If they have no allegedly needed incentive to pay more, then why would they demand with such passion that such a thing be enforced across-the-board to everyone who makes > $x ?
Good point... but by then, it is hoped that a dummy server and a few/etc/hosts entries will take care of that. Also, by then there will likely be packages you can load onto your goodies, much like one can do to their phone right now.
It's a lot like DRM has gone all this time - measure, counter-measure.
Short of completely abandoning modern society and living off the grid there is no way to maintain what was previously known as privacy.
Sure there is - you just have to work at it.
The cost to secure IoT devices and retroactively secure the internet age is so massively prohibitive it beyond the wildest of dreams for any realist..
Umm, really?
1) buy a cheap wifi router, give it a unique SSID 2) tie all your IoT crap to that new SSID 3) rig the router to QoS down to something ungodly tiny (2400 baud ought to do it), or just don't connect it to the Internet at all after the initial install/update for the device. Be certain that if it is connected, you block all incoming ports at the firewall. 4) (for the truly paranoid) If it has a camera, a bottle of cheap black nail polish is like $3 or so. If it has a microphone, clip if off or cover it with epoxy.
So far, we've spent less than $50, and most of that was for the new router - if you have an older router, just press that into service and it'll all cost you less than a couple of hours plus the price of a large latte... *shrug*.
Actually, as consumers, they (mostly) do have options - lots of them.
In my case, I avoid the whole IoT thing like it were some virulent form of radioactive space herpes. It's not out of paranoia, but because my rural Satellite ISP has a bandwidth cap during most of any given 24-hour cycle. This means not bothering with the cute little automated/networked thermometers, televisions, refrigerators, etc...
To be honest, I don't see much value in them anyway - at least not at this time; I'm perfectly capable of setting a thermostat (or throwing another log into the wood stove), and keeping a mental inventory of what's in my refrigerator. There are promising technologies/devices out (e.g. the Amazon Echo thingy), but in all honesty, they're nice-to-have things, not need-to-have (and unless you're severely disabled, nearly all of them are not much more than glorified monetization opportunities for whoever sells the thing to you - again, see also the Amazon Echo thingy).
Anyrate, yes the consumer (that is, you and I) have the ultimate power over how much these things influence and potentially control our lives and out stuff.
Now there may be exceptions (say you bought some swanky condo or rented an apartment that has all this stuff in it), but they can be disabled to an extent (or even hijacked by you if you know how and see a use for doing so.) It ultimately depends on you.
Eventually, I can see where you'd have no choice but to buy such things because alternatives would cease to exist... but even there, you can simply, say, assign them to an SSID that you've throttled down to 14.4k or some obscenely low rate, then take the extra step of firewalling the shit out of that network to allow only established/related ports. Or, just hack the thing to taste (after all, phones can be jailbroken fairly quickly, so...)
Actually... 1) all her content is backed-up online (viz. iCloud), so unless you took >5GB of photos/videos, it would cost like $10/year or some paltry sum to get more storage on it. 2) 6 months between backups? You know that the whole iCloud thing backs up *daily*, right?
Now way back in the long-ago, you would have had to back things up to some local source or another computer viz. iTunes, but still - 6 months between backups? Really? How the fsck would that have been Apple's fault?
My wife went the Apple route when she went to look for a new laptop back in 2013 fora lot of the same reasons as listed in TFS. I was told to keep my mouth shut, and that she would do all the decision-making when it came to replacing her dead laptop. So, I follow her to Best Buy (I know, right?)... While I stand far enough back to not be part of the convo (but close enough to hear), the sales-schlub tells her that she was not allowed to buy a laptop with Windows 7 on it, but had to buy one with 8. Worst part was, he said it in such an arrogant well you're a girl, so trust the big bad techie guy here way that she just got pissed off. I followed her from a distance as she stormed out of the store, and let out a loudly-coughed "Bullshit!" just as I passed the confused salescritter.
Long story short, two hours later we drove around to other stores, then we drove home with a shiny new iPad. The Apple Store employee was nothing but kindness and accommodation as he listened to her needs, and (again as I kept distance), they had a very pleasant conversation as she chose what she wanted. She's been using the thing ever since.
I can only imagine what kind of special tech-support hell I'd be subjected to if she did bring home a Windows 8 laptop, got used to it, then had to go through the Win10 horseshit... instead, I got 3 years of pure bliss, and I think I had to help her once with something when the iCloud thing came out.
Snowden in Russia making a decent living, has a very well-recognized name (even in Russia), and is surrounded by a bumper-crop of (arguably) the hottest babes on the planet.
Yesbut most jobs aren't for life, so plenty of non startup jobs will require moving on if you want to go up the career (or pay) ladder, and etc.
You're technically correct, but the issue lies within the frequency of job changes: do you want to jump to a new job every 3 months, every 6 months, every couple of years, every 5 years, or...? Startups tend towards the higher frequency, so...
As an aside, I've found that during the interview with a startup, you *always* begin discussing the business' long-term plans, discuss their financials, discuss their profit strategy, and learn enough to understand the answers... doubly so if you're not getting any stock (I go for cash/salary anyway - worthless stock is worthless if the company goes tits-up). If they get all nervous or their answers start getting all buzzwordy, end the interview there and go look somewhere else, unless circumstance says you have no other choice.
I've lost count of the times when I interviewed at some startup that tried to sound like The Next Big Thing(tm), and everyone runs for cover at the very mention of even the minor question of "How much revenue do you project over the next five years, and what is your strategy to improve it?"
( The funniest was when one "IT Director" replied to that very question with "Why should you care? You're just orchestrating the servers?" Why was it funny? Because the look on his face was priceless when I told him that "Well, I won't blindly slave away for some random VC chump, good luck finding someone stupid enough to work for you, and the interview is now over. Good day, gents.")
They're all too young to remember the dot-com bubble bursting 15 years ago. We're living in the same times.
Agreed. Good news is, at least this time you don't end up having to compete against paper tigers who throw the right buzzwords at clueless HR PHBs, right? Okay, but not as much this time. Umm, okay... we're screwed.
In all seriousness though, things have changed a bit since then.
Back then, I remember in California (Milpitas to be exact) in 2001, and driving by a building that had a huge banner saying "Now hiring at least 500 MCSEs!" Mind, I was only in town for a bit of vendor training, but that sign scared the crap out of me. Knowing full well that the dot-boom was stumbling at the time, the sign said that said that in six months those 500 card-carrying certificate-holders would be out of a job, and a lot of them would get frustrated enough to move out of California.
Worse still, that sign said that the company was only looking for paper, and not experience, skill, creativity...
Fast forward to 2016. Nowadays, most hiring is handled through recruiters, and most of the interviews (at least all of the ones I've been to) demand skills-testing, and at least one sit-down/grilling with the people who would end up being your peers. I think that most of these kids in Silly Valley are going to be far short on the experience department, and probably knowledge (seriously - a kid fresh out of college is going to know some basics, know one language fairly well, and maybe dabble in some gee-whiz-super-fad language on the side). These folks have one big advantage over the rest of us (call it time-clock masochism), but consider: the companies that seek out employees who willingly churn for 80+ hours a week? Those are the employers that anyone with a brain would avoid like hell anyway.
Only downside is, most of these kids will come breezing into our communities (outside of Silly Valley) and compete for the same jobs.
While at my end it's no big deal? I can see a lot of developers in places like Seattle, Portland, Austin, et al getting nervous all the sudden as the recruiters stop soliciting the locals as much as they used to.
At this point, the democrats stay home here many times rather than vote as their vote quite literally does not count. It would take about 80% of the popular vote for the democrats to get close to 50% of the seats.
We are a state that is red in name only as we are purple by voting method due to disenfranchised voters staying home and firmly blue by will of the people.
Incorrect - the voters who "stay home" are not "disenfranchised", as they were not denied the opportunity or the right to vote - they simply chose (for whatever reason) not to exercise the right.
Big difference there, dude.
If you're so mad about how your state is politically made up (trust me, I live in Oregon so feel your pain), then get off your ass and help get out the vote for your party/ideology/candidate. But, you cannot say that voters who feel the same as you are somehow "disenfranchised", because that's simply not true.
Question - what about those who are wards of the state? If you get your entire source(s) of income from government funds, why should you be allowed to have a voice in how that taxation is apportioned and levied?
I ask this because the temptation is all too real (and in the case of certain candidates, all too proven) for such folks to vote solely for the candidate who shouts 'panem et circensus!' the loudest.
That's why GP included the "take full legal responsibility" part as a condition. Excepting specific court-ordered emancipation, you're not allowed to legally be bound by contract until the age of 18, and cannot take full legal responsibility for yourself in civil matters.
Personally, I'd like to see the following conditions for voting:
* be at least 21 years old, unless you are an active-duty member of the US Military in which case you can vote as long as you are still on active-duty status (because if you took an oath to defend the US Constitution with your life and live that oath daily, you're proven that you're old enough to vote).
* pay federal income tax for at least 6 of the last 18 months before Jan 1 of the year you are voting, unless you are physically (not mentally) disabled to the point where you provably cannot work for a living.
* not be a felon and not be inpatient for mental illness and/or deficiency.
Hrm... one possibility: are your machines using an MSDN-generated license (say, off of a private subscription, or an EA or SA contract), an OEM one, or...?
Wait - doesn't that only work if you're connected via a 3/4G fob, or over or wifi? Didn't think that hard-wired ethernet connections (which I have on at least 3 machines) would have that option.
We eventually took it to an Apple Store and the tech said that her OS was no supported and she would have to spend $100 to upgrade to the latest version.
Calling that fishy, for two reasons:
1) I ran OSX 10.3 just fine all the way up until 2007, when the problem with site support failed (I then just switched to Chrome and ran that just fine on OSX 10.3 until 2010-ish).
2) You only paid for OS upgrades from before 10.7, when they actually charged money for OS upgrades - and OSX 10.5 - 10.6 were only like $35 each, not $100. 10.2 through 10.5 were $100 each, but 10.5 was supported until 2010, and 10.6 (the last PPC/Intel hybrid OS) was fully compatible and supported all the way to 2012 or so. Versions 10.7 all the way up to now were/are free of charge.
Unlike Microsoft, you get one notification (and only one!), then you have to specifically go to the App Store and consciously download it - then you install it as a separate step.
And this is why I don't have Windows running anywhere in my house - with multiple computers, I could see Microsoft totally raping the bandwidth caps on my rural Satellite Internet connection... and rural 3G/4G Internet users likely wouldn't get any relief from it either.:/
Speaking of which, I wonder if Microsoft could be found liable for any extra expenses incurred as a result of such a use case?
You missed the point - in either case, the user has to go in and intentionally tell Windows Update to not install Windows 10.
Most typical users don't even touch those settings, and with the default being that they will get Windows 10 installed, it appears to the user that they got the 'upgrade' forced on them.
[...]and can choose to not install the Windows 10 upgrade or remove the upgrade from Windows Update (WU) by changing the WU settings."
(emphasis mine)
From what I see of that quote, so long as you intentionally tell the system to *not* push Windows 10 on your box, it will just do it whenever Microsoft and Windows Update decide to push it in.
In the eyes of the typical user (who does not read tech blogs or suchlike, let alone dork around with their Windows Update settings), this appears by all counts to be a 'forced' push of Windows 10 onto their box.
Slashdot Mirror
If they have no allegedly needed incentive to pay more, then why would they demand with such passion that such a thing be enforced across-the-board to everyone who makes > $x ?
Oh, wait... ;)
Good point... but by then, it is hoped that a dummy server and a few /etc/hosts entries will take care of that. Also, by then there will likely be packages you can load onto your goodies, much like one can do to their phone right now.
It's a lot like DRM has gone all this time - measure, counter-measure.
Short of completely abandoning modern society and living off the grid there is no way to maintain what was previously known as privacy.
Sure there is - you just have to work at it.
The cost to secure IoT devices and retroactively secure the internet age is so massively prohibitive it beyond the wildest of dreams for any realist..
Umm, really?
1) buy a cheap wifi router, give it a unique SSID
2) tie all your IoT crap to that new SSID
3) rig the router to QoS down to something ungodly tiny (2400 baud ought to do it), or just don't connect it to the Internet at all after the initial install/update for the device. Be certain that if it is connected, you block all incoming ports at the firewall.
4) (for the truly paranoid) If it has a camera, a bottle of cheap black nail polish is like $3 or so. If it has a microphone, clip if off or cover it with epoxy.
So far, we've spent less than $50, and most of that was for the new router - if you have an older router, just press that into service and it'll all cost you less than a couple of hours plus the price of a large latte... *shrug*.
Fair point. But did they have any other options?
Actually, as consumers, they (mostly) do have options - lots of them.
In my case, I avoid the whole IoT thing like it were some virulent form of radioactive space herpes. It's not out of paranoia, but because my rural Satellite ISP has a bandwidth cap during most of any given 24-hour cycle. This means not bothering with the cute little automated/networked thermometers, televisions, refrigerators, etc...
To be honest, I don't see much value in them anyway - at least not at this time; I'm perfectly capable of setting a thermostat (or throwing another log into the wood stove), and keeping a mental inventory of what's in my refrigerator. There are promising technologies/devices out (e.g. the Amazon Echo thingy), but in all honesty, they're nice-to-have things, not need-to-have (and unless you're severely disabled, nearly all of them are not much more than glorified monetization opportunities for whoever sells the thing to you - again, see also the Amazon Echo thingy).
Anyrate, yes the consumer (that is, you and I) have the ultimate power over how much these things influence and potentially control our lives and out stuff.
Now there may be exceptions (say you bought some swanky condo or rented an apartment that has all this stuff in it), but they can be disabled to an extent (or even hijacked by you if you know how and see a use for doing so.) It ultimately depends on you.
Eventually, I can see where you'd have no choice but to buy such things because alternatives would cease to exist... but even there, you can simply, say, assign them to an SSID that you've throttled down to 14.4k or some obscenely low rate, then take the extra step of firewalling the shit out of that network to allow only established/related ports. Or, just hack the thing to taste (after all, phones can be jailbroken fairly quickly, so...)
While most of AC post is a troll, he does make one salient point:
That shit could have happened on a Windows laptop, too.
Fact is, it does that shit far more often on a Windows laptop...
Actually...
1) all her content is backed-up online (viz. iCloud), so unless you took >5GB of photos/videos, it would cost like $10/year or some paltry sum to get more storage on it.
2) 6 months between backups? You know that the whole iCloud thing backs up *daily*, right?
Now way back in the long-ago, you would have had to back things up to some local source or another computer viz. iTunes, but still - 6 months between backups? Really? How the fsck would that have been Apple's fault?
My wife went the Apple route when she went to look for a new laptop back in 2013 fora lot of the same reasons as listed in TFS. I was told to keep my mouth shut, and that she would do all the decision-making when it came to replacing her dead laptop. So, I follow her to Best Buy (I know, right?)... While I stand far enough back to not be part of the convo (but close enough to hear), the sales-schlub tells her that she was not allowed to buy a laptop with Windows 7 on it, but had to buy one with 8. Worst part was, he said it in such an arrogant well you're a girl, so trust the big bad techie guy here way that she just got pissed off. I followed her from a distance as she stormed out of the store, and let out a loudly-coughed "Bullshit!" just as I passed the confused salescritter.
Long story short, two hours later we drove around to other stores, then we drove home with a shiny new iPad. The Apple Store employee was nothing but kindness and accommodation as he listened to her needs, and (again as I kept distance), they had a very pleasant conversation as she chose what she wanted. She's been using the thing ever since.
I can only imagine what kind of special tech-support hell I'd be subjected to if she did bring home a Windows 8 laptop, got used to it, then had to go through the Win10 horseshit... instead, I got 3 years of pure bliss, and I think I had to help her once with something when the iCloud thing came out.
Snowden in Russia making a decent living, has a very well-recognized name (even in Russia), and is surrounded by a bumper-crop of (arguably) the hottest babes on the planet.
Tell me again how badly he's suffering...
Yesbut most jobs aren't for life, so plenty of non startup jobs will require moving on if you want to go up the career (or pay) ladder, and etc.
You're technically correct, but the issue lies within the frequency of job changes: do you want to jump to a new job every 3 months, every 6 months, every couple of years, every 5 years, or...? Startups tend towards the higher frequency, so...
This, right the hell here.
As an aside, I've found that during the interview with a startup, you *always* begin discussing the business' long-term plans, discuss their financials, discuss their profit strategy, and learn enough to understand the answers... doubly so if you're not getting any stock (I go for cash/salary anyway - worthless stock is worthless if the company goes tits-up). If they get all nervous or their answers start getting all buzzwordy, end the interview there and go look somewhere else, unless circumstance says you have no other choice.
I've lost count of the times when I interviewed at some startup that tried to sound like The Next Big Thing(tm), and everyone runs for cover at the very mention of even the minor question of "How much revenue do you project over the next five years, and what is your strategy to improve it?"
( The funniest was when one "IT Director" replied to that very question with "Why should you care? You're just orchestrating the servers?" Why was it funny? Because the look on his face was priceless when I told him that "Well, I won't blindly slave away for some random VC chump, good luck finding someone stupid enough to work for you, and the interview is now over. Good day, gents.")
I'm guessing that the whole 'finding a new job', and networking like hell to make that easier, tends to be a bit of a timesuck.
They're all too young to remember the dot-com bubble bursting 15 years ago. We're living in the same times.
Agreed. Good news is, at least this time you don't end up having to compete against paper tigers who throw the right buzzwords at clueless HR PHBs, right? Okay, but not as much this time. Umm, okay... we're screwed.
In all seriousness though, things have changed a bit since then.
Back then, I remember in California (Milpitas to be exact) in 2001, and driving by a building that had a huge banner saying "Now hiring at least 500 MCSEs!" Mind, I was only in town for a bit of vendor training, but that sign scared the crap out of me. Knowing full well that the dot-boom was stumbling at the time, the sign said that said that in six months those 500 card-carrying certificate-holders would be out of a job, and a lot of them would get frustrated enough to move out of California.
Worse still, that sign said that the company was only looking for paper, and not experience, skill, creativity...
Fast forward to 2016. Nowadays, most hiring is handled through recruiters, and most of the interviews (at least all of the ones I've been to) demand skills-testing, and at least one sit-down/grilling with the people who would end up being your peers. I think that most of these kids in Silly Valley are going to be far short on the experience department, and probably knowledge (seriously - a kid fresh out of college is going to know some basics, know one language fairly well, and maybe dabble in some gee-whiz-super-fad language on the side). These folks have one big advantage over the rest of us (call it time-clock masochism), but consider: the companies that seek out employees who willingly churn for 80+ hours a week? Those are the employers that anyone with a brain would avoid like hell anyway.
Only downside is, most of these kids will come breezing into our communities (outside of Silly Valley) and compete for the same jobs.
While at my end it's no big deal? I can see a lot of developers in places like Seattle, Portland, Austin, et al getting nervous all the sudden as the recruiters stop soliciting the locals as much as they used to.
At this point, the democrats stay home here many times rather than vote as their vote quite literally does not count. It would take about 80% of the popular vote for the democrats to get close to 50% of the seats.
We are a state that is red in name only as we are purple by voting method due to disenfranchised voters staying home and firmly blue by will of the people.
Incorrect - the voters who "stay home" are not "disenfranchised", as they were not denied the opportunity or the right to vote - they simply chose (for whatever reason) not to exercise the right.
Big difference there, dude.
If you're so mad about how your state is politically made up (trust me, I live in Oregon so feel your pain), then get off your ass and help get out the vote for your party/ideology/candidate. But, you cannot say that voters who feel the same as you are somehow "disenfranchised", because that's simply not true.
Question - what about those who are wards of the state? If you get your entire source(s) of income from government funds, why should you be allowed to have a voice in how that taxation is apportioned and levied?
I ask this because the temptation is all too real (and in the case of certain candidates, all too proven) for such folks to vote solely for the candidate who shouts 'panem et circensus!' the loudest.
That's why GP included the "take full legal responsibility" part as a condition. Excepting specific court-ordered emancipation, you're not allowed to legally be bound by contract until the age of 18, and cannot take full legal responsibility for yourself in civil matters.
Personally, I'd like to see the following conditions for voting:
* be at least 21 years old, unless you are an active-duty member of the US Military in which case you can vote as long as you are still on active-duty status (because if you took an oath to defend the US Constitution with your life and live that oath daily, you're proven that you're old enough to vote).
* pay federal income tax for at least 6 of the last 18 months before Jan 1 of the year you are voting, unless you are physically (not mentally) disabled to the point where you provably cannot work for a living.
* not be a felon and not be inpatient for mental illness and/or deficiency.
Hrm... one possibility: are your machines using an MSDN-generated license (say, off of a private subscription, or an EA or SA contract), an OEM one, or...?
Also - you still have to download the thing if you want it, and that multi-GB file isn't going to get any smaller just because you flip a switch. :/
Wait - doesn't that only work if you're connected via a 3/4G fob, or over or wifi? Didn't think that hard-wired ethernet connections (which I have on at least 3 machines) would have that option.
We eventually took it to an Apple Store and the tech said that her OS was no supported and she would have to spend $100 to upgrade to the latest version.
Calling that fishy, for two reasons:
1) I ran OSX 10.3 just fine all the way up until 2007, when the problem with site support failed (I then just switched to Chrome and ran that just fine on OSX 10.3 until 2010-ish).
2) You only paid for OS upgrades from before 10.7, when they actually charged money for OS upgrades - and OSX 10.5 - 10.6 were only like $35 each, not $100. 10.2 through 10.5 were $100 each, but 10.5 was supported until 2010, and 10.6 (the last PPC/Intel hybrid OS) was fully compatible and supported all the way to 2012 or so. Versions 10.7 all the way up to now were/are free of charge.
Unlike Microsoft, you get one notification (and only one!), then you have to specifically go to the App Store and consciously download it - then you install it as a separate step.
And this is why I don't have Windows running anywhere in my house - with multiple computers, I could see Microsoft totally raping the bandwidth caps on my rural Satellite Internet connection... and rural 3G/4G Internet users likely wouldn't get any relief from it either. :/
Speaking of which, I wonder if Microsoft could be found liable for any extra expenses incurred as a result of such a use case?
That would be rather awesome if Apple actually did that...
You missed the point - in either case, the user has to go in and intentionally tell Windows Update to not install Windows 10.
Most typical users don't even touch those settings, and with the default being that they will get Windows 10 installed, it appears to the user that they got the 'upgrade' forced on them.
Missed a bit in the post:
s/as you intentionally/as you do not intentionally/g
Actually, read the summary again... carefully.
(emphasis mine)
From what I see of that quote, so long as you intentionally tell the system to *not* push Windows 10 on your box, it will just do it whenever Microsoft and Windows Update decide to push it in.
In the eyes of the typical user (who does not read tech blogs or suchlike, let alone dork around with their Windows Update settings), this appears by all counts to be a 'forced' push of Windows 10 onto their box.