LOL, I fear Microsoft will forever be best summarized with the "Hi, I'm a PC/I'm a Mac" commercials where Microsoft is in a shirt and tie and wants to run a spreadsheet. Always with the fscking spreadsheet. Hell, on my Windows machine I don't even have software for spreadsheets. Because I don't ever use spreadsheets. Or PowerPoint. At least no on my personal desktop.
I'm not sure Microsoft would know what the hell to do with "cool cachet".
Starting with the non-spreadsheet tools Apple introduced, Microsoft has never successfully implemented other things, and many of their "cool" things they bought.
So while Apple was creating things like iMovie and Facetime, and Google was giving us tablets with cool interfaces and a tight integration with all of their services... Microsoft offers us appified versions of Office, and Bing.
Microsoft seems doomed to be constantly trying to get us access to Exchange and Office, even if many of us have no need for it.
In fact, I'm not sure there's a single thing in Windows 8.1 which I've said "wow, that's kind of neat". I've had to spend more time getting rid of the stuff they think is cool and innovative than admiring it.
I'll go one further... I honestly don't think I can name a single innovation in either desktop computing or mobile computing in the last decade which I can either attribute to Microsoft or that I use.
For home use, Windows has become a platform to run other people's cool software.
Most users are lazy, indifferent, or unaware that they can change their search engine.
So, by the time most consumers get this in their hands, unless they know someone who is crusading against Bing, that's probably what it will always be.
The point is when the users get it, Bing will be the default, and through simple inertia/indifference, will likely stay that way.
Exactly what did you think a "free market" actually is?
A complete fucking lie.
There never has been, and there never will be a free market. It simply can't exist.
I think when the rules of your "free market" are open for sale to the highest bidder, what you have is a corrupt system which starts with the premise that what is good for corporations is good for the country, but ends up exactly where we are... a corrupt oligarchy.
I think entities will always lie, cheat, and steal to the extent they can get away with, and cutting regulations on them in an asinine ideological position which has repeatedly been proven false.
I think all the bullshit lies we've been fed over the last 3 decades about how cutting corporate taxes would benefit us all, despite zero evidence to support that claim, is such a giant scam it isn't funny.
I think extending copyright terms for douchebag corporations like Di$ney has more or less allowed them to hoodwink us to maximize their profits but generally fuck over everybody else.
I think the claim H1Bs is to cover is a skill shortage is a complete lie.
I think people who claim the free market exists, and that it is some perfect ideal are drooling idiots who lack proof.
So, jack up the taxes on corporations, put copyright back to where it was before Di$ney bought an extension, stop pretending that the profits of a corporation in any way help the rest of us, and stop allowing lawmakers to pass laws which hands to keys to the kingdom to corporate assholes who give us nothing in return.
It's time we stopped pretending that what is good for corporations has direct benefit to the rest of us. Because that's been provably false for a long time.
Meh, whatever... go cram your high horse up your ass.
I'm not saying everybody should do it, or that I think it's right.
I am saying human nature is generally such that if everybody else is doing it, and you might not fare as well by not doing it, you'll probably find yourself doing it or suffering for not having done so.
The world is a cruel place, and doesn't always reward good behavior. When you see bad behavior being rewarded around you , you say fuck it and do the same.
But, by all means, continue to believe that in a similar situation with a different upbringing and cultural context you'd do better -- just remember that being a smug ass doesn't make that true.
When everything around you is systematically corrupt, you might find your ability to moralize is lessened.
How much do you want this is at the request of America so that a) their security spying can access everything, and b) so that companies like Microsoft can't be told what they can do.
I'm so sick and tired of government officials signing away our rights under the table.
It should be a criminal offense to have secret treaties which impact our rights.
This is to benefit US spying interests, and corporations. Neither of which is a sensible reason to sign away our fucking rights.
You know, when your parent society doesn't value honesty, and everybody around you is cheating... you're a fool to think there's any value in being that one guy who says "gee, I should be honest here".
In situations in which it's a liability to be honest, only suckers are honest.
And in governments who have spend decades saying "there is no higher power than the state", if the state is rampantly corrupt, "integrity" is a relative term.
Give it a few more years, and you'll discover that integrity in America is a much more malleable concept than you realize -- in fact, it's probably already there.
The mentality of "it's OK as long as I don't get caught" isn't a new thing to humanity.
I think the problem isn't so much a lack of skills, but instead grossly overcharging for those 'skills'
BULLSHIT!!!
This is about people who worship "the free market" saying "fuck it, if we pay these politicians we can introduce externalities to change the market in our favor we can do this cheaper".
This whole globalization crap is a race to the bottom where corporations exert political influence to basically decide they don't like the costs the market has decided on, and instead we'll get someone from a third world to do it for a fraction of the cost.
This doesn't benefit anybody but the fucking corporations, and it's a terrible idea.
That companies are so blatantly ignoring that H1Bs are intended to be used to cover skill shortages, not to drive down wages is appalling.
This has nothing to do with people grossly overcharging for skills, or competition, or even the fucking free market.
This is corporate interests manipulating the "free" market on their own terms to change the playing field in their favor. And it's about corrupt asshole politicians who are letting them do it.
This is the exact fucking opposite of a free market. This is corporate welfare at the expense of societies, bought and paid for through lobbying creating global oligarchies to make sure everybody is in a race for the bottom.
Rules framed in 2011 around Indiaâ(TM)s Information Technology Act allow the government to order intermediaries like network service providers to remove objectionable content, including material that is seen by officials as threatening the integrity, defense, security or sovereignty of the country.
So, ignoring that the Indian government can be fairly arbitrary and capricious... can you sue Facebook in a US court to demand that Facebook potentially goes against the law in India?
Because I'm pretty sure a US court has no legal jurisdiction to say a damned thing about WTF Facebook does in India.
Sorry, but once Blackberry helped get the access to communications, this precedent was set. And I'm fairly sure there's not a damned thing the US can do about it.
I'm not saying the banning of the Sikh pages makes any sense. I just don't think there is any jurisdiction here.
Wherever you plan on having major collections of electronics, put at least one outlet on a dedicated circuit so everything is isolated.
My computers and my stereo each have one, and it prevents those annoying things like having your UPS come on when your laser printer starts up. They're also each next to a non-dedicated circuit for overflow for less sensitive things.
Enough plugs, and some dedicated circuits make like a LOT easier. When I did my basement we have a plug every 6 feet on the wall.
Cat6 network cables everywhere, running to your central cabling hub, possibly 2 per room. Cable TV outlets liberally sprinkled around. Speaker wires to multiple locations for your stereo with wall plugs for speakers. They make in-wall HDMI plates to keep your wires tidy. A couple of them newfangled wall plugs with built in USB charging ports. A heat pump which does both heating and cooling. Sound proofing for wherever your TV will go. More plugs than you think you need, and a larger electrical panel than suggested to expand if you need to. LED pot lights and lots of dimmers. Under-cabinet lighting in your kitchen.
Basically anything which is hard to put in later. Infrastructure which is there is much more flexible down the road.
And, depending on your climate.. if you have duct work, make sure your damned seams are taped/seals so you're not losing all that heat/AC out gaps. There's nothing worse than realizing the air isn't getting where it needs to.
I would argue that a failure to catch an un-enumerated exception is neither correctness, nor keeping it running.
However, I've heard the argument about the elegance and beauty of letting it crash because it's a real defect which should be identified... I just disagree that an ungraceful failure is the way to do it.
I hope the people writing self-driving cars don't have the idiotic mindset that if they haven't enumerated the error it should be allowed to fail spectacularly.
The reality is, in the real world when software doesn't fail gracefully, some smug idiot of a developer who said you shouldn't catch things you didn't anticipate isn't there to clean up his mess. So his damned "correctness" becomes an aesthetic thing which is useless.
That's just defective by design, because either your design is 100% perfect and infallible, or it's pretty and elegant but is a crash waiting to happen.
Reality seldom conforms to the pre-planned expectations of the guys who built the product.
"Correctness" isn't correct if it can't account for incomplete correctness. It's lazy and ideological.
Of the zillions of places where Microsoft parses URLs, across all their platforms and products, you can completely hose the install of something with 8 characters.
One wonders if there are any other places which will keel over and die by simply putting that in.
The mind reels with incredulity and glee.
Shadenfreude, it's not just for breakfast any more!!
That such problems as basic as incorrectly typed URLs could break Skype is beyond understanding.
I don't think it's beyond understanding. Not even a little.
Microsoft has always been pioneers of the "let's try to embed 'smarts' in stuff to make it cooler and friendlier to use" kind of thing.
Autorun on media, for instance has caused a lot of problems with things like viruses and rootkits.
Hell, Microsoft pioneered the technology which meant you could get a virus without opening the attachment of an email -- and up until then people had been saying "no, you can't get a virus simply from clicking on the email unless you run the attachment". Then Microsoft went straight to running the attachment and proved them wrong.
Microsoft tries so hard to coat the world in eye candy and do things for the user that they often go straight to the "well, you clearly want me to run that".
So in this case it probably went "ZOMG, teh URL" and jumped to running some code.
I have found over the years Microsoft's zeal to have dynamic, flashy content often means they create things which make for terrible robustness.
Like their widgets and live desktop stuff they've now had to deprecate on no less than three different platforms that I'm aware of because it was a giant security hole.
They put in a feature which says "wow, we'll just run this stuff because it's awesome", only to run smack into the wall of "but it's also dangerous".
You know, it probably still shows up in a lot of searches.
There's quite possibly people out there who have known it long enough that they still trust it.
If you're following this stuff, you know about it. But it's surprising how long it can take from when a company starts being shady and when everybody stops trusting them.
From the sounds of it, Sourceforge will be able to coast on their reputation for some time before they go away, if at all.
And what's worse is FAR too many politicians are willing to follow along with them and say "well, as long as you're doing it for profit that's OK".
It really is time to stop pretending that anything corporations do must be good, and start putting real checks and balances on what they can do to us and our information.
But, of course, since they all give massive amounts of money to the politicians, and many of the politicians are also greedy bastards who have huge stakes in large corporations, they're never going to do that.
So the asshole company who acts like a bank except where there are regulations they ignore, is going to be the asshole company who gives itself and its asshole affiliates the right to call or spam you because they say so?
I'm sorry, but what the hell are these clowns thinking?
The sheer arrogance of that is mind boggling. And this whole shit of "see, we have terms of service, we can do anything we want" is just crap.
Tell you what, PayPal, our terms of service say we can tar and feather you before the castration and lynching.
Once again, I am reminded of the many reasons why I would never deal with this company. A bunch of shady, self-entitled weasels.
So, in other words, these models were specifically made for and distributed by an ISP, and were not off-the-shelf models. The backdoors were there for the ISP managers.
Well, I trust my ISPs router... well, not at all, actually.
Because I assume my ISP is either incompetent or dishonest, I don't really care which, I simply don't trust them. And I sure as fuck don't trust them with access to my actual network. I want a layer of security between me and their shit, because I assume their stuff is trivially hacked.
My wife and I each have our offices set up where our own router is getting DHCP from the ISPs router, and then firewalling everything from it. We each have our own locked down wifi, and entirely separate networks. I'm pondering a third router to provide the guest wifi.
Other than disabling the ISPs wifi and using our own, I wouldn't even know the SSID or the password for the ISPs crap. I assume they haven't turned it on without asking, but I never check -- come to think of it, I'd have to find out how.
My parents and my in-laws have routers we've bought them to sit behind the crap the ISP provides. Because I know for a fact that in both cases the ISP provides a router with default wifi SSID and passwords which are published in the docs they give you.
Because it's printed in the "how to" for every damned subscriber, and you can't change it, you can pretty much imagine that if you find an SSID of the right name you can connect to it, and probably have management access to it.
For 99% of network users out there, these vulnerabilities are of no practical concern.
But the problem is so many households trust that the wide open, back doored, well known remote-admin credentialed, shitty routers they've been provided with give them any form of security.
Which means for the overwhelming majority of home users who aren't tech savvy and paranoid, these vulnerabilities are absolutely of practical concern... because their PCs are directly plugged into the ISPs router, or they're using wifi from the ISPs router.
I'm betting a lot of home users figure they have the router from the ISP, so they don't need anything else.
That these are ISP models doesn't diminish the number of people who could be impacted... it greatly magnifies it. Because most people who don't know better (and a few who do) connect their PC directly to the ISPs router.
Honestly, go talk to a random neighbor.. see if they have anything between them and their ISPs router. My best is they don't.
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LOL, I fear Microsoft will forever be best summarized with the "Hi, I'm a PC/I'm a Mac" commercials where Microsoft is in a shirt and tie and wants to run a spreadsheet. Always with the fscking spreadsheet. Hell, on my Windows machine I don't even have software for spreadsheets. Because I don't ever use spreadsheets. Or PowerPoint. At least no on my personal desktop.
I'm not sure Microsoft would know what the hell to do with "cool cachet".
Starting with the non-spreadsheet tools Apple introduced, Microsoft has never successfully implemented other things, and many of their "cool" things they bought.
So while Apple was creating things like iMovie and Facetime, and Google was giving us tablets with cool interfaces and a tight integration with all of their services ... Microsoft offers us appified versions of Office, and Bing.
Microsoft seems doomed to be constantly trying to get us access to Exchange and Office, even if many of us have no need for it.
In fact, I'm not sure there's a single thing in Windows 8.1 which I've said "wow, that's kind of neat". I've had to spend more time getting rid of the stuff they think is cool and innovative than admiring it.
I'll go one further ... I honestly don't think I can name a single innovation in either desktop computing or mobile computing in the last decade which I can either attribute to Microsoft or that I use.
For home use, Windows has become a platform to run other people's cool software.
But cool cachet? Don't make me laugh.
Most users are lazy, indifferent, or unaware that they can change their search engine.
So, by the time most consumers get this in their hands, unless they know someone who is crusading against Bing, that's probably what it will always be.
The point is when the users get it, Bing will be the default, and through simple inertia/indifference, will likely stay that way.
Sure ... but Google got their place in the market by putting out something people wanted.
Microsoft is coming to the party late, as usual, with their "me too" product.
I think for Microsoft to be saying they "expect" 1 billion devices by 2017 is going to prove to be way too damned optimistic.
Sure, this is the exact same thing as Google does with Android. But will anybody give a damn is the question.
A billion devices in two years is a LOT of devices.
Honestly, is this different from now? In politics in any country?
It seems like those are the things which get most attention.
A complete fucking lie.
There never has been, and there never will be a free market. It simply can't exist.
I think when the rules of your "free market" are open for sale to the highest bidder, what you have is a corrupt system which starts with the premise that what is good for corporations is good for the country, but ends up exactly where we are ... a corrupt oligarchy.
I think entities will always lie, cheat, and steal to the extent they can get away with, and cutting regulations on them in an asinine ideological position which has repeatedly been proven false.
I think all the bullshit lies we've been fed over the last 3 decades about how cutting corporate taxes would benefit us all, despite zero evidence to support that claim, is such a giant scam it isn't funny.
I think extending copyright terms for douchebag corporations like Di$ney has more or less allowed them to hoodwink us to maximize their profits but generally fuck over everybody else.
I think the claim H1Bs is to cover is a skill shortage is a complete lie.
I think people who claim the free market exists, and that it is some perfect ideal are drooling idiots who lack proof.
So, jack up the taxes on corporations, put copyright back to where it was before Di$ney bought an extension, stop pretending that the profits of a corporation in any way help the rest of us, and stop allowing lawmakers to pass laws which hands to keys to the kingdom to corporate assholes who give us nothing in return.
It's time we stopped pretending that what is good for corporations has direct benefit to the rest of us. Because that's been provably false for a long time.
Meh, whatever ... go cram your high horse up your ass.
I'm not saying everybody should do it, or that I think it's right.
I am saying human nature is generally such that if everybody else is doing it, and you might not fare as well by not doing it, you'll probably find yourself doing it or suffering for not having done so.
The world is a cruel place, and doesn't always reward good behavior. When you see bad behavior being rewarded around you , you say fuck it and do the same.
But, by all means, continue to believe that in a similar situation with a different upbringing and cultural context you'd do better -- just remember that being a smug ass doesn't make that true.
When everything around you is systematically corrupt, you might find your ability to moralize is lessened.
How much do you want this is at the request of America so that a) their security spying can access everything, and b) so that companies like Microsoft can't be told what they can do.
I'm so sick and tired of government officials signing away our rights under the table.
It should be a criminal offense to have secret treaties which impact our rights.
This is to benefit US spying interests, and corporations. Neither of which is a sensible reason to sign away our fucking rights.
You know, when your parent society doesn't value honesty, and everybody around you is cheating ... you're a fool to think there's any value in being that one guy who says "gee, I should be honest here".
In situations in which it's a liability to be honest, only suckers are honest.
And in governments who have spend decades saying "there is no higher power than the state", if the state is rampantly corrupt, "integrity" is a relative term.
Give it a few more years, and you'll discover that integrity in America is a much more malleable concept than you realize -- in fact, it's probably already there.
The mentality of "it's OK as long as I don't get caught" isn't a new thing to humanity.
BULLSHIT!!!
This is about people who worship "the free market" saying "fuck it, if we pay these politicians we can introduce externalities to change the market in our favor we can do this cheaper".
This whole globalization crap is a race to the bottom where corporations exert political influence to basically decide they don't like the costs the market has decided on, and instead we'll get someone from a third world to do it for a fraction of the cost.
This doesn't benefit anybody but the fucking corporations, and it's a terrible idea.
That companies are so blatantly ignoring that H1Bs are intended to be used to cover skill shortages, not to drive down wages is appalling.
This has nothing to do with people grossly overcharging for skills, or competition, or even the fucking free market.
This is corporate interests manipulating the "free" market on their own terms to change the playing field in their favor. And it's about corrupt asshole politicians who are letting them do it.
This is the exact fucking opposite of a free market. This is corporate welfare at the expense of societies, bought and paid for through lobbying creating global oligarchies to make sure everybody is in a race for the bottom.
Save the world, shoot an MBA.
So, ignoring that the Indian government can be fairly arbitrary and capricious ... can you sue Facebook in a US court to demand that Facebook potentially goes against the law in India?
Because I'm pretty sure a US court has no legal jurisdiction to say a damned thing about WTF Facebook does in India.
Sorry, but once Blackberry helped get the access to communications, this precedent was set. And I'm fairly sure there's not a damned thing the US can do about it.
I'm not saying the banning of the Sikh pages makes any sense. I just don't think there is any jurisdiction here.
LOL ... I'm pretty sure audiophiles aren't running speakers PC Mag lauded for "thumping, powerful Bluetooth audio" and portable design and which were available in pink.
Not even a little.
And yet, there it is ... that big, gleaming red button ... press it ...go ahead ... you know you wanna
Oh, and one really handy one:
Wherever you plan on having major collections of electronics, put at least one outlet on a dedicated circuit so everything is isolated.
My computers and my stereo each have one, and it prevents those annoying things like having your UPS come on when your laser printer starts up. They're also each next to a non-dedicated circuit for overflow for less sensitive things.
Enough plugs, and some dedicated circuits make like a LOT easier. When I did my basement we have a plug every 6 feet on the wall.
Cat6 network cables everywhere, running to your central cabling hub, possibly 2 per room.
Cable TV outlets liberally sprinkled around.
Speaker wires to multiple locations for your stereo with wall plugs for speakers.
They make in-wall HDMI plates to keep your wires tidy.
A couple of them newfangled wall plugs with built in USB charging ports.
A heat pump which does both heating and cooling.
Sound proofing for wherever your TV will go.
More plugs than you think you need, and a larger electrical panel than suggested to expand if you need to.
LED pot lights and lots of dimmers.
Under-cabinet lighting in your kitchen.
Basically anything which is hard to put in later. Infrastructure which is there is much more flexible down the road.
And, depending on your climate .. if you have duct work, make sure your damned seams are taped/seals so you're not losing all that heat/AC out gaps. There's nothing worse than realizing the air isn't getting where it needs to.
Well, a T-rex was a large meat eater ... so I'm thinking bear or wolf might be better guesses.
And I gather as a rule large meat eaters don't make for good eating.
I would argue that a failure to catch an un-enumerated exception is neither correctness, nor keeping it running.
However, I've heard the argument about the elegance and beauty of letting it crash because it's a real defect which should be identified ... I just disagree that an ungraceful failure is the way to do it.
I hope the people writing self-driving cars don't have the idiotic mindset that if they haven't enumerated the error it should be allowed to fail spectacularly.
The reality is, in the real world when software doesn't fail gracefully, some smug idiot of a developer who said you shouldn't catch things you didn't anticipate isn't there to clean up his mess. So his damned "correctness" becomes an aesthetic thing which is useless.
That's just defective by design, because either your design is 100% perfect and infallible, or it's pretty and elegant but is a crash waiting to happen.
Reality seldom conforms to the pre-planned expectations of the guys who built the product.
"Correctness" isn't correct if it can't account for incomplete correctness. It's lazy and ideological.
LOL ... it gets better and better.
Of the zillions of places where Microsoft parses URLs, across all their platforms and products, you can completely hose the install of something with 8 characters.
One wonders if there are any other places which will keel over and die by simply putting that in.
The mind reels with incredulity and glee.
Shadenfreude, it's not just for breakfast any more!!
I don't think it's beyond understanding. Not even a little.
Microsoft has always been pioneers of the "let's try to embed 'smarts' in stuff to make it cooler and friendlier to use" kind of thing.
Autorun on media, for instance has caused a lot of problems with things like viruses and rootkits.
Hell, Microsoft pioneered the technology which meant you could get a virus without opening the attachment of an email -- and up until then people had been saying "no, you can't get a virus simply from clicking on the email unless you run the attachment". Then Microsoft went straight to running the attachment and proved them wrong.
Microsoft tries so hard to coat the world in eye candy and do things for the user that they often go straight to the "well, you clearly want me to run that".
So in this case it probably went "ZOMG, teh URL" and jumped to running some code.
I have found over the years Microsoft's zeal to have dynamic, flashy content often means they create things which make for terrible robustness.
Like their widgets and live desktop stuff they've now had to deprecate on no less than three different platforms that I'm aware of because it was a giant security hole.
They put in a feature which says "wow, we'll just run this stuff because it's awesome", only to run smack into the wall of "but it's also dangerous".
Crashing is one thing.
Parsing input data sufficiently badly as to require an uninstall? That's pretty epic.
Good job guys!!
I'm not even sure I've heard of an error condition which required a full uninstall.
I predict many people will be sending that string today. I also predict someone will attempt to charge the people sending it with criminal hacking.
Keep up the good work.
You know, it probably still shows up in a lot of searches.
There's quite possibly people out there who have known it long enough that they still trust it.
If you're following this stuff, you know about it. But it's surprising how long it can take from when a company starts being shady and when everybody stops trusting them.
From the sounds of it, Sourceforge will be able to coast on their reputation for some time before they go away, if at all.
And what's worse is FAR too many politicians are willing to follow along with them and say "well, as long as you're doing it for profit that's OK".
It really is time to stop pretending that anything corporations do must be good, and start putting real checks and balances on what they can do to us and our information.
But, of course, since they all give massive amounts of money to the politicians, and many of the politicians are also greedy bastards who have huge stakes in large corporations, they're never going to do that.
So the asshole company who acts like a bank except where there are regulations they ignore, is going to be the asshole company who gives itself and its asshole affiliates the right to call or spam you because they say so?
I'm sorry, but what the hell are these clowns thinking?
The sheer arrogance of that is mind boggling. And this whole shit of "see, we have terms of service, we can do anything we want" is just crap.
Tell you what, PayPal, our terms of service say we can tar and feather you before the castration and lynching.
Once again, I am reminded of the many reasons why I would never deal with this company. A bunch of shady, self-entitled weasels.
Well, I trust my ISPs router ... well, not at all, actually.
Because I assume my ISP is either incompetent or dishonest, I don't really care which, I simply don't trust them. And I sure as fuck don't trust them with access to my actual network. I want a layer of security between me and their shit, because I assume their stuff is trivially hacked.
My wife and I each have our offices set up where our own router is getting DHCP from the ISPs router, and then firewalling everything from it. We each have our own locked down wifi, and entirely separate networks. I'm pondering a third router to provide the guest wifi.
Other than disabling the ISPs wifi and using our own, I wouldn't even know the SSID or the password for the ISPs crap. I assume they haven't turned it on without asking, but I never check -- come to think of it, I'd have to find out how.
My parents and my in-laws have routers we've bought them to sit behind the crap the ISP provides. Because I know for a fact that in both cases the ISP provides a router with default wifi SSID and passwords which are published in the docs they give you.
Because it's printed in the "how to" for every damned subscriber, and you can't change it, you can pretty much imagine that if you find an SSID of the right name you can connect to it, and probably have management access to it.
But the problem is so many households trust that the wide open, back doored, well known remote-admin credentialed, shitty routers they've been provided with give them any form of security.
Which means for the overwhelming majority of home users who aren't tech savvy and paranoid, these vulnerabilities are absolutely of practical concern ... because their PCs are directly plugged into the ISPs router, or they're using wifi from the ISPs router.
I'm betting a lot of home users figure they have the router from the ISP, so they don't need anything else.
That these are ISP models doesn't diminish the number of people who could be impacted ... it greatly magnifies it. Because most people who don't know better (and a few who do) connect their PC directly to the ISPs router.
Honestly, go talk to a random neighbor .. see if they have anything between them and their ISPs router. My best is they don't.
Is anybody pretending that corporations and politicians aren't already effectively doing the same thing?
Only they pretty it up with foundations and think tanks who put out position papers to benefit the talking points of the people paying for them.
Propaganda comes in many forms. And from many sources.
And even some of the people who will be hand-wringing about this propaganda will be endorsing some other stuff.