Remember old cable? I mean really old cable. Back from when it was new and shiny. Hard to get to your area, I know, but those that got it, wasn't it awesome? You bought "cable" and you got like 50 new channels, some great ones, some not so great ones, some with rather... odd content, some local ones where you could see the "low budget" (or actually, more often, "no budget") production value, a healthy mix, giving you pretty much anything you'd want.
Then the CableComs realized that they could make more money by segmenting it. Hey, cable just got cheaper! Yes... but you only got like 30% of the channels now. But it's now buffet style! Only get what you want. Well, not exactly, because you want channel A, but you only get it if you take package X which contains A and a dozen craptastic ones that nobody wants. You also want to get Channel B? Get package Y. No, there is no package that has channels A and B. But you can get both packages X and Y which also come with 2 dozen other channels.
And this is where streaming is heading to. Just instead of 50 different "packages" from your same provider, you now have 50 different providers, all coming with their own portfolio of shows, where you pretty much want one or two shows, but to get them, you'd have to pay for the whole lot. You want that show? Pay another provider.
Just wait for them to lament how people are still illegally downloading their content when they offer it for "only" 10 bucks a month. Just like the other dozen or so studios. "But it's 10 bucks a month for oh so many shows and movies!" Yes. But of all those, all I want to see is one. Sell me that one. Keep the crap!
The internet will become what radio has become. The REALLY old farts here might remember the small, hobby-ish radio stations. Where they had witty DJs, playing local music, often even having local singers and bands who could perform live on the air, have a chat... remember? No? You'd have to be around 80 probably to do so.
Today, what's left of radio stations is a corporate nightmare. A handful of stations, all playing basically the same rubbish nobody really wants to hear, all day, every day, bloodless, lifeless, bland.
And that's what the internet is becoming. What made the internet awesome was that it was a bidirectional medium, the first medium where every participant was not only a receiver but could also become a sender. The not-quite-so-old ones might remember the 90s where people and even some (!) businesses created homepages... with varying degrees of quality, ok, with very questionable quality. But you could see that someone made an effort, someone tried to leave a mark and a message, a message of individuality.
Today, what's left of that is Facebook pages. All of them about as unique as English suburb houses. All of them created in the same style with the same tools saying the same rubbish all day long. Individuality? Nope. Conformity. We're all individuals. And we're all doing the same. Because that's all we are allowed to do anymore.
And it is getting worse. Because with fewer and fewer people even wanting an individual, personal presence, fewer and fewer people would complain if such a thing becomes illegal. What will be left is corporate-owned, corporate-guided and corporate-designed pages where you may say what you're allowed to say.
The big fuzz is that Lenovo (i.e. what used to be IBM) is a brand often used by businesses who cannot simply install what they want on their machines, be it because of corporate standards or even outside regulations requiring them to use certified machines from certain vendors. And yes, for some odd reason I cannot fathom, this may mean that such spyware-riddled machines are certified while doing a clean install is not. Back when IBM still held control over these machines, you could be fairly certain that at the very least their business line of models came without any crap littering them, and this made the decision rather easy.
My question thus is whether a business can actually use those machines. It may not be of importance to you or any private owner of a laptop, where you can simply decrapify your machine yourself, but to businesses this is actually a really big issue and leading to the problem that the number of models you can actually choose from, i.e. the number of models that intersect at "has no spyware" and "is $regulation compliant", is getting smaller and smaller.
And bogus security certificates? Do we get a load of bloat- and crapware preinstalled that nothing but a total wipe and clean install can cure, where we then get to beg forever to get drivers for their hardware (only to get told from support that we can always revert to the "clean" original state and they're happy to provide a CD with an image... for a small three-digit fee of course?
The Thinkpad died for me the moment IBM sold the brand.
It is the CEO's responsibility to know what's going on in his company. What the fuck is that idiot good for if he doesn't? The "decisions" made at that level could be gained from a magic-8-ball with at least the same level of quality.
The ultimate sad realization is that the person who bought the device isn't the one who gets to decide who to trust. I trust myself by default. But I am not the one who gets to trust. The manufacturer of the device I pay for gets to say who the device that (again) I PAID FOR trusts.
THAT is what's ultimately wrong here. The fundamental aspect of ownership is to have total control over something. I own my living room table. I can, if I so please, turn it into firewood. Or sell it. I may put a different coat of paint on it or convert it into a workbench. And nobody, not the government or the carpenter that made it has any right to keep me from doing so.
Why the FUCK is this different as soon as "on a computer" is added to the mix?
I have this mental image of a noose around my neck and someone yanking the attached chain. I think they mean that chain of trust? Trusting the chain to keep the user in reign?
It's a chain of treachery. If anything, this is GOOD news. It may allow people to actually own their devices, at least for a while.
The sad realization is that the "black market" has in general lower and less harmful impact on your security and privacy than the device maker.
Or, in a more direct way, the chance that a jailbreak tool gives you your privacy back is higher than a rootkit stealing even more of it. What could be stolen that has already been stolen?
In some aspects they are not really a lot more advanced than some countries we usually consider "third world". A lot of the infrastructure I got to see in rural California sure reminded me of Europe in the 1970s. That was quite a bit of a culture shock when you're used to thinking they're far ahead only to take a trip into your past when you arrive.
But it sure explained why blueboxing was possible in the US but rather tricky to pull off over here. It's not just negative, you see...
No pussy grabbing? Why not? That's about the only job perk I have in this damn job where I can't do a thing without someone telling me I can't do it for some bullshit reason.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember old cable? I mean really old cable. Back from when it was new and shiny. Hard to get to your area, I know, but those that got it, wasn't it awesome? You bought "cable" and you got like 50 new channels, some great ones, some not so great ones, some with rather ... odd content, some local ones where you could see the "low budget" (or actually, more often, "no budget") production value, a healthy mix, giving you pretty much anything you'd want.
Then the CableComs realized that they could make more money by segmenting it. Hey, cable just got cheaper! Yes... but you only got like 30% of the channels now. But it's now buffet style! Only get what you want. Well, not exactly, because you want channel A, but you only get it if you take package X which contains A and a dozen craptastic ones that nobody wants. You also want to get Channel B? Get package Y. No, there is no package that has channels A and B. But you can get both packages X and Y which also come with 2 dozen other channels.
And this is where streaming is heading to. Just instead of 50 different "packages" from your same provider, you now have 50 different providers, all coming with their own portfolio of shows, where you pretty much want one or two shows, but to get them, you'd have to pay for the whole lot. You want that show? Pay another provider.
Just wait for them to lament how people are still illegally downloading their content when they offer it for "only" 10 bucks a month. Just like the other dozen or so studios. "But it's 10 bucks a month for oh so many shows and movies!" Yes. But of all those, all I want to see is one. Sell me that one. Keep the crap!
Care to inform me why the fuck me, or anyone who has at least parts of his mental health remaining, would want to buy such a device?
The internet will become what radio has become. The REALLY old farts here might remember the small, hobby-ish radio stations. Where they had witty DJs, playing local music, often even having local singers and bands who could perform live on the air, have a chat... remember? No? You'd have to be around 80 probably to do so.
Today, what's left of radio stations is a corporate nightmare. A handful of stations, all playing basically the same rubbish nobody really wants to hear, all day, every day, bloodless, lifeless, bland.
And that's what the internet is becoming. What made the internet awesome was that it was a bidirectional medium, the first medium where every participant was not only a receiver but could also become a sender. The not-quite-so-old ones might remember the 90s where people and even some (!) businesses created homepages ... with varying degrees of quality, ok, with very questionable quality. But you could see that someone made an effort, someone tried to leave a mark and a message, a message of individuality.
Today, what's left of that is Facebook pages. All of them about as unique as English suburb houses. All of them created in the same style with the same tools saying the same rubbish all day long. Individuality? Nope. Conformity. We're all individuals. And we're all doing the same. Because that's all we are allowed to do anymore.
And it is getting worse. Because with fewer and fewer people even wanting an individual, personal presence, fewer and fewer people would complain if such a thing becomes illegal. What will be left is corporate-owned, corporate-guided and corporate-designed pages where you may say what you're allowed to say.
They can as well lock my body up when they already imprisoned me.
The big fuzz is that Lenovo (i.e. what used to be IBM) is a brand often used by businesses who cannot simply install what they want on their machines, be it because of corporate standards or even outside regulations requiring them to use certified machines from certain vendors. And yes, for some odd reason I cannot fathom, this may mean that such spyware-riddled machines are certified while doing a clean install is not. Back when IBM still held control over these machines, you could be fairly certain that at the very least their business line of models came without any crap littering them, and this made the decision rather easy.
My question thus is whether a business can actually use those machines. It may not be of importance to you or any private owner of a laptop, where you can simply decrapify your machine yourself, but to businesses this is actually a really big issue and leading to the problem that the number of models you can actually choose from, i.e. the number of models that intersect at "has no spyware" and "is $regulation compliant", is getting smaller and smaller.
And bogus security certificates? Do we get a load of bloat- and crapware preinstalled that nothing but a total wipe and clean install can cure, where we then get to beg forever to get drivers for their hardware (only to get told from support that we can always revert to the "clean" original state and they're happy to provide a CD with an image ... for a small three-digit fee of course?
The Thinkpad died for me the moment IBM sold the brand.
It is the CEO's responsibility to know what's going on in his company. What the fuck is that idiot good for if he doesn't? The "decisions" made at that level could be gained from a magic-8-ball with at least the same level of quality.
The next time you plan to install a rootkit on PCs and spy on people, first found a corporation. Then it's apparently no longer a crime.
I really wish I knew what pooped into your cereals this morning, but ... whatever, go ahead.
Dude, take your pills. And I mean the ones the doc gave you, not the ones you get from the guy on the street corner.
The ultimate sad realization is that the person who bought the device isn't the one who gets to decide who to trust. I trust myself by default. But I am not the one who gets to trust. The manufacturer of the device I pay for gets to say who the device that (again) I PAID FOR trusts.
THAT is what's ultimately wrong here. The fundamental aspect of ownership is to have total control over something. I own my living room table. I can, if I so please, turn it into firewood. Or sell it. I may put a different coat of paint on it or convert it into a workbench. And nobody, not the government or the carpenter that made it has any right to keep me from doing so.
Why the FUCK is this different as soon as "on a computer" is added to the mix?
Apparently it becomes more and more a necessity.
Just with more information and not paywalled?
I mean this one.
They can have full access to the VM I create for them for all I care.
Yes, this MAY allow someone to own your device, but it MAY also allow you to own it.
Without, you MAY NOT own your own device, but someone else DOES own it with absolute certainty.
You see the difference, I guess?
And it's legal to do so.
I thought that was the chain of command?
I have this mental image of a noose around my neck and someone yanking the attached chain. I think they mean that chain of trust? Trusting the chain to keep the user in reign?
It's a chain of treachery. If anything, this is GOOD news. It may allow people to actually own their devices, at least for a while.
The Intelligently Designed Internet Of Things Systems are made for their acronym.
Oh c'mon, it was hardly worse than the ladyboy we have now.
The sad realization is that the "black market" has in general lower and less harmful impact on your security and privacy than the device maker.
Or, in a more direct way, the chance that a jailbreak tool gives you your privacy back is higher than a rootkit stealing even more of it. What could be stolen that has already been stolen?
Wasn't that what was allegedly turning me into Romero's bitch?
In some aspects they are not really a lot more advanced than some countries we usually consider "third world". A lot of the infrastructure I got to see in rural California sure reminded me of Europe in the 1970s. That was quite a bit of a culture shock when you're used to thinking they're far ahead only to take a trip into your past when you arrive.
But it sure explained why blueboxing was possible in the US but rather tricky to pull off over here. It's not just negative, you see...
Please don't tell my waifupillow!
No pussy grabbing? Why not? That's about the only job perk I have in this damn job where I can't do a thing without someone telling me I can't do it for some bullshit reason.
Sad!