The irony is that Microsoft now offers a better tablet than either Apple or any of the Android tablet manufacturers.
Android tablets are locked down and loaded up with bloatware that you can't remove, with courtesy applications being loaded up for your convenience all the time and Apple's app store is now loaded with applications that are majority in-app purchases that want yearly subscriptions now for the dumbest things ever.
They already have us conditioned about being spied on everyday in stores, what we watch, what we type, what we buy. So no surprise to me. It's to the point that people are calling us crazies idiots for not joining in on the fun.
Everything that Snowden revealed, nobody even cares anymore it seems. It just seems the typical consumer is either too dumb downed to notice this or they simply don't have the time to care. The outlash from the public has been very minimal, giving these companies enough leeway to pull this off without any outcry.
Please find me a phone that works with LineageOS that allows me to root it and also doesn't get gimped after you root it and install another rom. And also, the phone can't be more than a year old. So far, I have a slightly gimped LGV20 that I use with f-droid only.
The manufacturers have joined in on all this data gathering madness and and doing everything they can to prevent you from stopping it. Samsung has gimped all their US products from being rooted or force you to wait seven days to even attempt it (If that even works anymore). Sony gimps your camera the moment you root it. LG makes you walk through a minefield, register you on their website before even handing you the key to unlock your bootloader so you can root your phone. The great irony, the Chinese phones are more open for now than all the major brands.
Let me root my phone and let me do what I want with my data please, thank you. I'm getting quite annoyed with the massive lock down of phones lately or they somehow completely gimp your phone if you do, like Sony's new phone where, sure you can root your phone, but your camera just takes green pictures.
It's getting to the point where I don't even want a phone or tablet anymore. They all want to "Protect" me. But when that protection uploads crap to the cloud hosted in China without my consent (Samsung and Apple, I'm looking at you with your BS default upload to the cloud crap), I don't want your method of protection.
I have industrial machines. If manufacturers designed equipment where I could no longer repair them by myself, I'm not going to purchase their machine. I'm quite capable of designing and building my own if I have too.
And believe me, I've already met some manufacturers attempting to do so under the guise of "Litigation", "Liability", "Proprietary". They lock down their devices, do not want to give me electrical or control schematics and insist this is the way the industry always was (By the way, access is required under all our standards in both Europe and the US for industrial machines, including schematics, so go F*** yourselves). Imagine the whole debacle with locked down phones being placed on multi-million dollar machines where you're required to somehow dispose of it after 2-3 years (Or of course they'll buy it off of you for pennies and resell it for another million). A lot of equipment is designed with standard replaceable parts, the moment they try to veer from that path, I'm no longer interested.
Solution is to stop using phone numbers all together. Why are we still using them? Data connection is now more than reliable to make very high quality calls now. Ever since it was allowed to spoof phone numbers was the downfall of caller ID.
Even my clients don't contact me by phone number anymore. Skype and other methods is gaining more ground. Phone number is just a last resort.
I'm inclined to believe the story. I was able to enter factories in China where supposedly companies wanted to protect their "Intellectual Property" (I'm not going to name who, but big known brands), take photos and do whatever I wanted, all because the landlord (who is my friend) also has government connections. No one is going to report it and no one is going to say anything. I was treated like a king visiting his kingdom. This seems to be pretty typical in China. I've also witnessed machines being copied right next to the Germans installing theirs.
So I can see the Chinese government easily pulling this off. Employees are easily bribed, threatened and/or coerced into doing things. Most don't want any problems with the government. Anyone can believe what they want, I've seen it first hand and anyone telling you otherwise is lying through their teeth. They could easily build another production and R&D line to secretly add whatever they want in the same damn factory, the corporate management would never know what it's for nor would they dare ask. The only revealing factor would be Chinese gossip, because they like to talk and show off.
The NSA doesn't have access to most manufacturing plants. Chinese government does. My visit to China to see my friend recently who owns large swatches of buildings with some big name manufacturers, allowed me to waltz in anyone's plant despite "Intellectual Property" (Landlord has some huge privileges in China). Because of his government connections, no one dared question him or me why I was in there taking pictures. No one is going to dare report it happening to the affected companies either that I was in there. In fact, they were concerned more about my safety of anything happening to me than worrying about your IP. Anyone that thinks their data or product design is safe in China are either lying through their teeth or just completely oblivious to reality.
So, possibility of this happening in China to me is highly likely, because every employee there is easily bribed, manipulated or threatened. They could build an R&D lab and additional manufacturing line just for this purpose right in the plant without letting them know. Stuff the NSA could only dream of.
And the sad part is, we knew all this 5+ years before Snowden. Everyone, even on here, flat out denied it could be happening. Now everyone is happy to upload all their data to China.
You try to make it sound like it's practically impossible. I'm not going to name the company or plant here, but there was a whole plant siphoning profits from corporate that no one noticed for years. Every employee in this plant was involved in the scheme and went on for a few years before accounting noticed. The only hint I'll give you, it was in Houston TX.
Suffice to say, it's entirely trivial to subvert an entire manufacturing plant without anyone noticing for years on end, especially when you have careless and/or disgruntled employees. And knowing Chinese employees, this wouldn't surprise me. You wouldn't need to spend much money to subvert every Chinese employee. Wouldn't surprise me if they even built their own R&D lab right in the factory to do it, with management completely oblivious to what it's for.
Yeah, and we had the NSA intercepting shipments to put keyloggers and whatever backdoors in whatever electronics. It was categorely denied here for years that it could be happening, and then Snowden happened. Seriously, we had leaks and inkling of this happening way back in 2008, where lots of people denied it could be happening, labeled us as crazy kooks.
And then we all forgot about Snowden and started willingly uploading all our wonderful data to Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Microsoft.
And why I'm not even remotely interested in Fallout 76. If they allow modding, it might lure me in. There's a big reason people play Skyrim and Fallout for so long and the modding community is quite the big one.
The funny thing is, it doesn't take much effort to download the free content. Netflix just made it that easy and Amazon Prime almost there. Now they want me to register to 100 sites to watch only one thing per a site.
Micro transactions already is causing a lot of negativity. Just look at Steam games that attempt that and the huge dip in reviews going to the negative side (I'm sure their sales as well).
The only thing that did was force me to just pirate their content, because I'm not going to register on another service for whatever amount a month just to watch one show.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean like trying to use an SD card reader sold be Apple themselves that doesn't work?
The irony is that Microsoft now offers a better tablet than either Apple or any of the Android tablet manufacturers.
Android tablets are locked down and loaded up with bloatware that you can't remove, with courtesy applications being loaded up for your convenience all the time and Apple's app store is now loaded with applications that are majority in-app purchases that want yearly subscriptions now for the dumbest things ever.
They already have us conditioned about being spied on everyday in stores, what we watch, what we type, what we buy. So no surprise to me. It's to the point that people are calling us crazies idiots for not joining in on the fun.
Everything that Snowden revealed, nobody even cares anymore it seems. It just seems the typical consumer is either too dumb downed to notice this or they simply don't have the time to care. The outlash from the public has been very minimal, giving these companies enough leeway to pull this off without any outcry.
Please find me a phone that works with LineageOS that allows me to root it and also doesn't get gimped after you root it and install another rom. And also, the phone can't be more than a year old. So far, I have a slightly gimped LGV20 that I use with f-droid only.
The manufacturers have joined in on all this data gathering madness and and doing everything they can to prevent you from stopping it. Samsung has gimped all their US products from being rooted or force you to wait seven days to even attempt it (If that even works anymore). Sony gimps your camera the moment you root it. LG makes you walk through a minefield, register you on their website before even handing you the key to unlock your bootloader so you can root your phone. The great irony, the Chinese phones are more open for now than all the major brands.
Let me root my device so I don't have to deal with this crap
Let me root my phone and let me do what I want with my data please, thank you. I'm getting quite annoyed with the massive lock down of phones lately or they somehow completely gimp your phone if you do, like Sony's new phone where, sure you can root your phone, but your camera just takes green pictures.
It's getting to the point where I don't even want a phone or tablet anymore. They all want to "Protect" me. But when that protection uploads crap to the cloud hosted in China without my consent (Samsung and Apple, I'm looking at you with your BS default upload to the cloud crap), I don't want your method of protection.
I have industrial machines. If manufacturers designed equipment where I could no longer repair them by myself, I'm not going to purchase their machine. I'm quite capable of designing and building my own if I have too.
And believe me, I've already met some manufacturers attempting to do so under the guise of "Litigation", "Liability", "Proprietary". They lock down their devices, do not want to give me electrical or control schematics and insist this is the way the industry always was (By the way, access is required under all our standards in both Europe and the US for industrial machines, including schematics, so go F*** yourselves). Imagine the whole debacle with locked down phones being placed on multi-million dollar machines where you're required to somehow dispose of it after 2-3 years (Or of course they'll buy it off of you for pennies and resell it for another million). A lot of equipment is designed with standard replaceable parts, the moment they try to veer from that path, I'm no longer interested.
That and the forced google+ account on YouTube. It made me forever not ever trust Google.
It's so bad, I have people calling me saying I called them all the time, yelling at me for doing so. I just block all local numbers now.
Solution is to stop using phone numbers all together. Why are we still using them? Data connection is now more than reliable to make very high quality calls now. Ever since it was allowed to spoof phone numbers was the downfall of caller ID.
Even my clients don't contact me by phone number anymore. Skype and other methods is gaining more ground. Phone number is just a last resort.
I'm inclined to believe the story. I was able to enter factories in China where supposedly companies wanted to protect their "Intellectual Property" (I'm not going to name who, but big known brands), take photos and do whatever I wanted, all because the landlord (who is my friend) also has government connections. No one is going to report it and no one is going to say anything. I was treated like a king visiting his kingdom. This seems to be pretty typical in China. I've also witnessed machines being copied right next to the Germans installing theirs.
So I can see the Chinese government easily pulling this off. Employees are easily bribed, threatened and/or coerced into doing things. Most don't want any problems with the government. Anyone can believe what they want, I've seen it first hand and anyone telling you otherwise is lying through their teeth. They could easily build another production and R&D line to secretly add whatever they want in the same damn factory, the corporate management would never know what it's for nor would they dare ask. The only revealing factor would be Chinese gossip, because they like to talk and show off.
The only difference here. We found the NSA spying unacceptable. But for some reason we know about Chinese spying but find it acceptable.
I prefer neither. One could have me killed, the other put in a super max prison.
The NSA doesn't have access to most manufacturing plants. Chinese government does. My visit to China to see my friend recently who owns large swatches of buildings with some big name manufacturers, allowed me to waltz in anyone's plant despite "Intellectual Property" (Landlord has some huge privileges in China). Because of his government connections, no one dared question him or me why I was in there taking pictures. No one is going to dare report it happening to the affected companies either that I was in there. In fact, they were concerned more about my safety of anything happening to me than worrying about your IP. Anyone that thinks their data or product design is safe in China are either lying through their teeth or just completely oblivious to reality.
So, possibility of this happening in China to me is highly likely, because every employee there is easily bribed, manipulated or threatened. They could build an R&D lab and additional manufacturing line just for this purpose right in the plant without letting them know. Stuff the NSA could only dream of.
And the sad part is, we knew all this 5+ years before Snowden. Everyone, even on here, flat out denied it could be happening. Now everyone is happy to upload all their data to China.
You try to make it sound like it's practically impossible. I'm not going to name the company or plant here, but there was a whole plant siphoning profits from corporate that no one noticed for years. Every employee in this plant was involved in the scheme and went on for a few years before accounting noticed. The only hint I'll give you, it was in Houston TX.
Suffice to say, it's entirely trivial to subvert an entire manufacturing plant without anyone noticing for years on end, especially when you have careless and/or disgruntled employees. And knowing Chinese employees, this wouldn't surprise me. You wouldn't need to spend much money to subvert every Chinese employee. Wouldn't surprise me if they even built their own R&D lab right in the factory to do it, with management completely oblivious to what it's for.
As if we have reason to trust Apple ever since they started working with China.
Snowden? Oh we forgot about him. Nevermind, not important anymore.
Yeah, and we had the NSA intercepting shipments to put keyloggers and whatever backdoors in whatever electronics. It was categorely denied here for years that it could be happening, and then Snowden happened. Seriously, we had leaks and inkling of this happening way back in 2008, where lots of people denied it could be happening, labeled us as crazy kooks.
And then we all forgot about Snowden and started willingly uploading all our wonderful data to Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Microsoft.
And why I'm not even remotely interested in Fallout 76. If they allow modding, it might lure me in. There's a big reason people play Skyrim and Fallout for so long and the modding community is quite the big one.
The funny thing is, it doesn't take much effort to download the free content. Netflix just made it that easy and Amazon Prime almost there. Now they want me to register to 100 sites to watch only one thing per a site.
Micro transactions already is causing a lot of negativity. Just look at Steam games that attempt that and the huge dip in reviews going to the negative side (I'm sure their sales as well).
The only thing that did was force me to just pirate their content, because I'm not going to register on another service for whatever amount a month just to watch one show.
Verizon/Frontier techs are usually nice enough to offer them tea or coffee though. Their CSR is god awful and don't deserve anything however.