To be honest, I don't think he's exactly wrong to say that unbreakable encryption is a public safety issue. It's an issue. It's an issue we can debate and think about and talk about. If encryption is unbreakable, then it makes it harder for law enforcement to do certain things that they might validly want to do.
On the other hand, if people can't encrypt their data (or that encryption is breakable), then it creates an entirely different set of problems. People can't safeguard their data or protect their systems. It increases the vulnerability of our infrastructure. It increases the chances that criminals and terrorists can gain access to important and private information.
There are going to be real valid problems either way. There should be open discussions about what all of those problems are, and how we can mitigate them. But ultimately, I don't think breakable encryption (or backdoored encryption) is a viable long-term option, even if we were willing to live in a police state. The ability to break or circumvent encryption will inevitably fall into the hands of criminals.
You want to have open discussions? Fine. We'll start with dismantling the FISA court system that seeks to hide Unconstitutional activity.
I agree, there are issues on both sides. No one is debating the existence of a Catch-22 here. The real problem is those who are asking for the keys to the kingdom cannot be trusted to respect The People or their Constitutional Rights. THAT is the real issue to address.
1) When reporting vulnerabilities, you never know if you're going to become a victim, fighting against criminal charges for merely doing the right thing.
Oh, so customers asked for phones to be made entirely of highly breakable glass? Non-removable batteries? Indiscernible display resolution upgrades? Removing the headphone jack? No memory expansion option? Software behind a walled garden? No ability to install 3rd party OS? Massive amounts of telemetry? So thin it bends and breaks in your pocket? Proprietary physical connectors requiring dongles?
Some of these things are what make modern smartphones thin and attractive and easy to use.
Thin and attractive? It's a fucking phone, not a girlfriend. And those same features also made it more breakable, which of course creates profits for vendors.
Others are things average users don't care much about. While many geeks are happy with durable bricks and lots of options for hacking, the average consume wants a sleek and stylish phone that's also a status symbol and fashion statement, while being simple and safe to use. They don't care about user replaceable batteries or SD card expansions. They certainly don't care about rooting their phones, and I guaranteed they have never considered replacing their OS.
Translation: Consumers don't care how they get fucked over, as long as they look good doing it. Consumers are nothing but narcissists.
Phones that are thin and beautiful constantly outsell phones which are bulkier, sturdier, less attractive, more expandable, user-serviceable, and so on. Did you notice how much flack Apple got for it's "ugly" iPhone case? That should tell you how important aesthetics are to people. No matter how you try to explain the design advantages of the "hump", it still looks ugly, and people hate it for that reason alone.
Perhaps we should have zero sympathy and no support for consumers subjected to Bendgate, shattered screens, and battery capacities that wear out well before their finance agreement does. After all, they asked for it.
I should clarify this mainly applies to US consumers. We wouldn't be having this discussion if this same ignorance existed worldwide; clearly there are some foreign consumers still armed with common sense.
There's a reason those large 800mg Motrin pills are called "Ranger Candy". I've seen MDs "prescribe" those horse pills scooped out of a cardboard box and into a plastic bag with a large metal scoop. Looked exactly like a kid buying jelly beans in bulk from a candy store.
Wonder if this latest research will affect the mentality in those high-speed low-drag military units where they tend to eat these things like candy.
Sadly, infertility is probably a better alternative than getting hooked on opium from Dr. Pharma.
I've worked in this industry for over a decade (never for Apple) What people don't realize is that batteries age, and so do chips especially when pushed to a limit. Ever wonder why military or even automotive grade chips are running so much slower and cooler? It's because they are rated for much longer lifetime than consumer grade devices - they are limited so they last the required number of years. Consumers want top performance, but they trade lifetime due to stress on the hardware. What Apple did here is cap the device performance increasing the device reliability and potential lifespan.
Unless you're one to beat the living shit out of your device physically, the main component going "bad" is the battery, which used to be a component that was replaceable and even upgradable by the end user.
Phones come with a 1-year warranty usually tied to a 2-year contract (where they often finance the cost of the phone with it). Due to the cellular contract length, consumer expectations are two years, plain and simple. Vendors need to stop being so damn greedy and offer a two-year warranty. If they can't design a battery to last more than a year (e.g. 1000 cycles) then offer a free battery replacement after a year. Making these products reasonably more durable isn't rocket science, and hardly requires military-grade hardware upgrades.
Apple implemented a technical solution that kept phones usable for LONGER than other phone makers. By not shutting down randomly as the battery aged, by trying to maintain a day of battery life in the phone for a longer period of time, Apple was delaying the time when a user might have to repair or replace a phone.
No, what Apple did was force a "feature" down on consumers without telling them, or giving them the option themselves to enable or disable it. THAT is the real issue here. Had they simply done that, and explained the reasoning being the "feature" as you have, it would have probably played out a LOT differently for Apple. Now, they appear sneaky and nefarious for doing this, even if they were ultimately trying to help.
Being honest and upfront still matters to consumers. Go figure.
Very nice, are you ready to pay for a smartphone like you pay for a durable product like a car? A decade of usable life can be arranged as long as you are willing to accept tradeoffs such as price, weight, form factor and features. Not interested? Than STFU. Market delivers what customers are asking for.
Oh, so customers asked for phones to be made entirely of highly breakable glass? Non-removable batteries? Indiscernible display resolution upgrades? Removing the headphone jack? No memory expansion option? Software behind a walled garden? No ability to install 3rd party OS? Massive amounts of telemetry? So thin it bends and breaks in your pocket? Proprietary physical connectors requiring dongles?
Vendors have been following the manufacturing mantra that caters to one thing and one thing only; Profits. They don't give a shit about what you want. You'll get what what makes them the most money. And they've been doing this for years now, so STFU about them delivering what consumers are asking for.
Greed knows no limits when consumer demand is immeasurable. We thought a $1000 price point would never be eclipsed. It's now been crushed. The $1500 smartphone is coming soon. After all, I'm sure you asked for acoustical sound, vibra-touch interface, and a 16K display resolution...
How can it be possible that a big company like Western Digital constructs a backdoor to your personal data? Such a company - and it's owners - should shut down, prosecuted and put behind bars for many - many - years... This is not an accident. This is making sure by design they (and maybe their partners, workforce, ex-workforce and 3-letter agencies) have acces to your private data. I for one will never buy another device from Western. Who knows what they have done to the IC's in their harddisks to provide access to my data. I can not look into a chip and they know that!
Western Digital knows you opinion represents less than 1% of their current customer base. You mean less to them than the corporate coffee clerk being accused of sexual assault, which means they're not going to think twice about re-installing backdoors into their products if it provides them even the slightest benefit.
Consumers simply don't give a shit. Firmware update a storage device? That will never happen across 90% of deployed product unless Western Digital does it themselves in a fully automated manner.
I mean replacing a CPU is a non-trivial task in a desktop, nevermind impossible for laptops which are the majority of purchases. And even if you could find someone else to do it you have to give up your device while they do, and you can bet that won't be a quick procedure.
How many components of your car, or washing machine, boiler, oven have *you* considered replacing? Even if you know what components there are in there, and what flaws they might have? Would you even know what particular components are in your car's engine management unit, for example? Because that's how most people view computers - they bought a Dell, not an Intel.
It's not "fucking lazy", it's "fucking have other shit to do, and don't have the technical expertise or time".
No, it's exactly what I said it is, and exactly what you confirmed yourself. Have "other shit to do" is the impatient crowd who demand everything in life be done quickly, so Intel can count on them not participating. Sadly, these are the same kind of people who hurt or kill themselves or others on the road because they were "too busy" to take their broken car off the road for a critical safety recall.
And then there are those who wouldn't care how easy the fix is; if it requires any effort on their part, it's too much effort. Ironically, I have flashed car units before for aftermarket tunings, and I've followed the procedures sent to me when my washing machine was found to be faulty. My point is most wouldn't even bother to do anything, no matter how hard or easy it may be presented. I'm certain that in the past many vendors have been able to estimate the cost of a recall before even announcing it because of the impatient/don't-give-a-shit human factor.
I'm not talking about television service, I'm talking about internet access. I'm a "cable cutter" that hasn't had cable in more than a decade. If you need a dopamine drip of television that's your problem. Opt out, that's my advice.
I'm right there with you regarding entertainment, but everything is now converging and reliant upon internet access. All entertainment will be delivered via "streaming" in the future. If internet access for the masses is going to eventually converge onto the cellular platforms, they will become strained. And consumers will be forced to pay whatever the colluding oligarchy of providers demand. Unlimited plans will turn back into pay-by-the-GB rates to maximize profits when the only way to get online is via the only method left.
Perhaps higher costs will help create a cure for entertainment addiction and social media narcissism, but I highly doubt it.
Well, I hope you never have to retrieve a quarter-megapixel digital photo from your graduation ceremony off an ATA disk. Or an original LaTeX of your final year project, for example. Don't worry soon enough you won't have a cd reader anywhere around you and loads of burned cds...
My Apple IIc still reads old games on 5.25" floppies just fine, and my USB CD/DVD burner and USB 3.5" disk reader will likely be useful for some time. Rather ironic that I worry the least about my oldest media (vinyl), but it's still archived as well.
CD media suffers from physical decay over time, so archiving into the cloud serves a purpose, unlike installing Linux on 25-year old hardware.
I spite of user name you are using, you don't seem like much of a geek.
The point is to experiment and learn.
Technical experimentation should have a point and produce value in order to learn from it. This little experiment provides next to nothing, and I guess my time is more valuable to me these days. To each their own I suppose.
"It is a scandal, and I want repaired processors for free."
And I want a pet unicorn. Come to think of it, unicorns are about as real a thing as a "repaired processor" since they physically cannot be repaired. He wants a replacement processor which almost certainly is never going to happen. Basically he's asking for every processor produced in the last 20 years to be replaced for free. If you think that's realistic I've got a bridge to sell you.
Ironically, it is realistic for one obvious reason; consumers are fucking lazy.
When you look at the actual affected processors vs. the number of people who will actually get off their ass and make a claim to have a processor replaced for free, it becomes very clear how affordable this really is. People are lazy, and don't give a shit. 75% of consumers won't even know or understand what the fuck "Meltdown" is a month from now, no matter how many times it's broken down in laymans terms on the evening news and morning talk shows. Two months from now 95% of people will have forgotten about it.
More likely that we'd see 5G (or 6G) fixed broadband (or LEO satellite, like Musk's plan) replace most consumer wireline services in 10-20 years, at gigabit or multi-gigabit speeds. So you'll just be able to use one connection you already pay for (i.e., internet service) for all your devices, anywhere. You won't want or need to deal with Wi-Fi anymore, and that will be a good thing.
Wi-Fi probably wouldn't go away entirely but you might see it removed from some devices. Most consumers wouldn't really need it any more.
It will be defined as a good thing right up until it is not.
Take cable cutters for example. They were pissed off for years over rising cable prices and forced bundled packages, so they "cut the cord". So what happens? Content/Streaming providers start the Fracturing Wars. Want Game of Thrones? Pay HBO monthly. Want Netflix exclusive content? Pay Netflix monthly. UFC, Disney, Hulu...the fracturing will continue more and more. You'll go from bundled cable service to get 25 channels of what you want and 500 channels of shit you don't to paying a dozen or more content providers to access the 50 shows you want and 500,000 channels of shit you don't. Welcome to the future of "A la carte", driven by Greed. And of course providers know you'll pay. Capitalism always said addiction is highly profitable.
And when you're pumping 300GB/month through your magical "one line to rule them all" 7G service in the future, bandwidth providers are going collude on pricing, and charge you an obscene amount of money per month for service. And of course providers know you'll pay. Capitalism always said addiction is highly profitable.
Sorry, but I'm not looking forward to our inevitable future. It's as fucked as the society who will ultimately deem the concepts of one-time cost and outright ownership as something they won't really need anymore.
"...it takes almost 11 minutes just to boot up -- and five and a half minutes to shut down. "Despite the many roadblocks I faced, I was impressed by the level of support Linux has for ancient hardware like this."
This is like Ford advertising their latest F-150 truck can also be retrofitted with a Model T engine.
Ancient hardware is ancient, and pointless support for it, is pointless.
In what way? I don't pay Apple for my cellular connection.
I stand corrected by my manufacturer comment. Regardless, my point still stands. You still have to pay your cellular provider, which an iPhone turns into an iTouch real quick unless you pay for a monthly recurring service.
Why would you pay Asus?
Currently, some netbooks have WiFi and cellular services. In the future, I would not be surprised one bit if free connections (such as WiFi) are phased out completely in favor of making hardware that forces you to subscribe to a cellular service in order to use it.
The concept of SaaS/IaaS isn't some fad that's going away. Pretty soon, all hardware and software will come with a perpetual cost. The concept of one-time purchase and outright ownership will become a thing of the past thanks to Greed.
I personally have shunned blueray like the plague from the moment I found out that each disk is designed to carry a blacklist of content producers (which the playback devices must load and adhere to).
Aka: You might have legally(!) bought yourselves a (small) libraries worth of bluerays, but just a single "he done something we don't like" blacklisting and you are left with nothing more than a (large) set of expensive coasters.
And although I'm certain there are some (awkward) work-arounds, the mere fact that blueray is designed in such a way as to, effectivily, punish the customer for a companies misbehaviour is enough to make me barf and give it a wide berth.
So, not that obvious I'm afraid.
Why would someone selling a product purposely include something that runs the risk of the product being unusable by their own customer? Now you have a pissed off customer who can't return an opened media product for a refund, and can only exchange a "defective" product for the same title, which would still not work in their player.
The backlash alone would be enough to destroy this entire "blacklist" justification. Mind providing a link or two to prove this stupidity is actually being used today? Blu-Rays and players can do a lot. Doesn't mean every feature is used (or abused).
As far as punishing the customer, there are probably some Kevin Spacey fans out there who would have liked to see him on House of Cards, but Netflix sure as shit isn't going to let that happen. I wouldn't be surprised if his entire movie catalog has been banned, so let's not assume this asinine scorched earth mentality would somehow be limited to technology designed to do it.
One Silicon Valley resident reportedly told a neighbor that "I've got a whole garage full of them," while Veach describes the bikes as "a reward for having to deal with the buses" that carry Google employees. Google has already hired 30 contractors to prowl the city in five vans looking for lost or stolen bikes -- only a third of which have GPS trackers -- and they eventually recover about two-thirds of the missing bikes.
I wonder if there is any correlation between this attitude toward property and the rampant sexual abuse you see in the same regions. Nah, couldn't be. They're all totally woke on those issues. Couldn't possibly be that you cannot silo off such a mentality into just one area rather than letting it spill into other areas.
Fuck entitlement. If someone stole something, they committed a crime. A "garage full" of bikes likely qualifies for Grand Theft in California (value over $950), and can be charged with a felony. See how this person likes the "reward" of a criminal record or incarceration. Often times it takes the correct deterrent to prevent abuse.
I don't really understand the reason for this bicycle initiative.
Since the bikes are only to be used by environmentally friendly employees, can't those employees simply just have their own bike?
At this point, it would be probably cheaper to offer a reimbursement program for an employee to go purchase their own bike and lock, and be responsible for it themselves, and simply install bike racks everywhere.
Single-speed cruiser bicycles painted bright yellow? I'm not seeing much resale value there. Even re-painted it would be rather obvious to anyone in that town to identify stolen merchandise.
getting people to pay for something requires that you have an infrastructure to lock the bikes everywhere they go.
these are just normal bicycles that sit by the dozens outside google offices, mostly just sitting on a kickstand. there's no way to charge for their use.
They are supposed to be for Google Employees only.
These aren't high-end bikes, they are single-speed cruiser style bikes, in google colors (bright yellow for much of the frame)
They are better than walking, and it's frequently faster to hop on a bike to get a few blocks than to walk to your car, drive, find a parking spot, and walk to the building (even if you didn't commute by bus)
former Google employee
Apparently they're valuable enough to install GPS trackers on them.
Every employee always has a smartphone on them. Always. Given that fact, figure out a way to tie a rider to their smartphone, and you've got a way of identifying who last used or is using a bike. If employees are using smartphones for work purposes, they should be controlled via MDM. Create and push an app that auto-registers a bike via NFC/WiFi/Bluetooth, which is probably less expensive than a GPS tracker. Hell, use the GPS in the smartphone to track riders real-time.
I will just remind our younger readers of the dotcom boom, where tech stocks were seen as the new big thing and pumped up a bubble that eventually crashed. You can tell the top of this by looking at a tech company that was registered on the NASDAQ called NETJ.COM,
This had all the right words in the name, "net", "J" (for Java, hot at the time) and ".com" but its description of what the company did was:
The company is not currently engaged in any substantial activity and has no plans to engage in such activities in the foreseeable future
and this raised several $110 million in IPO funding from ordinary investors when it floated.
So a dog coin cryptocurrency "worth" $1bn... just same shit, different day.
Some odd shapes painted on a canvas, by some guy named Picasso. A used baseball, that some guy named Babe scribbled on. A beat-up old guitar strung upside-down that some weird guy named Jimi used to play with his teeth. An old book of notes by a guy named da Vinci. Old bottles of rotten grapes. Shiny rocks and yellow rocks we mine out of the ground that we melt and polish.
The formula for value (1% subjective and 99% bullshit) was established long before the.bomb or cryptocurrency came around.
Snapchats "substantial activity" was losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year before their IPO and valuation of $20 billion. Makes you wonder how far we really are from the.bomb era of valuation.
Slashdot Mirror
To be honest, I don't think he's exactly wrong to say that unbreakable encryption is a public safety issue. It's an issue. It's an issue we can debate and think about and talk about. If encryption is unbreakable, then it makes it harder for law enforcement to do certain things that they might validly want to do.
On the other hand, if people can't encrypt their data (or that encryption is breakable), then it creates an entirely different set of problems. People can't safeguard their data or protect their systems. It increases the vulnerability of our infrastructure. It increases the chances that criminals and terrorists can gain access to important and private information.
There are going to be real valid problems either way. There should be open discussions about what all of those problems are, and how we can mitigate them. But ultimately, I don't think breakable encryption (or backdoored encryption) is a viable long-term option, even if we were willing to live in a police state. The ability to break or circumvent encryption will inevitably fall into the hands of criminals.
You want to have open discussions? Fine. We'll start with dismantling the FISA court system that seeks to hide Unconstitutional activity.
I agree, there are issues on both sides. No one is debating the existence of a Catch-22 here. The real problem is those who are asking for the keys to the kingdom cannot be trusted to respect The People or their Constitutional Rights. THAT is the real issue to address.
1) When reporting vulnerabilities, you never know if you're going to become a victim, fighting against criminal charges for merely doing the right thing.
2) See above.
3) See above.
4) See above.
5) See above.
Oh, so customers asked for phones to be made entirely of highly breakable glass? Non-removable batteries? Indiscernible display resolution upgrades? Removing the headphone jack? No memory expansion option? Software behind a walled garden? No ability to install 3rd party OS? Massive amounts of telemetry? So thin it bends and breaks in your pocket? Proprietary physical connectors requiring dongles?
Some of these things are what make modern smartphones thin and attractive and easy to use.
Thin and attractive? It's a fucking phone, not a girlfriend. And those same features also made it more breakable, which of course creates profits for vendors.
Others are things average users don't care much about. While many geeks are happy with durable bricks and lots of options for hacking, the average consume wants a sleek and stylish phone that's also a status symbol and fashion statement, while being simple and safe to use. They don't care about user replaceable batteries or SD card expansions. They certainly don't care about rooting their phones, and I guaranteed they have never considered replacing their OS.
Translation: Consumers don't care how they get fucked over, as long as they look good doing it. Consumers are nothing but narcissists.
Phones that are thin and beautiful constantly outsell phones which are bulkier, sturdier, less attractive, more expandable, user-serviceable, and so on. Did you notice how much flack Apple got for it's "ugly" iPhone case? That should tell you how important aesthetics are to people. No matter how you try to explain the design advantages of the "hump", it still looks ugly, and people hate it for that reason alone.
Perhaps we should have zero sympathy and no support for consumers subjected to Bendgate, shattered screens, and battery capacities that wear out well before their finance agreement does. After all, they asked for it.
I should clarify this mainly applies to US consumers. We wouldn't be having this discussion if this same ignorance existed worldwide; clearly there are some foreign consumers still armed with common sense.
There's a reason those large 800mg Motrin pills are called "Ranger Candy". I've seen MDs "prescribe" those horse pills scooped out of a cardboard box and into a plastic bag with a large metal scoop. Looked exactly like a kid buying jelly beans in bulk from a candy store.
Wonder if this latest research will affect the mentality in those high-speed low-drag military units where they tend to eat these things like candy.
Sadly, infertility is probably a better alternative than getting hooked on opium from Dr. Pharma.
I've worked in this industry for over a decade (never for Apple) What people don't realize is that batteries age, and so do chips especially when pushed to a limit. Ever wonder why military or even automotive grade chips are running so much slower and cooler? It's because they are rated for much longer lifetime than consumer grade devices - they are limited so they last the required number of years. Consumers want top performance, but they trade lifetime due to stress on the hardware. What Apple did here is cap the device performance increasing the device reliability and potential lifespan.
Unless you're one to beat the living shit out of your device physically, the main component going "bad" is the battery, which used to be a component that was replaceable and even upgradable by the end user.
Phones come with a 1-year warranty usually tied to a 2-year contract (where they often finance the cost of the phone with it). Due to the cellular contract length, consumer expectations are two years, plain and simple. Vendors need to stop being so damn greedy and offer a two-year warranty. If they can't design a battery to last more than a year (e.g. 1000 cycles) then offer a free battery replacement after a year. Making these products reasonably more durable isn't rocket science, and hardly requires military-grade hardware upgrades.
Apple implemented a technical solution that kept phones usable for LONGER than other phone makers. By not shutting down randomly as the battery aged, by trying to maintain a day of battery life in the phone for a longer period of time, Apple was delaying the time when a user might have to repair or replace a phone.
No, what Apple did was force a "feature" down on consumers without telling them, or giving them the option themselves to enable or disable it. THAT is the real issue here. Had they simply done that, and explained the reasoning being the "feature" as you have, it would have probably played out a LOT differently for Apple. Now, they appear sneaky and nefarious for doing this, even if they were ultimately trying to help.
Being honest and upfront still matters to consumers. Go figure.
Very nice, are you ready to pay for a smartphone like you pay for a durable product like a car? A decade of usable life can be arranged as long as you are willing to accept tradeoffs such as price, weight, form factor and features. Not interested? Than STFU. Market delivers what customers are asking for.
Oh, so customers asked for phones to be made entirely of highly breakable glass? Non-removable batteries? Indiscernible display resolution upgrades? Removing the headphone jack? No memory expansion option? Software behind a walled garden? No ability to install 3rd party OS? Massive amounts of telemetry? So thin it bends and breaks in your pocket? Proprietary physical connectors requiring dongles?
Vendors have been following the manufacturing mantra that caters to one thing and one thing only; Profits. They don't give a shit about what you want. You'll get what what makes them the most money. And they've been doing this for years now, so STFU about them delivering what consumers are asking for.
Greed knows no limits when consumer demand is immeasurable. We thought a $1000 price point would never be eclipsed. It's now been crushed. The $1500 smartphone is coming soon. After all, I'm sure you asked for acoustical sound, vibra-touch interface, and a 16K display resolution...
How can it be possible that a big company like Western Digital constructs a backdoor to your personal data? Such a company - and it's owners - should shut down, prosecuted and put behind bars for many - many - years... This is not an accident. This is making sure by design they (and maybe their partners, workforce, ex-workforce and 3-letter agencies) have acces to your private data. I for one will never buy another device from Western. Who knows what they have done to the IC's in their harddisks to provide access to my data. I can not look into a chip and they know that!
Western Digital knows you opinion represents less than 1% of their current customer base. You mean less to them than the corporate coffee clerk being accused of sexual assault, which means they're not going to think twice about re-installing backdoors into their products if it provides them even the slightest benefit.
Consumers simply don't give a shit. Firmware update a storage device? That will never happen across 90% of deployed product unless Western Digital does it themselves in a fully automated manner.
I mean replacing a CPU is a non-trivial task in a desktop, nevermind impossible for laptops which are the majority of purchases. And even if you could find someone else to do it you have to give up your device while they do, and you can bet that won't be a quick procedure.
How many components of your car, or washing machine, boiler, oven have *you* considered replacing? Even if you know what components there are in there, and what flaws they might have? Would you even know what particular components are in your car's engine management unit, for example? Because that's how most people view computers - they bought a Dell, not an Intel.
It's not "fucking lazy", it's "fucking have other shit to do, and don't have the technical expertise or time".
No, it's exactly what I said it is, and exactly what you confirmed yourself. Have "other shit to do" is the impatient crowd who demand everything in life be done quickly, so Intel can count on them not participating. Sadly, these are the same kind of people who hurt or kill themselves or others on the road because they were "too busy" to take their broken car off the road for a critical safety recall.
And then there are those who wouldn't care how easy the fix is; if it requires any effort on their part, it's too much effort. Ironically, I have flashed car units before for aftermarket tunings, and I've followed the procedures sent to me when my washing machine was found to be faulty. My point is most wouldn't even bother to do anything, no matter how hard or easy it may be presented. I'm certain that in the past many vendors have been able to estimate the cost of a recall before even announcing it because of the impatient/don't-give-a-shit human factor.
When everyone involved is in fact addicted, no one sees an addiction problem.
There are no caffeine addicts, the masses are merely supporting the coffee industry.
There are no narcissists or attention whores, the masses are merely very interactive on Social Media.
The more a problem becomes the norm, the less it is viewed as a problem.
As far as a greedy investor worried about stock price? Hold up a mirror if you're wondering where to get started on your ethical cleansing mission.
I'm not talking about television service, I'm talking about internet access. I'm a "cable cutter" that hasn't had cable in more than a decade. If you need a dopamine drip of television that's your problem. Opt out, that's my advice.
I'm right there with you regarding entertainment, but everything is now converging and reliant upon internet access. All entertainment will be delivered via "streaming" in the future. If internet access for the masses is going to eventually converge onto the cellular platforms, they will become strained. And consumers will be forced to pay whatever the colluding oligarchy of providers demand. Unlimited plans will turn back into pay-by-the-GB rates to maximize profits when the only way to get online is via the only method left.
Perhaps higher costs will help create a cure for entertainment addiction and social media narcissism, but I highly doubt it.
Well, I hope you never have to retrieve a quarter-megapixel digital photo from your graduation ceremony off an ATA disk. Or an original LaTeX of your final year project, for example. Don't worry soon enough you won't have a cd reader anywhere around you and loads of burned cds...
My Apple IIc still reads old games on 5.25" floppies just fine, and my USB CD/DVD burner and USB 3.5" disk reader will likely be useful for some time. Rather ironic that I worry the least about my oldest media (vinyl), but it's still archived as well.
CD media suffers from physical decay over time, so archiving into the cloud serves a purpose, unlike installing Linux on 25-year old hardware.
I spite of user name you are using, you don't seem like much of a geek.
The point is to experiment and learn.
Technical experimentation should have a point and produce value in order to learn from it. This little experiment provides next to nothing, and I guess my time is more valuable to me these days. To each their own I suppose.
"It is a scandal, and I want repaired processors for free."
And I want a pet unicorn. Come to think of it, unicorns are about as real a thing as a "repaired processor" since they physically cannot be repaired. He wants a replacement processor which almost certainly is never going to happen. Basically he's asking for every processor produced in the last 20 years to be replaced for free. If you think that's realistic I've got a bridge to sell you.
Ironically, it is realistic for one obvious reason; consumers are fucking lazy.
When you look at the actual affected processors vs. the number of people who will actually get off their ass and make a claim to have a processor replaced for free, it becomes very clear how affordable this really is. People are lazy, and don't give a shit. 75% of consumers won't even know or understand what the fuck "Meltdown" is a month from now, no matter how many times it's broken down in laymans terms on the evening news and morning talk shows. Two months from now 95% of people will have forgotten about it.
More likely that we'd see 5G (or 6G) fixed broadband (or LEO satellite, like Musk's plan) replace most consumer wireline services in 10-20 years, at gigabit or multi-gigabit speeds. So you'll just be able to use one connection you already pay for (i.e., internet service) for all your devices, anywhere. You won't want or need to deal with Wi-Fi anymore, and that will be a good thing. Wi-Fi probably wouldn't go away entirely but you might see it removed from some devices. Most consumers wouldn't really need it any more.
It will be defined as a good thing right up until it is not.
Take cable cutters for example. They were pissed off for years over rising cable prices and forced bundled packages, so they "cut the cord". So what happens? Content/Streaming providers start the Fracturing Wars. Want Game of Thrones? Pay HBO monthly. Want Netflix exclusive content? Pay Netflix monthly. UFC, Disney, Hulu...the fracturing will continue more and more. You'll go from bundled cable service to get 25 channels of what you want and 500 channels of shit you don't to paying a dozen or more content providers to access the 50 shows you want and 500,000 channels of shit you don't. Welcome to the future of "A la carte", driven by Greed. And of course providers know you'll pay. Capitalism always said addiction is highly profitable.
And when you're pumping 300GB/month through your magical "one line to rule them all" 7G service in the future, bandwidth providers are going collude on pricing, and charge you an obscene amount of money per month for service. And of course providers know you'll pay. Capitalism always said addiction is highly profitable.
Sorry, but I'm not looking forward to our inevitable future. It's as fucked as the society who will ultimately deem the concepts of one-time cost and outright ownership as something they won't really need anymore.
"...it takes almost 11 minutes just to boot up -- and five and a half minutes to shut down. "Despite the many roadblocks I faced, I was impressed by the level of support Linux has for ancient hardware like this."
This is like Ford advertising their latest F-150 truck can also be retrofitted with a Model T engine.
Ancient hardware is ancient, and pointless support for it, is pointless.
In what way? I don't pay Apple for my cellular connection.
I stand corrected by my manufacturer comment. Regardless, my point still stands. You still have to pay your cellular provider, which an iPhone turns into an iTouch real quick unless you pay for a monthly recurring service.
Why would you pay Asus?
Currently, some netbooks have WiFi and cellular services. In the future, I would not be surprised one bit if free connections (such as WiFi) are phased out completely in favor of making hardware that forces you to subscribe to a cellular service in order to use it.
The concept of SaaS/IaaS isn't some fad that's going away. Pretty soon, all hardware and software will come with a perpetual cost. The concept of one-time purchase and outright ownership will become a thing of the past thanks to Greed.
I personally have shunned blueray like the plague from the moment I found out that each disk is designed to carry a blacklist of content producers (which the playback devices must load and adhere to).
Aka: You might have legally(!) bought yourselves a (small) libraries worth of bluerays, but just a single "he done something we don't like" blacklisting and you are left with nothing more than a (large) set of expensive coasters.
And although I'm certain there are some (awkward) work-arounds, the mere fact that blueray is designed in such a way as to, effectivily, punish the customer for a companies misbehaviour is enough to make me barf and give it a wide berth.
So, not that obvious I'm afraid.
Why would someone selling a product purposely include something that runs the risk of the product being unusable by their own customer? Now you have a pissed off customer who can't return an opened media product for a refund, and can only exchange a "defective" product for the same title, which would still not work in their player.
The backlash alone would be enough to destroy this entire "blacklist" justification. Mind providing a link or two to prove this stupidity is actually being used today? Blu-Rays and players can do a lot. Doesn't mean every feature is used (or abused).
As far as punishing the customer, there are probably some Kevin Spacey fans out there who would have liked to see him on House of Cards, but Netflix sure as shit isn't going to let that happen. I wouldn't be surprised if his entire movie catalog has been banned, so let's not assume this asinine scorched earth mentality would somehow be limited to technology designed to do it.
netbook?
A netbook might have required a monthly recurring cost that creates a never-ending revenue stream for manufacturers.
This new hardware fucking guarantees it.
Big difference.
Do not want under any circumstances. *I* decide when *MY* devices connect.
Welcome to the group of us that represent the 0.1% of society. Our motto is Good Luck With That.
We fight against the other 99.9% of society driving manufacturers that have adopted the Take-It-And-Like-It-Bitch manufacturing standard.
I wonder if there is any correlation between this attitude toward property and the rampant sexual abuse you see in the same regions. Nah, couldn't be. They're all totally woke on those issues. Couldn't possibly be that you cannot silo off such a mentality into just one area rather than letting it spill into other areas.
Fuck entitlement. If someone stole something, they committed a crime. A "garage full" of bikes likely qualifies for Grand Theft in California (value over $950), and can be charged with a felony. See how this person likes the "reward" of a criminal record or incarceration. Often times it takes the correct deterrent to prevent abuse.
I don't really understand the reason for this bicycle initiative. Since the bikes are only to be used by environmentally friendly employees, can't those employees simply just have their own bike?
At this point, it would be probably cheaper to offer a reimbursement program for an employee to go purchase their own bike and lock, and be responsible for it themselves, and simply install bike racks everywhere.
Thieves steal bicycles. Film at 11.
Single-speed cruiser bicycles painted bright yellow? I'm not seeing much resale value there. Even re-painted it would be rather obvious to anyone in that town to identify stolen merchandise.
getting people to pay for something requires that you have an infrastructure to lock the bikes everywhere they go.
these are just normal bicycles that sit by the dozens outside google offices, mostly just sitting on a kickstand. there's no way to charge for their use.
They are supposed to be for Google Employees only.
These aren't high-end bikes, they are single-speed cruiser style bikes, in google colors (bright yellow for much of the frame)
They are better than walking, and it's frequently faster to hop on a bike to get a few blocks than to walk to your car, drive, find a parking spot, and walk to the building (even if you didn't commute by bus)
former Google employee
Apparently they're valuable enough to install GPS trackers on them.
Every employee always has a smartphone on them. Always. Given that fact, figure out a way to tie a rider to their smartphone, and you've got a way of identifying who last used or is using a bike. If employees are using smartphones for work purposes, they should be controlled via MDM. Create and push an app that auto-registers a bike via NFC/WiFi/Bluetooth, which is probably less expensive than a GPS tracker. Hell, use the GPS in the smartphone to track riders real-time.
C'mon Google, this isn't rocket science.
I will just remind our younger readers of the dotcom boom, where tech stocks were seen as the new big thing and pumped up a bubble that eventually crashed. You can tell the top of this by looking at a tech company that was registered on the NASDAQ called NETJ.COM,
This had all the right words in the name, "net", "J" (for Java, hot at the time) and ".com" but its description of what the company did was:
and this raised several $110 million in IPO funding from ordinary investors when it floated.
So a dog coin cryptocurrency "worth" $1bn... just same shit, different day.
Some odd shapes painted on a canvas, by some guy named Picasso. A used baseball, that some guy named Babe scribbled on. A beat-up old guitar strung upside-down that some weird guy named Jimi used to play with his teeth. An old book of notes by a guy named da Vinci. Old bottles of rotten grapes. Shiny rocks and yellow rocks we mine out of the ground that we melt and polish.
The formula for value (1% subjective and 99% bullshit) was established long before the .bomb or cryptocurrency came around.
Snapchats "substantial activity" was losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year before their IPO and valuation of $20 billion. Makes you wonder how far we really are from the .bomb era of valuation.