What are you, some kind of masochist? Why would you want a smartphone that can only actually work as a smartphone when you have wifi? That would drive me crazy - and it almost has several times while traveling.
Honestly, because I don't use those features, and don't care about them.
For the overwhelming majority of the time, my phone is used minimally except for calls and texts. I'm not using it for conference calls and emails.. that's the last thing I want.
And, like my tablet, I only use internet features when I'm near wifi. I usually find what I need before I travel and keep it available offline.
Not all of us care about being constantly connected to the intertubes. I don't need to access the internet while I'm in the grocery store, and I don't care to have my phone telling advertisers everywhere I go.
I'm not a masochist, I'm just old enough to view the internet as something which I don't need constant access to, because it used to involve phones and modems.
Hell, when I download a game to my tablet, the first thing I do is turn off wifi and run the game... if it bitches that it wants access to the internet, I delete it.
You would be amazed at how many people do not feel the need to be constantly checking their email and other stuff online.
You use it how you want to, and I'll do the same. For me, I don't see any pressing need in having an internet connected device at all times.
Ever hear of Stuxnet? Do you know it was largely spread with infected USB drives?
It's not like there has never been a situation in which someone has gotten malware installed through this kind of thing. And once you know you have the exploit, you can start figuring out how to get it there.
Security tends to fail when humans are involved, because sooner or later someone messes up.
History has told us repeatedly that this is achievable without ever actually needing to have physical access yourself, you let the target do that for you.
Or, conversely, if your machine never has any data which comes in or out, then you somehow have created a perfect closed system which has all the information it ever needs and can never be updated.
In which case it's probably useless.
Air gapped doesn't mean you never periodically put in new data or extract results, it means you don't have it connected to anything.
If you never add new data, and you never extract any, your computer is probably doing a really damned boring task which probably doesn't need to be air gapped in the first place.
If you put a computer in a secure room, and hermetically seal it so you can never do anything with it, you might as well turn it off while you're at it. If you're doing something so mundane as to know it will never ever need updating, then print out everything it can ever tell you and put it in a damned book.
Because it will never ever tell you anything you don't already know.
Well, 64GB of internal storage is a fair bit, but yes, it's cheap to add one... I don't give a damn about Wireless charging... the speakers I need enough to use it as a speakerphone, so I'm not sure... I actively don't want any fscking NFC... I have dedicated cameras for real work, and I'm meh about the battery (since I've never removed the battery from my current phone so it's not like I'd be missing anything).
I'm starting to be in the market for something to replace my aging phone, and really don't want to buy a carrier locked phone, especially since I don't want a data plan and carriers won't give you those phones without one. My phone needs to text and make calls, and use wifi from time to time.
The existence of (somewhat more) affordable phones not tied to a carrier sounds appealing.
For some of us, those missing features aren't that big of a deal. And since I have no intention of ever using my phone with a tap-to-pay, the absence of NFC is a bonus.
Will this phone cover the wishlist of everybody? Of course not. Will it suffice for a lot of people? Absolutely.
It requires someone to have access, but not necessarily you.
Say I know every Tuesday you need to transfer data to your air gapped computers. Now, assume the source of that data is somehow less secure and I can target that. Now, the person who is supposed to be in there is the only one who ever is, and unknowingly transfers the appropriate code to get into your systems.
See, the thing about security is that it's only as strong as the weakest link. If there is ever any data transfer in or out of your secure system, that becomes the weak link.
With some cleverness and patience, it is entirely possible this can be done entirely remotely, with all of the physical access being done by trusted people. And then your assertion about needing physical access becomes provably false.
Assuming your air-gapped machine periodically needs new inputs, and assuming you don't have people type that in from paper copy... then however you get stuff on or off that computer is the thing you target.
Sure, the guys with guns and video cameras won't let me into your secure room. But they do let someone in. And that someone can be made to be unwittingly do your dirty work.
I don't think my scenario is even remotely implausible. If you have enough motivation, patience, and resources, you can accomplish an awful lot when it comes to bypassing security. And most nation states have all of those things, and lots of people actively working on it.
But so what? If you can get someone inside the secure area where the super secret machines are, and you can put a small amount of malware on them, you can gain access to them.
Yes, you won't do this with a remote exploit, but if you can subvert one person you can get into stuff.
So, like in Ocean's 11 where the guy dressed as the technician hooks into the system and nobody knows it, this is a way in which the bad guys can get your stuff.
And if you know that air gapped computers likely rely on some form of portable media on some form of regular schedule, and you can target that remotely, you really don't need a willing participant on the other end. The portable media might do the job for you without anybody even knowing about it.
If I can compromise your top secret computers by figuring out the weak link of getting this stuff onto them, then from an espionage sense of the word, I'm inside 'yer stuff and I can has cheeseburger.
It sure as hell is hacking by any meaningful sense of the word.
To many of us, 'hack' absolutely includes a clever new way of gaining access to something by exploiting something something unexpected. Doing it over an air gap is pretty unexpected since traditionally we say computers are secure if they're not connected to a network and inside a locked room. With this, not so much.
Once you have the technique, the social engineering or other cheating to get the access is something pretty much well covered by the rest of the espionage playbook. Hell, it's pretty well covered in books and movies.
LOL... who the hell still has access to usenet feeds?
I mean, sure, who doesn't have fond memories of concatenating files and then uudecoding them to discover what you'd downloaded? Or the horror of discovering the horse porn.
But the last time I saw anything with access to the usenet feeds was a long time ago. I'm sure they exist, but would most people even have access to them any more?
I can honestly say I've seen some of the sickest stuff of my life on usenet. And I can also say I've not seen usenet in around a decade.
If you can't use a piece of technology out of the box before you get prompted for a credit card, you pretty much have to assume the rest of the experience will be even worse.
Things which go straight to the "give us your credit card" are generally not to be trusted, and is a sign it's going to be asking for money pretty much constantly.
If you bought a TV, and the first thing it did was prompt for your credit card, would you actually do that?
You are free to piss away your money on any damned thing you want to.
But, in general, I'd say it's a fair observation that Kick Starter mostly serves to fund people who have an idea, and nothing else... who may or may not reach their goals, and who will probably still go under, leaving all of your stuff in the hands of an entity you wouldn't have started a business relationship with.
From the stories we see, it really has the hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme as a bunch of guys play the get-rich-quick game by pretending they have a business plan.
I've never heard of either Razer or Ouya, but the news stories I've seen over the last few years says I'd never pay into a Kick Starter.
Who you give your money to is your damned business.
It's like PT Barnum said, there's a sucker born every minute.
The cops in this case were just doing their job, as prescribed by city of Hammond. Would you find a police force which selectively disobeys orders more to your taste?
Would I expect a police force to know and understand the law and that they are not allowed to do things which go against the law just because the fucking mayor says so?
Yes, I absolutely would.
If police are going to start following orders to enforce things which aren't illegal, then we're really fucked. Because it means they have become unthinking puppets.
So, what is the law which says someone who is wanted for a crime is not allowed to appear remotely or that the event can be shut down? If it is the whim of the mayor, the mayor is an idiot and has no authority.
If there is an actual law being broken, then there is no problem.
But increasingly it seems the police neither know nor care what the law says. In which case they have no business being police.
Honestly, these days the law seems to be "whatever the fuck the police say it is until a court tells them otherwise".
They don't care what is legal. They don't care what is Constitutional. They seem to believe they have limitless magical powers unconstrained by reality.
My only conclusion it is time to stop treating the cops as the ones who know and enforce the law. The cops enforce the law selectively, incorrectly, or in ways they know to be blatantly false.
From demanding you stop recording them or delete images, to charging you with resisting arrest when you weren't being arrested in the first place... the police seem to neither know nor care what the fucking law says.
Which means all of them need to be wearing body cameras at all times, and much more aggressively charged when they break the law. Enough with this the police are above the law and can make it up as they go.
Start putting more of them in prison with the rest of the crooks, and maybe we'll see change.
But the last decade or so has pretty much demonstrated they simply do not adhere to the law. Either by committing perjury with "parallel construction" , or by hiding unconstitutional wiretaps with devices they won't admit to using... the trend has been for police to stop giving a damn about the law.
Which means it's time we stopped giving them the benefit of the doubt of being honest players. Increasingly, they're anything but.
And since it's impossible to separate the good from the bad, and they won't do it themselves, it's time to treat them as if they all have a higher burden of proof for their actions.
None of this "because we said so shit", because that usually gets proven false when the video comes out.
Look, I simply do not trust Microsoft to force updates on their timetable and without user consent.
They've had far too many incidents of demonstrating they absolutely suck at doing it, and there's far too many configurations of machines for this to work without leaving a wake of crap behind it.
Sorry, but this is just more Microsoft thinking they know what is best, being assholes about, and being fucking wrong about it.
If Microsoft is going with a model of "it's our computer and we'll break it if we want to" they can fuck off and watch people get away from Windows.
If I have to simply block Microsoft at the firewall level and deal with a less secure OS, I'd rather do that than put up with the bullshit of Microsoft incompetently deciding I must take their updates so I can be their fucking beta testers.
Every thing about the way Microsoft is doing this screams "assholes who incorrectly think we should trust them to have final control over our computers.
Listen... we don't care about your creationist drivel or your superstitions, we believe in reality around here.
Why don't look a the universe as it exists, and realize that if your god actually exists, he's a fuck of a lot more sophisticated and expansive than you drooling morons who need to believe the Earth is young.
The Earth is old. The solar system is old. The universe is massive, old beyond imagining, vast beyond comprehension, and utterly amazing beyond belief. You have elements in your body which could only come into existence in stars which have already died, before our own sun existed, before the Earth existed, and long long long before your damned 50,000 years.
The need to squish reality into matching the literal interpretation of your superstitions is your problem, because your wee-little evolved-from-monkey brain refuses to see the world as it is, and insist on some trite explanation whipped up in a way suitable to explain to bronze age people... and borrowed from what you'd call heathens and pagans from well before that.
Any god which can create the vast and awesome universe we live in would be rolling his eyes at your need to deny physical reality to fit your fairy tales.
But the specific need to take the bible as a literal, and accurate representation of reality instead a means of explaining stuff to primitive people is pathetic.
You do god a disservice by treating him as being as as small and tiny as your world view. Because you're obsessed with denying reality, instead of seeing it.
There is no "science" in this denial of fossils, evolution or any of this... this is nothing but use stupid tricks to deny reality to match your fables, instead of realizing your fables are metaphor.
Any god who wanted people to do that would have to be a moron. And if he doesn't like it, he can take it up with me himself.
But stop pretending to use science to defend creationism. Because that's just sophistry to support your own delusional take on reality.
And yet any time someone suggestes stronger regulation the entire IT community comes out up in arms and shouts "free market".
No, the CEOs say that. The rich greedy bastard maximizing executive compensation say that.
The "entire" IT community sure as hell doesn't say that. Many many people have figured out the free market is a fucking fairy tale.
The IT community is not defined by the rich assholes who get heard more often. And I'm sorry, but listening to rich assholes is the fucking problem -- because what they're telling us a self-serving lie.
How is it still legal for these companies to advertise and sell a whole product but only deliver part of it?
Because they have all the power, can simply change the fucking terms of service as they see fit, and have the fucking politicians in their pockets to ensure they can get away with it.
Honestly, are you expecting a fair situation in which the consumer actually gets input on this shit?
You might as well ask a Ferengi for favorable financing terms. If he gives them to you, they're not favorable.
Why do we keep acting like we're surprised by any of this crap? Unless people start changing laws to shift the balance away from corporations, this is all you'll ever get.
Or, more accurately, none of which is relevant to how much the manufacturers will charge.
See, in theory, over time the cost of a good goes down. In practice, companies keep adding doo-dads and wanting to amortize their development costs, so the amount they charge goes up even when the economies make it cheaper to make.
There isn't a CEO on the planet who would allow the costs to go down over time, because it's bad for business.
So as long as we worship the stock market and quarterly revenues so we can calculate executive bonuses... the cost of no consumer good will ever go down, because the people selling it will actively just find new ways to justify raising the price.
Corporate greed and the unsustainable economics of the market is the reality, not the belief in economics that prices go down over time.
It depends on *how* you listen... if you're singing along and dancing, well, it's probably not helping you any.
But, like most people, if you have it on in the background and it's masking other stuff and/or you're using it to keep you focused, it's probably helping, just like you said.
I was always a code with headphones kind of guy, and to this day there's a lot of tasks I'd rather be doing with some music to give me an added push.
But in this case, if your phone is beeping to tell you something shiny has happened, then I have seen a LOT of people who will not be able to ignore that for even a few seconds. For some people, the moment the phone makes a sound they're grabbing for it. It's almost Pavlovian, and pretty much means you'll get derailed almost instantly.
In fact, when I see most people with cell phones it's almost like "squirrel!" and then they're completely derailed to find out what happened. I can totally see that happening in the middle of studying derailing you from taking stuff in.
No matter HPs motivation for this... the shitty and sorry state of security of consumer electronics is pretty well documented. Hell, we see stories here at least weekly about it.
I assume pretty much every device which wants to connect to the internet is full of absolutely gaping security holes, because companies don't care, and consumers want easy.
My default position is these smartwatches are full of security holes. And smart TVs. And the internet of things.
Because every damned vendor seems to either do a shit job of security, or they don't do it at all.
But EM radiation pretty much travels at the speed of light.
As there is zero EM radiation emitted by humans which will have traveled 1000 light years, no matter how sensitive your sensor is, it simply cannot measure signals which haven't traveled that far.
So when we just now discover something which is 1000 light years away, what we are seeing is 1000 year old light, and conversely, what they can see/hear from us is also 1000 years delayed.
Around 1000 years after humans started producing EM radiation this planet might start receiving the earliest radio signals. But humans have not been transmitting EM radiation for anywhere near 1000 years.
There is NO amount of sensitivity of a detector which can have received EM radiation 1000 light years away from us, because we haven't been creating it for that long. That would involve time travel.
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly, because I don't use those features, and don't care about them.
For the overwhelming majority of the time, my phone is used minimally except for calls and texts. I'm not using it for conference calls and emails .. that's the last thing I want.
And, like my tablet, I only use internet features when I'm near wifi. I usually find what I need before I travel and keep it available offline.
Not all of us care about being constantly connected to the intertubes. I don't need to access the internet while I'm in the grocery store, and I don't care to have my phone telling advertisers everywhere I go.
I'm not a masochist, I'm just old enough to view the internet as something which I don't need constant access to, because it used to involve phones and modems.
Hell, when I download a game to my tablet, the first thing I do is turn off wifi and run the game ... if it bitches that it wants access to the internet, I delete it.
You would be amazed at how many people do not feel the need to be constantly checking their email and other stuff online.
You use it how you want to, and I'll do the same. For me, I don't see any pressing need in having an internet connected device at all times.
So what?
Ever hear of Stuxnet? Do you know it was largely spread with infected USB drives?
It's not like there has never been a situation in which someone has gotten malware installed through this kind of thing. And once you know you have the exploit, you can start figuring out how to get it there.
Security tends to fail when humans are involved, because sooner or later someone messes up.
History has told us repeatedly that this is achievable without ever actually needing to have physical access yourself, you let the target do that for you.
I figure by the time you have a fairly large touch screen an physical keyboard is just bulk ... and can probably be done with Bluetooth anyway.
I've actually found the Google keyboard which lets you type by dragging your finger over a virtual keyboard is almost as fast as a real keyboard
Or they're trying to keep costs down and cover "most" of the market instead of all of it.
Or, conversely, if your machine never has any data which comes in or out, then you somehow have created a perfect closed system which has all the information it ever needs and can never be updated.
In which case it's probably useless.
Air gapped doesn't mean you never periodically put in new data or extract results, it means you don't have it connected to anything.
If you never add new data, and you never extract any, your computer is probably doing a really damned boring task which probably doesn't need to be air gapped in the first place.
If you put a computer in a secure room, and hermetically seal it so you can never do anything with it, you might as well turn it off while you're at it. If you're doing something so mundane as to know it will never ever need updating, then print out everything it can ever tell you and put it in a damned book.
Because it will never ever tell you anything you don't already know.
Well, 64GB of internal storage is a fair bit, but yes, it's cheap to add one ... I don't give a damn about Wireless charging ... the speakers I need enough to use it as a speakerphone, so I'm not sure ... I actively don't want any fscking NFC ... I have dedicated cameras for real work, and I'm meh about the battery (since I've never removed the battery from my current phone so it's not like I'd be missing anything).
I'm starting to be in the market for something to replace my aging phone, and really don't want to buy a carrier locked phone, especially since I don't want a data plan and carriers won't give you those phones without one. My phone needs to text and make calls, and use wifi from time to time.
The existence of (somewhat more) affordable phones not tied to a carrier sounds appealing.
For some of us, those missing features aren't that big of a deal. And since I have no intention of ever using my phone with a tap-to-pay, the absence of NFC is a bonus.
Will this phone cover the wishlist of everybody? Of course not. Will it suffice for a lot of people? Absolutely.
It requires someone to have access, but not necessarily you.
Say I know every Tuesday you need to transfer data to your air gapped computers. Now, assume the source of that data is somehow less secure and I can target that. Now, the person who is supposed to be in there is the only one who ever is, and unknowingly transfers the appropriate code to get into your systems.
See, the thing about security is that it's only as strong as the weakest link. If there is ever any data transfer in or out of your secure system, that becomes the weak link.
With some cleverness and patience, it is entirely possible this can be done entirely remotely, with all of the physical access being done by trusted people. And then your assertion about needing physical access becomes provably false.
Assuming your air-gapped machine periodically needs new inputs, and assuming you don't have people type that in from paper copy ... then however you get stuff on or off that computer is the thing you target.
Sure, the guys with guns and video cameras won't let me into your secure room. But they do let someone in. And that someone can be made to be unwittingly do your dirty work.
I don't think my scenario is even remotely implausible. If you have enough motivation, patience, and resources, you can accomplish an awful lot when it comes to bypassing security. And most nation states have all of those things, and lots of people actively working on it.
But so what? If you can get someone inside the secure area where the super secret machines are, and you can put a small amount of malware on them, you can gain access to them.
Yes, you won't do this with a remote exploit, but if you can subvert one person you can get into stuff.
So, like in Ocean's 11 where the guy dressed as the technician hooks into the system and nobody knows it, this is a way in which the bad guys can get your stuff.
And if you know that air gapped computers likely rely on some form of portable media on some form of regular schedule, and you can target that remotely, you really don't need a willing participant on the other end. The portable media might do the job for you without anybody even knowing about it.
If I can compromise your top secret computers by figuring out the weak link of getting this stuff onto them, then from an espionage sense of the word, I'm inside 'yer stuff and I can has cheeseburger.
It sure as hell is hacking by any meaningful sense of the word.
To many of us, 'hack' absolutely includes a clever new way of gaining access to something by exploiting something something unexpected. Doing it over an air gap is pretty unexpected since traditionally we say computers are secure if they're not connected to a network and inside a locked room. With this, not so much.
Once you have the technique, the social engineering or other cheating to get the access is something pretty much well covered by the rest of the espionage playbook. Hell, it's pretty well covered in books and movies.
Just be sure to check their ID and get written consent, or you'll be in a whole world of hurt.
LOL ... who the hell still has access to usenet feeds?
I mean, sure, who doesn't have fond memories of concatenating files and then uudecoding them to discover what you'd downloaded? Or the horror of discovering the horse porn.
But the last time I saw anything with access to the usenet feeds was a long time ago. I'm sure they exist, but would most people even have access to them any more?
I can honestly say I've seen some of the sickest stuff of my life on usenet. And I can also say I've not seen usenet in around a decade.
If you can't use a piece of technology out of the box before you get prompted for a credit card, you pretty much have to assume the rest of the experience will be even worse.
Things which go straight to the "give us your credit card" are generally not to be trusted, and is a sign it's going to be asking for money pretty much constantly.
If you bought a TV, and the first thing it did was prompt for your credit card, would you actually do that?
You are free to piss away your money on any damned thing you want to.
But, in general, I'd say it's a fair observation that Kick Starter mostly serves to fund people who have an idea, and nothing else ... who may or may not reach their goals, and who will probably still go under, leaving all of your stuff in the hands of an entity you wouldn't have started a business relationship with.
From the stories we see, it really has the hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme as a bunch of guys play the get-rich-quick game by pretending they have a business plan.
I've never heard of either Razer or Ouya, but the news stories I've seen over the last few years says I'd never pay into a Kick Starter.
Who you give your money to is your damned business.
It's like PT Barnum said, there's a sucker born every minute.
Are you aware of the meaning of Prior Restraint, and why you cannot prevent speech just because you dislike the person making it?
Any attempt to block this man from appearing must not simply be about stopping him from speaking, and cannot run afoul of prior restraint.
What they certainly can't do is just make shit up as they go and decide through some vague legal reasoning they have the authority to prevent this.
So, are you stupid on purpose?
Because the GP is 100% correct. There is no legal basis to prevent him from appearing remotely, and the city has no leg to stand on here.
Would I expect a police force to know and understand the law and that they are not allowed to do things which go against the law just because the fucking mayor says so?
Yes, I absolutely would.
If police are going to start following orders to enforce things which aren't illegal, then we're really fucked. Because it means they have become unthinking puppets.
So, what is the law which says someone who is wanted for a crime is not allowed to appear remotely or that the event can be shut down? If it is the whim of the mayor, the mayor is an idiot and has no authority.
If there is an actual law being broken, then there is no problem.
But increasingly it seems the police neither know nor care what the law says. In which case they have no business being police.
Honestly, these days the law seems to be "whatever the fuck the police say it is until a court tells them otherwise".
They don't care what is legal. They don't care what is Constitutional. They seem to believe they have limitless magical powers unconstrained by reality.
My only conclusion it is time to stop treating the cops as the ones who know and enforce the law. The cops enforce the law selectively, incorrectly, or in ways they know to be blatantly false.
From demanding you stop recording them or delete images, to charging you with resisting arrest when you weren't being arrested in the first place ... the police seem to neither know nor care what the fucking law says.
Which means all of them need to be wearing body cameras at all times, and much more aggressively charged when they break the law. Enough with this the police are above the law and can make it up as they go.
Start putting more of them in prison with the rest of the crooks, and maybe we'll see change.
But the last decade or so has pretty much demonstrated they simply do not adhere to the law. Either by committing perjury with "parallel construction" , or by hiding unconstitutional wiretaps with devices they won't admit to using ... the trend has been for police to stop giving a damn about the law.
Which means it's time we stopped giving them the benefit of the doubt of being honest players. Increasingly, they're anything but.
And since it's impossible to separate the good from the bad, and they won't do it themselves, it's time to treat them as if they all have a higher burden of proof for their actions.
None of this "because we said so shit", because that usually gets proven false when the video comes out.
Look, I simply do not trust Microsoft to force updates on their timetable and without user consent.
They've had far too many incidents of demonstrating they absolutely suck at doing it, and there's far too many configurations of machines for this to work without leaving a wake of crap behind it.
Sorry, but this is just more Microsoft thinking they know what is best, being assholes about, and being fucking wrong about it.
If Microsoft is going with a model of "it's our computer and we'll break it if we want to" they can fuck off and watch people get away from Windows.
If I have to simply block Microsoft at the firewall level and deal with a less secure OS, I'd rather do that than put up with the bullshit of Microsoft incompetently deciding I must take their updates so I can be their fucking beta testers.
Every thing about the way Microsoft is doing this screams "assholes who incorrectly think we should trust them to have final control over our computers.
Not fucking happening.
Listen ... we don't care about your creationist drivel or your superstitions, we believe in reality around here.
Why don't look a the universe as it exists, and realize that if your god actually exists, he's a fuck of a lot more sophisticated and expansive than you drooling morons who need to believe the Earth is young.
The Earth is old. The solar system is old. The universe is massive, old beyond imagining, vast beyond comprehension, and utterly amazing beyond belief. You have elements in your body which could only come into existence in stars which have already died, before our own sun existed, before the Earth existed, and long long long before your damned 50,000 years.
The need to squish reality into matching the literal interpretation of your superstitions is your problem, because your wee-little evolved-from-monkey brain refuses to see the world as it is, and insist on some trite explanation whipped up in a way suitable to explain to bronze age people ... and borrowed from what you'd call heathens and pagans from well before that.
Any god which can create the vast and awesome universe we live in would be rolling his eyes at your need to deny physical reality to fit your fairy tales.
But the specific need to take the bible as a literal, and accurate representation of reality instead a means of explaining stuff to primitive people is pathetic.
You do god a disservice by treating him as being as as small and tiny as your world view. Because you're obsessed with denying reality, instead of seeing it.
There is no "science" in this denial of fossils, evolution or any of this ... this is nothing but use stupid tricks to deny reality to match your fables, instead of realizing your fables are metaphor.
Any god who wanted people to do that would have to be a moron. And if he doesn't like it, he can take it up with me himself.
But stop pretending to use science to defend creationism. Because that's just sophistry to support your own delusional take on reality.
No, the CEOs say that. The rich greedy bastard maximizing executive compensation say that.
The "entire" IT community sure as hell doesn't say that. Many many people have figured out the free market is a fucking fairy tale.
The IT community is not defined by the rich assholes who get heard more often. And I'm sorry, but listening to rich assholes is the fucking problem -- because what they're telling us a self-serving lie.
There is no damned free market.
Because they have all the power, can simply change the fucking terms of service as they see fit, and have the fucking politicians in their pockets to ensure they can get away with it.
Honestly, are you expecting a fair situation in which the consumer actually gets input on this shit?
You might as well ask a Ferengi for favorable financing terms. If he gives them to you, they're not favorable.
Why do we keep acting like we're surprised by any of this crap? Unless people start changing laws to shift the balance away from corporations, this is all you'll ever get.
You provide a link to something which has a banner for free-market.com.
As there is no fucking such thing as a free market, never has been, and never can be .. I simply don't care.
The fucking free market is a lie, which was my point.
None of which is relevant to cost.
Or, more accurately, none of which is relevant to how much the manufacturers will charge.
See, in theory, over time the cost of a good goes down. In practice, companies keep adding doo-dads and wanting to amortize their development costs, so the amount they charge goes up even when the economies make it cheaper to make.
There isn't a CEO on the planet who would allow the costs to go down over time, because it's bad for business.
So as long as we worship the stock market and quarterly revenues so we can calculate executive bonuses ... the cost of no consumer good will ever go down, because the people selling it will actively just find new ways to justify raising the price.
Corporate greed and the unsustainable economics of the market is the reality, not the belief in economics that prices go down over time.
Uninstall Flash and get on with your life.
This solves all instances.
It depends on *how* you listen ... if you're singing along and dancing, well, it's probably not helping you any.
But, like most people, if you have it on in the background and it's masking other stuff and/or you're using it to keep you focused, it's probably helping, just like you said.
I was always a code with headphones kind of guy, and to this day there's a lot of tasks I'd rather be doing with some music to give me an added push.
But in this case, if your phone is beeping to tell you something shiny has happened, then I have seen a LOT of people who will not be able to ignore that for even a few seconds. For some people, the moment the phone makes a sound they're grabbing for it. It's almost Pavlovian, and pretty much means you'll get derailed almost instantly.
In fact, when I see most people with cell phones it's almost like "squirrel!" and then they're completely derailed to find out what happened. I can totally see that happening in the middle of studying derailing you from taking stuff in.
No matter HPs motivation for this ... the shitty and sorry state of security of consumer electronics is pretty well documented. Hell, we see stories here at least weekly about it.
I assume pretty much every device which wants to connect to the internet is full of absolutely gaping security holes, because companies don't care, and consumers want easy.
My default position is these smartwatches are full of security holes. And smart TVs. And the internet of things.
Because every damned vendor seems to either do a shit job of security, or they don't do it at all.
Dude ... this is Slashdot ... if you don't expect someone to correct that, joke or not, you're pretty clueless.
News for Nerds, the pedantry comes for free.
Ummm ... yes, SETI does look for EM radiation.
But EM radiation pretty much travels at the speed of light.
As there is zero EM radiation emitted by humans which will have traveled 1000 light years, no matter how sensitive your sensor is, it simply cannot measure signals which haven't traveled that far.
So when we just now discover something which is 1000 light years away, what we are seeing is 1000 year old light, and conversely, what they can see/hear from us is also 1000 years delayed.
Around 1000 years after humans started producing EM radiation this planet might start receiving the earliest radio signals. But humans have not been transmitting EM radiation for anywhere near 1000 years.
There is NO amount of sensitivity of a detector which can have received EM radiation 1000 light years away from us, because we haven't been creating it for that long. That would involve time travel.
You know, because physics.