We don't want telemetry and forced updating Windows 10 and we don't want Portless Macs either. Windows 7 will be staying here after January 14 2020 on my computers.
I can understand Win10 bullshit and disagree with Apples move to portless designs, but how exactly is a portless Mac preventing you from adopting it? You've justified spending $3K+ on Apple hardware and OSX, but you can't justify another $200 for any I/O adapters that may be needed?
Based on how many companies seem to enjoy ignorantly building an IT hardware refresh cycle based on hardware failure, I'd say it's more like a "pleasurable torment"...
A lot of outdated tech sits inside I.T. storage closets to gather dust. Most companies don't have a plan to recycle outdated tech.
And how exactly is outdated tech sitting powered off in a storage closet degrading current business and decision making?
If the answer here was as simple as "recycle", we wouldn't be having this discussion. You're sure as hell not going to fund a proper hardware refresh by recycling old crap for pennies.
If you could count cards in blackjack and achieve a 51% win rate mathematically would you consider that gambling or investing?
If you've removed all inherent risk of losing your capital, then it is an investment. That said, not too many investments are actual investments with zero risk. A savings account is not an investment vehicle; it's a method of insulating an investment to protect it.
As far as your scenario goes, you've manipulated the outcome to minimize the risk of losing everything, but at 51% it's still going to take you quite a long time for the game of chance to come up in your favor enough to call it an investment. That all gets down the semantics of your expected rate of return, and your chances of being allowed to play. Sometimes casinos decide when you stop winning...
You seem to be very determined to convince us that anything with an uncertain outcome is gambling. The problem is that everything has some element of risk. I could wake up tomorrow morning, slip on the tub and hit my head on the edge of the sink. So is it a gamble to get up in the morning? Where do we draw the line?
Uh, you draw the line around this particular topic of financial investments, which is what we're discussing. Yes, everything in life is essentially a gamble, but let's keep the lines drawn where they logically should be. I've not escaped that logical border when I define any financial investment that involves risk as gambling, because it is. There is a chance that you could lose your entire financial investment. If you can afford to do that, then go for it. Gamble away. Take risks. If you can't afford to lose it all, then don't take the risk. It's that simple.
The definitions of gambling that I see include terms like "high risk" and "games of chance". If everything is gambling then the term looses all meaning.
Again, you're trying to drag this out of context. Within the realm of financial investments, there is almost always a risk. A chance of betting and losing it all. It's not merely ironic that we use these same exact terms to describe traditional "games of chance"; it's accurate. Whether you want to believe investing is gambling or not does not change the fact that risk is inherent, and losing everything is a possible outcome.
Investing is not gambling, it is choosing to not spend money today in order to increase productivity (and spending ability) tomorrow. Speculation isn't even gambling - that involves transferring an existing risk to someone more capable of managing it (think farmers locking in the price of their crops, through investors purchasing commodity futures). Gambling is about creating financial risk out of thin air. No one actually stands to lose anything based on the order in which a bunch or horses cross a line (except maybe the time wasted watching said horses), nonetheless they choose to create financial risk for themselves by betting on which horse will cross first.
By these definitions, I would classify ICOs as gambling - you are betting on the possibility that there are still greater fools in line behind you.
Gambling is simply defined as an activity that involves wagering on an uncertain outcome. You can try and use many terms to describe the various levels of risk, but unless you reduce the risk down to zero and remove the possible outcome of losing your investment, it's called gambling.
Nothing you have described above changes the fact that investing is gambling. It all still involves an element of chance. There's a chance you could win, and there's a chance you could lose. That pretty much describes Las Vegas too.
No, investing isn't gambling, it's not black and white like that.
There's more of a scale. At one end you have "gambling" and at the other you have "investing". At the far gambling end of the spectrum you have games of chance (e.g. roulette), binary options (which is gambling dressed up to look like investing), slot machines etc - basically all the types of things where the house always win. At the other end you have things like bonds, traditional long term buy and hold in blue chip companies etc. There's still some risk but on that end of the spectrum, it's not a zero sum game nor "the house always wins".
As you have stated, there are levels of risk. Any level above zero would be considered gambling, because you're wagering on an uncertain outcome. You can use many terms to describe it, but at the end of the day it's still rather black and white as to you accepting a risk with the potential outcome of losing your entire investment.
And quite honestly, the "house" here would be considered Wall Street, and in the end they sure as hell aren't losing regardless of your performance or even your participation.
If you say all investing is gambling because there's some risk and can never be a sure thing, then you get to the reductio ad absurdum argument that absolutely everything is gambling, e.g keeping your money in a savings account is also gambling because that's not a sure thing either.
Yes, certain activities (like savings accounts) can essentially reduce the inherent risk down to near zero, but most would not consider savings accounts as primary investment vehicles. If you're looking for zero risk, then you're looking to insulate your wealth, not invest it. Perhaps the absurdity would be to attempt to not recognize and respect investments that include risk as gambling, because shit happens in any game of chance.
So because a mega-corp hasn't shut down due to consumer outrage over invasion of privacy, that means 99.9999% of consumers don't care about privacy?
Sorry, but your logic is shit.
Data breaches across services that the overwhelming majority of humans use is something that happens on a weekly basis now. Exactly how many more data breaches have to occur against the brain-dead masses for you to be convinced that their complete lack of response is a valid measurement of their general concern? They sure as hell don't stop using a service after a violation occurs.
And it doesn't really matter if you use 99.9999%, or 99%, or even 90% to describe the uncaring masses. At the end of the day there are never enough consumers who care enough to effect real change. The few who might actually act and quit a service because of a breach never amount to any real impact for a mega-corp, which is also exactly why corporate arrogance has increased considerably within such organizations. They can offer services with shit security and be nefarious in their data collection activities because they know consumers don't give a shit enough to change or quit if a breach ever occurs.
"About 56 percent of crypto startups that raise money through token sales die within four months of their initial coin offerings."
Yeah, and 80 - 90% of start-ups die within the first 12 months, which leaves the obvious question; Are ICOs nothing more than scams, or is a four-month death essentially expected in this particular type of business?
Perhaps it's a bit early to really tell, but it's rather ironic that ICOs seem to have a success rate on par with damn near any other type of start-up (if not better), and yet we're questioning that activity worse than Al Capones tax auditor. All forms of investing are gambling at the end of the day.
...The fact the CEO of Box is such a f*ing idiot he would assume users just come in to a new platform completely trusting is as laughable as it is horrifying.
Speaking of laughable, care to tell me why you assume otherwise?
Here's a list of the resources it takes to convince hundreds of millions of people to sign up for [social media flavor/free service of the month]:
1.
2.
3.
That list also includes everyone who cares enough about data privacy or security to actually read a EULA.
99.9999% of consumers don't give a shit about privacy. That's painfully obvious given the lack of impact against the very organizations who abuse privacy the most.
Let's all just make up shit and click 'Submit'.
Find me a mega-corp that has closed down due to consumer outrage stemming from multiple privacy and/or security violations. (Hint: you might have to make shit up.)
And that is also the reason the "list" is completely irrelevant, as is any concern of liquidation.
But before we do lets make declarative statements supported entirely by the shit we just made up.
When you can actually find a consumer response to privacy or security breaches that defines real concern and creates effective change, I'll believe you have a point here. Until then, my point stands in an endless sea of careless consumers. And any list that exists for the purposes of identifying differentiation becomes irrelevant and worthless when every provider is on it.
Would you like all your neighbors to know what porn you look at while you masturbate? How about your employer? I mean specific pictures, how often and long you looked at each. How about every comment you've ever made on a forum. How about private conversations you've had with friends, lovers, or coworkers. Everything you've ever purchased on the internet. Everything video you've rented/streamed. All of it available and searchable to all your family, neighbors, friends, and employer. Most people don't consider this when they're told everything they're doing is logged. If this was explained to them, I think it's more likely that 99.999% do actually care about privacy and the.001% are just freaky exhibitionists who want their life on display.
Damn near every example you've provided here are considered data points that would be very easy for any ISP to collect.
And yet, how many consumers have EVER asked their ISP about any of the data collection issues you've presented? How many consumers even know what their ISP collects and/or sells about them? Yeah, I thought so. As I said before, people don't give a shit about privacy.
And consumers are told all the damn time about data collecting; happens every time another data breach happens that showcases that activity. Yeah, 0.0001% of consumers freak out, and they might actually get off their ass and do something about it (like stop using a service completely, or change providers), but the other 99.9999% of consumers are too damn lazy and don't bother. And consumers ARE told everything they're doing is logged. It's buried in every one of those EULAs they never read.
And if you've dealt with any number of average consumers, you know damn well I'm right. We're having this conversation for a reason. Or a few hundred million of them.
Acting like a human is more rewarding. Acting like a machine is easier and safer.
I do see your point, but it makes little sense from a business perspective. Humans are not something you can convert to a machine. Even acting like one doesn't eradicate all of the human requirements. You cannot control an illness that wreaks havoc on your body. You can't just simply turn into a machine and ignore the need for sleep, food, and a reasonable amount of physical labor constrained within a period of performance that ends when a human demands to rest after an 8 - 12 hour work day. And no matter how many times a human repeats a task, they will never be incapable of making mistakes.
Bottom line is humans can act like machines all they want, but they still carry every human weakness, which in the end remains a significant burden for any business.
If this society wasn't so focused on having jobs in order to eat and keep a house, I'm sure a lot more jobs would get completely automated.
That's a big part of why I'm in favor of a universal basic income, so life doesn't have to be about bullshit jobs for so much of so many lives.
I agree with you, but what makes you assume any kind of Universal Basic Income will amount to anything more than Welfare 2.0 for the unemployable masses?
You severely underestimate the power of Greed, and forget who ultimately would fund UBI. Go interview someone on welfare. You may find yourself feeling totally different about adopting yet another model that barely sustains life. At least bullshit jobs offer some level of varying income and prosperity.
Also you have a horrible understanding of the word profit. You use it as an insult. A company does not survive long without either making a profit or taking out more debt and selling more securities. The second option of debt or securities only lasts for a while. There are plenty of tech companies long gone who thought they would get by without taking profits for years or decades. They were very wrong.
Please do try to educate yourself before posting nonsense.
Snapchat filed an IPO last year. In their public offering paperwork, they blatantly stated that they've never made a profit, and may never actually make a profit in the future. Naturally they valued themselves north of $20 billion.
THAT is what is "very wrong" with capitalism today. Forget basic business 101; I'm talking about the kind of Greed that allows companies to even exist with that kind of stupid mentality about profitability. THAT is the kind of stupid shit that makes profitability (and common-sense capitalism) irrelevant. And you're right; it doesn't make sense, but we've reached that infamous crossroads again where selling hype is more valuable than a sound business plan.
Oh, and don't think we're going to see Dot Bomb v2.0 come along to reset this stupidity. We now have shit like Too Big To Fail to thank for removing the logical options for companies that should fall over and die.
I see no reason why any company holding any personal data should be trusted. They are the ones that resist any regulation of personal data. They are the ones that profit off of it.
You have to earn trust. Since when has any company done that?
Credit agencies, medical establishments, and banking to name a few. I highly doubt you personally know the CEOs that are currently responsible for some of your most personal and valued data, so I'd like to know exactly how they earned your trust.
Also remember that trust goes both ways. Mark "Dumb Fucks" Zuckerberg already clarified exactly how we got here.
Earlier the mistrust was for IBM and Microsoft. Then Oracle was added. And now Facebook and Google.
Also realize that the list just grows, the only way to get off the list is a liquidation.
99.9999% of consumers don't give a shit about privacy. That's painfully obvious given the lack of impact against the very organizations who abuse privacy the most.
And that is also the reason the "list" is completely irrelevant, as is any concern of liquidation.
...Yep, and not only that, we see spikes in heart attacks/death every time we fsck with the clocks and having it mess with our internal clocks.
Internal clock? Give me a break. It's an hour. Changed twice a year. On a weekend. I've owned pet fish that caused more stress and anxiety than that minor bullshit.
I would like to abolish it too, but if your body clock is screwed up so bad that it triggers a heart attack after such a nothing event, then your body is incompatible with humanity and this planet. I don't often point at Survival of the Fittest, but in this case...
A gun trigger isn't hard to operate either, and yet we demand a considerable amount of training (physical as well as legal) in order for someone to carry and use one while on duty.
Having the tool is only half the problem in our over-litigious society. Knowing when you can legally use it is another matter entirely. An operator using the emergency kill switch to shut down an entire gas station because a single pump was not communicating properly? Sadly, they probably would have been fired by the greedy gas station owner for losing out on revenue.
Slashdot Mirror
We don't want telemetry and forced updating Windows 10 and we don't want Portless Macs either. Windows 7 will be staying here after January 14 2020 on my computers.
I can understand Win10 bullshit and disagree with Apples move to portless designs, but how exactly is a portless Mac preventing you from adopting it? You've justified spending $3K+ on Apple hardware and OSX, but you can't justify another $200 for any I/O adapters that may be needed?
"My ignorance amuses me.."
Based on how many companies seem to enjoy ignorantly building an IT hardware refresh cycle based on hardware failure, I'd say it's more like a "pleasurable torment"...
A lot of outdated tech sits inside I.T. storage closets to gather dust. Most companies don't have a plan to recycle outdated tech.
And how exactly is outdated tech sitting powered off in a storage closet degrading current business and decision making?
If the answer here was as simple as "recycle", we wouldn't be having this discussion. You're sure as hell not going to fund a proper hardware refresh by recycling old crap for pennies.
If you could count cards in blackjack and achieve a 51% win rate mathematically would you consider that gambling or investing?
If you've removed all inherent risk of losing your capital, then it is an investment. That said, not too many investments are actual investments with zero risk. A savings account is not an investment vehicle; it's a method of insulating an investment to protect it.
As far as your scenario goes, you've manipulated the outcome to minimize the risk of losing everything, but at 51% it's still going to take you quite a long time for the game of chance to come up in your favor enough to call it an investment. That all gets down the semantics of your expected rate of return, and your chances of being allowed to play. Sometimes casinos decide when you stop winning...
You seem to be very determined to convince us that anything with an uncertain outcome is gambling. The problem is that everything has some element of risk. I could wake up tomorrow morning, slip on the tub and hit my head on the edge of the sink. So is it a gamble to get up in the morning? Where do we draw the line?
Uh, you draw the line around this particular topic of financial investments, which is what we're discussing. Yes, everything in life is essentially a gamble, but let's keep the lines drawn where they logically should be. I've not escaped that logical border when I define any financial investment that involves risk as gambling, because it is. There is a chance that you could lose your entire financial investment. If you can afford to do that, then go for it. Gamble away. Take risks. If you can't afford to lose it all, then don't take the risk. It's that simple.
The definitions of gambling that I see include terms like "high risk" and "games of chance". If everything is gambling then the term looses all meaning.
Again, you're trying to drag this out of context. Within the realm of financial investments, there is almost always a risk. A chance of betting and losing it all. It's not merely ironic that we use these same exact terms to describe traditional "games of chance"; it's accurate. Whether you want to believe investing is gambling or not does not change the fact that risk is inherent, and losing everything is a possible outcome.
It comes down to how you cannot reason someone out of a idea they didn't arrive at through reason in the first place.
And I wish YouTube would realize that trying to police reason, logic, and facts on their platform makes herding cats look easy.
They will. Soon enough.
If success means solving a problem, filling a need, or replacing an obsolete solution, then no crypto currency is yet successful.
You don't feel crypto currency fills a need for secure anonymous transactions? I would question why any government is still printing cash then.
Investing is not gambling, it is choosing to not spend money today in order to increase productivity (and spending ability) tomorrow. Speculation isn't even gambling - that involves transferring an existing risk to someone more capable of managing it (think farmers locking in the price of their crops, through investors purchasing commodity futures). Gambling is about creating financial risk out of thin air. No one actually stands to lose anything based on the order in which a bunch or horses cross a line (except maybe the time wasted watching said horses), nonetheless they choose to create financial risk for themselves by betting on which horse will cross first.
By these definitions, I would classify ICOs as gambling - you are betting on the possibility that there are still greater fools in line behind you.
Gambling is simply defined as an activity that involves wagering on an uncertain outcome. You can try and use many terms to describe the various levels of risk, but unless you reduce the risk down to zero and remove the possible outcome of losing your investment, it's called gambling.
Nothing you have described above changes the fact that investing is gambling. It all still involves an element of chance. There's a chance you could win, and there's a chance you could lose. That pretty much describes Las Vegas too.
No, investing isn't gambling, it's not black and white like that.
There's more of a scale. At one end you have "gambling" and at the other you have "investing". At the far gambling end of the spectrum you have games of chance (e.g. roulette), binary options (which is gambling dressed up to look like investing), slot machines etc - basically all the types of things where the house always win. At the other end you have things like bonds, traditional long term buy and hold in blue chip companies etc. There's still some risk but on that end of the spectrum, it's not a zero sum game nor "the house always wins".
As you have stated, there are levels of risk. Any level above zero would be considered gambling, because you're wagering on an uncertain outcome. You can use many terms to describe it, but at the end of the day it's still rather black and white as to you accepting a risk with the potential outcome of losing your entire investment.
And quite honestly, the "house" here would be considered Wall Street, and in the end they sure as hell aren't losing regardless of your performance or even your participation.
If you say all investing is gambling because there's some risk and can never be a sure thing, then you get to the reductio ad absurdum argument that absolutely everything is gambling, e.g keeping your money in a savings account is also gambling because that's not a sure thing either.
Yes, certain activities (like savings accounts) can essentially reduce the inherent risk down to near zero, but most would not consider savings accounts as primary investment vehicles. If you're looking for zero risk, then you're looking to insulate your wealth, not invest it. Perhaps the absurdity would be to attempt to not recognize and respect investments that include risk as gambling, because shit happens in any game of chance.
So because a mega-corp hasn't shut down due to consumer outrage over invasion of privacy, that means 99.9999% of consumers don't care about privacy?
Sorry, but your logic is shit.
Data breaches across services that the overwhelming majority of humans use is something that happens on a weekly basis now. Exactly how many more data breaches have to occur against the brain-dead masses for you to be convinced that their complete lack of response is a valid measurement of their general concern? They sure as hell don't stop using a service after a violation occurs.
And it doesn't really matter if you use 99.9999%, or 99%, or even 90% to describe the uncaring masses. At the end of the day there are never enough consumers who care enough to effect real change. The few who might actually act and quit a service because of a breach never amount to any real impact for a mega-corp, which is also exactly why corporate arrogance has increased considerably within such organizations. They can offer services with shit security and be nefarious in their data collection activities because they know consumers don't give a shit enough to change or quit if a breach ever occurs.
"About 56 percent of crypto startups that raise money through token sales die within four months of their initial coin offerings."
Yeah, and 80 - 90% of start-ups die within the first 12 months, which leaves the obvious question; Are ICOs nothing more than scams, or is a four-month death essentially expected in this particular type of business?
Perhaps it's a bit early to really tell, but it's rather ironic that ICOs seem to have a success rate on par with damn near any other type of start-up (if not better), and yet we're questioning that activity worse than Al Capones tax auditor. All forms of investing are gambling at the end of the day.
Acquiring coins in an ICO and selling them on the first day is the safest investment strategy, ...
That's not investing. Speculating, maybe. More like gambling.
Investing is gambling.
Those who claim otherwise are trying to sell you a "sure thing", which only reinforces my point.
...The fact the CEO of Box is such a f*ing idiot he would assume users just come in to a new platform completely trusting is as laughable as it is horrifying.
Speaking of laughable, care to tell me why you assume otherwise?
Here's a list of the resources it takes to convince hundreds of millions of people to sign up for [social media flavor/free service of the month]:
1.
2.
3.
That list also includes everyone who cares enough about data privacy or security to actually read a EULA.
99.9999% of consumers don't give a shit about privacy. That's painfully obvious given the lack of impact against the very organizations who abuse privacy the most.
Let's all just make up shit and click 'Submit'.
Find me a mega-corp that has closed down due to consumer outrage stemming from multiple privacy and/or security violations. (Hint: you might have to make shit up.)
And that is also the reason the "list" is completely irrelevant, as is any concern of liquidation.
But before we do lets make declarative statements supported entirely by the shit we just made up.
When you can actually find a consumer response to privacy or security breaches that defines real concern and creates effective change, I'll believe you have a point here. Until then, my point stands in an endless sea of careless consumers. And any list that exists for the purposes of identifying differentiation becomes irrelevant and worthless when every provider is on it.
"For instance, it may be possible to charge your smartwatch during your morning jog someday."
My automatic watch has been running without batteries for years, and all I have to do is wear it.
Millennial, please sell me again why I need this solution that lacks a problem...
Would you like all your neighbors to know what porn you look at while you masturbate? How about your employer? I mean specific pictures, how often and long you looked at each. How about every comment you've ever made on a forum. How about private conversations you've had with friends, lovers, or coworkers. Everything you've ever purchased on the internet. Everything video you've rented/streamed. All of it available and searchable to all your family, neighbors, friends, and employer. Most people don't consider this when they're told everything they're doing is logged. If this was explained to them, I think it's more likely that 99.999% do actually care about privacy and the .001% are just freaky exhibitionists who want their life on display.
Damn near every example you've provided here are considered data points that would be very easy for any ISP to collect.
And yet, how many consumers have EVER asked their ISP about any of the data collection issues you've presented? How many consumers even know what their ISP collects and/or sells about them? Yeah, I thought so. As I said before, people don't give a shit about privacy.
And consumers are told all the damn time about data collecting; happens every time another data breach happens that showcases that activity. Yeah, 0.0001% of consumers freak out, and they might actually get off their ass and do something about it (like stop using a service completely, or change providers), but the other 99.9999% of consumers are too damn lazy and don't bother. And consumers ARE told everything they're doing is logged. It's buried in every one of those EULAs they never read.
And if you've dealt with any number of average consumers, you know damn well I'm right. We're having this conversation for a reason. Or a few hundred million of them.
Acting like a human is more rewarding. Acting like a machine is easier and safer.
I do see your point, but it makes little sense from a business perspective. Humans are not something you can convert to a machine. Even acting like one doesn't eradicate all of the human requirements. You cannot control an illness that wreaks havoc on your body. You can't just simply turn into a machine and ignore the need for sleep, food, and a reasonable amount of physical labor constrained within a period of performance that ends when a human demands to rest after an 8 - 12 hour work day. And no matter how many times a human repeats a task, they will never be incapable of making mistakes.
Bottom line is humans can act like machines all they want, but they still carry every human weakness, which in the end remains a significant burden for any business.
If this society wasn't so focused on having jobs in order to eat and keep a house, I'm sure a lot more jobs would get completely automated.
That's a big part of why I'm in favor of a universal basic income, so life doesn't have to be about bullshit jobs for so much of so many lives.
I agree with you, but what makes you assume any kind of Universal Basic Income will amount to anything more than Welfare 2.0 for the unemployable masses?
You severely underestimate the power of Greed, and forget who ultimately would fund UBI. Go interview someone on welfare. You may find yourself feeling totally different about adopting yet another model that barely sustains life. At least bullshit jobs offer some level of varying income and prosperity.
Also you have a horrible understanding of the word profit. You use it as an insult. A company does not survive long without either making a profit or taking out more debt and selling more securities. The second option of debt or securities only lasts for a while. There are plenty of tech companies long gone who thought they would get by without taking profits for years or decades. They were very wrong.
Please do try to educate yourself before posting nonsense.
Snapchat filed an IPO last year. In their public offering paperwork, they blatantly stated that they've never made a profit, and may never actually make a profit in the future. Naturally they valued themselves north of $20 billion.
THAT is what is "very wrong" with capitalism today. Forget basic business 101; I'm talking about the kind of Greed that allows companies to even exist with that kind of stupid mentality about profitability. THAT is the kind of stupid shit that makes profitability (and common-sense capitalism) irrelevant. And you're right; it doesn't make sense, but we've reached that infamous crossroads again where selling hype is more valuable than a sound business plan.
Oh, and don't think we're going to see Dot Bomb v2.0 come along to reset this stupidity. We now have shit like Too Big To Fail to thank for removing the logical options for companies that should fall over and die.
I see no reason why any company holding any personal data should be trusted. They are the ones that resist any regulation of personal data. They are the ones that profit off of it.
You have to earn trust. Since when has any company done that?
Credit agencies, medical establishments, and banking to name a few. I highly doubt you personally know the CEOs that are currently responsible for some of your most personal and valued data, so I'd like to know exactly how they earned your trust.
Also remember that trust goes both ways. Mark "Dumb Fucks" Zuckerberg already clarified exactly how we got here.
Earlier the mistrust was for IBM and Microsoft. Then Oracle was added. And now Facebook and Google.
Also realize that the list just grows, the only way to get off the list is a liquidation.
99.9999% of consumers don't give a shit about privacy. That's painfully obvious given the lack of impact against the very organizations who abuse privacy the most.
And that is also the reason the "list" is completely irrelevant, as is any concern of liquidation.
"Mistrust of Google and Facebook is a 'Contagion' That Could Spread To Every Tech Company"
Greed is a contagion that has spread to every capitalist company, but you sure as shit don't hear any shareholder bitching about profits, now do you?
Funny how everyone is all up in arms about the moral and ethical values tech companies hold, right up until it affects revenue and stock price.
Nothing will change, because Greed.
...Yep, and not only that, we see spikes in heart attacks/death every time we fsck with the clocks and having it mess with our internal clocks.
Internal clock? Give me a break. It's an hour. Changed twice a year. On a weekend. I've owned pet fish that caused more stress and anxiety than that minor bullshit.
I would like to abolish it too, but if your body clock is screwed up so bad that it triggers a heart attack after such a nothing event, then your body is incompatible with humanity and this planet. I don't often point at Survival of the Fittest, but in this case...
Manual shut off valves aren't hard.
A gun trigger isn't hard to operate either, and yet we demand a considerable amount of training (physical as well as legal) in order for someone to carry and use one while on duty.
Having the tool is only half the problem in our over-litigious society. Knowing when you can legally use it is another matter entirely. An operator using the emergency kill switch to shut down an entire gas station because a single pump was not communicating properly? Sadly, they probably would have been fired by the greedy gas station owner for losing out on revenue.
"...the gas station attendant unable to thwart the hackers."
Unable? An Out of Order sign and a plastic bag over the gas pump would have fucking worked fine.
This is the inherent problem with building systems that are idiot-proof; we ultimately end up building grade-A idiots to sit behind the wheel.