I'm a gen X'er and I *know* I won't have a pension. Even if I retire, the government or the pension providers will default on me - either through inflation, or just because the damn pension providers will flatly announce they just don't have anything left in their coffers. I know this because they've already done it to my dad, who was born in the silent generation. So it's nothing new, but it sure won't get no better.
So, I'm not putting any money in a system that'll shaft me and I'm not saving anything for old age - most likely I'll be working until I die anyway.
What I do instead is, I enjoy as much free time now while I'm still young: I found me one of the last "old-style" jobs still available that lets me work 36 hrs/week with unreasonably great pay, in a heavily unionized old company that does business in a market that doesn't know the word recession.
In other words, I've maximized my salary/work ratio and I do as little work as possible to enjoy life the the fullest while I'm still in a condition to enjoy it. Time enough when I'm old and decrepit to kill myself at work for a living.
If you want to keep unprincipled actors in the datamining sphere from getting (too much) information about you, you *can* avoid patronizing internet services that are run by them. That means you don't get to enjoy 95% of the internet, because every-fucking-thing is run/owned/exploited/controlled by Google, Facebook, Akamai, Cloudflare...
I'm unusually careful with what I do on the internet compared to most people I know, and every year I feel more and more socially handicapped. As in:
"Oh, you don't do Facebook? I'll send you the invite by email then".
"What do you mean you didn't find it? It's the first line in Google search... What the fuck is Duckduckgo?".
"You should have used Waze instead of that offline satnav: it shows traffic jams and speed cameras live! What do you mean it's evil?"
No, I'm saying software back then was buggier than it is today overall - either shoddily coded, taking certain OS settings for granted, or using undocumented system calls - in an environment where any old rogue program could do anything it wanted or take down the entire system. Anybody who remembers software working better back then remembers wrong.
Incidentally, to the credit of Microsoft, Windows was a masterpiece of backward compatibility for a long time, considering the amount of badly coded 16-bit and 32-bit shit programs it had to run properly.
Not quite true: software that's "licensed" to the user (as opposed to "owned" by the user) has been there for decades. It's just that if you wanted to resell it, or more likely crack it and copy it to give to your friends, nobody could do much about it.
Maybe before Windows came about. But Win 95 was absolutely chock-full of useless shit. The first thing everybody with any sense did back then was clean up the freshly-installed OS to have more disk space and speed things up.
Hmm, I think memory is failing you here. I clearly remember many, many programs randomly crashing and taking the entire OS with it - and losing hours of work in the process, having to fiddle with hi memory and extended memory in DOS for hours to get some half-assed program to work, installing version after version of certain buggy drivers and goofing around with interrupt jumpers to get a somewhat stable system, etc etc etc. And the worst thing was trying to figure it all out on my own, without any internet forum to help me out.
It was fun at times, but mostly frustrating. I sure ain't missing those days...
No sonofabitch was trying to monetize my data, watch what I do on my computer or online (when there was an online to speak of), or force-feed me advertisement.
Well, look at it this way: sure he'd have stickers all over his screen, but even if he scrolled or reloaded the main page, he'd still end up with better edited posts than without the stickers.
For a long time, I thought "Android - and its awful datamining daddy Google - is more and more pervasive, but at least Windows isn't serving me ads, and with moderate efforts, isn't putting me under surveillance." Well... ahem... that sure turned out well lately:(
So the irony is, Android has overtaken Windows as the most used OS, but Windows has overtaken Android as the most evil. And the losers in all that are all of us users.
There are two days in the year when I just stay at home and avoid interacting with other human beings - in real life or on the internet: April 1st - the most pathetically unfunny day of the year - and December 25th - the most depressing day of the year.
For some reason, this year I forgot today was April 1st and I visited Slashdot by mistake. I wish I hadn't...
Either they're in the data business and their aim is to exploit your data for money - that's almost all companies that happen to have any software in their product line these days - or they're incompetent to safeguard data even if they're not crooked, or both. Most likely both.
The thing is, as long as people pay for their own internet themselves, they're in complete control of what gets to connect to their wifi. So, even if all the water heaters on the market had IoT features, it's trivial to keep them offline and harmless. And should they ever come with their own connectivity solution that bypasses the users' router completely, well... it's always possible to encase it in a Faraday cage of some sort.
As for trusting manufacturer with IT security, that's not the only problem: even if they're serious about it and actually qualified to secure your device properly, personally I'm more concerned about what they do with my data - how they snoop on my habits, how they intend to misuse that data, or whom they intend to sell it to.
If there's a buck to be made, company won't even consider moral or ethical use of the data they collect. That's the only thing you can bet on with big data.
Everybody knows they offer marginally beneficial services to the user, and massive surveillance and privacy invasion opportunities for big data, unconstitutional government agencies and other sumbitches.
Even if you do like kids, bringing them to the world we have today isn't exactly a gift to them...
I know a great many youngster even today who deeply resent our generation's wasteful and selfish way of living, the consequences of which we left to them, and that they'll have to sort out when we're gone.
At the age of 60, men who had children had almost two years more on their remaining life expectancy than those without, at 20.2 and 18.4 years respectively.
Correlation isn't causation.
Also, many of those who gain 2 years in life expectancy lose many more years of piece and quiet having to raise their brats.
Funny how political extremists always seem to be the first to embrace new technologies to further their agendas. Hitler for example used the latest magnetic tape recording technology of his days to appear as if he was doing live broadcast in a city while he was in another.
ask the car insurance companies: above a certain age - way above 18 usually - their rates suddenly drop dramatically. The insurance companies don't make that age up: it comes from their accidents statistics.
It's pretty clear certain age groups get more into accidents than others: it's because they're not really mature enough to be good drivers, even after years of driving experience. Nothing reveals immaturity in a person more than their way of behaving on the road.
I'm saying this as a general rule of course: clearly there are good young drivers and incompetent old timers. But for the population in general, the insurance statistics don't lie.
The Christmas we knows today - with the garish fat man dressed in red and gaudy lights that waste gigawatt hours of energy for nothing every year - is a pure invention of the Coca Cola company, designed solely to sell Coca Cola products. Also, the contemporary Christmas "spirit", based on ultra-consumerism and overeating, that start at least a month before the actual fucking Christmas Eve, is nothing but a massive effort by companies to brainwash people into buying tons of shit without realizing they're being manipulated into consuming. When was the last time Christmas was a strictly christian celebration, with Christians going to church to pray for a whole day and night, while the Jews, Muslims and all the others went about their business as usual on December 24?
So no, Google didn't steal the Christmas spirit: they *are* the Christmas spirit. They're pushing their products, like everybody else
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly.
I'm a gen X'er and I *know* I won't have a pension. Even if I retire, the government or the pension providers will default on me - either through inflation, or just because the damn pension providers will flatly announce they just don't have anything left in their coffers. I know this because they've already done it to my dad, who was born in the silent generation. So it's nothing new, but it sure won't get no better.
So, I'm not putting any money in a system that'll shaft me and I'm not saving anything for old age - most likely I'll be working until I die anyway.
What I do instead is, I enjoy as much free time now while I'm still young: I found me one of the last "old-style" jobs still available that lets me work 36 hrs/week with unreasonably great pay, in a heavily unionized old company that does business in a market that doesn't know the word recession.
In other words, I've maximized my salary/work ratio and I do as little work as possible to enjoy life the the fullest while I'm still in a condition to enjoy it. Time enough when I'm old and decrepit to kill myself at work for a living.
If you want to keep unprincipled actors in the datamining sphere from getting (too much) information about you, you *can* avoid patronizing internet services that are run by them. That means you don't get to enjoy 95% of the internet, because every-fucking-thing is run/owned/exploited/controlled by Google, Facebook, Akamai, Cloudflare...
I'm unusually careful with what I do on the internet compared to most people I know, and every year I feel more and more socially handicapped. As in:
"Oh, you don't do Facebook? I'll send you the invite by email then".
"What do you mean you didn't find it? It's the first line in Google search... What the fuck is Duckduckgo?".
"You should have used Waze instead of that offline satnav: it shows traffic jams and speed cameras live! What do you mean it's evil?"
Etc etc etc...
No, I'm saying software back then was buggier than it is today overall - either shoddily coded, taking certain OS settings for granted, or using undocumented system calls - in an environment where any old rogue program could do anything it wanted or take down the entire system. Anybody who remembers software working better back then remembers wrong.
Incidentally, to the credit of Microsoft, Windows was a masterpiece of backward compatibility for a long time, considering the amount of badly coded 16-bit and 32-bit shit programs it had to run properly.
Not quite true: software that's "licensed" to the user (as opposed to "owned" by the user) has been there for decades. It's just that if you wanted to resell it, or more likely crack it and copy it to give to your friends, nobody could do much about it.
Maybe before Windows came about. But Win 95 was absolutely chock-full of useless shit. The first thing everybody with any sense did back then was clean up the freshly-installed OS to have more disk space and speed things up.
Hmm, I think memory is failing you here. I clearly remember many, many programs randomly crashing and taking the entire OS with it - and losing hours of work in the process, having to fiddle with hi memory and extended memory in DOS for hours to get some half-assed program to work, installing version after version of certain buggy drivers and goofing around with interrupt jumpers to get a somewhat stable system, etc etc etc. And the worst thing was trying to figure it all out on my own, without any internet forum to help me out.
It was fun at times, but mostly frustrating. I sure ain't missing those days...
No sonofabitch was trying to monetize my data, watch what I do on my computer or online (when there was an online to speak of), or force-feed me advertisement.
Well, look at it this way: sure he'd have stickers all over his screen, but even if he scrolled or reloaded the main page, he'd still end up with better edited posts than without the stickers.
he should visit /. with his tool.
For a long time, I thought "Android - and its awful datamining daddy Google - is more and more pervasive, but at least Windows isn't serving me ads, and with moderate efforts, isn't putting me under surveillance." Well... ahem... that sure turned out well lately :(
So the irony is, Android has overtaken Windows as the most used OS, but Windows has overtaken Android as the most evil. And the losers in all that are all of us users.
There are two days in the year when I just stay at home and avoid interacting with other human beings - in real life or on the internet: April 1st - the most pathetically unfunny day of the year - and December 25th - the most depressing day of the year.
For some reason, this year I forgot today was April 1st and I visited Slashdot by mistake. I wish I hadn't...
...with any company.
Either they're in the data business and their aim is to exploit your data for money - that's almost all companies that happen to have any software in their product line these days - or they're incompetent to safeguard data even if they're not crooked, or both. Most likely both.
The thing is, as long as people pay for their own internet themselves, they're in complete control of what gets to connect to their wifi. So, even if all the water heaters on the market had IoT features, it's trivial to keep them offline and harmless. And should they ever come with their own connectivity solution that bypasses the users' router completely, well... it's always possible to encase it in a Faraday cage of some sort.
As for trusting manufacturer with IT security, that's not the only problem: even if they're serious about it and actually qualified to secure your device properly, personally I'm more concerned about what they do with my data - how they snoop on my habits, how they intend to misuse that data, or whom they intend to sell it to.
If there's a buck to be made, company won't even consider moral or ethical use of the data they collect. That's the only thing you can bet on with big data.
Don't buy IoT devices. Problem solved.
Everybody knows they offer marginally beneficial services to the user, and massive surveillance and privacy invasion opportunities for big data, unconstitutional government agencies and other sumbitches.
He wasn't arrested for the flashy GIF. He was arrested for the accompanying tweet text:
" ....
Hey dude, jack up the brightness and contrast.
Done yet?
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!! You're so convulsing on the floor!!! I gotcha good!!!
"
Healthier and richer people are likely to live longer, and also likely to be preferred for starting a family with
Only it doesn't work that way: it's a well established fact that rich, usually educated people have fewer children than poor uneducated people.
Even if you do like kids, bringing them to the world we have today isn't exactly a gift to them...
I know a great many youngster even today who deeply resent our generation's wasteful and selfish way of living, the consequences of which we left to them, and that they'll have to sort out when we're gone.
At the age of 60, men who had children had almost two years more on their remaining life expectancy than those without, at 20.2 and 18.4 years respectively.
Correlation isn't causation.
Also, many of those who gain 2 years in life expectancy lose many more years of piece and quiet having to raise their brats.
Funny how political extremists always seem to be the first to embrace new technologies to further their agendas. Hitler for example used the latest magnetic tape recording technology of his days to appear as if he was doing live broadcast in a city while he was in another.
I'll only take this exhibition seriously if it has something on Woz and nothing on the "genius" Steve Jobs for a change.
No.
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
The extension is also Windows-only, meaning Mac and Linux Chrome users will not receive it.
Why are Mac and Linux users treated better than Windows users? That's not fair!
ask the car insurance companies: above a certain age - way above 18 usually - their rates suddenly drop dramatically. The insurance companies don't make that age up: it comes from their accidents statistics.
It's pretty clear certain age groups get more into accidents than others: it's because they're not really mature enough to be good drivers, even after years of driving experience. Nothing reveals immaturity in a person more than their way of behaving on the road.
I'm saying this as a general rule of course: clearly there are good young drivers and incompetent old timers. But for the population in general, the insurance statistics don't lie.
The Christmas we knows today - with the garish fat man dressed in red and gaudy lights that waste gigawatt hours of energy for nothing every year - is a pure invention of the Coca Cola company, designed solely to sell Coca Cola products. Also, the contemporary Christmas "spirit", based on ultra-consumerism and overeating, that start at least a month before the actual fucking Christmas Eve, is nothing but a massive effort by companies to brainwash people into buying tons of shit without realizing they're being manipulated into consuming. When was the last time Christmas was a strictly christian celebration, with Christians going to church to pray for a whole day and night, while the Jews, Muslims and all the others went about their business as usual on December 24?
So no, Google didn't steal the Christmas spirit: they *are* the Christmas spirit. They're pushing their products, like everybody else