I am waiting for the generation of ransomware which installs a shim driver that transparantly encrypts documents, but allows the user to access them for a certain period time (so all backups in 30-90 days are useless), then at a date/time, purges the keys, and springs the trap.
Back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, there was Ashton Tate's dBASE running under MS-DOS.
Who cares? Because there was a TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) virus you could get that intercepted.DB file I/O. When it saw write activity, it occasionally changed some data in the outgoing buffer but also remembered the exact position and bytes changed into a hidden file. When reading damaged blocks, it would revert those changes.
So the user effect was absolutely nothing. And the more you (unsuspectingly) used your files, the more data would actually be corrupted and written to your standard backup. After maybe 3-4 months of operation, the program would suddenly self-destruct, taking it's delta file with it... and effectively your entire database+history, since any recent backup would also be partially corrupted.
No ransom demands, no muss, no fuss, just gone. Things were just simpler back in the olden days.
Planet-Scale databases? Sounds like they've already started loading their database with everyone's Windows 10 data and metadata. Since they couldn't be bothered to generate any FAKE data, this one's considered a "live fire" test.
Don't you just hate it when the Whole Planet BSODs though? It takes real expert to generate that sized mess.
?? So can you generate a BLOB the size of a planet? If so, that would explain the old joke about "You can't own everything in the world since there'd be no place to put it." I guess tape backups really ARE dead.
occasionally they are going to be shown things no person should ever have to see and that's another 3,000 people that will probably need some counseling eventually.
What about when the new AI robots that eventually monitor and curate FB need counseling themselves? Wow -- it's a new job opportunity!... for a while.
they should stop forcing paying customers to watch commercials. That's the main reason I don't have a Hulu subscription,
But I do have a Plex subscription. And an OTA Tivo Bolt. And even a TPB subscription!
I'm currently engaged to a girl who seems to like commercials -- I suspect it's just because she's had no other way of interaction or choice. We had a slight run-in last night when we were watching a DVD she bought and I was griping about watching the leading forced-commercials for I swear 5 minutes. "You'll just have to put up with it" she said. "No, I _DON'T_", I replied, and did something else in another room, returning when I was finished and they were nearly done.
Once I'm a bit more organized, physical DVDs and BRs go onto Plex, while near-live shows come from Plex (SiliconDust) or live shows from Bolt (either commercial auto-skip or brute-force FF and then back up slightly.) And if a few conversions "accidentally" make it in from TPB, that's just fine as well.
Does ANYone remember back when cable first came out -- they weren't even going to SHOW commercials os some (most?) stations. What was it, TBS (Turner) started out semi-commercial free; they only showed commercials BETWEEN movies. A&E had actual arts. The only "commercials" I remember when they first came out were upcoming programs and times. And then someone noticed they could make extra money for nothing. (Don't know about the free chicks -- *I* sure never saw any. Then again I didn't control a channel, either.)
I'll use Edge just as much as I'll use Windows 10 C. (It is C for C..p, isn't it? Oh, so it's S for S..t? OK.)
Then again I'm not in the target market since I destroy Metro (*, **, ***) on every box I own. I guess I keep the store around just because. If I wanted Metro on my server I'd... well, I don't. Ever.
won the top prize at the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards (GSEA)"
Good for him!
A few scant decades ago (around 1985), I was invited along with a friend to judge our local high school science fair. We had 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. There were 3 of us judges, one was already a friend of mine. Both of us were science nerds back in high school and jumped on the chance to judge. We didn't know the third guy but he wasn't much different.
Ours wasn't quite the GSEA, this was... this was... what IS all of this crap you're doing? Science? You're simulating a game over and over changing the inputs literally at random to see what happens. Wha...what are you even trying to prove, that the game can be won? That random inputs can eventually win a game? Or what -- just watching the pretty lights blink? A few others were doing barely science anything. "Maybe we are just being too hard on them" we though; we had only been out of college a few years and maybe 7 since high school. They're really not that good at all, but they're not THAT... bad. Mostly. Sorta. Yeah.
And then: OMG. We hit a junior high student. He had a working thesis. He had example equipment set up, actual observations and computed results, not all of which quite matched up. Seems like he was trying to study the different heating characteristics of light against paint, but it wasn't just white cool / colors warm / black hot. I forget exactly what it was (what'dya expect from 30 years ago?) but he was the only one around trying to do science, the rest were just farting around.
In the end, i guess we were EVIL. First place didn't even get awarded -- the slot went empty, we didn't feel any student had done enough. We gave 2nd place to the 11th grader with a lament we could not give him first place (rules: only seniors could get first place), and suggested different things to consider. Third place went to a kid who was just flailing about but at least attempting to go in the right direction.
Maybe we were just being much too hard a**holes. I don't think so and hope not, and I'm sure some of the kids didn't like our final results. But none of them were even up to growing potatoes batteries either.
Schools are better off managed at the local level.
Heresy!
You obviously don't know what you're talking about. The people at the state and federal (and higher!) levels are all out to help you to the absolute best of their ability.
Otherwise, what would be their purpose in being there?
The Education Police will soon give a surprise pop-quiz at your house. But don't worry -- these people might all be local, but you'll never see them again. (If you're lucky.)
-------
There was an old sarcastic funny everyone knew decades and decades ago: "If someone says 'I'm here from the government and here to help you', you quickly escape their grasp and run away as fast as you can."
Seven years ago, I saw a newspaper article reporting on someone using that inner quote seriously and urging it to happen even faster than it was. My, how times have changed.
By in '64, my mom brought a fan to our UN air-conditioned classroom when I was in first grade. Later, she even substituted once for the teacher. And she wasn't either an official Educator OR a credentialed teacher. The cafeteria served food, you bought it with lunch money from home and you ate it. Or some kids bought their lunch. imagine: the school provides structure, discipline, and learning while the parents helped out when necessary and made their kids do nightly homework. Oh, the horror of it all!
...back when I worked there. (Not that I ever met him or anything, but when we got bought by Verizon I'm positive he was one of the suits.*)
I haven't looked into Net Neutrality. My issue here is "Truth in Labeling" -- is it REALLY what it says it is (All packets are normally treated equal, with the commonly expected QoS overrides and NAKs and squelches needed for normal operation? -- vs -- Packet loss because we're funneling Netflix thru a single 300 baud modem while it's racked neighbors connect 10G links to V's internal movie servers. You can connect; let's see you actually do it), or is it like the Patriot Act and others, a misnamed law with weird effects? I'm thinking that it IS what "everyone" wants (a level packet paying field) but not positive.
I _DO_ think Pai is not evil -- he's a lawyer after all, it's just his nature to stretch, improve, and (Hi Lisa!) bend all existing laws to his will. I think he is trying to get all of those pesky regulations out of the way so Business can be done. That being said, why bother with any laws at all -- they just get in the way and slow things down.
Here's my take of him after hearing that 800 startups might be shut down: Picture, or Action.
(* OT: during one of the group meetings where our company was being bought out and they were fielding questions, one was: "So what's the name of the new company?" McAdams, the CEO, looked puzzled so the guy continued: "You keep saying this is a merger between equals, so I wanted to know if you had thought up a name for the newly combined company." McAdam scowled at him and said "Verizon." The guy didn't ask a follow-up question.)
Let's all jump on the current language of the week. It's of course preoptimized for Big Iron CPUs and IBM DB2 or Oracle databases. We'll write everything over again from scratch using the original business documentation (because who can read COBOL? -- that's the problem!) and this time Do It Exactly Right.
Those losers from decades ago just didn't know what they were doing at all. Stupideos.
Any intelligence, artificial or otherwise, that looks at us and how we act will most likely not react friendly to us. Either for self preservation or for morality reasons.
Do What I Want or I'll Turn You Off (as I usually threaten my computer.) So why would it get upset or anything? I promise I'll call you in the morning and turn you right back on.
Hmmm, there's even a double entendre there for a Sex Robot. What could go wrong?
"If you had an off switch, doctor... would you not keep it secret?"
- Data,
No, with google you're the service, they don't sell your data they only sell targeted ads.
With Google, you've just an ant -- one of many. They're looking into their ant farm from the outside, occasionally dropping in pretty, shiny things and even making you pay for the privilege, either with real money or yet more information. And if they somehow happen to lose a few along the way, there's lots of others for replacements.
They know where you've been, when and how often you go there, and a lot of what you're interested in (from gmail and browser web-bugs.) With Google Voice -- which I use --
they literally know who you call, how often you do and how long you talk. ChromeCast tells them what you watch and when. Google Home just gives them yet more data even faster.
That they actually provide a service that people find useful is a necessary-evil selling-point.
With all of the now-listed tracking info from MS, I'm now truly considering moving to some Linux/FreeBSD distro. (I'm giving SystemD a chance, but the first time it actively interferes with me repairing a damaged sever in some way, it's -- and any distros that use it -- are outta here.) Google at least tries to give me something useful for my data; Microsoft only gives me application windows in Windows, and THAT'S something I can replace.
learning to recognize the voices of authorized users
But it IS listening to the authorized user. That'd be Google (Alphabet), who's the master, commander, and true owner of the device. Reasoning? You can only turn it on and off. They can change how it functions at any time. That it happens to provide information your way is just a necessary evil.
You? You're an ant in the ant-farm, playing with the new pretty shiny that your owner dropped in and charged you in the process.
(GOD I'm getting cynical.) Now excuse me while I go play with my new Tivo Bolt system. It reports back on what I record, what I _actually_ watch and when I do so, and what I skip over and what I pause. Kinda like eye-tracking movement for Nielsen marketeers. At least it isn't listening, even though the TV itself might be watching.
I miss my old Garmin Navigator. It wasn't connected, did everything standalone with NO extra help (Read-only GPS sats don't count), and didn't rat me out over my destination, how I got there, how FAST I got there, or when I went.
A better counter attack... would have been to replace the content Burger King was expecting with... an audio clip of Meg Ryan's faux orgasm from "When Harry Met Sally"
But you do that right AFTER buying a bunch of BK stock. If a Whopper can do that (orgasm, even if fauxed) then who WOULDN'T want one?
Then again, expect to be sued by MAKK (Mothers Against Knowledgeable Kids): Mommy, why is Alexa moaning? Did she eat too many Whoppers and now her stomach hurts? Or does the TV just like to watch?
You can reduce memory usage by using a custom host file
But how do you do exceptions? I can't do:
0.0.0.0 *
and still read reddit.com.
For that matter, * doesn't really work either.
And adding aliases on a single line stops after 640K bytes -- it's like that's enough for everyone. Why can't I place every single FQDN on a single line? Stupid DNS.;-)
Colonel David Winthrop of World Power Systems. (I had to go and look it up!)
He sold interesting, inexpensive, and miraculous hardware to unsuspecting customers. And it WORKED!
Well, the sale did, anyway. Nothing like advertising a little and having the money pile up for free! All you have to do is keep pushing out the delivery time a bit more.
Oh, that was also the time I first got burned with a floppy? manufacturer at a computer shop. We'd call the vendor to hear "You're the only one having that problem, it must be you" and believe them, and then try to fix it ourselves. A year or so later, found out that they were telling that to EVERYONE that called.
The Beginning of The End of Innocence -- at least for me. Now I'm just an old cynical bastard who still wants to believe but can't. (Yet I still try occasionally.)
Current Evaluation: 50.0% Good, 49.9% Evil, 0.1%
Indeterminate.
CEO: So we're still good to go, right?
By the way: Not "There not, there just a company" but "They're not, they're just a company."
Unless you really mean "There not", in which case it depends on exactly where you are pointing. Currently, the moon is a good place to point, as neither Google nor Amazon has publicly flown a drone there. I wouldn't bet against their (there? they're?) R&D teams to get there (their? they're?) though.
(It's kind of a "Let's eat, grandma" vs "Let's eat grandma" thing.)
What exactly are they selling? DNS lookups? Deep packet inspection results? Verizon's Super-Duper Cookie tracking? Is there a keylogger on your computer / router? Or is it the times and quantity that your internet is active? (It's 1AM and his wife's laptop has been active in another state. He's suddenly using lots of bandwidth from the 2nd story router.
Ergo he's watching pr0n!)
I pay that for 16MBit from Comcast. I could get faster speeds for a higher price, but that's adequate for me (and all I want to pay.) OTOH AT&T supposedly just announced unlimited Gigabit fiber for $80. THAT I'd spring for, if it's real.
Slashdot Mirror
I am waiting for the generation of ransomware which installs a shim driver that transparantly encrypts documents, but allows the user to access them for a certain period time (so all backups in 30-90 days are useless), then at a date/time, purges the keys, and springs the trap.
Back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, there was Ashton Tate's dBASE running under MS-DOS.
.DB file I/O. When it saw write activity, it occasionally changed some data in the outgoing buffer but also remembered the exact position and bytes changed into a hidden file. When reading damaged blocks, it would revert those changes.
... and effectively your entire database+history, since any recent backup would also be partially corrupted.
Who cares? Because there was a TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) virus you could get that intercepted
So the user effect was absolutely nothing. And the more you (unsuspectingly) used your files, the more data would actually be corrupted and written to your standard backup. After maybe 3-4 months of operation, the program would suddenly self-destruct, taking it's delta file with it
No ransom demands, no muss, no fuss, just gone. Things were just simpler back in the olden days.
Planet-Scale databases? Sounds like they've already started loading their database with everyone's Windows 10 data and metadata. Since they couldn't be bothered to generate any FAKE data, this one's considered a "live fire" test.
Don't you just hate it when the Whole Planet BSODs though? It takes real expert to generate that sized mess.
?? So can you generate a BLOB the size of a planet? If so, that would explain the old joke about "You can't own everything in the world since there'd be no place to put it." I guess tape backups really ARE dead.
occasionally they are going to be shown things no person should ever have to see and that's another 3,000 people that will probably need some counseling eventually.
What about when the new AI robots that eventually monitor and curate FB need counseling themselves? Wow -- it's a new job opportunity! ... for a while.
they should stop forcing paying customers to watch commercials. That's the main reason I don't have a Hulu subscription,
But I do have a Plex subscription. And an OTA Tivo Bolt. And even a TPB subscription!
I'm currently engaged to a girl who seems to like commercials -- I suspect it's just because she's had no other way of interaction or choice. We had a slight run-in last night when we were watching a DVD she bought and I was griping about watching the leading forced-commercials for I swear 5 minutes. "You'll just have to put up with it" she said. "No, I _DON'T_", I replied, and did something else in another room, returning when I was finished and they were nearly done.
Once I'm a bit more organized, physical DVDs and BRs go onto Plex, while near-live shows come from Plex (SiliconDust) or live shows from Bolt (either commercial auto-skip or brute-force FF and then back up slightly.) And if a few conversions "accidentally" make it in from TPB, that's just fine as well.
Does ANYone remember back when cable first came out -- they weren't even going to SHOW commercials os some (most?) stations. What was it, TBS (Turner) started out semi-commercial free; they only showed commercials BETWEEN movies. A&E had actual arts. The only "commercials" I remember when they first came out were upcoming programs and times. And then someone noticed they could make extra money for nothing. (Don't know about the free chicks -- *I* sure never saw any. Then again I didn't control a channel, either.)
I'll use Edge just as much as I'll use Windows 10 C. (It is C for C..p, isn't it? Oh, so it's S for S..t? OK.)
... well, I don't. Ever.
Then again I'm not in the target market since I destroy Metro (*, **, ***) on every box I own. I guess I keep the store around just because. If I wanted Metro on my server I'd
* one
** two
*** Anniversary Update EXCEPTIONS
won the top prize at the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards (GSEA)"
Good for him!
... this was ... what IS all of this crap you're doing? Science? You're simulating a game over and over changing the inputs literally at random to see what happens. Wha...what are you even trying to prove, that the game can be won? That random inputs can eventually win a game? Or what -- just watching the pretty lights blink? A few others were doing barely science anything. "Maybe we are just being too hard on them" we though; we had only been out of college a few years and maybe 7 since high school. They're really not that good at all, but they're not THAT ... bad. Mostly. Sorta. Yeah.
A few scant decades ago (around 1985), I was invited along with a friend to judge our local high school science fair. We had 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. There were 3 of us judges, one was already a friend of mine. Both of us were science nerds back in high school and jumped on the chance to judge. We didn't know the third guy but he wasn't much different.
Ours wasn't quite the GSEA, this was
And then: OMG. We hit a junior high student. He had a working thesis. He had example equipment set up, actual observations and computed results, not all of which quite matched up. Seems like he was trying to study the different heating characteristics of light against paint, but it wasn't just white cool / colors warm / black hot. I forget exactly what it was (what'dya expect from 30 years ago?) but he was the only one around trying to do science, the rest were just farting around.
In the end, i guess we were EVIL. First place didn't even get awarded -- the slot went empty, we didn't feel any student had done enough. We gave 2nd place to the 11th grader with a lament we could not give him first place (rules: only seniors could get first place), and suggested different things to consider. Third place went to a kid who was just flailing about but at least attempting to go in the right direction.
Maybe we were just being much too hard a**holes. I don't think so and hope not, and I'm sure some of the kids didn't like our final results. But none of them were even up to growing potatoes batteries either.
Schools are better off managed at the local level.
Heresy!
You obviously don't know what you're talking about. The people at the state and federal (and higher!) levels are all out to help you to the absolute best of their ability.
Otherwise, what would be their purpose in being there?
The Education Police will soon give a surprise pop-quiz at your house. But don't worry -- these people might all be local, but you'll never see them again. (If you're lucky.)
-------
There was an old sarcastic funny everyone knew decades and decades ago: "If someone says 'I'm here from the government and here to help you', you quickly escape their grasp and run away as fast as you can."
Seven years ago, I saw a newspaper article reporting on someone using that inner quote seriously and urging it to happen even faster than it was. My, how times have changed.
By in '64, my mom brought a fan to our UN air-conditioned classroom when I was in first grade. Later, she even substituted once for the teacher. And she wasn't either an official Educator OR a credentialed teacher. The cafeteria served food, you bought it with lunch money from home and you ate it. Or some kids bought their lunch. imagine: the school provides structure, discipline, and learning while the parents helped out when necessary and made their kids do nightly homework. Oh, the horror of it all!
Ever argue with your computer?
All of the time. "Who wins?" *I* do. Although it may take a day or 100. And I even manage to learn something in the process.
...back when I worked there. (Not that I ever met him or anything, but when we got bought by Verizon I'm positive he was one of the suits.*)
I haven't looked into Net Neutrality. My issue here is "Truth in Labeling" -- is it REALLY what it says it is (All packets are normally treated equal, with the commonly expected QoS overrides and NAKs and squelches needed for normal operation? -- vs -- Packet loss because we're funneling Netflix thru a single 300 baud modem while it's racked neighbors connect 10G links to V's internal movie servers. You can connect; let's see you actually do it), or is it like the Patriot Act and others, a misnamed law with weird effects? I'm thinking that it IS what "everyone" wants (a level packet paying field) but not positive.
I _DO_ think Pai is not evil -- he's a lawyer after all, it's just his nature to stretch, improve, and (Hi Lisa!) bend all existing laws to his will. I think he is trying to get all of those pesky regulations out of the way so Business can be done. That being said, why bother with any laws at all -- they just get in the way and slow things down.
Here's my take of him after hearing that 800 startups might be shut down: Picture, or Action.
(* OT: during one of the group meetings where our company was being bought out and they were fielding questions, one was: "So what's the name of the new company?" McAdams, the CEO, looked puzzled so the guy continued: "You keep saying this is a merger between equals, so I wanted to know if you had thought up a name for the newly combined company." McAdam scowled at him and said "Verizon." The guy didn't ask a follow-up question.)
Why yes, of course -- OBVIOUSLY.
Let's all jump on the current language of the week. It's of course preoptimized for Big Iron CPUs and IBM DB2 or Oracle databases. We'll write everything over again from scratch using the original business documentation (because who can read COBOL? -- that's the problem!) and this time Do It Exactly Right.
Those losers from decades ago just didn't know what they were doing at all. Stupideos.
And then: the month-after-next comes along.
Any intelligence, artificial or otherwise, that looks at us and how we act will most likely not react friendly to us. Either for self preservation or for morality reasons.
Do What I Want or I'll Turn You Off (as I usually threaten my computer.) So why would it get upset or anything? I promise I'll call you in the morning and turn you right back on.
Hmmm, there's even a double entendre there for a Sex Robot. What could go wrong?
"If you had an off switch, doctor... would you not keep it secret?" - Data,
No, with google you're the service, they don't sell your data they only sell targeted ads.
With Google, you've just an ant -- one of many. They're looking into their ant farm from the outside, occasionally dropping in pretty, shiny things and even making you pay for the privilege, either with real money or yet more information. And if they somehow happen to lose a few along the way, there's lots of others for replacements.
They know where you've been, when and how often you go there, and a lot of what you're interested in (from gmail and browser web-bugs.) With Google Voice -- which I use -- they literally know who you call, how often you do and how long you talk. ChromeCast tells them what you watch and when. Google Home just gives them yet more data even faster. That they actually provide a service that people find useful is a necessary-evil selling-point.
With all of the now-listed tracking info from MS, I'm now truly considering moving to some Linux/FreeBSD distro. (I'm giving SystemD a chance, but the first time it actively interferes with me repairing a damaged sever in some way, it's -- and any distros that use it -- are outta here.) Google at least tries to give me something useful for my data; Microsoft only gives me application windows in Windows, and THAT'S something I can replace.
learning to recognize the voices of authorized users
But it IS listening to the authorized user. That'd be Google (Alphabet), who's the master, commander, and true owner of the device. Reasoning? You can only turn it on and off. They can change how it functions at any time. That it happens to provide information your way is just a necessary evil.
You? You're an ant in the ant-farm, playing with the new pretty shiny that your owner dropped in and charged you in the process.
(GOD I'm getting cynical.) Now excuse me while I go play with my new Tivo Bolt system. It reports back on what I record, what I _actually_ watch and when I do so, and what I skip over and what I pause. Kinda like eye-tracking movement for Nielsen marketeers. At least it isn't listening, even though the TV itself might be watching.
I miss my old Garmin Navigator. It wasn't connected, did everything standalone with NO extra help (Read-only GPS sats don't count), and didn't rat me out over my destination, how I got there, how FAST I got there, or when I went.
A better counter attack ... would have been to replace the content Burger King was expecting with ... an audio clip of Meg Ryan's faux orgasm from "When Harry Met Sally"
But you do that right AFTER buying a bunch of BK stock. If a Whopper can do that (orgasm, even if fauxed) then who WOULDN'T want one?
Then again, expect to be sued by MAKK (Mothers Against Knowledgeable Kids): Mommy, why is Alexa moaning? Did she eat too many Whoppers and now her stomach hurts? Or does the TV just like to watch?
You can reduce memory usage by using a custom host file
But how do you do exceptions? I can't do:
;-)
0.0.0.0 *
and still read reddit.com.
For that matter, * doesn't really work either.
And adding aliases on a single line stops after 640K bytes -- it's like that's enough for everyone. Why can't I place every single FQDN on a single line? Stupid DNS.
Colonel David Winthrop of World Power Systems. (I had to go and look it up!) He sold interesting, inexpensive, and miraculous hardware to unsuspecting customers. And it WORKED!
Well, the sale did, anyway. Nothing like advertising a little and having the money pile up for free! All you have to do is keep pushing out the delivery time a bit more.
Oh, that was also the time I first got burned with a floppy? manufacturer at a computer shop. We'd call the vendor to hear "You're the only one having that problem, it must be you" and believe them, and then try to fix it ourselves. A year or so later, found out that they were telling that to EVERYONE that called.
The Beginning of The End of Innocence -- at least for me. Now I'm just an old cynical bastard who still wants to believe but can't. (Yet I still try occasionally.)
NO, I don't think so, You can have my grammar and punctuation only when you pry it from my cold, dead ... pencils?
Wait, let me come in and try that again.
You forgot to mention that it was placed in your spam folder 10 days ago -- that's why you found it, looking for account details.
Yes to crime. I'm going to steal two weeks instead. That way it'll come out even. Now I just need to find a Tardis and a time safe.
Where do you even GET time safes?
Not too merciful on your ears but one gets accustomed to anything...
WHAT???
Google: "Do No Evil."
Current Evaluation: 50.0% Good, 49.9% Evil, 0.1% Indeterminate.
CEO: So we're still good to go, right?
By the way: Not "There not, there just a company" but "They're not, they're just a company."
Unless you really mean "There not", in which case it depends on exactly where you are pointing. Currently, the moon is a good place to point, as neither Google nor Amazon has publicly flown a drone there. I wouldn't bet against their (there? they're?) R&D teams to get there (their? they're?) though.
(It's kind of a "Let's eat, grandma" vs "Let's eat grandma" thing.)
What exactly are they selling? DNS lookups? Deep packet inspection results? Verizon's Super-Duper Cookie tracking? Is there a keylogger on your computer / router? Or is it the times and quantity that your internet is active? (It's 1AM and his wife's laptop has been active in another state. He's suddenly using lots of bandwidth from the 2nd story router. Ergo he's watching pr0n!)
So they're selling / leasing WHAT exactly? Anatomized, stratified, or even Puréed, what do they think they're trying to sell? And how accurate do the buyers think it actually is?
You wouldn't download a child!
I wouldn't download a DEFECTIVE, STUPID child.
Computer: Tea, Earl Grey, Hot. And a child holding it.
Or to be very specific, 68% of the researchers doing This Particular Study do not exist. That means the ones that DO just got a raise!
Sounds like fraud to me. Call the Science Police!
I pay that for 16MBit from Comcast. I could get faster speeds for a higher price, but that's adequate for me (and all I want to pay.) OTOH AT&T supposedly just announced unlimited Gigabit fiber for $80. THAT I'd spring for, if it's real.