At my company, IT sends out an email or phone paging message when there's something people really need to know about. The person who originally found or reported it is given a mention for helping the company out. It makes them feel VERY special and well-pet.
It's sad but just a mention of a person's name to a large group of people for having done something that was smiled upon is enough to make most feel like a god/goddess. Human nature, I guess. It works. More people report suspicious things because they're hoping to get a mention.
It's a lot like moderation on/. - I expect no moderation because I'm answering a question, but if I discovered the latest malware that's easy to identify but only if you know what to look for, I would hope for an up-mod. Same with people in the office; they l-hu-uuuuuuuuuve the up-mod if they've helped and everyone sees/hears their name.
I should go find old theories and republish them as new ideas, then I can brag I was published in scientific journals.
"The researchers conducted nearly 1,000 computer simulations and estimate about 20 impacts could do the job."
this is what modern science is reduced to, old theories joined to faddish techs that can be easily trailered to fit the theory.
:) News flash: Upon conducting 3,000 more computer simulations, the models indicate that the moon could have been formed from quadrillions of smaller moons. Wait, more runs have shown that it could be in the septillion smaller moon range. Wait..."
JavaScript was so cool that one of the creators of the company has had a hard-on for years with this dream - come up with a way to chat that uses lots of scripting and inclusions of scripts to make it behave in weird ways..... you know.... like the old IRC script days... but new!
If they intended it to be 100 GB/month, why did they sell it as unlimited?
Roping in customers and competing with sales words that other companies were using.
Long-term fallout is that they have customers leaving and their bandwidth availability decreasing because of increased utilization. Wait, the other companies are the same!
I imaging the model like breathing - Verizon can suck up a bunch of customers but eventually will have to accommodate for the saturation; customers get pissed and leave to go to another company. Other companies then breathe them in with sales tactics and short-term goals (1 year minimum term is the goal). Then, Verizon does something to please the pissed and the other companies do something to piss their customers off. Customers leave those companies and switch to Verizon. Repeat process.
I see this as nothing but (pardon the pun but it fits perfectly) giving themselves breathing room to suck up the next wave of customers with something "Newest/first/best/fastest/blahblahblah". It'll only last a year before those customers see they're getting screwed or the other companies have made a really awesome place for those customers to transition over to. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Repeat and avoid doing that ONE BAD THING that will ruin you forever (I'm thinking of Sprint/Nextel right now. Such bad smokers they can't afford to put up more towers/obtain space, so they breathe very lightly and get worse every year with more and more customers leaving).;)
"5G" is the next big thing that everyone is going to sell like hotcakes only to start the breathing process in motion again.
So.. Are we moving beyond simple throttling and are throwing unprofitable but paying customers over the side because they use too much of their "unlimited" data transfer limits? You idiots, just institute progressive throttles on your "problem" paying customers until they start switching, but DON'T announce it to the world. Either that, or start raising rates for these customers.... Oh wait, you locked them into long term contracts? Live with it, pay them to leave or what have you, but it's YOUR mistake to deal with not your customer's...
Why am I not surprised this is Verizon? Hmm?
Short-term wins are all that's in most companies' minds. Of course there are smart ones that think long-term but when there's a battle and a finish line in sight, companies don't think because they want to be the winner. What I'm saying is Verizon didn't have a problem with unlimited because it was the "thing" at the time that was driving customers to other companies. Eventually, the other companies got rid of unlimited data, but didn't throw away (at least not publicly) the ones that survived (unlimited contracts). Those other companies also throttled speeds and got throttled financially.
Now there's this '5G' thing coming out and the companies are going to compete for it. What a lot of people (not saying you, just a lot) is that each tower location has either a microwave relay to another 'hub' location with inet connection(s) available, or they have just plain old available connections from the telco/cable company/whoever hooked up at the cell site. There's a limit on the bandwidth to keep the entire operation profitable. With the introduction of something that's capable of higher speeds (hence, higher immediate throughput), a company that doesn't have enough immediate bandwidth available to pony up will get called out or sued for lying about their '5G' speed. Sure, the tower might be able (even with timing and fast-moving handsets) be able to keep up, but the backbone 'net connection still has a limit of immediate availability.
Do I agree with Verizon's actions? No. Do I agree with the customers that used this unlimited plan for so much actual data throughput? No. Do I think it was a bad idea to have both shake hands on paper without including future expansion problems in mind? Yeah.
I think the customers that use so much are lazy asses, companies tethering for their office internet availability, or people using in areas where there isn't wired 'net available but LTE still works (or LTE is faster/cheaper than the wired alternative). Side but related notes: I have a relative in such an area so I know they exist. Why she sticks with dial-up is because she has an old computer and really only looks at the weather. I was also able to get Gigabit fiber at $69/99/mo (fees added it came to $80 and change) in the last place I lived; the bandwidth was actually testing for lengthy periods up to 800mbps! Once the Google Fiber competition dropped, my telco suddenly stopped rolling out fiber to new locations, and started jacking the prices up. Now, where I live (call it "other side of town, richer area), I have only 30mbps DSL available and fiber less than a block away with "no estimate on time" for expansion to be available to my house. Imagine that. I digress. Anyhow, with the last (only fast 'net that can be accessed) excluded, I believe the others are using one side of the tower for RF and the inet connection for their data. They're limiting others. It didn't matter because no one complained or if they did, they didn't leave. There was a profit.
Internet wired connections are getting more and more ridiculous as time goes on in terms of price, so the cell companies wouldn't turn as much of a profit if they add more bandwidth to their tower sites and also introduce the new competitive technology to be on teh win, while people are still eating up a good portion of it and not financially compensating for that usage.
We often stream two programs at once here, I work from home half the time supporting projects where I have to push ISOs/patches, and I barely hit 200 GB a month.
I can only guess this is a cell device tethered not just to one computer but possibly to a larger network where it is the sole source of Internet connectivity and moving data at nearly the throughput limit of the connection almost continuously.
I think if it were mobile it'd be a stretch to get that 200 GB, since you'd have to factor in periods of mobility where the mobile device itself was the only thing using data.
Agreed. Le me put it this way to say why I agree - I can get 30mbps where I live for $49.99/mo (plus tax/state,fed fees/etc) or I can get 80mpbs using my phone and tethering. At night time when the network volume is down, I can get 110mbps over the air from ATT. So yes, I agree. If I were someone else who needed net access and the local service was unavailable or overpriced, I'd go with what's cheaper.
FTR, I get 16GB/mo with rollover. I don't use more than 10, tops (some months, less than 1). If I started using 16, I'm sure they would advertise another plan to me to get my pesky data-hogging ass away from using the big numbers of available data I see on paper/screen.:)
Marketing: We have an amazingly fast network capable of moving TBs of data a second!!! Download a movie in super-ultra-HD while boarding your plane in seconds!!! Buy now!!!
Contracts: We will charge you 1 kidney per movie you download, and shame you in the public square. It is horrible to everyone else if you actually use the network.
Me: F U. Worrying about getting reamed for data sucks the fun out of it all. Buys a pay-as-you-go phone and doesn't try to do anything "cool".
You make a good point, but don't forget the overall equation - they have the amazingly fast network capable of moving TBs in a second because no one is using it. Put 100 users on it watching movies, browsing the web, downloading/backing up/etc and the timing shifts at the controller and utilized air time take that amazingly fast network and make it a jittery really fast network. Wait, don't we already have that?;)
If Verizon wants to screw customers more, then keep that in mind when they have to reinstate unlimited data (and in a way that is accessible to the masses) to get access to 5G.
Agreed. I can see it now:
I open a new phone for Xmas and am trying it for the first time after the "5G" roll-out.
Download SpeedTest... Check speed at my location with my nearby towers' levels to see what I get.
Find out I've already gone over my limit after the test.
..wow. We're finding ways to not harm the planet's biodiversity and survival IN THE PROCESS of killing each other. If this isn't proof that wars are not designed for resource "borrowing", I don't know what is. Go Manifest Destiny v2!/humor
Doing it right before Christmas, would have been worse. All those ad-blockers have an impact.
Cool. "Adapt," I say. Come up with a way to sell shit other than advertising on the 'net. If there isn't a way and people hate it, uh, it's not going to work. It's amazing that online ads have actually had a function to this point! I pay no attention and avoid them, but that's my personality. I guess others still have "OOH, SHINY" reactions or something. *shrug*
...As far as I am concerned, this report is irrelevant, because you can't really get any real-world use of it other than deceptive marketing (either pro or contra).
In Windows world, Vulnerabilities are Features, so there aren't any Vulnerabilities.
You got that right, fer sher. When someone at corporation x that purchases 200,000 licenses and needs a change in the OS to serve their needs, code is changed in a library or executable (or both) by MS to accommodate without taking into account all that it can introduce a weakness or bug when combined with other changes/additions. I don't think it's Humanly possible to have a corporation that's profitable when it is taking every single change into account and monitoring every other change and testing against it with every possible combination and random introduction of circumstances with "use over time". Don't get me wrong, you can "reposit" all you want and make all comments under the sun, but that doesn't account for Human incapability.
If you were to ask a decision maker at Microsoft if they would rather have a bug found now that makes all machines vulnerable to being compromised, after having made $2billion, versus spending $500million now to try and account for all bugs now and delaying releases/updates, which do you think they'd pick? Come on, I'm talking Human pick, not logic pick. FOSS is no different, but there tend to be more competitive finds to get one's name out as a "savior" and +1ing their popularity for a brief second. Some get found and some don't, but there's more of a drive to find them and fix them rather than making money. Enter Google - it's not easy to fix all problems, let alone all problems in all versions of something, let alone all problems in all versions of something with manufacturers making in-the-middle non-FOSS changes, let alone all problems in all versions of something, with all problems in all versions of something with manufacturers making in-the-middle non-FOSS changes with their focus forced to be on coming up with new releases of products to make more money on sales.... I digress.
..sales tactic? These sorts of things have been happening more and more; there is less loss due to pissed off consumers and more interest the "news" feeds the nosy hackers. Lost 100 for lost saves; gain 2000 for hacking interest AND flashy interest generated by viewers of the "news".
Hell, I would do it, and I'm not a sales-minded person. They're way ahead of me in using tactics for sales, so I state my point.
Vehicle emission testing is common throughout the US, if you think having clean air is too much of a hassle please keep all those smoking vehicles in Ohio where they belong so your kids can grow up with deficiencies from the exposure to the hazardous emissions.
Better yet, bring back leaded fuel and really show those government thugs that clean air is nothing to worry about and lead poisoning is something to be proud of!
You're presumptuously dragging a comparison into a belief statement on my part. You only read the first and last lines. That's why I type things like that - to filter out comments of people who aren't paying attention. Since you were just blabbering and not being an ass, I'm telling you;)
I can already see myself telling a grandkid, "See this screen on the refrigerator? The settings and options you use every day have an operating system that controls its functions, and that operating system was called 'Android Things' back in the old days. That operating system has a core kernel that makes all of the hardware/software interfaces happen, and that kernel was written back when I was a 37-year-old young guy working in IT. See [pushes button], it's still here today, working just like it did then."
Kid: "Grandpa, what is it that makes us have to push the Big Red Button so much?"
Me: "Ahh, that's the restore automation trigger. It reboots the unit and restores the factory default unmodifiable ROM settings like you know, but the reason is that everything is connected these days. A new thing that hacks into the core of the refrigerator's Linux Kernel from 2016 at least ten times/day. We push the button to restore everything back to working and block network access for an hour, just to help the world slow down the process of using devices like this to take advantage of other devices."
Kid: "Grandpa, why don't they just fix the problem that allows hackers to take advantage of it?"
Me: "Do you know what the word 'profitability' means?"
Kid: "Yes. That's when a corporation makes more money than they spent on producing a product, I think."
Me: "You're correct. Corporations don't consider it profitable to fix problems in their products unless there is overwhelming governmental or social pressure that might make them unable to produce new crap that looks and works great until it fails. Back in 2018, there were so many problems with every new product on the market that it became a 'base norm'. That means everything is expected to be that way, but anything that's better in performance than that has a much higher 'cost to it and very few people can afford it. It's also not considered to be 'cool' to have something different than your family or friends; you know that, don't you, kiddo?"
Kid: "Oh, yes. Grandma and momma remind me of that every day at least 20 times *sigh*."
Me: "Don't sass your grandma and momma, kiddo. They know what's best for you. That's why we have things the way we do. This refrigerator is just a normal product, like anything else that has the Big Red Button on it. [hears alert noise] See? It just got hacked again. It's good for my body. Keeps me exercising by standing up and walking around every part of the house at least once an hour. Do you wanna hit the Big Red Button this time, kiddo? Just hit it hard to make sure it gets activated."
Kid: "Now I think I understand. [whacks the Big Red Button on the fridge and watches it start a hard reboot process] That's why you call all of the people with nice things lazy asses?"
Me: "Watch your mouth! But yes, that's why. Stupid rich fuc... err.. people.. don't want to get up out of their comfortable little chairs to maintain their equipment. Google brought muscular health back to the people of the world by starting the Big Red Button project. Bless their souls. I love watching the kernel throw console messages. See the lines of words scrolling up the screen really fast, kiddo? If you used to watch those, you were considered a very smart cookie. It's a damn shame those days have passed. Now, watching a kernel boot with console messages is like breathing - everyone does it so much they don't even realize it. You know, kiddo, we used to have to read these lines of messages on the console back in my old days.... Kiddo? Hello? Did you just disconnect from the real world and go into VR mode??? Damnit, I wish I would have invested in Google back in 2005. [snores while standing with the Google Sleep Optimization muscular control unit running Linux kernel 80.22.11.0.29.13.15]"
Although the magnet modules can apparently be replaced easily, Deepwater needs to have the components shipped from France, where General Electric, the manufacturer of the wind turbines, makes them.
Offshoring is wonderful!!! **head/hand-desk laughter**
I didn't say that. I said, "Why start nibbling at things that eat smaller amounts of power?"
I should have added, "Because one thing isn't working doesn't mean that you can't just throw in the towel and admit defeat, you have to go and attack something else to feel like there was a win and the "project" was accomplished. Self-aggrandizement isn't "savings."
Slashdot Mirror
At my company, IT sends out an email or phone paging message when there's something people really need to know about. The person who originally found or reported it is given a mention for helping the company out. It makes them feel VERY special and well-pet.
It's sad but just a mention of a person's name to a large group of people for having done something that was smiled upon is enough to make most feel like a god/goddess. Human nature, I guess. It works. More people report suspicious things because they're hoping to get a mention.
It's a lot like moderation on /. - I expect no moderation because I'm answering a question, but if I discovered the latest malware that's easy to identify but only if you know what to look for, I would hope for an up-mod. Same with people in the office; they l-hu-uuuuuuuuuve the up-mod if they've helped and everyone sees/hears their name.
It's a bunch of small moons taped together!
You forgot the proper reference and trademark symbol after "Taped(tm)".
I should go find old theories and republish them as new ideas, then I can brag I was published in scientific journals.
"The researchers conducted nearly 1,000 computer simulations and estimate about 20 impacts could do the job."
this is what modern science is reduced to, old theories joined to faddish techs that can be easily trailered to fit the theory.
:) News flash: Upon conducting 3,000 more computer simulations, the models indicate that the moon could have been formed from quadrillions of smaller moons. Wait, more runs have shown that it could be in the septillion smaller moon range. Wait..."
>> app...without needing to install anything
Congratulations - you invented the World Wide Web
JavaScript was so cool that one of the creators of the company has had a hard-on for years with this dream - come up with a way to chat that uses lots of scripting and inclusions of scripts to make it behave in weird ways..... you know.... like the old IRC script days... but new!
Sorry.. Just had to.
If they intended it to be 100 GB/month, why did they sell it as unlimited?
Roping in customers and competing with sales words that other companies were using.
Long-term fallout is that they have customers leaving and their bandwidth availability decreasing because of increased utilization. Wait, the other companies are the same!
I imaging the model like breathing - Verizon can suck up a bunch of customers but eventually will have to accommodate for the saturation; customers get pissed and leave to go to another company. Other companies then breathe them in with sales tactics and short-term goals (1 year minimum term is the goal). Then, Verizon does something to please the pissed and the other companies do something to piss their customers off. Customers leave those companies and switch to Verizon. Repeat process.
I see this as nothing but (pardon the pun but it fits perfectly) giving themselves breathing room to suck up the next wave of customers with something "Newest/first/best/fastest/blahblahblah". It'll only last a year before those customers see they're getting screwed or the other companies have made a really awesome place for those customers to transition over to. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Repeat and avoid doing that ONE BAD THING that will ruin you forever (I'm thinking of Sprint/Nextel right now. Such bad smokers they can't afford to put up more towers/obtain space, so they breathe very lightly and get worse every year with more and more customers leaving). ;)
"5G" is the next big thing that everyone is going to sell like hotcakes only to start the breathing process in motion again.
So.. Are we moving beyond simple throttling and are throwing unprofitable but paying customers over the side because they use too much of their "unlimited" data transfer limits? You idiots, just institute progressive throttles on your "problem" paying customers until they start switching, but DON'T announce it to the world. Either that, or start raising rates for these customers.... Oh wait, you locked them into long term contracts? Live with it, pay them to leave or what have you, but it's YOUR mistake to deal with not your customer's...
Why am I not surprised this is Verizon? Hmm?
Short-term wins are all that's in most companies' minds. Of course there are smart ones that think long-term but when there's a battle and a finish line in sight, companies don't think because they want to be the winner. What I'm saying is Verizon didn't have a problem with unlimited because it was the "thing" at the time that was driving customers to other companies. Eventually, the other companies got rid of unlimited data, but didn't throw away (at least not publicly) the ones that survived (unlimited contracts). Those other companies also throttled speeds and got throttled financially.
Now there's this '5G' thing coming out and the companies are going to compete for it. What a lot of people (not saying you, just a lot) is that each tower location has either a microwave relay to another 'hub' location with inet connection(s) available, or they have just plain old available connections from the telco/cable company/whoever hooked up at the cell site. There's a limit on the bandwidth to keep the entire operation profitable. With the introduction of something that's capable of higher speeds (hence, higher immediate throughput), a company that doesn't have enough immediate bandwidth available to pony up will get called out or sued for lying about their '5G' speed. Sure, the tower might be able (even with timing and fast-moving handsets) be able to keep up, but the backbone 'net connection still has a limit of immediate availability.
Do I agree with Verizon's actions? No. Do I agree with the customers that used this unlimited plan for so much actual data throughput? No. Do I think it was a bad idea to have both shake hands on paper without including future expansion problems in mind? Yeah.
I think the customers that use so much are lazy asses, companies tethering for their office internet availability, or people using in areas where there isn't wired 'net available but LTE still works (or LTE is faster/cheaper than the wired alternative). Side but related notes: I have a relative in such an area so I know they exist. Why she sticks with dial-up is because she has an old computer and really only looks at the weather. I was also able to get Gigabit fiber at $69/99/mo (fees added it came to $80 and change) in the last place I lived; the bandwidth was actually testing for lengthy periods up to 800mbps! Once the Google Fiber competition dropped, my telco suddenly stopped rolling out fiber to new locations, and started jacking the prices up. Now, where I live (call it "other side of town, richer area), I have only 30mbps DSL available and fiber less than a block away with "no estimate on time" for expansion to be available to my house. Imagine that. I digress. Anyhow, with the last (only fast 'net that can be accessed) excluded, I believe the others are using one side of the tower for RF and the inet connection for their data. They're limiting others. It didn't matter because no one complained or if they did, they didn't leave. There was a profit.
Internet wired connections are getting more and more ridiculous as time goes on in terms of price, so the cell companies wouldn't turn as much of a profit if they add more bandwidth to their tower sites and also introduce the new competitive technology to be on teh win, while people are still eating up a good portion of it and not financially compensating for that usage.
I believe this is a strong-arm tactic w
I kind of struggle to see how you'd do it at all.
We often stream two programs at once here, I work from home half the time supporting projects where I have to push ISOs/patches, and I barely hit 200 GB a month.
I can only guess this is a cell device tethered not just to one computer but possibly to a larger network where it is the sole source of Internet connectivity and moving data at nearly the throughput limit of the connection almost continuously.
I think if it were mobile it'd be a stretch to get that 200 GB, since you'd have to factor in periods of mobility where the mobile device itself was the only thing using data.
Agreed. Le me put it this way to say why I agree - I can get 30mbps where I live for $49.99/mo (plus tax/state,fed fees/etc) or I can get 80mpbs using my phone and tethering. At night time when the network volume is down, I can get 110mbps over the air from ATT. So yes, I agree. If I were someone else who needed net access and the local service was unavailable or overpriced, I'd go with what's cheaper.
FTR, I get 16GB/mo with rollover. I don't use more than 10, tops (some months, less than 1). If I started using 16, I'm sure they would advertise another plan to me to get my pesky data-hogging ass away from using the big numbers of available data I see on paper/screen. :)
Agreed. Keep in mind that you just read about it, though ;)
Marketing:
We have an amazingly fast network capable of moving TBs of data a second!!! Download a movie in super-ultra-HD while boarding your plane in seconds!!! Buy now!!!
Contracts:
We will charge you 1 kidney per movie you download, and shame you in the public square. It is horrible to everyone else if you actually use the network.
Me:
F U. Worrying about getting reamed for data sucks the fun out of it all. Buys a pay-as-you-go phone and doesn't try to do anything "cool".
You make a good point, but don't forget the overall equation - they have the amazingly fast network capable of moving TBs in a second because no one is using it. Put 100 users on it watching movies, browsing the web, downloading/backing up/etc and the timing shifts at the controller and utilized air time take that amazingly fast network and make it a jittery really fast network. Wait, don't we already have that? ;)
Unless we double your monthly bill of course.... then the network can handle it fine.... until... you know... next time it can't......
Amen. Addendum: "..and come on. We are rolling out '5G'. We have to have somewhere to corral the non-contiguous and over-the-limit users."
If Verizon wants to screw customers more, then keep that in mind when they have to reinstate unlimited data (and in a way that is accessible to the masses) to get access to 5G.
Agreed. I can see it now:
I open a new phone for Xmas and am trying it for the first time after the "5G" roll-out.
Download SpeedTest... Check speed at my location with my nearby towers' levels to see what I get.
Find out I've already gone over my limit after the test.
We'll be down to a bit under 10GB/mo allowed in 3 years if they follow this 60%/mo decrease pattern.
..wow. We're finding ways to not harm the planet's biodiversity and survival IN THE PROCESS of killing each other. If this isn't proof that wars are not designed for resource "borrowing", I don't know what is. Go Manifest Destiny v2! /humor
How typical and old-school. I'd bet half of my life savings this is an advertising stunt.
Doing it right before Christmas, would have been worse. All those ad-blockers have an impact.
Cool. "Adapt," I say. Come up with a way to sell shit other than advertising on the 'net. If there isn't a way and people hate it, uh, it's not going to work. It's amazing that online ads have actually had a function to this point! I pay no attention and avoid them, but that's my personality. I guess others still have "OOH, SHINY" reactions or something. *shrug*
Q = Distraction from Exploding Batteries
Had to. Sorry.
...As far as I am concerned, this report is irrelevant, because you can't really get any real-world use of it other than deceptive marketing (either pro or contra).
Statistics. Love them.
You mean not all bugs carry the same weight? But I really needed a metric to prove product A is better than product B.
That's why MS loves "{mumble}found: 12,342,472, Fixed: 12,342,101".
Where the metric for "fixed and released to all vulnerable machines before the next bi-weekly release scheduled date"? I want that metric!
In Windows world, Vulnerabilities are Features, so there aren't any Vulnerabilities.
You got that right, fer sher. When someone at corporation x that purchases 200,000 licenses and needs a change in the OS to serve their needs, code is changed in a library or executable (or both) by MS to accommodate without taking into account all that it can introduce a weakness or bug when combined with other changes/additions. I don't think it's Humanly possible to have a corporation that's profitable when it is taking every single change into account and monitoring every other change and testing against it with every possible combination and random introduction of circumstances with "use over time". Don't get me wrong, you can "reposit" all you want and make all comments under the sun, but that doesn't account for Human incapability.
If you were to ask a decision maker at Microsoft if they would rather have a bug found now that makes all machines vulnerable to being compromised, after having made $2billion, versus spending $500million now to try and account for all bugs now and delaying releases/updates, which do you think they'd pick? Come on, I'm talking Human pick, not logic pick. FOSS is no different, but there tend to be more competitive finds to get one's name out as a "savior" and +1ing their popularity for a brief second. Some get found and some don't, but there's more of a drive to find them and fix them rather than making money. Enter Google - it's not easy to fix all problems, let alone all problems in all versions of something, let alone all problems in all versions of something with manufacturers making in-the-middle non-FOSS changes, let alone all problems in all versions of something, with all problems in all versions of something with manufacturers making in-the-middle non-FOSS changes with their focus forced to be on coming up with new releases of products to make more money on sales.... I digress.
..sales tactic? These sorts of things have been happening more and more; there is less loss due to pissed off consumers and more interest the "news" feeds the nosy hackers. Lost 100 for lost saves; gain 2000 for hacking interest AND flashy interest generated by viewers of the "news".
Hell, I would do it, and I'm not a sales-minded person. They're way ahead of me in using tactics for sales, so I state my point.
Vehicle emission testing is common throughout the US, if you think having clean air is too much of a hassle please keep all those smoking vehicles in Ohio where they belong so your kids can grow up with deficiencies from the exposure to the hazardous emissions.
Better yet, bring back leaded fuel and really show those government thugs that clean air is nothing to worry about and lead poisoning is something to be proud of!
You're presumptuously dragging a comparison into a belief statement on my part. You only read the first and last lines. That's why I type things like that - to filter out comments of people who aren't paying attention. Since you were just blabbering and not being an ass, I'm telling you ;)
I can already see myself telling a grandkid, "See this screen on the refrigerator? The settings and options you use every day have an operating system that controls its functions, and that operating system was called 'Android Things' back in the old days. That operating system has a core kernel that makes all of the hardware/software interfaces happen, and that kernel was written back when I was a 37-year-old young guy working in IT. See [pushes button], it's still here today, working just like it did then."
Kid: "Grandpa, what is it that makes us have to push the Big Red Button so much?"
Me: "Ahh, that's the restore automation trigger. It reboots the unit and restores the factory default unmodifiable ROM settings like you know, but the reason is that everything is connected these days. A new thing that hacks into the core of the refrigerator's Linux Kernel from 2016 at least ten times/day. We push the button to restore everything back to working and block network access for an hour, just to help the world slow down the process of using devices like this to take advantage of other devices."
Kid: "Grandpa, why don't they just fix the problem that allows hackers to take advantage of it?"
Me: "Do you know what the word 'profitability' means?"
Kid: "Yes. That's when a corporation makes more money than they spent on producing a product, I think."
Me: "You're correct. Corporations don't consider it profitable to fix problems in their products unless there is overwhelming governmental or social pressure that might make them unable to produce new crap that looks and works great until it fails. Back in 2018, there were so many problems with every new product on the market that it became a 'base norm'. That means everything is expected to be that way, but anything that's better in performance than that has a much higher 'cost to it and very few people can afford it. It's also not considered to be 'cool' to have something different than your family or friends; you know that, don't you, kiddo?"
Kid: "Oh, yes. Grandma and momma remind me of that every day at least 20 times *sigh*."
Me: "Don't sass your grandma and momma, kiddo. They know what's best for you. That's why we have things the way we do. This refrigerator is just a normal product, like anything else that has the Big Red Button on it. [hears alert noise] See? It just got hacked again. It's good for my body. Keeps me exercising by standing up and walking around every part of the house at least once an hour. Do you wanna hit the Big Red Button this time, kiddo? Just hit it hard to make sure it gets activated."
Kid: "Now I think I understand. [whacks the Big Red Button on the fridge and watches it start a hard reboot process] That's why you call all of the people with nice things lazy asses?"
Me: "Watch your mouth! But yes, that's why. Stupid rich fuc... err.. people.. don't want to get up out of their comfortable little chairs to maintain their equipment. Google brought muscular health back to the people of the world by starting the Big Red Button project. Bless their souls. I love watching the kernel throw console messages. See the lines of words scrolling up the screen really fast, kiddo? If you used to watch those, you were considered a very smart cookie. It's a damn shame those days have passed. Now, watching a kernel boot with console messages is like breathing - everyone does it so much they don't even realize it. You know, kiddo, we used to have to read these lines of messages on the console back in my old days.... Kiddo? Hello? Did you just disconnect from the real world and go into VR mode??? Damnit, I wish I would have invested in Google back in 2005. [snores while standing with the Google Sleep Optimization muscular control unit running Linux kernel 80.22.11.0.29.13.15]"
Reading this:
Although the magnet modules can apparently be replaced easily, Deepwater needs to have the components shipped from France, where General Electric, the manufacturer of the wind turbines, makes them.
Offshoring is wonderful!!! **head/hand-desk laughter**
I didn't say that. I said, "Why start nibbling at things that eat smaller amounts of power?"
I should have added, "Because one thing isn't working doesn't mean that you can't just throw in the towel and admit defeat, you have to go and attack something else to feel like there was a win and the "project" was accomplished. Self-aggrandizement isn't "savings."
I'm so sorry but I have to...
Part of the law will be banning of gaming between the hours of 8a-7p local time.
Again... so sorry. It was just.. there. :)