Americans hurt by server outages: We need to shop! We need to Facebook!

　　When all else fails, we always assume our favorite Web sites will be there.
　　We feel reassured that we'll have the comfort of sitting on our sofas, clutching our little iPads and communing with the same outside world that doesn't always like us in person.
　　Yet, for one reason or another, sites are going down. Sites are being attacked. Servers go down for reasons that don't always seem understandable.
　　Which means that Americans are beginning to realize that the fundaments of their lives are being assaulted and insulted.
　　I lean on my exclusive possession of new research that asked Americans whether outages were upsetting them and why.
　　You will end this post prostrate at the way respondents bared their souls. Did they declare that server outages were hurting them because this was a serious threat to their way of life?
　　In a way.
　　Fifty-two percent said that their biggest concern about server outages was that it would affect a time-sensitive commercial transaction.
　　Please imagine the pain if you've been waiting for that one moment when you can buy One Direction tickets and the ticket site gets attacked by miscreant Belarussian teenagers or the server is overloaded with, oh, people trying to buy One Direction tickets.
　　Some might never, ever get over it. The hospital and psychiatric systems of America would grind to inertia.
　　Still, perhaps this particular 52 percent are the 52 percent that have skewed principles.
　　Perhaps there is still a large section of the populace that has greater security concerns. Well, the next biggest worry when a server goes down belonged to the 35 percent of respondents who screamed: "WE CAN'T FACEBOOK!"
　　Well, they did add Twitter and other forms of social media as they screamed.
　　Life without these essences is like life without eyes and lungs. It is not life at all.
　　Because we're always skeptical about research here, might I reveal that this survey was performed on behalf of Linode.
　　This, quite coincidentally, is a cloud services company whose very purpose in life is to ensure that servers run more smoothly than Bentleys on a sunny day in the English countryside.
　　Somehow, though, the results do ring a bell of authenticity.
　　Indeed, the survey also examined human feelings about mobile apps. Humans are becoming aware that the more apps are used by other humans, the more they slow down and the more they crash.
　　Humans want apps now -- and just for me!
　　This last thought might, for many, sum up the state of the Web-connected mobile soul.
　　It's a soul that wants what it wants and it wants it now. Otherwise, it'll be very lonely indeed.