Hacked cards definitely did exist. But the ability to purchase ANYTHING without connecting to the phone network most certainly did not.
Sure you can unhook the phone cord, and watch normal television, but the only way you'd watch PPV is either with the hacked card, or by calling in and having them set it up remotely.
That's not how most of them worked. Maybe you found a particularly poorly designed one, but the vast majority wouldn't allow you to watch PPV at all if it couldn't make the phone call to confirm. The only way to watch PPV without the phone line connected to the box was to phone in to the customer service people and get a code and punch it in on the remote.
Of course the fact that Hollywood's garbage is locked down harder than other items is no surprise.
Except in most of the world it is already illegal to store that data somewhere the US has jurisdiction over. So far that has meant "in the US" but the definition might soon be "with any company that does business in the US" and that would be a pretty big deal.
And here's the problem, the US can, as you point out, force a company that does business in the US to either hand over the data, or cease doing business in the US. But that's only the start of it. A precedent like that would trigger what is effectively a trade war, with other countries making laws that if you want to do business in their country you must not do business in the US, as well as the precedent that all data held in the US is also obtainable by any other country in the world, including places like China, Russia, and Iran. The US is a big market, but it's not as big as the rest of the world, and businesses worldwide would suffer from such a trade war, especially those based in the US.
The question here has never been whether the US can force Microsoft to hand over the data, that part is obvious, they can. The real question is whether the US should do so, or if the cost is really too high. I believe it is.
You do realize that "Telecom" is short for "Telecommunications", not for "Telephone" right? It simply means communicating over long distances, it doesn't mean only by telephone. "Telecom" companies these days are more about internet than about phone.
Why would you expect people who work primarily in the field of keeping the internet running (Telecom workers) to prefer to use telephones more than the general public does?
Granted, we don't have have 16 hour days in a coal mine anymore, but that's probably more due to social revolutions than technological ones.
And this here is the crux of the matter. Eventually we could be in a world where the ultra-elite have all the wealth, and the rest live in squalor with no work at all, or, there might be more social change to balance things out. I think it's pretty clear right now that we won't get to the 4 hour work week because our employers are benevolent (which seems to be the source of all these predictions). But that doesn't mean we won't get there. The 8 hour work day wasn't because employers wanted their employers to work less either, it's because it became socially unacceptable, and illegal, to force them to work more. Personally, I predict a very bright future. Unfortunately though, I think we may have to go through a very dark time to get there.
Group childcare for our 2 year old daughter costs us less than a third of my net after-tax salary, and I'm the lower income earner in our house. The only domestic chore we pay someone to do is lawn maintenance, and that's dirt cheap, and unrelated to whether we are employed or not, I used to do it myself, I just don't want to.
So if I were to quit my job to be a stay at home parent, our family net earnings after the savings in child care, would still be a significant decrease.
Now I'm not saying we couldn't afford to be a single income family, we could survive on my wife's salary alone, however our standard of living would be dramatically worse than it is now.
I don't think posters have a problem watching a show that includes it, just like people watched a show that included a black woman on the bridge, and later a black captain on a space station, and then a woman commanding a starship. Going to LGBTQ stuff would be par for the course for Trek. What people DO have an issue with is that the people putting this show together haven't come up with anything better to say about the show than that it will include these issues. That screams "We don't have a good story to tell, but at least we're politically correct!" nobody wants that. People want good storytelling, and want it to include that sorts of social commentary. They don't want social commentary just for the sake of social commentary.
Because most customers don't even think about that, And instead look at the gift with purchase, or $0.10/month cheaper, or they simply thought the salesperson was cute....
How much do you really trust the "trusted" root certificates? I mean, telecoms have found they can screw with net-neutrality for profit, and now have government sanction to do so. What's to make you think that root certificate providers would be immune to the same temptation, or that the same government would see it in any worse light?
This wouldn't be very useful to the store if they couldn't also force you on to their wi-fi, so I wouldn't be surprised if they do everything they can to ensure that you can't get a good cell connection in their store. People willingly connect to "free" wi-fi when they're somewhere they plan to sit and work, (like a coffee shop) or somewhere they plan to spend a lot of time (like an airport) but not at most stores, the extra step of connecting to the network is more effort than it's usually worth for the time you spend there.
And yet 100% of that carrier's customers would be able to leave, and only 1/3 of the competitor's customers could move to them. Severe disadvantage. But if everyone does it, the playing field stays level.
All of your points go out the window when you look at the price of the phone at the carrier's own store, and find that it's way more than the discount for bringing your own times the number of months on the contract.
The most I've seen is $10/month off for a BYOD plan, and contacts are limited to 24 months by law. So that's $240. There aren't many phones they'll let you buy outright for $240 in their own store, which means that the BYOD plans are a to off as you are obviously still subsidizing someone's device.
Uncouple them I say. If I pay for an S8+ at over $1000 off contact, you only give me $10 off per month? But if I take your contract I pay $200 and am locked in for $24 months. These 2 options are from the same carrier, so whatever discounts and hardware deals they get are identical, and with locking you know they'll both be used on your network. Meanwhile in every other industry paying for a product over 24 months instead of all at once it's MORE expensive, not less. The math doesn't work.
The OP obviously is looking for an email service that is completely different from the one they are migrating from, however expect that it will exist, and probably want it for approximately the same cost (near zero)
I think this may be asking too much.
For a good alternative to Yahoo mail, you could use Gmail, it has all of the same security issues as Yahoo but I don't think it is in any way worse (and arguably I do trust google more than I trust yahoo, though that doesn't say much) and gmail, simply due to it's popularity, does have a lot of functionality (either native, or third party) so there is that. Google also doesn't have much of a history of data breaches, and they seem to allow no more government snooping than any other company (which again doesn't say much)
Automated phone exchanges existed, I don't see any reason why they couldn't have also done automated connections for cell phones.
Sure not all exchanges had been converted yet, but that doesn't mean the technology didn't exist.
The only issue I can really foresee is the ability to do cell hand-off might not have been there yet, but as long as you use the device stationary that's not much of an issue.
There have been phones made in the past that are capable of it, our local telecom used to have hundreds of them packed in pelican cases ready to hand out to emergency responders in disaster areas until a cell network could be re-established. These days though it's a much less common feature, and unfortunately for all our focus on disasters, our communication infrastructure gets less and less disaster proof with every new technology.
The small ambulance service where I volunteer used analog radios up until last year. We could talk over vast distances via a single low-tech repeater, and if that repeater failed, we could still talk over somewhat shorter distances directly from radio to radio. Better yet, those radios could talk to the radio in any other ambulance, fire truck, or police car in the province if they were nearby and we needed to. Last year we switched to a new digital system, it's shorter range, has much less coverage overall, and if the network goes down, we have no communication at all. Even when everything is working 100% perfectly we can no longer talk directly to police or fire. But the new system is "better" because we can be addressed interdependently and hear only our calls instead of everyone in the area, it can send text on the display in addition to voice communications, and we don't have to change channels when we move to a different area any more, and because it's a trunked system it's far more frequency efficient... I'd give it up in a second for the dependability, reliability, and functionality of the old system.
The scanner I had, had one jumper that both unblocked the cell frequencies, AND doubled the channel memory capacity (I'm guessing it used that memory to decide which frequencies were off limits?) it was a no-brainer to cut the jumper. Especially being that it was completely legal in my jurisdiction to do so.
That said, if you've ever listened to random people's phone conversations, you'd quickly learn it's simply not interesting enough to do so. Especially if you happen to get a teenager.... But I did enjoy the extra channel capacity.
This is one of those places where government regulation made sense.
Although all the carriers locked their phones, and it was obvious that customers didn't want it, no single carrier dared unlock without the rest of the industry following suit. Although one company could possibly use it as a selling point to try to attract customers, in reality it would be a competitive disadvantage. You can imagine if only one company offered unlocked phones, their customers would be free to leave for the competition, but the competitors customers would not be free to do the reverse.
The free market can in fact sort out many things, but this just isn't one of them. (that, and the whole definition of a "free" market in such a heavily regulated space)
That justification for locked phones never held any water.
If I break my contract, they have penalty fees, those fees are independent of whether or not my phone is locked, or even if they provided a phone in the first place. Not to mention the fact that phones purchased outright are still locked, which makes no sense as you paid full price for it!.
What Canada really needs to do, and this may be a step in that direction, is to completely uncouple the phones from the plans. That wouldn't stop a carrier from offering a subsidized phone on a plan, it would just have to be spelled out in the contract. eg. $X/mo service + $Y/mo phone financing = $Total cost. And once the phone is paid off, or if you bring your own, the total cost reverts to $X. It should also be noted that $Y multiplied by the number of months you pay it, should be the same or higher than the total cost of the phone purchased outright. (right now carriers offer a BYOD plan, but the monthly discount is laughably low on it so it's obvious that the difference between that plan and a full featured plan isn't the actual cost of the phone)
I work from home approximately 4 days a week right now. I get far more work done when I'm at home than I do when I'm at the office.
It's all about how you handle it though. I have a lot of flexibility in what I can do and when, but I only exercise it when I have a good reason to (an appointment I need to attend, etc) otherwise I sit down in my home office at 0800 and I leave at 1600 and between those hours I only leave the room to use the washroom or get lunch from the fridge. In short, I may as well be punching a time clock. My family also supports this knowing that when I'm in that office during the day I'm "at work" and that I'm no more accessible to them than I would be if I was at an office downtown (in other words, if they come to see me it should be no longer than they would otherwise place a phone call for if I wasn't home)
Each person is different though. I couldn't have done this 10 years ago, at that time I didn't have the self discipline, and I knew it at the time. Back then I had to go somewhere and punch a clock. I'm glad that I've found a way to do this though, because there are many advantages. I don't have any commute time, I DO have flexibility if I have an important appointment (e.g. if a technician needs to come out and fix my furnace, or if I have to go to a doctor's appointment, etc.) and being 50' from my kitchen has saved me a good deal on eating out (sure, I COULD pack a lunch to take to work, but it was more convenient to hit the food court, but at home it's more convenient to make my own lunch than go out and find food)
Additionally it's a good deal for my employer as the desk I use when I'm at the office is used by other people in similar arrangements when I'm not there saving quite a bit on real-estate. It also helps that the people I "work with" are scattered all over the country anyway, so going to the office doesn't get me any closer to them than I would be on a video conference from home.
As for your comment about "It seems that they were just pissing away cash by having what would be an expensive office in prime location"... yeah, they've realized that That's the whole point to the article.
Everybody on/. knows that. Each single person on/. is aware of that. However not everybody is on/.
And yet the article is on Slashdot, so it seems unlikely that it being here will have much effect on those who are not.
Also, had you actually read my comment, you'd notice that I'm not blaming the victims, I'm blaming Microsoft for making such an idiotic decision, while at the same time stating that this particular issue is no worse (and probably much less dangerous) than the normal attack vector of simply sending the victim an installer file in the first place. After all, if they're going to click on a suspicious file, why make them also enable macros, and hover over a link when it's easier to just do it all from that first click.
Slashdot Mirror
Hacked cards definitely did exist.
But the ability to purchase ANYTHING without connecting to the phone network most certainly did not.
Sure you can unhook the phone cord, and watch normal television, but the only way you'd watch PPV is either with the hacked card, or by calling in and having them set it up remotely.
None of the systems that I have worked with. They all allow for zero purchases without authentication.
That's not how most of them worked. Maybe you found a particularly poorly designed one, but the vast majority wouldn't allow you to watch PPV at all if it couldn't make the phone call to confirm.
The only way to watch PPV without the phone line connected to the box was to phone in to the customer service people and get a code and punch it in on the remote.
Of course the fact that Hollywood's garbage is locked down harder than other items is no surprise.
Except in most of the world it is already illegal to store that data somewhere the US has jurisdiction over. So far that has meant "in the US" but the definition might soon be "with any company that does business in the US" and that would be a pretty big deal.
And here's the problem, the US can, as you point out, force a company that does business in the US to either hand over the data, or cease doing business in the US. But that's only the start of it. A precedent like that would trigger what is effectively a trade war, with other countries making laws that if you want to do business in their country you must not do business in the US, as well as the precedent that all data held in the US is also obtainable by any other country in the world, including places like China, Russia, and Iran. The US is a big market, but it's not as big as the rest of the world, and businesses worldwide would suffer from such a trade war, especially those based in the US.
The question here has never been whether the US can force Microsoft to hand over the data, that part is obvious, they can. The real question is whether the US should do so, or if the cost is really too high. I believe it is.
You do realize that "Telecom" is short for "Telecommunications", not for "Telephone" right? It simply means communicating over long distances, it doesn't mean only by telephone. "Telecom" companies these days are more about internet than about phone.
Why would you expect people who work primarily in the field of keeping the internet running (Telecom workers) to prefer to use telephones more than the general public does?
What a ridiculous spin on the title/summary!
Granted, we don't have have 16 hour days in a coal mine anymore, but that's probably more due to social revolutions than technological ones.
And this here is the crux of the matter. Eventually we could be in a world where the ultra-elite have all the wealth, and the rest live in squalor with no work at all, or, there might be more social change to balance things out.
I think it's pretty clear right now that we won't get to the 4 hour work week because our employers are benevolent (which seems to be the source of all these predictions). But that doesn't mean we won't get there. The 8 hour work day wasn't because employers wanted their employers to work less either, it's because it became socially unacceptable, and illegal, to force them to work more.
Personally, I predict a very bright future. Unfortunately though, I think we may have to go through a very dark time to get there.
Group childcare for our 2 year old daughter costs us less than a third of my net after-tax salary, and I'm the lower income earner in our house. The only domestic chore we pay someone to do is lawn maintenance, and that's dirt cheap, and unrelated to whether we are employed or not, I used to do it myself, I just don't want to.
So if I were to quit my job to be a stay at home parent, our family net earnings after the savings in child care, would still be a significant decrease.
Now I'm not saying we couldn't afford to be a single income family, we could survive on my wife's salary alone, however our standard of living would be dramatically worse than it is now.
I don't think posters have a problem watching a show that includes it, just like people watched a show that included a black woman on the bridge, and later a black captain on a space station, and then a woman commanding a starship. Going to LGBTQ stuff would be par for the course for Trek. What people DO have an issue with is that the people putting this show together haven't come up with anything better to say about the show than that it will include these issues. That screams "We don't have a good story to tell, but at least we're politically correct!" nobody wants that. People want good storytelling, and want it to include that sorts of social commentary. They don't want social commentary just for the sake of social commentary.
The nice thing about such a condition is that it's very easy for any government to classify anyone they don't like in to one of those groups.
Because most customers don't even think about that, And instead look at the gift with purchase, or $0.10/month cheaper, or they simply thought the salesperson was cute....
I would ask how this works with https though?
How much do you really trust the "trusted" root certificates? I mean, telecoms have found they can screw with net-neutrality for profit, and now have government sanction to do so. What's to make you think that root certificate providers would be immune to the same temptation, or that the same government would see it in any worse light?
This wouldn't be very useful to the store if they couldn't also force you on to their wi-fi, so I wouldn't be surprised if they do everything they can to ensure that you can't get a good cell connection in their store.
People willingly connect to "free" wi-fi when they're somewhere they plan to sit and work, (like a coffee shop) or somewhere they plan to spend a lot of time (like an airport) but not at most stores, the extra step of connecting to the network is more effort than it's usually worth for the time you spend there.
Not from those same carrier's who think that $10/month is fair.
And yet 100% of that carrier's customers would be able to leave, and only 1/3 of the competitor's customers could move to them. Severe disadvantage. But if everyone does it, the playing field stays level.
All of your points go out the window when you look at the price of the phone at the carrier's own store, and find that it's way more than the discount for bringing your own times the number of months on the contract.
The most I've seen is $10/month off for a BYOD plan, and contacts are limited to 24 months by law. So that's $240. There aren't many phones they'll let you buy outright for $240 in their own store, which means that the BYOD plans are a to off as you are obviously still subsidizing someone's device.
Uncouple them I say. If I pay for an S8+ at over $1000 off contact, you only give me $10 off per month? But if I take your contract I pay $200 and am locked in for $24 months. These 2 options are from the same carrier, so whatever discounts and hardware deals they get are identical, and with locking you know they'll both be used on your network. Meanwhile in every other industry paying for a product over 24 months instead of all at once it's MORE expensive, not less.
The math doesn't work.
I think this is really the important bit.
The OP obviously is looking for an email service that is completely different from the one they are migrating from, however expect that it will exist, and probably want it for approximately the same cost (near zero)
I think this may be asking too much.
For a good alternative to Yahoo mail, you could use Gmail, it has all of the same security issues as Yahoo but I don't think it is in any way worse (and arguably I do trust google more than I trust yahoo, though that doesn't say much) and gmail, simply due to it's popularity, does have a lot of functionality (either native, or third party) so there is that.
Google also doesn't have much of a history of data breaches, and they seem to allow no more government snooping than any other company (which again doesn't say much)
Automated phone exchanges existed, I don't see any reason why they couldn't have also done automated connections for cell phones.
Sure not all exchanges had been converted yet, but that doesn't mean the technology didn't exist.
The only issue I can really foresee is the ability to do cell hand-off might not have been there yet, but as long as you use the device stationary that's not much of an issue.
There have been phones made in the past that are capable of it, our local telecom used to have hundreds of them packed in pelican cases ready to hand out to emergency responders in disaster areas until a cell network could be re-established.
These days though it's a much less common feature, and unfortunately for all our focus on disasters, our communication infrastructure gets less and less disaster proof with every new technology.
The small ambulance service where I volunteer used analog radios up until last year. We could talk over vast distances via a single low-tech repeater, and if that repeater failed, we could still talk over somewhat shorter distances directly from radio to radio. Better yet, those radios could talk to the radio in any other ambulance, fire truck, or police car in the province if they were nearby and we needed to.
Last year we switched to a new digital system, it's shorter range, has much less coverage overall, and if the network goes down, we have no communication at all. Even when everything is working 100% perfectly we can no longer talk directly to police or fire.
But the new system is "better" because we can be addressed interdependently and hear only our calls instead of everyone in the area, it can send text on the display in addition to voice communications, and we don't have to change channels when we move to a different area any more, and because it's a trunked system it's far more frequency efficient...
I'd give it up in a second for the dependability, reliability, and functionality of the old system.
The scanner I had, had one jumper that both unblocked the cell frequencies, AND doubled the channel memory capacity (I'm guessing it used that memory to decide which frequencies were off limits?) it was a no-brainer to cut the jumper. Especially being that it was completely legal in my jurisdiction to do so.
That said, if you've ever listened to random people's phone conversations, you'd quickly learn it's simply not interesting enough to do so. Especially if you happen to get a teenager.... But I did enjoy the extra channel capacity.
This is one of those places where government regulation made sense.
Although all the carriers locked their phones, and it was obvious that customers didn't want it, no single carrier dared unlock without the rest of the industry following suit. Although one company could possibly use it as a selling point to try to attract customers, in reality it would be a competitive disadvantage.
You can imagine if only one company offered unlocked phones, their customers would be free to leave for the competition, but the competitors customers would not be free to do the reverse.
The free market can in fact sort out many things, but this just isn't one of them. (that, and the whole definition of a "free" market in such a heavily regulated space)
That justification for locked phones never held any water.
If I break my contract, they have penalty fees, those fees are independent of whether or not my phone is locked, or even if they provided a phone in the first place.
Not to mention the fact that phones purchased outright are still locked, which makes no sense as you paid full price for it!.
What Canada really needs to do, and this may be a step in that direction, is to completely uncouple the phones from the plans. That wouldn't stop a carrier from offering a subsidized phone on a plan, it would just have to be spelled out in the contract. eg. $X/mo service + $Y/mo phone financing = $Total cost. And once the phone is paid off, or if you bring your own, the total cost reverts to $X. It should also be noted that $Y multiplied by the number of months you pay it, should be the same or higher than the total cost of the phone purchased outright. (right now carriers offer a BYOD plan, but the monthly discount is laughably low on it so it's obvious that the difference between that plan and a full featured plan isn't the actual cost of the phone)
I work from home approximately 4 days a week right now. I get far more work done when I'm at home than I do when I'm at the office.
It's all about how you handle it though. I have a lot of flexibility in what I can do and when, but I only exercise it when I have a good reason to (an appointment I need to attend, etc) otherwise I sit down in my home office at 0800 and I leave at 1600 and between those hours I only leave the room to use the washroom or get lunch from the fridge. In short, I may as well be punching a time clock. My family also supports this knowing that when I'm in that office during the day I'm "at work" and that I'm no more accessible to them than I would be if I was at an office downtown (in other words, if they come to see me it should be no longer than they would otherwise place a phone call for if I wasn't home)
Each person is different though. I couldn't have done this 10 years ago, at that time I didn't have the self discipline, and I knew it at the time. Back then I had to go somewhere and punch a clock. I'm glad that I've found a way to do this though, because there are many advantages. I don't have any commute time, I DO have flexibility if I have an important appointment (e.g. if a technician needs to come out and fix my furnace, or if I have to go to a doctor's appointment, etc.) and being 50' from my kitchen has saved me a good deal on eating out (sure, I COULD pack a lunch to take to work, but it was more convenient to hit the food court, but at home it's more convenient to make my own lunch than go out and find food)
Additionally it's a good deal for my employer as the desk I use when I'm at the office is used by other people in similar arrangements when I'm not there saving quite a bit on real-estate. It also helps that the people I "work with" are scattered all over the country anyway, so going to the office doesn't get me any closer to them than I would be on a video conference from home.
As for your comment about "It seems that they were just pissing away cash by having what would be an expensive office in prime location"... yeah, they've realized that That's the whole point to the article.
Everybody on /. knows that. Each single person on /. is aware of that. However not everybody is on /.
And yet the article is on Slashdot, so it seems unlikely that it being here will have much effect on those who are not.
Also, had you actually read my comment, you'd notice that I'm not blaming the victims, I'm blaming Microsoft for making such an idiotic decision, while at the same time stating that this particular issue is no worse (and probably much less dangerous) than the normal attack vector of simply sending the victim an installer file in the first place. After all, if they're going to click on a suspicious file, why make them also enable macros, and hover over a link when it's easier to just do it all from that first click.
I'm not defending the users either, but I don't see it changing as long as software companies are not held responsible for their actions.