Why does every bottle of of everything (salad dressing, ketchup, pickles, etc) have a plastic safety seal around it? Because of the Tylenol thing in 1982 ?
Yes, and that needs to stay the way it is for purposes of public safety. Do you really think for one minute that if they didn't put seals on things some sick fuck out there wouldn't start poisoning things?
Ironically, some "sick fuck" did start poisoning things.
There are two different things, valuing privacy and valuing ownership.
They're becoming far more intertwined with products and services today. If you want to own a product free and clear (so to speak), then you will pay for that freedom by paying for the subsidies that reduce the price. Otherwise, you are the revenue stream that benefits from a reduced price in exchange for your usage data. Or your GPS location. Or your contacts. Or any number of private data points companies often use as revenue streams to justify a "free" offering.
Bottom line is people don't value either one of them for various reasons, but cost is certainly one of them. Spoil an entire generation with "free" services is like the drug dealer giving out free samples forever. They're hooked, and will happily trade privacy and ownership for it.
I think people are starting to come around to privacy, but now they lack alternatives.
And privacy advocates warned of that for years. The I told you so isn't even worth it at this point due to the impact on everyone.
question Bruce's logic here, since he's not exactly ignorant of either technology or law.
That happens once in a while. He's one of the foremost information security gurus in the world, but he still backs paper ballots as if they're magic. He won't even have a conversation about systemic problems in proving paper ballot integrity, in the lack of auditability of paper ballots, and so forth...
You bring good points here (I did read your entire post), but I have a feeling Bruce was merely defending the lesser of two evils (ironically not unlike the candidates). If you think we have less accountability with paper ballots, we are marching towards no accountability with e-voting machines that have proven to be insecure as hell. At least a paper ballot tampering process takes real human effort. History has shown that all it takes is one hacker to manipulate millions of records in seconds once a database is compromised, and at the rate we're going, the American voting system will be fucking cloud-based soon. Or run by Facebook.
Sadly, I worry more about the selection of idiots we're putting on the ballot than the voting system itself. Tampering won't really matter if we're forced to choose between Mama June and Yeezy.
It was a rhetorical question. The point is, the mile-per-hour is an existing unit (albeit one that is only used in Burma and in the US) and it does not mean that.
Journalism also used to mean honesty and integrity too.
It will be interesting to see what this new slower wave of smart phone replacements as primary market looks like... will phone makers start to not release new models quite so often?
While that would be logical, it will never happen. Shareholders demand growth, because they're greedy. They expect ridiculous sales numbers to simply last into infinity, even after you've populated the world with a product.
So, what will actually happen is software support will get shorter and shorter, security updates and patching will be designed to hobble "old" hardware more, forcing more consumers to purchase the latest model.
And like cars, they'll propose leasing new hardware instead of buying it as a marketing tactic to always keep the latest model in your hand while you agree to simply pay forever for it (which is essentially what we do already, by the time you finish paying off shitty hardware today, it's ready to be replaced)
And the only thing that will stop this, is if we actually start cracking down on disposable hardware due to the environmental impact, and taxing the shit out of companies who insist on making shit hardware that fills landfills prematurely. Unfortunately, there's likely no way you're going to get getting humans more worried about the planet than the latest smartphone.
You totally miss the point. It's not the consumer's problem that the non-cloud one would cost too much and that the cloud one is "a bargain" by comparison. If consumers don't feel comfortable buying it, then it isn't a bargain in a commercial sense.
Fair point, so let's root-cause this a bit more.
The real reason this problem exists is because people don't give a shit about privacy anymore. They'll comfortably sell their digital soul to get a $5 app for free. Billions of them do it.
If privacy was still important in society, cloud-anything wouldn't exist, and the concept of ownership would still be alive and thriving instead of dying.
I could buy a whole rack of servers for $15K and build my own dam cloud, this is a glorified smart speaker, you could build it out of a raspberry pi and some off the shelf bits.
You mean you could "build it."
The other 99.999% of society is too lazy to even attempt to try, and they're too cheap to care about privacy anymore. They'll vote for the bargain every time.
He want technical experts to become efficient lawmakers while staying on top of their technical expertise at the same time?
I think he seriously underestimates what it takes to become either one.
I would have to agree with you, and question Bruce's logic here, since he's not exactly ignorant of either technology or law.
I often have to explain to non-IT executives the importance and challenge every IT professional faces throughout their career to simply maintain proficiency. I often equate it to an accountant being forced to take the CPA exam every 3-5 years, or a lawyer being asked to do the same thing for the Bar.
You can automate both of these professions only so much. Asking a professional to maintain both is being ignorant of human capacity.
I think the poster is just annoyed on how Computing Technology has reached popularity with the common folks...
Uh, no not quite. The parent is rather annoyed because we've taken a cool technology and pretty much limited it to one kind of disposable electronics.
It's like inventing Teflon and then deciding to only make non-stick windshield wipers with it. Somewhat useful, but in the big picture basically an utter waste of the technology.
I'd bet that 1% of your user base could easily destroy your product if they are those type of people who try uploading 500 TB of data to your file sharing site just to see if they can. You gotta put some sane limits into your product to product yourself from abusers like that.
You're likely right for a lot of companies out there. And there's a rather simple answer to that pseudo-problem.
Stop offering "unlimited" bullshit.
When the default human response to "idiot-proof" is to build a better idiot, it tends to justify that sane limits are necessary to combat against human behavior, which is as predictable as the wind.
We can have nice things. But obviously trying to change human behavior is akin to bending the laws of physics.
You seem to have a total inability to understand why companies offer "unlimited" options. It's all about marketing, but that point seems to be so far over your head that you can't even begin to comprehend. But keep crying about it, it's pretty funny.
I don't care if it's defined as mere marketing or not; stand behind your product and offering, or shut the hell up.
1 - 10% of your user base "abusing" an unlimited plan should never be enough to destroy your product. If it is, then you were stupid enough to allow it in the first place. Don't bitch about gambling if you can't afford to lose.
Take that stance all you like. The point is to stop crying that companies are putting caps in place. If some didn't choose to be abusive of them, we'd all still be enjoying things without any caps, should there be times when our usage is more than normal.
There you go again, making pathetic excuses for companies who fail to understand human behavior. Stop doing that stupid shit already. The actual point here is understanding and accepting human behavior. If you don't like it when even 1% of your user base takes FULL advantage of your "unlimited" offering, then STOP being that idiot who offers unlimited plans.
And no, I'm not one of those 500TB hoarders who abuses the shit out of these offerings. I barely have a couple hundred GB stored in the cloud in total. I just hate it when companies utterly fail to understand human behavior, and then constantly bitch about it. Fuck those idiots. They deserve bankruptcy at this point.
your favorite flavor of politician is above all that then huh ?
Yes, I oddly enough prefer a leader who isn't a murderous dictator. And regardless of anyone's assumptions of how bad things "really" are, they're NOT as bad as they were for anyone who managed to survive socialism/communism half a century ago.
100 million lives lost tend to validate that statement.
A degree in teaching would be more useful for that. The hard part is teaching kids, not learning school level history curriculum.
It takes some time before schoolchildren are old enough to start learning history.
And if they're still acting like little shitheads by that age, then learn to blame the parents, not the topic of study. It's sure as hell not history's fault that little Johnny is an asshole.
The absolute last thing any politician or ruler would do is ban Spybook or Google. The permanent profiles they build on individuals are quite literally Stalin's dream.
You assume a lot from an entire planet full of politicians and rulers.
You do know other forms of politics besides socialism/communism exist, right? Not every leader is a murderous dictator...
And they did offer just that. They never limited things. It was when a small group of users pushed things to the point it was unprofitable for the company that they closed their consumer business. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, Comcast, and others never would have put in caps on their own service if it weren't for those that go far and away above the general user. It's those users that cost all of us.
The end result of offering "unlimited" plans should come as no surprise to anyone in any business at this point. And if you can't manage to be profitable off the other 95%+ who don't abuse your service, then your business model was doomed anyway. Stupidity deserves to be rewarded with bankruptcy in that case, and I'm not about to make excuses for the fucking morons who refuse to account for human behavior or learn from history.
Ironically enough, football players are smart enough to go after degrees in finance or business, which can benefit them if they're successful enough to make it in the NFL or any other elite level.
People with degrees in finance and business are pretty useless IMO. Moving money around is hardly a real skill. They aren't completely useless though, but pretty close.
Based on the amount of debt the average American holds, I find it pretty fucking hilarious that you're dismissing the value of a financial education.
Everyone at every level can benefit from being able to balance a budget and manage finances.
The same argument applies to all sorts of things. What is the point of having a PhD in History?
Since you haven't noticed, there is a significant demand for history teachers. Because history is something we still feel is valuable to teach, else you might just end up repeating it.
I sure as hell can't say the same for a degree in gender studies. And the unemployable with that degree would agree, regardless if they're willing to admit it or not.
Slashdot Mirror
This is just too funny! Facebook, one of the biggest data grabbing sites on earth suing someone over what Facebook itself does!!!!!
Zuck the Data Mob Boss is pissed someone else tried to get in on his action.
At the end of the day, it's all about revenue for a corporation.
Why does every bottle of of everything (salad dressing, ketchup, pickles, etc) have a plastic safety seal around it? Because of the Tylenol thing in 1982 ? Yes, and that needs to stay the way it is for purposes of public safety. Do you really think for one minute that if they didn't put seals on things some sick fuck out there wouldn't start poisoning things?
Ironically, some "sick fuck" did start poisoning things.
We call them "ingredients" now.
There are two different things, valuing privacy and valuing ownership.
They're becoming far more intertwined with products and services today. If you want to own a product free and clear (so to speak), then you will pay for that freedom by paying for the subsidies that reduce the price. Otherwise, you are the revenue stream that benefits from a reduced price in exchange for your usage data. Or your GPS location. Or your contacts. Or any number of private data points companies often use as revenue streams to justify a "free" offering.
Bottom line is people don't value either one of them for various reasons, but cost is certainly one of them. Spoil an entire generation with "free" services is like the drug dealer giving out free samples forever. They're hooked, and will happily trade privacy and ownership for it.
I think people are starting to come around to privacy, but now they lack alternatives.
And privacy advocates warned of that for years. The I told you so isn't even worth it at this point due to the impact on everyone.
question Bruce's logic here, since he's not exactly ignorant of either technology or law.
That happens once in a while. He's one of the foremost information security gurus in the world, but he still backs paper ballots as if they're magic. He won't even have a conversation about systemic problems in proving paper ballot integrity, in the lack of auditability of paper ballots, and so forth...
You bring good points here (I did read your entire post), but I have a feeling Bruce was merely defending the lesser of two evils (ironically not unlike the candidates). If you think we have less accountability with paper ballots, we are marching towards no accountability with e-voting machines that have proven to be insecure as hell. At least a paper ballot tampering process takes real human effort. History has shown that all it takes is one hacker to manipulate millions of records in seconds once a database is compromised, and at the rate we're going, the American voting system will be fucking cloud-based soon. Or run by Facebook.
Sadly, I worry more about the selection of idiots we're putting on the ballot than the voting system itself. Tampering won't really matter if we're forced to choose between Mama June and Yeezy.
It was more of a joke than a rhetorical question.
Much like the modern journalism driving this discussion.
It was a rhetorical question. The point is, the mile-per-hour is an existing unit (albeit one that is only used in Burma and in the US) and it does not mean that.
Journalism also used to mean honesty and integrity too.
Hence the bullshit clickbait title.
It will be interesting to see what this new slower wave of smart phone replacements as primary market looks like... will phone makers start to not release new models quite so often?
While that would be logical, it will never happen. Shareholders demand growth, because they're greedy. They expect ridiculous sales numbers to simply last into infinity, even after you've populated the world with a product.
So, what will actually happen is software support will get shorter and shorter, security updates and patching will be designed to hobble "old" hardware more, forcing more consumers to purchase the latest model.
And like cars, they'll propose leasing new hardware instead of buying it as a marketing tactic to always keep the latest model in your hand while you agree to simply pay forever for it (which is essentially what we do already, by the time you finish paying off shitty hardware today, it's ready to be replaced)
And the only thing that will stop this, is if we actually start cracking down on disposable hardware due to the environmental impact, and taxing the shit out of companies who insist on making shit hardware that fills landfills prematurely. Unfortunately, there's likely no way you're going to get getting humans more worried about the planet than the latest smartphone.
You totally miss the point. It's not the consumer's problem that the non-cloud one would cost too much and that the cloud one is "a bargain" by comparison. If consumers don't feel comfortable buying it, then it isn't a bargain in a commercial sense.
Fair point, so let's root-cause this a bit more.
The real reason this problem exists is because people don't give a shit about privacy anymore. They'll comfortably sell their digital soul to get a $5 app for free. Billions of them do it.
If privacy was still important in society, cloud-anything wouldn't exist, and the concept of ownership would still be alive and thriving instead of dying.
Congress is also a full time job.
Idiot constituents are electing barmaids to be lawmakers on the premise of give-me-free-shit in a capitalist country.
Tends to make that "full time" problem look like spilled milk by comparison.
I could buy a whole rack of servers for $15K and build my own dam cloud, this is a glorified smart speaker, you could build it out of a raspberry pi and some off the shelf bits.
You mean you could "build it."
The other 99.999% of society is too lazy to even attempt to try, and they're too cheap to care about privacy anymore. They'll vote for the bargain every time.
He want technical experts to become efficient lawmakers while staying on top of their technical expertise at the same time?
I think he seriously underestimates what it takes to become either one.
I would have to agree with you, and question Bruce's logic here, since he's not exactly ignorant of either technology or law.
I often have to explain to non-IT executives the importance and challenge every IT professional faces throughout their career to simply maintain proficiency. I often equate it to an accountant being forced to take the CPA exam every 3-5 years, or a lawyer being asked to do the same thing for the Bar.
You can automate both of these professions only so much. Asking a professional to maintain both is being ignorant of human capacity.
...concerned about privacy?
That's almost as funny as trying to convince us to believe him.
I think the poster is just annoyed on how Computing Technology has reached popularity with the common folks...
Uh, no not quite. The parent is rather annoyed because we've taken a cool technology and pretty much limited it to one kind of disposable electronics.
It's like inventing Teflon and then deciding to only make non-stick windshield wipers with it. Somewhat useful, but in the big picture basically an utter waste of the technology.
...Why would anyone spend close to $1k on something that could stop working at any time?
Because like most other products, the non-cloud version (if available) would cost $15K, making the cloud version seem like a bargain.
That's why.
I'd bet that 1% of your user base could easily destroy your product if they are those type of people who try uploading 500 TB of data to your file sharing site just to see if they can. You gotta put some sane limits into your product to product yourself from abusers like that.
You're likely right for a lot of companies out there. And there's a rather simple answer to that pseudo-problem.
Stop offering "unlimited" bullshit.
When the default human response to "idiot-proof" is to build a better idiot, it tends to justify that sane limits are necessary to combat against human behavior, which is as predictable as the wind.
We can have nice things. But obviously trying to change human behavior is akin to bending the laws of physics.
What is a less inane and useless application for this amazing technology?
As a member of the four-eyed community, I can certainly think of at least one rather obvious one.
Try opening your eyes to the world around you. Helps to not to be so shortsighted next time.
You seem to have a total inability to understand why companies offer "unlimited" options. It's all about marketing, but that point seems to be so far over your head that you can't even begin to comprehend. But keep crying about it, it's pretty funny.
I don't care if it's defined as mere marketing or not; stand behind your product and offering, or shut the hell up.
1 - 10% of your user base "abusing" an unlimited plan should never be enough to destroy your product. If it is, then you were stupid enough to allow it in the first place. Don't bitch about gambling if you can't afford to lose.
You do know other forms of politics besides socialism/communism exist
I do, and from where I'm standing, they all seem to be in favor of mass surveillance.
As much as I'm against mass surveillance, I'll take that over mass genocide any day.
Learn from history.
Take that stance all you like. The point is to stop crying that companies are putting caps in place. If some didn't choose to be abusive of them, we'd all still be enjoying things without any caps, should there be times when our usage is more than normal.
There you go again, making pathetic excuses for companies who fail to understand human behavior. Stop doing that stupid shit already. The actual point here is understanding and accepting human behavior. If you don't like it when even 1% of your user base takes FULL advantage of your "unlimited" offering, then STOP being that idiot who offers unlimited plans.
And no, I'm not one of those 500TB hoarders who abuses the shit out of these offerings. I barely have a couple hundred GB stored in the cloud in total. I just hate it when companies utterly fail to understand human behavior, and then constantly bitch about it. Fuck those idiots. They deserve bankruptcy at this point.
your favorite flavor of politician is above all that then huh ?
Yes, I oddly enough prefer a leader who isn't a murderous dictator. And regardless of anyone's assumptions of how bad things "really" are, they're NOT as bad as they were for anyone who managed to survive socialism/communism half a century ago.
100 million lives lost tend to validate that statement.
A degree in teaching would be more useful for that. The hard part is teaching kids, not learning school level history curriculum.
It takes some time before schoolchildren are old enough to start learning history.
And if they're still acting like little shitheads by that age, then learn to blame the parents, not the topic of study. It's sure as hell not history's fault that little Johnny is an asshole.
The absolute last thing any politician or ruler would do is ban Spybook or Google. The permanent profiles they build on individuals are quite literally Stalin's dream.
You assume a lot from an entire planet full of politicians and rulers.
You do know other forms of politics besides socialism/communism exist, right? Not every leader is a murderous dictator...
And they did offer just that. They never limited things. It was when a small group of users pushed things to the point it was unprofitable for the company that they closed their consumer business. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, Comcast, and others never would have put in caps on their own service if it weren't for those that go far and away above the general user. It's those users that cost all of us.
The end result of offering "unlimited" plans should come as no surprise to anyone in any business at this point. And if you can't manage to be profitable off the other 95%+ who don't abuse your service, then your business model was doomed anyway. Stupidity deserves to be rewarded with bankruptcy in that case, and I'm not about to make excuses for the fucking morons who refuse to account for human behavior or learn from history.
Ironically enough, football players are smart enough to go after degrees in finance or business, which can benefit them if they're successful enough to make it in the NFL or any other elite level.
People with degrees in finance and business are pretty useless IMO. Moving money around is hardly a real skill. They aren't completely useless though, but pretty close.
Based on the amount of debt the average American holds, I find it pretty fucking hilarious that you're dismissing the value of a financial education.
Everyone at every level can benefit from being able to balance a budget and manage finances.
The same argument applies to all sorts of things. What is the point of having a PhD in History?
Since you haven't noticed, there is a significant demand for history teachers. Because history is something we still feel is valuable to teach, else you might just end up repeating it.
I sure as hell can't say the same for a degree in gender studies. And the unemployable with that degree would agree, regardless if they're willing to admit it or not.