On the impossibility of business, and what to expect.

Because America has an 'anyone can sue' legal system based upon privilege that originated in 1400s Scottish and British law, and has rarely been complimented, it's hazardous to be "in business." Everyone will sue you. Insurance to offset this is expensive. Despite my feelings about Corporations controlling most nations and the UN, USA, et al., those are the bad guys, and I'm talking about companies that aren't up to no good.

Google has to do things to be competitive, to obey laws, and to make money. They can't NOT do those three things or they will cease to be a corporation! Compete, Obey, and Profit are the paramount driving forces of corporations. Even in nations where they may freely flout certain laws, or be excluded from civilian law such as Blackwater / XE is, they still have the laws of other nations to be concerned with. However, laws are rarely a DIRECT problem, but the reputation of violating them can kill.

Profit is the golden rule, and a bad reputation will ruin profits. Once seen as an enemy of the state, or the people, a company will have a harder time competing against other companies. Thus, it eventually becomes enlightened self-interest to be "good." The less evil a company is know as, the more willingly people will spend. AOL almost has to trick people into using its services, and certainly spends a lot of energy in customer abuse in my opinion. Everyone laughs in even the largest rooms when I say "AOL" out loud. It doesn't even have to BE a joke that I'm telling! AOL itself is the joke to techies and geeks, nerds or all computer literate people, alike.

Don't be Blackwater, AT&T, or AOL. That's what Google means when they say "Don't be Evil." So, when I say most computer hosting is a scam, please understand that I am not really overstating the case. Today, a reputable, and trusted, host I still use failed to notice a domain being broken - EVEN after it took down their home page for 30 seconds. THEIR server reset, but they ignored MINE. It's still offline at this writing, nearly 24 hours later.

THAT is why I say that paying people to host your website is a gamble, at best. Even the most honest company can't really get it right. The problem is that they have to sell thousands of websites, and who can pay attention to thousands of things at one time? Nobody. They'll never hire that many people. You will notice, and that's why you should host yourself. The real problem is bandwidth.

I'm setting up the four home servers I have to be mirrors, so that they can run when the host I use for bandwidth fails to work properly - which happens more often than once a month. Even with a good hosting company and a business hosting account, there are monthly problems if you make any changes to your site, including just updating your blog.

I'd go 100% self-host if only I had more bandwidth at home. Guess what? Clearwire is upping their bandwidth to corporations. Soon... little jedi, soon. [Somewhat evil laugh.]

You see, in any business, no matter how bad the ESTABLISHED industry practices are, there will be competitors arise who will kick their ass. Clearwire will have my sword.

Expect to see me posting a LOT more about how to install, maintain, and manage servers in your home office, in the coming months. I've been down that road many times and still run several servers in my home now. IPV6 will also be my savior, as it has the potential to eliminate IPV4 problems such as home IP addresses not visible to the internet - when you want one or two of them to be.