When making posts you have the choice of "comment" as well as others for the review type. I can see from loads of other decent reviews you've made on Macupdate that you likely know this, but what you and a few others, have done here is not review this product, instead you've made a comment and given that comment a star review. This doesn't really improve the quality of Macupdate feedback.

Also, the only 1984 we could actually "Welcome ... again" would be the year when "Do They Know It's Christmas" was released which isn't really as terrifying as the fictional era of oppression that you are presumably referring to and which never actually happened.

My point is you're ranting and not really helping other users of Macupdate.

I will reply without a star rating.This and other online run software all deserve low stars because this type of madness should be avoided at all costs. The more fools that jump on this bandwagon the more incentive there is for making more like it. Fools that continue to allow companies to take total control over their software and freedom are no better than the lemmings portrayed in the movie 1984.

No thank you.

@MACTECHHEAD: "Fools that continue to allow companies to take total control over their software and freedom"... I can think of several clients of mine that could use this give them MORE control over access to their OWN custom built web applications that are hosted on their OWN servers.

It is a just a tool and your crusading against it is like crusading against telephones because "faceless corporations" could have control over what you've said.

I'm not afraid of the folks at the Mozilla Project who develop Prism. If all web apps were run by altruistic young open sorcerers like them I might even consider getting on board. But, of course, profit-seeking corporations are always just a few steps behind the revolutionaries, waiting for their ideas to mature enough to squeeze a buck out of them. And I think we'd be fools to consider giving up control of our identities to 'the cloud'.

To those who support the concept of web-based software, I ask this: Have you already forgotten the mountains of evidence suggesting we kill this development before it gets off the ground (and into the cloud)? What about the thousands of recent examples of corporations misusing and profiting off our personal information without our approval and often without our knowledge?

What about the US government officials from the Social Security Administration who sold the personal info of nearly 4 million Americans last year -- mostly to corporations?! If our banks and government agencies can't be trusted with our personal information, can the employees of your future web-based software companies?

I had my identity stolen for the second time 3 months ago, and I was responsible for the first $50 charged fraudulently to each of 7 different credit cards (including the ones started up by those criminals)! I had to spend 6 days on the phone convincing the big American credit rating agencies to block issuance of any new credit in my name for the next year, and with my current credit companies convincing them that I really am me, so they shouldn't cancel my current cards! And it's not over yet. But more importantly, how do you think those criminals got my personal info in the first place -- and that of the 27,400 other Americans involved in just this one case? By hacking a BANK! Now consider that banks use much, much stronger security protocols than other companies, including the ones that will host your online apps.

There are NO security standards, NO best-practices regulations, and NO effective enforcement mechanisms in place to guarantee the safety of your personal info. What's worse, the unqualified success of corporate lobbyists at watering down all the legislation that Congress recently passed to protect us from another economic crisis like this one proves that there never will be such protections from government.

Take it from someone who spent 8 years running the Clinton White House's legislative initiatives on social policy: Government is not a proactive entity, it only REACTS to pressures generated by society, and always in the most milquetoast, mealymouthed and ineffective ways. Politicians will never protect us from business interests as long as those same business interests are the sole financiers of their political campaigns.

If you're not yet critical of the fundamental logic of web-based apps and you think FORMICA's rant (below) went too far (especially those geniuses CORNSTALK and HERMIT, who don't even seem to have read it before launching into mini-rants of their own), I propose that you try what FORMICA did. Download and test NetBarrier or Little Snitch so you can intercept your software's calls out to the Internet and decide whether to allow or block them. Then download a new and interesting little music app called Instinctiv (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/33909/instinctiv). When Little Snitch intercepts Instinctiv's callouts, write down the addresses and, if possible, the countries of all Instinctiv's callouts to the dozens of companies and other entities all over the world -- though many are impossible to identify or even locate. I bet you'll get tired and give up way before you get to callout number 50 in just the first 10 minutes (that's when I quit)! If you like, do it again with the software of a company you really trust. Then, let us know if you still trust software companies to ensure the safety of your personal and financial information stored on a net-apps client computer with unencumbered access to the Internet.

Oh, and while you're at it, read a newspaper occasionally.

ha ha ha ha......Good Lord. These conspiracy theorists need to crawl back up in their holes and stay there.

Technically, FORMICA is very correct. Or put another way - there is far too much unannounced OUTGOING communications between YOUR computer and points unknown.

That's a fact.

Interesting rant. Starts out with one premise (any software from the web), moves to another while giving a solution (network monitoring such as Little Snitch which allows you to monitor and block ANY outbound connection), then goes on to erroneously say this program is only for other companies to make programs with. Besides the bad example of Microsoft Office (which is moving entirely online for storage and, therefore, a "software from the web"), am I the only one that sees the irony in a person ranting about the privacy evils of web-based programs on a web site using a web browser?

Incoherent rant or not.

I wouldn't trust web based apps ever. You would have to be a complete idiot to think there was any good to come from this.

A waste of bandwidth and a waste of time.

Welcome to 1984 again lemmings.