"When people speak in Star Trek, the computer is always listening. What changed in that hypothetical future's past that needs to change in our present to make wholesale gathering of our voice comms acceptable?"
Its an interesting question. The capabilities of the star trek technology means that within a few seconds of Picard/Riker or Kirk/Spock/Scotty/etc decided to breach protocol or violate an order and discussing it anywhere on the ship... his superior officer would show up on the view screen and relieve him of duty; and teleport him to the ships brig.
Real-time spying of everyone on the ship at all times... would turn into a dystopia pretty quick.
They'd need a constitution that guaranteed them absolute privacy; and complete immunity from persecution/prosecution from such eavesdropping/electronic monitoring if it were to take place. And a system of checks and balances that had the people's faith that the audio wasn't being archived, reviewed, and misused.
ah i see i -did- have a typo; as per the thread topic, the subject is 200 microseconds, which is the number i had in my head and worked through with all the maths.
However i wrote down '2 us' instead of '200 us' when i started my post. That was just a typo -- i knew it was 200 us.
"Word binary format. I will let you make that determination. A quick perusal says yes, it saves the specific fonts used inside the document throughout the document."
What if the document originally existed as an RTF or TXT file or as a WordPerfect 5 for DOS file?
Around 10 years ago, I converted an old DOS based Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet running on Windows 95 to system to Excel 2003 for someone. If they printed it out post-conversion it would have had the default Excel 2003 fonts I'm sure. But it easily went back to the early 90s.
Likewise, imagine a document generated in 2006 in Lotus Notes and saved as RTF or something and then converted to Office 2007 a year later when the office switched systems. Then in 2008 some flunky prints a copy out and takes it home... where it surfaces in 2017 as evidence of 'thing' happening in 2006...
How much weight do you really want to give the font used on that printout as to the authenticity of the document?
For another example, I routinely save certain banking CSV exports at year end as part of my filings. They'll get printed in whatever font is the current default. So... statement exports from June 2016; won't get the treatment until Mar 2017. I certainly hope that never comes to bite me in the ass -- when some genius in 2024 asserts that the Feb 2016 data is forged because the font used in the printout wasn't introduced by MS until 2017.
Real investors? Or can you or your wife simply invest in your business with 250k line-of-credit against the house?
If not, what if we run it through a holding company so that it looks more arms length? "See, I have memorandum of understanding from MyOfficeChair Startup Venture Capital Ltd, and they've wired the money to the account; see here... and here...
Seriously... the idea that you need 250k lined up from investors sounds good on paper to people who think that's a lot of money. But for a lot of people, that's really not much money at all; and if they just need to 'front it' for the duration of the application process a LOT of people could come up with it for a couple months.
Was Linus spectacularly wrong or were the BitKeeper people spectactularly wrong? I've always taken that sequence of events as a calculated risk... he didn't expect bitkeeper would revoke their use of bitkeeper; but he also know he could replace it quickly if they were boneheaded enough to do it.
They revoked the license. He wrote git over the weekend. And... problem solved. Not really a big deal after all.
" I'd like to see some proof that this was a Google Home at work."
It wasn't. TFA was updated to say it was 'something else'.
"Isn't anyone at all skeptical anymore about news stories?"
Sure. But in this case, it was fairly reasonable; given google did announce the feature a couple months ago. You were right this time, but that was mostly luck, seeing as you discounted the story based on outdated facts that are no longer true. That's hardly something to brag about.;)
Or, do people just not care (or even know about) sound fidelity anymore...?
They don't care. People don't need a lot of fidelity to enjoy music. As long as it isn't actually dropping out left and right, people can enjoy it. My wife frequently listens to her ipod with her earbuds sitting on the table next to her. I've enjoyed songs heard through the leakage of the headphones of the person sitting next to me in a waiting room...
The noise reaching our ears isn't the music we hear in our heads. Normal people don't continually focus on the fidelity of the noise hitting our ears... we're re-living the music performance when we heard it live in concert; etc.
Don't get me wrong, I prefer good fidelity music; and will choose it if its available; but mp3 is more than good enough on a plane or bus or in my car. Stuff i've ripped from youtube to mp3... also perfectly serviceable. I'd be irritated if I bought a CD or otherwise purchased the song and it sounded like some of my youtube rips... but at 'free' its more than 'good enough' for me to enjoy listening to it.
I have a 70" 4K TV with a surround sound setup; but I went to the elementary school for movie night with my kids and watched despicable me or something in the school gym run through an old lousy projector and blown speakers... They got the focus good enough that it wasn't unwatchable, and the volume loud enough you could hear it without too much distortion... and 5 minutes in I didn't even notice anymore just how objectively bad the audio and video was; and just enjoyed the movie.
and to use that, a frequent traveler would need hundreds of apps. Maybe a few do it in the top 3 cities, but in the medium size places, there are piles of Ubers
You make a good point here. So the primary value of uber is that its a large multinational company. Basically, it's mcdonalds...
So now when you go to a new city and there are dozens of restaurants to choose from, and you don't know any of them... well... you can just go to mcdonalds and get a familiar big mac. You can even use the app to find the nearest one.
I'm kidding of course. The comparison has some pretty serious flaws. But I am serious about one aspect -- the main advantage of uber seems to be that you don't have to deal with more than one business -- you can deal with one multinational everywhere. Its competitive advantage is that it's everywhere.
On the one hand, sure, I can see how that's an advantage to you. One company. One app. Same UI everywhere.
On the other hand, that's awful.Centralize all the control and profits with one multinational company. That is kind of the antithesis of what I want.
Setting up a website is harder than using facebook, and once your on facebook communicating with other methos is more work... so lets use facebook for everything. Good idea right?
Same thing. Plus Instead of spending your transportation dollars locally and keeping the profits in the local economy, you send them back to uber. Me, that right there is a reason not to. I'd rather the local taxi driver / taxi company keep the money in the local economy.
And when I travel... I'd like, as much as possible to spend on the THAT local economy.
I see your convenience angle... but to me that's the same argument one could make for using facebook... and I don't have account there either. Dealing with a shitty abusive company in exchange for a bit more convenience? I'm willing to make the effort not to.
See here's the thing... the local taxi company has a perfectly serviceable app and I use it more than anything else. As I see no real difference between it and uber or lyft, I guess I'll go with that.
The app my friend had me using in Melbourne last time i was there was also fine.. again for some local cab company.
Or am I only supposed to cheer for big silicon valley taxi companies that pretend they aren't?
Or did you just write a comment to make yourself feel superior?
You mean the cab company I actually have to call to talk to a human being that doesn't know when the cab will arrive, or if it will arrive at all?
Actually the local cab companies all have apps now, automatic dispatch systems, sms notifcations when your cab is close etc. Oooo.... does that make it a ride sharing company?
The innovation in ride sharing apps is not in the app itself
Again. That's innovation in taxi dispatch. Nothing to do with ride sharing.
but in the controls they've put on the drivers to stop some of the frequent scams that almost everyone hates,
So they could replace them with new scams that everyone hates? like surge pricing Or reinventing old scams that were regulated out... like discrimination against minorities or the handicapped.
In any case uber etc may well have improved certain parts of the taxi experience in certain cases; but that just makes them an innovative taxi company.
You summon a car with a driver to your location, they pick you up and take you where you want to go, and you pay them. How is that anything but a taxi service?
An apps to setup and coordinate carpools... now THAT would be a ride sharing app.
That's was my first thought as well. But why the sudden spike then... chrome etc has operated that way for quite a while.
I think the botnet c&c theory makes more sense to me; or some other virus related issue... e.g. a misconfgured malware that is trying to direct people to xhamster but is instead ending up on the wikipedia page.
Sure... unless they discontinue it. Which is highly likely.
"My shortest lifespan of a mac laptop has been 5 years, I still have a 2006 MBP running and in daily use"
My old macbook pro is also still in daily use (2010ish)... but a big part of its longevity is is because I was able to add ram and replace the original 5400rpm drive with an SSD. That's a big part of the longevity proposition, and apple's newer stuff doesn't have that. If the new units are long lived its going to be in spite of apple not thanks to them.
And in general all computers are lasting a long time now. My sisters laptop, is from 2009 and its perfectly fine, and it's a dell. My HTPC tower is running Windows 1 -- we play all kinds of steam stuff on it and it runs beautifully... xcom 2 chugs a bit though. It's running 4GB RAM and a Q6600 cpu from 2007. The video card is a few years newer... GTX660. The days where a PC was in the bin after 3 years and a mac was still going strong are LONG gone. The average PC at work is 5-7 years old now, and runs fine with the work load. (Windows 7, Office 2016, POS software, industry specific stuff).
"For ethernet, I got the T-bolt->ethernet adapter."
Yeah, me too. Its a hassle to remember, and there have been multiple occasions where i didn't have it with me when it would have been handy. I'd have paid more for a model that was thicker, with more battery life, and a built-in port if one existed.
"Does it work?"
Its also kind of irritating that I can't configure ethernet when its not plugged in. But yeah, its not horrifically defective. Its just a hassle to carry the dongle everywhere. I have one in my bag too, but I've occasionally left it plugged into the last cable i used somewhere. Wifi is pretty ubiquitous, but its not universal, and wired is often **much** higher speed. Plus i program routers / switches / APs... I realize the latter is a bit niche (albeit precisely a niche where a someone would want a pro laptop)... but "moving large files frequently" is a pretty "pro" requirement.
Mine at least has full size hdmi... which i have used in hotels, board rooms, executive lounges, private offices... the new ones dropped that too. So that would be another dongle to carry around. And no USB A... seriously apple?? WTF. Those aren't niche requirements. Maybe in 2025 or 2030 they will be like needing analog VGA, but I have to use my laptop in 2017 and in 2017 those aren't niche requirements.
Then you don't need what Apple's selling, and that's fine.
No, it's not fine. Its irritating.
I do need [..]
I hope, for your sake, for next years model apple doesn't decide what you need isn't important.
My current 2015 mbp is tolerable. The missing ethernet is annoying. The new ones... are a joke. More stuff I need stripped out (function keys, ports...) replaced with stuff I don't need like "touchbar and apple pay".
" On a like for like comparison as much as possible, Apple laptops cost about the same or even less than their competition"
Only if you start with the apple laptop as the baseline, and then customize the PC to match.
This is a bogus approach.
It frames the comparison relative to what apple packaged as opposed to what I want to buy.
Whenever I shop Apple its also an exercise in irritation, I don't want the fastest CPU but I'm forced to pay for it to get the other stuff I want. With a PC I can shop for what i actually want. With Apple to get what I want I HAVE to buy a bunch of things I am not the slightest bit interested in. If I want the big SSD and an i3 or i5 I can buy that. That represents a price savings.
And that's without even going into the frustration with ports right now. I want full size hdmi, ethernet, and both usb A and C ports. Apple isn't even at the table right now, doesn't matter what I buy I'd have to work around what Apple offers instead of apple offering what I want to buy.
Backups should be done via a client/server; where the client agent software sends data to the server.
The client system should not ever directly mount nor be able to write to the backup media.
And of course, the backups should be differential versioned; so if the client is compromised, and the encrypted/corrupted files are backed up, that you can still roll back to the day before the corruption.
And there should be another separate back up on top of that.
Don't get me wrong, plugging in an external hard drive and running a copy script or something is hell of a lot better then not doing backups at all, but it has all kinds of severe failure modes that prevent it from being considered a good strategy.
I doubled what I think the average customer is paying. $100 / month for internet is pretty high... for a rural village in TX... its probably mostly 25-50/mo.
I think he's asking 10-15 years gross revenue. Which is ludicrous.
Seriously rule of thumb multiples... are usually less than 100% of annual revenue, not 10x.
They even cite an ISP... the rule of thumb for that is $200-400 per account. (about 1.5 years AR assuming $35/month )
But look at the rest of the example businesses; ad agency... 75% of annual revenue; a collection agency 3-5x monthly revenue (so less than 50% annual revenues...)
10 years of annual revenue is insane. 10 years of net profits might be reasonable...but not annual revenues.
In all seriousness though, I would bet you that comcast wasn't planning strategic expansion into Corrigan TX... with its 1500 residents. Nor into Weston Lakes with 2600.
It was just a few specks in a broader East Texas rural expansion project.
Your not wrong in general, but this was a tiny ISP in Weston Lakes and Corrigan, Texas. These "cities" have a combined population of under 4000 people, probably 1500-2000 households total.
They were servicing a couple small rural communities; and likely thrived due to comcast having extremely poor and limited services. That's why i speculated limited growth potential. They weren't likely going to be able to get a foothold anywhere.
Further, no, you do not typically mulitply GROSS revenue out by 5+ years. profit maybe, but not total revenues. And further I'd already dramatically inflated what i expect their average customer was paying. It was probably closer to half that. I'd bet 1.8 million is 10+ years gross revenue, which is pretty ludicrous.
Slashdot Mirror
"When people speak in Star Trek, the computer is always listening. What changed in that hypothetical future's past that needs to change in our present to make wholesale gathering of our voice comms acceptable?"
Its an interesting question.
The capabilities of the star trek technology means that within a few seconds of Picard/Riker or Kirk/Spock/Scotty/etc decided to breach protocol or violate an order and discussing it anywhere on the ship... his superior officer would show up on the view screen and relieve him of duty; and teleport him to the ships brig.
Real-time spying of everyone on the ship at all times... would turn into a dystopia pretty quick.
They'd need a constitution that guaranteed them absolute privacy; and complete immunity from persecution/prosecution from such eavesdropping/electronic monitoring if it were to take place. And a system of checks and balances that had the people's faith that the audio wasn't being archived, reviewed, and misused.
ah i see i -did- have a typo; as per the thread topic, the subject is 200 microseconds, which is the number i had in my head and worked through with all the maths.
However i wrote down '2 us' instead of '200 us' when i started my post. That was just a typo -- i knew it was 200 us.
Not quite. You're off by two orders of magnitude.
200 us = 200 microseconds = 200 millionths of a second.
200/1000000 second = 1/5000 second, which is exactly what I said...
er no...
2 us is 200 millionths or 0.0002 seconds.
in fractions that would be 2/10,000ths; 1/5000th
It is important to note that 5 thousandths is NOT the same as 1/5000th; 5/1000ths would be 0.005 seconds; which is out by a factor of 25.
But simply expressing it as a fraction isn't american enough. It should be like their wrench sizes... so 200 us is about 7/32768ths second.
"Word binary format. I will let you make that determination. A quick perusal says yes, it saves the specific fonts used inside the document throughout the document."
What if the document originally existed as an RTF or TXT file or as a WordPerfect 5 for DOS file?
Around 10 years ago, I converted an old DOS based Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet running on Windows 95 to system to Excel 2003 for someone. If they printed it out post-conversion it would have had the default Excel 2003 fonts I'm sure. But it easily went back to the early 90s.
Likewise, imagine a document generated in 2006 in Lotus Notes and saved as RTF or something and then converted to Office 2007 a year later when the office switched systems. Then in 2008 some flunky prints a copy out and takes it home... where it surfaces in 2017 as evidence of 'thing' happening in 2006...
How much weight do you really want to give the font used on that printout as to the authenticity of the document?
For another example, I routinely save certain banking CSV exports at year end as part of my filings. They'll get printed in whatever font is the current default. So ... statement exports from June 2016; won't get the treatment until Mar 2017. I certainly hope that never comes to bite me in the ass -- when some genius in 2024 asserts that the Feb 2016 data is forged because the font used in the printout wasn't introduced by MS until 2017.
Real investors? Or can you or your wife simply invest in your business with 250k line-of-credit against the house?
If not, what if we run it through a holding company so that it looks more arms length? "See, I have memorandum of understanding from MyOfficeChair Startup Venture Capital Ltd, and they've wired the money to the account; see here... and here...
Seriously... the idea that you need 250k lined up from investors sounds good on paper to people who think that's a lot of money. But for a lot of people, that's really not much money at all; and if they just need to 'front it' for the duration of the application process a LOT of people could come up with it for a couple months.
I know I could.
True.It could have called the police on a non-emergency number though. But it didn't, and that isn't what happened, and it wasn't a google home.
I'm still a bit curious what happened though; don't all those boxes require a prefix to start a command... ??
Either way, it's just another reason I don't want one.
"In a sense that's spectacularly wrong, no?"
Was Linus spectacularly wrong or were the BitKeeper people spectactularly wrong? I've always taken that sequence of events as a calculated risk... he didn't expect bitkeeper would revoke their use of bitkeeper; but he also know he could replace it quickly if they were boneheaded enough to do it.
They revoked the license. He wrote git over the weekend. And ... problem solved. Not really a big deal after all.
you:
"Google Home cannot yet make phone calls."
vs
"Googleâ(TM)s Home speaker can now make phone calls"
https://www.theverge.com/circu...
Which is right?
" I'd like to see some proof that this was a Google Home at work."
It wasn't. TFA was updated to say it was 'something else'.
"Isn't anyone at all skeptical anymore about news stories?"
Sure. But in this case, it was fairly reasonable; given google did announce the feature a couple months ago. You were right this time, but that was mostly luck, seeing as you discounted the story based on outdated facts that are no longer true. That's hardly something to brag about. ;)
Wait, which shitty abusive company are we talking about?
You make a good point, but the local taxi cab company is never going to be as shitty and abusive as uber.
Or, do people just not care (or even know about) sound fidelity anymore...?
They don't care. People don't need a lot of fidelity to enjoy music. As long as it isn't actually dropping out left and right, people can enjoy it. My wife frequently listens to her ipod with her earbuds sitting on the table next to her. I've enjoyed songs heard through the leakage of the headphones of the person sitting next to me in a waiting room...
The noise reaching our ears isn't the music we hear in our heads. Normal people don't continually focus on the fidelity of the noise hitting our ears... we're re-living the music performance when we heard it live in concert; etc.
Don't get me wrong, I prefer good fidelity music; and will choose it if its available; but mp3 is more than good enough on a plane or bus or in my car. Stuff i've ripped from youtube to mp3 ... also perfectly serviceable. I'd be irritated if I bought a CD or otherwise purchased the song and it sounded like some of my youtube rips... but at 'free' its more than 'good enough' for me to enjoy listening to it.
I have a 70" 4K TV with a surround sound setup; but I went to the elementary school for movie night with my kids and watched despicable me or something in the school gym run through an old lousy projector and blown speakers... They got the focus good enough that it wasn't unwatchable, and the volume loud enough you could hear it without too much distortion... and 5 minutes in I didn't even notice anymore just how objectively bad the audio and video was; and just enjoyed the movie.
and to use that, a frequent traveler would need hundreds of apps. Maybe a few do it in the top 3 cities, but in the medium size places, there are piles of Ubers
You make a good point here. So the primary value of uber is that its a large multinational company. Basically, it's mcdonalds...
So now when you go to a new city and there are dozens of restaurants to choose from, and you don't know any of them... well... you can just go to mcdonalds and get a familiar big mac. You can even use the app to find the nearest one.
I'm kidding of course. The comparison has some pretty serious flaws. But I am serious about one aspect -- the main advantage of uber seems to be that you don't have to deal with more than one business -- you can deal with one multinational everywhere. Its competitive advantage is that it's everywhere.
On the one hand, sure, I can see how that's an advantage to you. One company. One app. Same UI everywhere.
On the other hand, that's awful.Centralize all the control and profits with one multinational company. That is kind of the antithesis of what I want.
Setting up a website is harder than using facebook, and once your on facebook communicating with other methos is more work... so lets use facebook for everything. Good idea right?
Same thing. Plus Instead of spending your transportation dollars locally and keeping the profits in the local economy, you send them back to uber. Me, that right there is a reason not to. I'd rather the local taxi driver / taxi company keep the money in the local economy.
And when I travel... I'd like, as much as possible to spend on the THAT local economy.
I see your convenience angle... but to me that's the same argument one could make for using facebook... and I don't have account there either. Dealing with a shitty abusive company in exchange for a bit more convenience? I'm willing to make the effort not to.
Which service do you prefer?
See here's the thing... the local taxi company has a perfectly serviceable app and I use it more than anything else. As I see no real difference between it and uber or lyft, I guess I'll go with that.
The app my friend had me using in Melbourne last time i was there was also fine.. again for some local cab company.
Or am I only supposed to cheer for big silicon valley taxi companies that pretend they aren't?
Or did you just write a comment to make yourself feel superior?
I did it just to provoke you.
You mean the cab company I actually have to call to talk to a human being that doesn't know when the cab will arrive, or if it will arrive at all?
Actually the local cab companies all have apps now, automatic dispatch systems, sms notifcations when your cab is close etc. Oooo.... does that make it a ride sharing company?
The innovation in ride sharing apps is not in the app itself
Again. That's innovation in taxi dispatch. Nothing to do with ride sharing.
but in the controls they've put on the drivers to stop some of the frequent scams that almost everyone hates,
So they could replace them with new scams that everyone hates? like surge pricing ... like discrimination against minorities or the handicapped.
Or reinventing old scams that were regulated out
In any case uber etc may well have improved certain parts of the taxi experience in certain cases; but that just makes them an innovative taxi company.
Uber? Lyft? Get real. That's not 'ride sharing'.
Those are just taxi apps.
You summon a car with a driver to your location, they pick you up and take you where you want to go, and you pay them. How is that anything but a taxi service?
An apps to setup and coordinate carpools... now THAT would be a ride sharing app.
That's was my first thought as well. But why the sudden spike then... chrome etc has operated that way for quite a while.
I think the botnet c&c theory makes more sense to me; or some other virus related issue ... e.g. a misconfgured malware that is trying to direct people to xhamster but is instead ending up on the wikipedia page.
"Then buy the non touchbar version."
Sure... unless they discontinue it. Which is highly likely.
"My shortest lifespan of a mac laptop has been 5 years, I still have a 2006 MBP running and in daily use"
My old macbook pro is also still in daily use (2010ish)... but a big part of its longevity is is because I was able to add ram and replace the original 5400rpm drive with an SSD. That's a big part of the longevity proposition, and apple's newer stuff doesn't have that. If the new units are long lived its going to be in spite of apple not thanks to them.
And in general all computers are lasting a long time now. My sisters laptop, is from 2009 and its perfectly fine, and it's a dell. My HTPC tower is running Windows 1 -- we play all kinds of steam stuff on it and it runs beautifully... xcom 2 chugs a bit though. It's running 4GB RAM and a Q6600 cpu from 2007. The video card is a few years newer... GTX660. The days where a PC was in the bin after 3 years and a mac was still going strong are LONG gone. The average PC at work is 5-7 years old now, and runs fine with the work load. (Windows 7, Office 2016, POS software, industry specific stuff).
"For ethernet, I got the T-bolt->ethernet adapter."
Yeah, me too. Its a hassle to remember, and there have been multiple occasions where i didn't have it with me when it would have been handy. I'd have paid more for a model that was thicker, with more battery life, and a built-in port if one existed.
"Does it work?"
Its also kind of irritating that I can't configure ethernet when its not plugged in. But yeah, its not horrifically defective. Its just a hassle to carry the dongle everywhere. I have one in my bag too, but I've occasionally left it plugged into the last cable i used somewhere. Wifi is pretty ubiquitous, but its not universal, and wired is often **much** higher speed. Plus i program routers / switches / APs ... I realize the latter is a bit niche (albeit precisely a niche where a someone would want a pro laptop)... but "moving large files frequently" is a pretty "pro" requirement.
Mine at least has full size hdmi... which i have used in hotels, board rooms, executive lounges, private offices... the new ones dropped that too. So that would be another dongle to carry around. And no USB A... seriously apple?? WTF. Those aren't niche requirements. Maybe in 2025 or 2030 they will be like needing analog VGA, but I have to use my laptop in 2017 and in 2017 those aren't niche requirements.
Then you don't need what Apple's selling, and that's fine.
No, it's not fine. Its irritating.
I do need [..]
I hope, for your sake, for next years model apple doesn't decide what you need isn't important.
My current 2015 mbp is tolerable. The missing ethernet is annoying. The new ones... are a joke. More stuff I need stripped out (function keys, ports...) replaced with stuff I don't need like "touchbar and apple pay".
" On a like for like comparison as much as possible, Apple laptops cost about the same or even less than their competition"
Only if you start with the apple laptop as the baseline, and then customize the PC to match.
This is a bogus approach.
It frames the comparison relative to what apple packaged as opposed to what I want to buy.
Whenever I shop Apple its also an exercise in irritation, I don't want the fastest CPU but I'm forced to pay for it to get the other stuff I want. With a PC I can shop for what i actually want. With Apple to get what I want I HAVE to buy a bunch of things I am not the slightest bit interested in. If I want the big SSD and an i3 or i5 I can buy that. That represents a price savings.
And that's without even going into the frustration with ports right now. I want full size hdmi, ethernet, and both usb A and C ports. Apple isn't even at the table right now, doesn't matter what I buy I'd have to work around what Apple offers instead of apple offering what I want to buy.
I'm sorry. You are doing backups wrong.
Backups should be done via a client/server; where the client agent software sends data to the server.
The client system should not ever directly mount nor be able to write to the backup media.
And of course, the backups should be differential versioned; so if the client is compromised, and the encrypted/corrupted files are backed up, that you can still roll back to the day before the corruption.
And there should be another separate back up on top of that.
Don't get me wrong, plugging in an external hard drive and running a copy script or something is hell of a lot better then not doing backups at all, but it has all kinds of severe failure modes that prevent it from being considered a good strategy.
Maybe they own a zillion "coins", that THEY got for being in at the ground floor. They just have to sell a few now.
If I invent a cryptocurrency at it goes to $300 a coin... I'd be "rich" too.
the source code can make generating the exploit once you have found the vulnerability much easier.
That's an understatement.
He's asking for less than ten years of revenue.
I doubled what I think the average customer is paying. $100 / month for internet is pretty high... for a rural village in TX... its probably mostly 25-50/mo.
I think he's asking 10-15 years gross revenue. Which is ludicrous.
Seriously rule of thumb multiples ... are usually less than 100% of annual revenue, not 10x.
http://www.business-valuation....
They even cite an ISP ... the rule of thumb for that is $200-400 per account. (about 1.5 years AR assuming $35/month )
But look at the rest of the example businesses; ad agency ... 75% of annual revenue; a collection agency 3-5x monthly revenue (so less than 50% annual revenues...)
10 years of annual revenue is insane. 10 years of net profits might be reasonable...but not annual revenues.
The other poster had it right. They are borg. :)
In all seriousness though, I would bet you that comcast wasn't planning strategic expansion into Corrigan TX... with its 1500 residents. Nor into Weston Lakes with 2600.
It was just a few specks in a broader East Texas rural expansion project.
Your not wrong in general, but this was a tiny ISP in Weston Lakes and Corrigan, Texas. These "cities" have a combined population of under 4000 people, probably 1500-2000 households total.
They were servicing a couple small rural communities; and likely thrived due to comcast having extremely poor and limited services. That's why i speculated limited growth potential. They weren't likely going to be able to get a foothold anywhere.
Further, no, you do not typically mulitply GROSS revenue out by 5+ years. profit maybe, but not total revenues. And further I'd already dramatically inflated what i expect their average customer was paying. It was probably closer to half that. I'd bet 1.8 million is 10+ years gross revenue, which is pretty ludicrous.