There's a lot wrong with the headline. The alternative to EME isn't no DRM; it's Adobe Flash. Which we've had, and suffered with, for a very long time. EME standardizes, so some degree, DRM so that we can dump Flash. Of the EME-producers, it's Apple that's the evil one... regardless of using Flash or using a non-Apple EME... such as Widevine in Chrome... you cannot detect HDCP; Apple does not document that and yet uses it in their Fairplay CDM. So neither Flash or Widevine in Chrome can enforce HDMI per the OPL, and yet the Safari Fairplay EME CDM can, meaning you need to go full Apple to see HD on an external monitor unless a toughened custom viewer is used. EME doesn't really freeze out other browsers either. Firefox has supported Widevine for years. Mostly what this does is allow us to dump the enormous vulnerability surface of Flash. But of course "evil corporations are corrupting the internet" does SOUND better than "EME helps you migrate from Flash."
One of my gripes with iOS web browsing is the page reload when you context-switch back to it, which is a dreadful experience on an airplane via GoGo. I'd been looking into writing a browser better at caching, but the Apple requirements are that the browser use their WebKit. So you can't really change the behavior.
Apple also restricts scripting, doesn't support a wide variety of languages, can't support TUN VPNs... but the corporate types like it for how bolted-down and controllable it is.
Only now, that's racist and violent and will get you locked up.
Roam around the countryside with our friends.
Only now, that's an abdication of parenting, and results in HHS taking kids from parents.
Play random games of dodgeball.
Only now, that's violent and gets you sent to counselling.
Played soccer or competitive (organized) sports.
Only now, those are judgemental, because there are winners and losers, so they've over-burdened them with rules and awards to where they're no longer fun enough to do.
Goofed off in one of our parents' backyards.
Only now, any minor injury results in a lawsuit, so you can't risk your neighbor kids coming over to play.
When younger, have birthday parties with our besties.
Only now, that's exclusionary and the school forbids parents from having non-school related parties at all.
Each our brown-bagged lunches, mostly peanut butter & jelly, together outside at recess, except for the kids who luckily brought the chips and candy.
Only now, peanut butter is banned. And so are candy and chips. One is dangerous and the other is, well, dangerous but slower.
Geez, and you wonder why the kids hide from everything?
This is exactly what "states rights", etc. are all about. The creeping definition of "interstate commerce" has resulted in too much centralized bureaucracy that doesn't understand the real impact.
It isn't really that the engineers get fired first; more like they don't even hire other disciplines now. The rest are outsourced to local manufacturers, or contracted workers through external companies, so it doesn't make the news when those reductions happen. Years ago Boeing manufactured a much larger percentage of their airplanes than they do now, and had a larger fraction of their administrative (e.g.) work done by employees.
I don't understand the zealotry about blocking a DRM standard. Let's recap the current situation:
Initially there was no DRM. And no content, except via usenet.
Then we got Macromedia Flash. Which supported DRM. And content began to appear, along with streaming video.
Eventually lots of content appeared, some protected via Flash and some not. Audio and TV stations began streaming, DRM-protected by Flash.
Then Apple (HLS / Fairplay) and Microsoft (Smoothstreaming / PlayReady, including packaged as Silverlight) wanted a piece of the pie, and DRM fragmented. Apple blocked Flash from iOS devices.
... and... Adobe Flash became a common surface vector for malware attacks.
Which brings us to yesterday, when we have quite a few competing DRMs (Flash, Fairplay on Safari/iOS, Playready on Microsoft/Roku/most consoles, Google Widevine Modular on Android and many of the same consoles and in Chrome) and devices can't always play the desired streams.
We still have Flash dominance... something like 15% of websites with media still use Flash and only Flash.
So let's summarize: Without any standard, DRM became required and pervasive, as well as a cause of compatibility matrix and support issues.
What does the proposed HTML5 EME standard do? It doesn't require DRM. It merely provides a standardized mechanism for implementing it. In theory, the CDM was going to be, well, modular so that the same browser could play several DRMs, but we know how that works. But it just doesn't matter, because CMAF helps ensure a lower implementation bar anyhow. One set of HTML5 code (or fairly close, Apple being the outlier right now) and one set of media segments (well, two right now, due to Fairplay using a different AES128 mode than anyone else, and the differences between DASH which Google and Microsoft support and HLS which Apple and Adobe support, but at least it's only two and not four.)
In other words, standardization won't cost anything, it won't restrict you any because DRM already happened even without standardization. What standardization does is raise the likelihood that you can use any device/browser you want to view content that otherwise would be blocked to you.
Of course they would. if consumers gave them a choice: release DRM free, or go out of business, they will release DRM free. They need us more than we need them.
You do realize that the consumers receive, not give, choices, right? The sellers says, "take it or leave it." And won't sell without sufficient protections. Adobe Flash didn't become the standard because it's easy to write for; it was because of DRM and you needed it to watch anything.
So the thing is, people who actually want to watch the new movies, will tolerate the DRM. Mostly you don't even notice it's there. And with CMAF, how you watch it is relatively up to you. But it's still protected.
The last time that you could get a decent permanent job without solid skills and education was the 70s. But they weren't easy jobs - things like auto plant worker. And many of those jobs vanished in the 80s. Today's WSJ has an article why... basically people got progressively more expensive, while automation got less expensive. The "gig economy" is no different than what people did before about it... Amway or Fuller, or holding Tupperware parties, or starting a lawn care or housecleaning service, or starting your own cab/limo company before cities regulated and medallioned that option off the list. The unfortunate part is that we fall for the sob stories, the anecdotes of emotion, and then close off another rung on the upward-mobility ladder in the name of protecting the people that, as a result, are held down more firmly.
Just because you are racing to the bottom, doesn't mean everyone is. Delta dedicates quite a few seats to Comfort+, and just brought back in-flight meals for cross-country flights for all seats.
You may be a bit young to remember this, but a lot of jobs in the medical device sector were lost due to Obama before he implemented any policies. The statements he made about his intent to constrain what could be charged - for what devices, under what conditions, how much - reduced investor confidence long before he put any policies in place. His actual actions later were bad for that same sector, but not nearly as bad as his initial off-the-cuff statements of intent.
Hiring (or continuing to pay) a team for a project is an investment in future returns. It's bets by investors that putting their money into companies is better than into government bonds. It's not about what today looks like, but rather how, relatively, they expect tomorrow to look.
This has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time, and I've followed it for years, because password complexity hasn't been the problem in the big breaches. We are just making it harder on normal people, who then write them down, lose them, use the same one everywhere.
Think of the big breaches, which I tracked until about five years ago... In the Zappos breach, hackers broke into their system and stole their database. They didnt guess passwords, just stole them.
In May 2005, GMail was hacked... via JavaScript, exposing contacts, personal data without cracking (or exposing) passwords.
When CardSystems Solutions (a payment processor) was hacked and 40 million credit card numbers stolen, it was by SQL Injection. Fust full names, addresses and passwords exposed without any password guessing. TJX (TJ Maxx, a retailer) lost 45 million credit card records in a hack... by unprotected WiFi and unencrypted records.
Google's AdWords system by surrupticious files being installed. User passwords were stolen.
About ten years ago, Internet Explorer (yeah, I know...) facilitated look-alike sites to steal Hotmail (Microsoft), GMail and Yahoo passwords... but complexity or guessing were not the issue.
When Epsilon Data Management was hacked, it wasn't via guessed passwords, but they were stolen, compromisingcustomer accounts on Citibank, Chase, Target, Walgreen and Best Buy. LinkedIn, the professional networking site, had six million passwords cracked-and-leaked in June 2012. The process was an attack on the server storage encryption, not on password strength.
The stupid thing was, when Zappos was hacked (again, not via password theft), they then decided to impose stringent password requirements. Amazon doesn't have such stringent requirements, so just for ease I've switched most of the purchases (about four a year) I used to do from Zappos over to Amazon.
I admire your passion, but the world of media doesn't work that way. If the content distributors (Netflix, Amazon, HBO GO/NOW and the also-rans) weren't able to use standardized DRM, they would use... and standardize... on a non-standard platform. One that, being non-standard, would probably be very closed-source and proprietary. And consumers would flock to it Resulting in a huge, unverified surface for exploits and attacks.
I don't think that. For several years I was "randomly" picked for a thorough search every time I boarded a flight back from Europe... which was every other month. I'm blue-eyed, white, clean-shaven, born in the U.S. and was usually in a nice business suit. We used to joke that it was because it's safer to search someone like me, as you know you won't find anything and you won't be accused of bias.
You are making an accusation based on a single incident. It could have been an agent responding to Sidd being, e.g., belligerent, or some other country on his passport, or even just misinterpreting a recent memo.
VeraCrypt/True were already secure -enough-. Cracking through the holes is usually more effort than local law enforcement, your boss or the local mob will care about. If you're on the radar of worse people, they can toss you in jail or threaten your family. So while I consider better security a good thing when it doesn't increase cost or inconvenience, it's not really an essential move forward.
The bigger problem is common passwords, leaving the volume open, having open drives automatically backed up to "the cloud", emailing documents... things these security code fixes cannot address. We don't hear often that the Feds have used a security hole to extract data from a user's system.
Umm... no. The real number is about 25%. Real world tests. But you have to do REAL world tests.
A few years ago I was at the VP8 conference. Google was touting how much bandwidth VP8 could save over H.264. They said they could give identical quality with a 5Mbps VP8 1080p stream as with a 10Mbps H.264 stream. Well, yes... you get about the same quality with a 4Mbps H.264 stream at 1080p as with the 10Mbps. But they did freeze when asked if they would pit the quality of VP8 doing a 1.2Mbps stream against H.264 doing a 2.4Mbps stream.
You've got to know the context. For our tested real world content, same quality, against optimized H.264, it's about 25%, pretty consistently.
I've seen a lot of style wars - tabs vs spaces, braces starting same line vs next line vs omitted when possible, commented enums required (especially by European companies using StyleCop), etc.
All of that is unnecessary from a compiler perspective. But the style you are accustomed to aids your efficiency and effectiveness. Code doesn't care if it's consistently indented, but finding that unbalanced loop is much easier with it.
For me personally, since I'm in C++, Java, JavaScript/Node (never by choice), Groovy, C# and Python every week, style consistency for me, rather than optimizing for what zealots for a particular language want, is highly beneficial. So the Groovy gets semicolons. The inability of JavaScript to handle certain brace formattings resulted in me modifying my default across all the languages, because they other (real) languages don't care.
Use what makes you personally across all your development, and more importantly your entire team, faster and better.
There is so much wrong with that as to be comical.
When do you ever hear about insecure passwords being compromised? That doesn't happen. They get leaked. Constantly. But not guessed, not when they can be leaked or stolen.
So how does a super-ultra-secure password help?
And then we have this odd bit of math, that 18% of the >51 age range had compromised accounts, while less than double that, 35%, of the youngest range had. Probably, but unclear because the report requires providing PII, while having four times more accounts. I'd certainly bet that the 18-to-34 age bracket has more than double the account count of the compu-geysers. (I say as someone just squeaking below that bar.)
Which would imply that, mathematically, insecure passwords are more secure. Go figure.
The on-chip FM radio requires a WIRED headset. Not bluetooth, not using the phone speaker or earpiece. The headset lead is used as an antenna. Without it, the radio doesn't work. Generally won't even turn on, just gives a warning.
So it won't work for most users. And was probably costing too much in support calls about why it wasn't working.
"For everyone who is going to respond to this in a "Fuck you, I can say and do whatever I want" fashion, can you please explain why it is so difficult to refrain from inappropriate jokes in an office environment?" Did you even READ the OP? This wasn't about an office environment. And, if you really have been around that long, you know that the definition of "appropriate" changed a lot in 25 years. You could claim that we should have been this sensitive, this advanced, 25 years ago, but that was then and, for then, it was pretty advanced. More so than 25 years before that. All of which makes you sound a bit immature.
That's not entirely fair. That's still a pretty recent version - if you purchase from Amazon or NewEgg you have a good bet of getting it even on an x14 model, and certainly will get that or older on any other model - and there's no "Automatic Update" mechanism on Synology systems. Plus they're essentially storage appliances; users aren't expected to log into and manage them frequently. And the feature that seems to put people at risk is a selling point of the device.
I'm not bashing Synology; I have two Syns running in my system (both current, both firewalled, neither has the rumored susceptible port open, neither infected.) But you're not spending enough time around regular people if you think people expect to be logging into the admin screen of their external hard drive - or their fridge, toaster oven or coffee maker - frequently to check for updates.;)
She starts with claiming the researchers are almost unanimous. That's simply not true; more accurately, any who are not in agreement are drummed out of the committees. It's a selection problem, a bit like asking an lgbt studies group whether sexual orientation is nature or nurture.
The farmers, though, play the long game. They see political fads come and go. If their families have been on these plots for just two centuries, they've seen parts of the Little Ice Age, the recovery from that and the Global Cooling hysteria of the late 1970s-early 1980s.
If the researchers are wrong, they write follow-up papers and continue with their careers. But if the farmers make bad decisions, they lose their livelihoods and the historical homestead. The researchers may be right, but the farmers have more at stake and have a better long-term success rate.
I'm really sick of people who use attack words constantly, as you are, and yet don't pay any attention to the content.
I suspect I far out-credential you on both science and climate studies, but the internet has no respect for that. To that degree, I would agree with your objection to the rejection of expertise, but I take it a step further than you... I don't consider many of the "experts" experts because they aren't - they are preachers. To be an expert, you have to have studied the alternatives, gone into the lions den, and be able to defend your hypothesis rather than shouting down what you consider unbelievers. But the alarmists have a history of treating it as a religion.
Your inability to discuss this civilly suggests you have the same problem. All these invectives and so little content. Bravo for you!
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There's a lot wrong with the headline.
The alternative to EME isn't no DRM; it's Adobe Flash. Which we've had, and suffered with, for a very long time. EME standardizes, so some degree, DRM so that we can dump Flash.
Of the EME-producers, it's Apple that's the evil one... regardless of using Flash or using a non-Apple EME... such as Widevine in Chrome... you cannot detect HDCP; Apple does not document that and yet uses it in their Fairplay CDM. So neither Flash or Widevine in Chrome can enforce HDMI per the OPL, and yet the Safari Fairplay EME CDM can, meaning you need to go full Apple to see HD on an external monitor unless a toughened custom viewer is used.
EME doesn't really freeze out other browsers either. Firefox has supported Widevine for years. Mostly what this does is allow us to dump the enormous vulnerability surface of Flash.
But of course "evil corporations are corrupting the internet" does SOUND better than "EME helps you migrate from Flash."
One of my gripes with iOS web browsing is the page reload when you context-switch back to it, which is a dreadful experience on an airplane via GoGo. I'd been looking into writing a browser better at caching, but the Apple requirements are that the browser use their WebKit. So you can't really change the behavior. Apple also restricts scripting, doesn't support a wide variety of languages, can't support TUN VPNs... but the corporate types like it for how bolted-down and controllable it is.
Geez, and you wonder why the kids hide from everything?
This is exactly what "states rights", etc. are all about. The creeping definition of "interstate commerce" has resulted in too much centralized bureaucracy that doesn't understand the real impact.
It isn't really that the engineers get fired first; more like they don't even hire other disciplines now. The rest are outsourced to local manufacturers, or contracted workers through external companies, so it doesn't make the news when those reductions happen. Years ago Boeing manufactured a much larger percentage of their airplanes than they do now, and had a larger fraction of their administrative (e.g.) work done by employees.
Sometimes people don't even realize encrypted data is present.
Initially there was no DRM. And no content, except via usenet.
Then we got Macromedia Flash. Which supported DRM. And content began to appear, along with streaming video.
Eventually lots of content appeared, some protected via Flash and some not. Audio and TV stations began streaming, DRM-protected by Flash.
Then Apple (HLS / Fairplay) and Microsoft (Smoothstreaming / PlayReady, including packaged as Silverlight) wanted a piece of the pie, and DRM fragmented. Apple blocked Flash from iOS devices.
Which brings us to yesterday, when we have quite a few competing DRMs (Flash, Fairplay on Safari/iOS, Playready on Microsoft/Roku/most consoles, Google Widevine Modular on Android and many of the same consoles and in Chrome) and devices can't always play the desired streams.
We still have Flash dominance... something like 15% of websites with media still use Flash and only Flash.
So let's summarize: Without any standard, DRM became required and pervasive, as well as a cause of compatibility matrix and support issues.
What does the proposed HTML5 EME standard do? It doesn't require DRM. It merely provides a standardized mechanism for implementing it. In theory, the CDM was going to be, well, modular so that the same browser could play several DRMs, but we know how that works. But it just doesn't matter, because CMAF helps ensure a lower implementation bar anyhow. One set of HTML5 code (or fairly close, Apple being the outlier right now) and one set of media segments (well, two right now, due to Fairplay using a different AES128 mode than anyone else, and the differences between DASH which Google and Microsoft support and HLS which Apple and Adobe support, but at least it's only two and not four.)
In other words, standardization won't cost anything, it won't restrict you any because DRM already happened even without standardization. What standardization does is raise the likelihood that you can use any device/browser you want to view content that otherwise would be blocked to you.
Why is this a bad thing?
Of course they would. if consumers gave them a choice: release DRM free, or go out of business, they will release DRM free. They need us more than we need them.
You do realize that the consumers receive, not give, choices, right? The sellers says, "take it or leave it." And won't sell without sufficient protections. Adobe Flash didn't become the standard because it's easy to write for; it was because of DRM and you needed it to watch anything.
So the thing is, people who actually want to watch the new movies, will tolerate the DRM. Mostly you don't even notice it's there. And with CMAF, how you watch it is relatively up to you. But it's still protected.
The last time that you could get a decent permanent job without solid skills and education was the 70s. But they weren't easy jobs - things like auto plant worker. And many of those jobs vanished in the 80s. Today's WSJ has an article why... basically people got progressively more expensive, while automation got less expensive. The "gig economy" is no different than what people did before about it... Amway or Fuller, or holding Tupperware parties, or starting a lawn care or housecleaning service, or starting your own cab/limo company before cities regulated and medallioned that option off the list. The unfortunate part is that we fall for the sob stories, the anecdotes of emotion, and then close off another rung on the upward-mobility ladder in the name of protecting the people that, as a result, are held down more firmly.
Just because you are racing to the bottom, doesn't mean everyone is. Delta dedicates quite a few seats to Comfort+, and just brought back in-flight meals for cross-country flights for all seats.
You may be a bit young to remember this, but a lot of jobs in the medical device sector were lost due to Obama before he implemented any policies. The statements he made about his intent to constrain what could be charged - for what devices, under what conditions, how much - reduced investor confidence long before he put any policies in place. His actual actions later were bad for that same sector, but not nearly as bad as his initial off-the-cuff statements of intent. Hiring (or continuing to pay) a team for a project is an investment in future returns. It's bets by investors that putting their money into companies is better than into government bonds. It's not about what today looks like, but rather how, relatively, they expect tomorrow to look.
Think of the big breaches, which I tracked until about five years ago... In the Zappos breach, hackers broke into their system and stole their database. They didnt guess passwords, just stole them.
In May 2005, GMail was hacked... via JavaScript, exposing contacts, personal data without cracking (or exposing) passwords.
When CardSystems Solutions (a payment processor) was hacked and 40 million credit card numbers stolen, it was by SQL Injection. Fust full names, addresses and passwords exposed without any password guessing.
TJX (TJ Maxx, a retailer) lost 45 million credit card records in a hack... by unprotected WiFi and unencrypted records.
Google's AdWords system by surrupticious files being installed. User passwords were stolen.
About ten years ago, Internet Explorer (yeah, I know...) facilitated look-alike sites to steal Hotmail (Microsoft), GMail and Yahoo passwords... but complexity or guessing were not the issue.
When Epsilon Data Management was hacked, it wasn't via guessed passwords, but they were stolen, compromisingcustomer accounts on Citibank, Chase, Target, Walgreen and Best Buy.
LinkedIn, the professional networking site, had six million passwords cracked-and-leaked in June 2012. The process was an attack on the server storage encryption, not on password strength.
The stupid thing was, when Zappos was hacked (again, not via password theft), they then decided to impose stringent password requirements. Amazon doesn't have such stringent requirements, so just for ease I've switched most of the purchases (about four a year) I used to do from Zappos over to Amazon.
I admire your passion, but the world of media doesn't work that way. If the content distributors (Netflix, Amazon, HBO GO/NOW and the also-rans) weren't able to use standardized DRM, they would use... and standardize... on a non-standard platform. One that, being non-standard, would probably be very closed-source and proprietary. And consumers would flock to it Resulting in a huge, unverified surface for exploits and attacks.
This has happened before. Remember Flash?
Channel George Santayana.
I don't think that. For several years I was "randomly" picked for a thorough search every time I boarded a flight back from Europe... which was every other month. I'm blue-eyed, white, clean-shaven, born in the U.S. and was usually in a nice business suit. We used to joke that it was because it's safer to search someone like me, as you know you won't find anything and you won't be accused of bias.
You are making an accusation based on a single incident. It could have been an agent responding to Sidd being, e.g., belligerent, or some other country on his passport, or even just misinterpreting a recent memo.
VeraCrypt/True were already secure -enough-. Cracking through the holes is usually more effort than local law enforcement, your boss or the local mob will care about. If you're on the radar of worse people, they can toss you in jail or threaten your family. So while I consider better security a good thing when it doesn't increase cost or inconvenience, it's not really an essential move forward.
The bigger problem is common passwords, leaving the volume open, having open drives automatically backed up to "the cloud", emailing documents... things these security code fixes cannot address. We don't hear often that the Feds have used a security hole to extract data from a user's system.
Umm... no. The real number is about 25%. Real world tests. But you have to do REAL world tests.
A few years ago I was at the VP8 conference. Google was touting how much bandwidth VP8 could save over H.264. They said they could give identical quality with a 5Mbps VP8 1080p stream as with a 10Mbps H.264 stream. Well, yes... you get about the same quality with a 4Mbps H.264 stream at 1080p as with the 10Mbps. But they did freeze when asked if they would pit the quality of VP8 doing a 1.2Mbps stream against H.264 doing a 2.4Mbps stream.
You've got to know the context. For our tested real world content, same quality, against optimized H.264, it's about 25%, pretty consistently.
For a company! The average /.er must be over half of that, >$150K/annum.
I've seen a lot of style wars - tabs vs spaces, braces starting same line vs next line vs omitted when possible, commented enums required (especially by European companies using StyleCop), etc.
All of that is unnecessary from a compiler perspective. But the style you are accustomed to aids your efficiency and effectiveness. Code doesn't care if it's consistently indented, but finding that unbalanced loop is much easier with it.
For me personally, since I'm in C++, Java, JavaScript/Node (never by choice), Groovy, C# and Python every week, style consistency for me, rather than optimizing for what zealots for a particular language want, is highly beneficial. So the Groovy gets semicolons. The inability of JavaScript to handle certain brace formattings resulted in me modifying my default across all the languages, because they other (real) languages don't care.
Use what makes you personally across all your development, and more importantly your entire team, faster and better.
I'm not sure, but the image at http://www.nullisland.com/geog... looks a lot like Aogashima Island in Japan.
There is so much wrong with that as to be comical.
When do you ever hear about insecure passwords being compromised? That doesn't happen. They get leaked. Constantly. But not guessed, not when they can be leaked or stolen.
So how does a super-ultra-secure password help?
And then we have this odd bit of math, that 18% of the >51 age range had compromised accounts, while less than double that, 35%, of the youngest range had. Probably, but unclear because the report requires providing PII, while having four times more accounts. I'd certainly bet that the 18-to-34 age bracket has more than double the account count of the compu-geysers. (I say as someone just squeaking below that bar.)
Which would imply that, mathematically, insecure passwords are more secure. Go figure.
The on-chip FM radio requires a WIRED headset. Not bluetooth, not using the phone speaker or earpiece. The headset lead is used as an antenna. Without it, the radio doesn't work. Generally won't even turn on, just gives a warning.
So it won't work for most users. And was probably costing too much in support calls about why it wasn't working.
"For everyone who is going to respond to this in a "Fuck you, I can say and do whatever I want" fashion, can you please explain why it is so difficult to refrain from inappropriate jokes in an office environment?"
Did you even READ the OP? This wasn't about an office environment. And, if you really have been around that long, you know that the definition of "appropriate" changed a lot in 25 years. You could claim that we should have been this sensitive, this advanced, 25 years ago, but that was then and, for then, it was pretty advanced. More so than 25 years before that.
All of which makes you sound a bit immature.
That's not entirely fair. That's still a pretty recent version - if you purchase from Amazon or NewEgg you have a good bet of getting it even on an x14 model, and certainly will get that or older on any other model - and there's no "Automatic Update" mechanism on Synology systems. Plus they're essentially storage appliances; users aren't expected to log into and manage them frequently. And the feature that seems to put people at risk is a selling point of the device.
I'm not bashing Synology; I have two Syns running in my system (both current, both firewalled, neither has the rumored susceptible port open, neither infected.) But you're not spending enough time around regular people if you think people expect to be logging into the admin screen of their external hard drive - or their fridge, toaster oven or coffee maker - frequently to check for updates. ;)
She starts with claiming the researchers are almost unanimous. That's simply not true; more accurately, any who are not in agreement are drummed out of the committees. It's a selection problem, a bit like asking an lgbt studies group whether sexual orientation is nature or nurture. The farmers, though, play the long game. They see political fads come and go. If their families have been on these plots for just two centuries, they've seen parts of the Little Ice Age, the recovery from that and the Global Cooling hysteria of the late 1970s-early 1980s. If the researchers are wrong, they write follow-up papers and continue with their careers. But if the farmers make bad decisions, they lose their livelihoods and the historical homestead. The researchers may be right, but the farmers have more at stake and have a better long-term success rate.
I'm really sick of people who use attack words constantly, as you are, and yet don't pay any attention to the content.
I suspect I far out-credential you on both science and climate studies, but the internet has no respect for that. To that degree, I would agree with your objection to the rejection of expertise, but I take it a step further than you... I don't consider many of the "experts" experts because they aren't - they are preachers. To be an expert, you have to have studied the alternatives, gone into the lions den, and be able to defend your hypothesis rather than shouting down what you consider unbelievers. But the alarmists have a history of treating it as a religion.
Your inability to discuss this civilly suggests you have the same problem. All these invectives and so little content. Bravo for you!