostate. Sorry.