Simply remove the ability for any company to be both a carrier AND a content distributor.
You can either:
1) Be an ISP ( you sell bandwidth. It requires #2 for it to be useful. ) or 2) Be in the content creation / distribution business ( you sell end content people want that requires #1 to experience it )
but not both.
This would effectively remove any financial incentive for a carrier to throttle competing services in an effort to promote their own. ( Because, come on. This IS what they're doing regardless if they admit to it publicly or not. They will stone-cold LIE to your face to protect it. )
Hell, a Congress with a spine ( we can dream right ? ) needs only threaten these folks with such a possibility and this silly behavior will cease as of yesterday.
Here's hoping Assange ( or another of our favorite whistle blowers currently residing in Russia ) held back some seriously juicy documents for the world to ponder over in the event something like this ever becomes a reality.
That's a really nice $illegal_as_hell_with_a_silly_operation_name Surveillance System you have there . . . . would be a shame if something happened to it. . . . . .
If China is claiming the technology to " see " stealth aircraft is now a reality, why are they still spending big $$$$ on building stealth aircraft ?
China is fixated on image. They took that whole " fake it till you make it " saying to heart and desperately wants the entire planet to believe they are the most amazing, powerful and capable country in history.
It should be noted the term " Paper Tiger " originated in China. They should be all too familiar with what it means since they are basically the very definition of the word.
The only difference between Harvey and every other hurricane in history that has hit this particular area of Texas is......
Wait for it . . .
The slow speed at which it tracked.
If Ike ( 2008 ) had stalled like Harvey did, we would have seen the same results. The lack of dual high pressure boundaries in the area limiting its movement is why it did not.
Texas typically has a large high pressure system sitting on it through much of the Summer months. Its size, boundaries and specific location within the State usually determine the path of any tropical storm system that shows up in the Gulf.
Those of us who live in the regions that see these storms probably have a bit more insight as to how they work than random anonymous cowards whose expert opinion consists only of what they read on the internet.
Pro tip: If you open a rebuttal with the vocabulary of a ten year old ( eg. dipshit ), odds are the remainder of your post will not be taken very seriously.
Harvey flooded areas that were not considered flood plain previously. It doesn't matter where you live, if a storm dumps nearly sixty inches of water on your neighborhood over a three day period, you're going to flood. ( So will everyone downstream from you as that water makes its way back to the ocean )
Harvey dumped a stupid amount of rain on SE Texas ( ~56 inches where I live ) for a couple of reasons.
1) It was caught in between two high pressure systems ( One in Texas, the other over the Gulf ) which is why it tracked the way it did. 2) It was moving at a blistering 2-3 mph which meant the rain bands just kept dumping water over the same areas for hours at a time. ( ~4in / hour or more )
It went from " who cares, it's a tropical depression " to " holy shit it's a significant strength hurricane " in a day or two. This was due to the warm water ( ~85-90f is typical in the Summer months ) in the Gulf of Mexico and # 2 above.
Again, the only reason it dumped so much water is because it effectively sat on the coastline and kept drawing in Gulf moisture. The Gulf Water temps have always been warm in late Summer ( has been that way my entire life ), so I don't see where they drew the conclusion about the amount of water Harvey dumped and climate change.
Had it been tracking at typical hurricane speeds, it wouldn't have been able to continue funneling Gulf Moisture onto the Texas Gulf Coast for as long as it did. I would lean more towards just bad timing with the two High Pressure systems coupled with the normal seasonal water temps in the Gulf of Mexico as the root cause.
" In the first place no, it wouldn't be fairly easy to pinpoint the location of the jamming source "
Easier than you may realize.
Between ships and aircraft outfitted with the right antenna arrays to satellite based systems, if you fire up a transmitter we can build an AOU small enough to send several cruise missiles your way to say hello.
The spooky people use to send us targeting data based on this stuff so we could incorporate it into the bigger picture of whatever region we were operating in at the time.
These systems have been in use for a long time and, over the years, have likely become far more accurate than the original hardware.
Of course you'll have to call it a " security " or " privacy protection " app before Apple would even consider such a thing on the App Store. Make sure to think of a catchy name for it. . . .
Conditions:
1) User has not logged into phone in $user_defined number of hours ( user is detained ) 2) No signal ( cellular or wifi ) present ( phone is in a signal denied environment ) 3) User has the paranoid feature enabled
#2 is fun because they have to choose to either leave the phone connected to a network ( risking a remote wipe ) or denying the connection and running the risk of the phone wiping itself. Decisions, decisions . . . . . .
User selectable payloads:
a) Phone wipes itself b) Phone rekeys with a random password ( user plausible deniability - I really don't know the password ) c) Phone overwrites data with random gibberish or lyrics from your favorite anti-police music ( NWA can help you out here )
If you're the forgetful criminal type, you can always add a setting to flash a warning, beep, vibrate, whatever telling you bad things are about to happen to your phone if you don't log into it soon.
Done.
Or you could, you know, leave your damn phone at home if you plan on doing something stupid. . . . . . ( # 2 answer right behind don't do anything stupid to begin with )
*afterthought*
This whole " they-might-wipe-the-phone-remotely-so-put-it-in-a-shielded-bag-or-faraday cage " thing wouldn't be an issue if there was a user removable battery in these things.
Plenty of folks use the various platforms to brag or show how amazing and fulfilling their lives are when, it's usually nothing more than staged fantasy.
Many folks don't see it for what it is and it then becomes a digital version of keeping up with the Jonses.
Unless they, too, partake in the charade, they can't possibly keep up which causes anxiety, depression and other issues.
and, at least in the US, few have any sympathy for them. They like to play the victim card over how terrible they're treated but, the reality is, they have few to blame other than themselves.
The news / media have long since ceased being a source of reliable / unbiased information and have, instead, turned into political attack dogs of whatever party they are affiliated with. As a result, I don't even bother to watch, listen or read anything other than the weather from any of our usual news sources. It's simply a waste of my time.
I would agree with Trudeau in that the news / media -should- be free from attacks and criticism, but only if news / media return to their principles and start acting as the professionals they are -supposed- to be. Not the three ring circus they have become.
Lose the bias, sensationalism, personal agendas and personal attacks against political parties and / or people they dislike and just report the damn news. Returning to their professional roots will go a long way in re-establishing some credibility as journalists and "news" as a whole.
If not . . . . . well. . . . when you engage in mud-slinging, you're bound to get just as dirty.
Don't whine about it when no one hands you a towel.
My first CC to incorporate a chip was compromised in less than a week. The wait staff ( my best guess due to it's limited use based on the length of time I had it ) simply copied the name, CC numbers and security code and voila, they have everything they need to make an online purchase or provide to a third party who is paying them to collect such things due to their access to so many.
I was somewhat puzzled when the transaction alert hit the phone that I had just paid for dinner for four to go about 1600 miles away:| ( People are awfully ballsy with many banks moving to the ability to instantly send text alerts for any purchases for any amount made from any of your accounts )
Called the bank a moment later to let them know the card was compromised. ( Dunno if the folks who used my card got to enjoy their dinner or not )
They marked the transaction as such, invalidated the card and sent me a new one within forty eight hours. ( I keep one other CC in the safe for exactly this reason. If one is compromised, I can easily switch to the other. )
As time has gone by, the bank knows what my typical purchases look like. When an oddball one shows up ( say an overseas one or out of State ) they block it by default. I have to call them up, validate who I am and authorize the unblock so the charge can go through.
My best guess for the delay in chip + pin is the cost of implementing the system due to the sheer scale of the US CC market. From what I've read, the estimated cost to shift over to the chip + pin tech will be somewhere in the vicinity of $8-10B USD and end retailers, banks and CC folks like Visa and Mastercard are fighting over who is going to foot the bill. ( The US has somewhere North of ~1B Credit Cards in circulation )
Telcos are going to roll out 5G in areas they previously had zero presence.
This will put them in direct competition with Cable.
As a result, I would expect to see some decent price drops on Big Cables side in order to keep customers from jumping ship just before the deployment goes live.
If there was any chance of listening to future conversations between parties using Iron Chat, this announcement just blew that right out of the water.
The folks who wish to talk via encrypted channels will now simply change their method of communication. It could be another commercial app, a homebrew one or just go all old school and do things the way it was done before the era of smartphones.
It could also be complete bullshit on the part of the Police in an attempt to get folks to quit using it:D
" I just couldn't remember where they told me they saved the thing, several weeks ago, when they talked about creating the new document in one of our weekly meetings. "
The problem is that every single meeting there are several of these " things " you're supposed to keep up with. The problem is every single meeting, those " things " you're supposed to remember from the last meeting gets changed to a " new " process or archived in favor of something else. Pretty soon, you have no idea which " things " are still active, which process is the current one or even what fucking day it is. . . .:|
All the while you're still putting out fires on a daily basis, headcount comes and goes and somehow it magically became your job to train the new people because when you asked management for a training budget and / or even the time to train them, you got laughed off the call.
One day, you just give up.
Eventually, you come to realize you've become the old timer you used to hate when you first started working for the company. The only difference is now you understand how they came to be that way.
Yet, my internet only package is ~$100 / month. ( My router, my cable modem ) What you pay differs VASTLY depending upon where you live and if any competition ( Fios, Google Fiber, AT&T Gigapower, etc ) exists in your neighborhood.
If Google rolled in here tomorrow, Comcast would probably cut my bill in HALF just to keep everyone from jumping ship.
My next system is a 16 core liquid cooled Threadripper paired with 64GB of memory, a pair of 1080ti GPU's and a few M.2 SSD's. Should keep the system relevant for a few years at least ( which is the goal )
Clock speed is higher on the 16 core vs the 32 for applications ( or portions thereof ) that aren't multithreaded. ( Maya modeling, rigging and / or animating ) The extra cores are useful for CPU based rendering ( Arnold, Keyshot, Brazil, etc ) as they're all heavily multithreaded. So I went with a balance of the two.
Dual 1080ti's for GPU based rendering ( Blender, Octane, Redshift, etc ) and anything that can use the available CUDA cores. Refraining from 2080 cards as they are too new to be thourougly tested with the software I use.
64GB of Ram makes everthing in the Adobe CC suite giggle when launched. Upgradable to 128GB if demands ever require it.
At least a State Income Tax is fixed to your income. The more you make, the more you're taxed. Whereas property taxes never seem to quit going up.
Becomes a problem when you finally get to quit working and retire. That home you paid $75k for forty years ago is now tax appraised at $300k ( or more depending on where you live ).
Gets rather tough to keep paying more and more in property taxes every year once you quit working.
Long term residents of CA who purchased their homes long ago at a reasonable price can now sell said home for ludicrous amounts of money.
This allows them to move out of State and easily pay cash ( far in excess of the asking price ) for homes where home prices haven't gone full stupid yet.
As the number of homes in an area start selling for insane amounts of money, it drives the asking prices up for all the homes in the area. It also raises your tax appraisal values so you get to pay more in property taxes every year. Pretty soon, no one local can afford housing in the area because the asking prices and taxes are so inflated.
Texas median household income is around the ~$60k mark yet, there is a new subdivision full of homes nearby that -start- at $500k.
It's insanity.
** The amusing part is watching folks move into one of these $500k+ homes only to learn that Texas property taxes are uncapped and can increase by 10% every year. The State loves to advertise that we have no State Tax, but those property taxes more than make up for it. **
The problem with hiring a bunch of really smart lawyers is that you will owe THEM as much or more financially to get you out of trouble as the fines / fees in the first place.
Lawyers are for rich people. Jail is for the rest.
would you say anything worth hearing over the phone in question ?
Or, if you know or suspect someone is listening do something fun instead and follow Reagan's lead . . . . . .
" We begin bombing in five minutes "
* * * * *
I know this is Slashdot and folks spend all day long hating on Trump ( hell, it's usually the FIRST several posts regardless of topic ), but he possesses a trait that no one was really prepared for. . . .
His behavior is so chaotic / unpredictable no one really knows how to respond to him. Is he joking ? Is he serious ? He says one thing today, only to contradict it tomorrow. ( Maybe . . . lol )
Is it all a game to keep everyone off balance ?
He may go to bed every night laughing to himself about how confused he keeps everyone around him.
Slashdot Mirror
Simply remove the ability for any company to be both a carrier AND a content distributor.
You can either:
1) Be an ISP ( you sell bandwidth. It requires #2 for it to be useful. )
or
2) Be in the content creation / distribution business ( you sell end content people want that requires #1 to experience it )
but not both.
This would effectively remove any financial incentive for a carrier to throttle competing services in an effort to promote their own.
( Because, come on. This IS what they're doing regardless if they admit to it publicly or not. They will stone-cold LIE to your face to protect it. )
Hell, a Congress with a spine ( we can dream right ? ) needs only threaten these folks with such a possibility and this silly behavior will cease as of yesterday.
Here's hoping Assange ( or another of our favorite whistle blowers currently residing in Russia ) held back some seriously juicy documents for the world to ponder over in the event something like this ever becomes a reality.
That's a really nice $illegal_as_hell_with_a_silly_operation_name Surveillance System you have there . . . . would be a shame if something happened to it. . . . . .
If China is claiming the technology to " see " stealth aircraft is now a reality, why are they still spending big $$$$ on building stealth aircraft ?
China is fixated on image. They took that whole " fake it till you make it " saying to heart and desperately wants the entire planet to believe they are the most amazing, powerful and capable country in history.
It should be noted the term " Paper Tiger " originated in China. They should be all too familiar with what it means since they are basically the very definition of the word.
The only difference between Harvey and every other hurricane in history that has hit this particular area of Texas is ......
Wait for it . . .
The slow speed at which it tracked.
If Ike ( 2008 ) had stalled like Harvey did, we would have seen the same results. The lack of dual high pressure boundaries in the area limiting its movement is why it did not.
Texas typically has a large high pressure system sitting on it through much of the Summer months. Its size, boundaries and specific location within the State usually determine the path of any tropical storm system that shows up in the Gulf.
Those of us who live in the regions that see these storms probably have a bit more insight as to how they work than random anonymous cowards whose expert opinion consists only of what they read on the internet.
Pro tip: If you open a rebuttal with the vocabulary of a ten year old ( eg. dipshit ), odds are the remainder of your post will not be taken very seriously.
Hugs and kisses
Not to downplay your post but . . . . . .
Harvey flooded areas that were not considered flood plain previously. It doesn't matter where you live, if a storm dumps nearly sixty inches of water on your neighborhood over a three day period, you're going to flood. ( So will everyone downstream from you as that water makes its way back to the ocean )
Harvey dumped a stupid amount of rain on SE Texas ( ~56 inches where I live ) for a couple of reasons.
1) It was caught in between two high pressure systems ( One in Texas, the other over the Gulf ) which is why it tracked the way it did.
2) It was moving at a blistering 2-3 mph which meant the rain bands just kept dumping water over the same areas for hours at a time. ( ~4in / hour or more )
It went from " who cares, it's a tropical depression " to " holy shit it's a significant strength hurricane " in a day or two.
This was due to the warm water ( ~85-90f is typical in the Summer months ) in the Gulf of Mexico and # 2 above.
Again, the only reason it dumped so much water is because it effectively sat on the coastline and kept drawing in Gulf moisture. The Gulf Water temps have always been warm in late Summer ( has been that way my entire life ), so I don't see where they drew the conclusion about the amount of water Harvey dumped and climate change.
Had it been tracking at typical hurricane speeds, it wouldn't have been able to continue funneling Gulf Moisture onto the Texas Gulf Coast for as long as it did.
I would lean more towards just bad timing with the two High Pressure systems coupled with the normal seasonal water temps in the Gulf of Mexico as the root cause.
" In the first place no, it wouldn't be fairly easy to pinpoint the location of the jamming source "
Easier than you may realize.
Between ships and aircraft outfitted with the right antenna arrays to satellite based systems, if you fire up a transmitter we can build an AOU small enough to send several cruise missiles your way to say hello.
The spooky people use to send us targeting data based on this stuff so we could incorporate it into the bigger picture of whatever region we were operating in at the time.
These systems have been in use for a long time and, over the years, have likely become far more accurate than the original hardware.
That T2 chip seems to have a strange effect on my Credit Card anytime I try to purchase an Apple product with such hardware installed.
Guess I'll have to go buy something else . . . . . .
Of course you'll have to call it a " security " or " privacy protection " app before Apple would even consider such a thing on the App Store.
Make sure to think of a catchy name for it. . . .
Conditions:
1) User has not logged into phone in $user_defined number of hours ( user is detained )
2) No signal ( cellular or wifi ) present ( phone is in a signal denied environment )
3) User has the paranoid feature enabled
#2 is fun because they have to choose to either leave the phone connected to a network ( risking a remote wipe ) or denying the connection and running the risk of the phone wiping itself. Decisions, decisions . . . . . .
User selectable payloads:
a) Phone wipes itself
b) Phone rekeys with a random password ( user plausible deniability - I really don't know the password )
c) Phone overwrites data with random gibberish or lyrics from your favorite anti-police music ( NWA can help you out here )
If you're the forgetful criminal type, you can always add a setting to flash a warning, beep, vibrate, whatever telling you bad things are about to happen to your phone if you don't log into it soon.
Done.
Or you could, you know, leave your damn phone at home if you plan on doing something stupid. . . . . .
( # 2 answer right behind don't do anything stupid to begin with )
*afterthought*
This whole " they-might-wipe-the-phone-remotely-so-put-it-in-a-shielded-bag-or-faraday cage " thing wouldn't be an issue if there was a user removable battery in these things.
Just sayin . . . .
As much of Social Media is a lie to begin with.
Plenty of folks use the various platforms to brag or show how amazing and fulfilling their lives are when, it's usually nothing more than staged fantasy.
Many folks don't see it for what it is and it then becomes a digital version of keeping up with the Jonses.
Unless they, too, partake in the charade, they can't possibly keep up which causes anxiety, depression and other issues.
Boxx custom fabricates their own cases for every system they sell and seem to be doing just fine.
Their systems, however, are typically on the higher end of things.
and, at least in the US, few have any sympathy for them. They like to play the victim card over how terrible they're treated but, the reality is, they have few to blame other than themselves.
The news / media have long since ceased being a source of reliable / unbiased information and have, instead, turned into political attack dogs of whatever party they are affiliated with. As a result, I don't even bother to watch, listen or read anything other than the weather from any of our usual news sources. It's simply a waste of my time.
I would agree with Trudeau in that the news / media -should- be free from attacks and criticism, but only if news / media return to their principles and start acting as the professionals they are -supposed- to be. Not the three ring circus they have become.
Lose the bias, sensationalism, personal agendas and personal attacks against political parties and / or people they dislike and just report the damn news.
Returning to their professional roots will go a long way in re-establishing some credibility as journalists and "news" as a whole.
If not . . . . . well. . . . when you engage in mud-slinging, you're bound to get just as dirty.
Don't whine about it when no one hands you a towel.
My first CC to incorporate a chip was compromised in less than a week. The wait staff ( my best guess due to it's limited use based on the length of time I had it ) simply copied the name, CC numbers and security code and voila, they have everything they need to make an online purchase or provide to a third party who is paying them to collect such things due to their access to so many.
I was somewhat puzzled when the transaction alert hit the phone that I had just paid for dinner for four to go about 1600 miles away :|
( People are awfully ballsy with many banks moving to the ability to instantly send text alerts for any purchases for any amount made from any of your accounts )
Called the bank a moment later to let them know the card was compromised.
( Dunno if the folks who used my card got to enjoy their dinner or not )
They marked the transaction as such, invalidated the card and sent me a new one within forty eight hours.
( I keep one other CC in the safe for exactly this reason. If one is compromised, I can easily switch to the other. )
As time has gone by, the bank knows what my typical purchases look like. When an oddball one shows up ( say an overseas one or out of State ) they
block it by default. I have to call them up, validate who I am and authorize the unblock so the charge can go through.
My best guess for the delay in chip + pin is the cost of implementing the system due to the sheer scale of the US CC market. From what I've read, the estimated cost to shift over to the chip + pin tech will be somewhere in the vicinity of $8-10B USD and end retailers, banks and CC folks like Visa and Mastercard are fighting over who is going to foot the bill. ( The US has somewhere North of ~1B Credit Cards in circulation )
We may get there one day . . . . lol
Sort of.
Telcos are going to roll out 5G in areas they previously had zero presence.
This will put them in direct competition with Cable.
As a result, I would expect to see some decent price drops on Big Cables side in order to keep customers from jumping ship just before the deployment goes live.
If there was any chance of listening to future conversations between parties using Iron Chat, this announcement just blew that right out of the water.
The folks who wish to talk via encrypted channels will now simply change their method of communication.
It could be another commercial app, a homebrew one or just go all old school and do things the way it was done before the era of smartphones.
It could also be complete bullshit on the part of the Police in an attempt to get folks to quit using it :D
" I just couldn't remember where they told me they saved the thing, several weeks ago, when they talked about creating the new document in one of our weekly meetings. "
The problem is that every single meeting there are several of these " things " you're supposed to keep up with. The problem is every single meeting, those " things " you're supposed to remember from the last meeting gets changed to a " new " process or archived in favor of something else. Pretty soon, you have no idea which " things " are still active, which process is the current one or even what fucking day it is. . . . :|
All the while you're still putting out fires on a daily basis, headcount comes and goes and somehow it magically became your job to train the new people because when you asked management for a training budget and / or even the time to train them, you got laughed off the call.
One day, you just give up.
Eventually, you come to realize you've become the old timer you used to hate when you first started working for the company. The only difference is now you understand how they came to be that way.
Yet, my internet only package is ~$100 / month. ( My router, my cable modem )
What you pay differs VASTLY depending upon where you live and if any competition ( Fios, Google Fiber, AT&T Gigapower, etc ) exists in your neighborhood.
If Google rolled in here tomorrow, Comcast would probably cut my bill in HALF just to keep everyone from jumping ship.
My next system is a 16 core liquid cooled Threadripper paired with 64GB of memory, a pair of 1080ti GPU's and a few M.2 SSD's. Should keep the system relevant for a few years at least ( which is the goal )
Clock speed is higher on the 16 core vs the 32 for applications ( or portions thereof ) that aren't multithreaded. ( Maya modeling, rigging and / or animating ) The extra cores are useful for CPU based rendering ( Arnold, Keyshot, Brazil, etc ) as they're all heavily multithreaded. So I went with a balance of the two.
Dual 1080ti's for GPU based rendering ( Blender, Octane, Redshift, etc ) and anything that can use the available CUDA cores. Refraining from 2080 cards as they are too new to be thourougly tested with the software I use.
64GB of Ram makes everthing in the Adobe CC suite giggle when launched. Upgradable to 128GB if demands ever require it.
M.2's for the performance boost vs Sata SSD.
I could have went with Xeons. . . . but why ?
" You missed my point. What kind of a weird arse computer build specs out something like a Ryzen Threadripper and then doesn't have a dedicated GPU. "
CPU based render farms.
Watch CNN and it is nothing but hate towards all things Republican.
Watch Fox and it is nothing but hate towards all things Democrat.
The only thing that differentiates them from Social Media is they have total control of the narrative.
I agree with you.
At least a State Income Tax is fixed to your income. The more you make, the more you're taxed.
Whereas property taxes never seem to quit going up.
Becomes a problem when you finally get to quit working and retire. That home you paid $75k for
forty years ago is now tax appraised at $300k ( or more depending on where you live ).
Gets rather tough to keep paying more and more in property taxes every year once you quit working.
Long term residents of CA who purchased their homes long ago at a reasonable price can now sell said home for ludicrous amounts of money.
This allows them to move out of State and easily pay cash ( far in excess of the asking price ) for homes where home prices haven't gone full stupid yet.
As the number of homes in an area start selling for insane amounts of money, it drives the asking prices up for all the homes in the area.
It also raises your tax appraisal values so you get to pay more in property taxes every year. Pretty soon, no one local can afford housing in the
area because the asking prices and taxes are so inflated.
Texas median household income is around the ~$60k mark yet, there is a new subdivision full of homes nearby that -start- at $500k.
It's insanity.
** The amusing part is watching folks move into one of these $500k+ homes only to learn that Texas property taxes are uncapped and can
increase by 10% every year. The State loves to advertise that we have no State Tax, but those property taxes more than make up for it. **
The problem with hiring a bunch of really smart lawyers is that you will owe THEM as much or more financially to get you out of trouble as the fines / fees in the first place.
Lawyers are for rich people. Jail is for the rest.
would you say anything worth hearing over the phone in question ?
Or, if you know or suspect someone is listening do something fun instead and follow Reagan's lead . . . . . .
" We begin bombing in five minutes "
* * * * *
I know this is Slashdot and folks spend all day long hating on Trump ( hell, it's usually the FIRST
several posts regardless of topic ), but he possesses a trait that no one was really prepared for. . . .
His behavior is so chaotic / unpredictable no one really knows how to respond to him. Is he joking ?
Is he serious ? He says one thing today, only to contradict it tomorrow. ( Maybe . . . lol )
Is it all a game to keep everyone off balance ?
He may go to bed every night laughing to himself about how confused he keeps everyone around him.
You can refuse the upgrade, it will just pester the shit out of you until you give in.