Growing up, there was a phrase; "He has his head in the clouds" that suggests such a person is not paying attention, or aware of the consequences of what they are doing...

This past week a relative of mine told me that they have subscribed to one of these cloud-based backup services, and then asked me "do you think that was a wise idea?". I asked; "Did you carefully read the license agreement?" The answer of course was "No" - who reads all that legal-ease, and anyway this will now save them from buying any backup hardware.

About two days later I got a call from them in panic... "I just actually read the license agreement and it states that if they screw up or lose all my data, I have agreed not to hold them liable!!!"... Yeah, welcome to cloud-computing - too bad you clicked "I agree" before actually reading the agreement.

Its all very interesting what we are doing with the cloud and this morning's editorial brings more of that. But I still cannot help corresponding the cloud with what this country did with asbestos. We stuck it all over the place before realizing it kills people. Companies that made a fortune selling it, are now bankrupt and out of business. And people are still dying from the affects.

Sure, the cloud isnt going to kill anyone - but here we are again pushing something forward in Technology that is really still just an idea and we're making it up as we go along. That, and the fact that most average users dont read license agreements, bodes some future disaster where once again we look back and wonder - why didnt we think this through?

Simple: There's money to be made, and damn the end-users.