Nest Reminds Customers That Ownership Isn't What It Used To Be (eff.org) 268
Alphabet-owned Nest recently announced that it will be turning off Revolv Hub next month. An anonymous reader shares an article on EFF, a privacy rights group: Nest Labs, a home automation company acquired by Google in 2014, will disable some of its customers' home automation control devices in May. This move is causing quite a stir among people who purchased the $300 Revolv Hub devices -- customers who reasonably expected that the promised "lifetime" of updates would enable the hardware they paid for to actually work, only to discover the manufacturer can turn their device into a useless brick when it so chooses. This is far from the first time that customers' software and electronics have been downgraded by manufacturers. Updates can disable features the customer paid for that have fallen out of favor with the vendor, as when Google disabled privacy settings on Android or Sony took away the ability to run GNU/Linux on a Playstation 3. Manufacturers can even render a device unusable until the customer "agrees" to new terms of use, as Nintendo did with the Wii U. Other software and devices, including some video games, are designed so they simply stop working when they can no longer dial home to a server run by the vendor.
To any Canadians (Score:5, Interesting)
Dear Canucks, under your provincial consumer protection laws(varies by province) you are likely entitled to a full refund of the product price regardless of when you bought it. Revocation of a lifetime agreement, even when the company is bought out is considered a breach of said warranty and support agreement under the law, and you are permitted to a full refund. Remember, if refused it only costs $20-40 to file in small claims court over this, and you do not have to settle for arbitration in Canada, jumping through that hoop is not required.
Re:To any Canadians (Score:4, Insightful)
A good reminder as to why we americans consider canada our escape plan.
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I have friends who tell me "if x wins, I'm moving to Canada," and I just have to say, "No..no you're not. You're a moron."
Having living in Australia and New Zealand, I know what visa processes are like. It's involved. Unless you're in a skilled profession, in an in-demand field and are willing to sign your life away, you're not going to Canada. If you're under 30, you CAN easily get into AU/NZ (and if you just graduated or are enrolled in classes, Ireland as well), thanks to Holiday Work Visas. They're only
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I lived in Brasil under the dictatorship. It was better then!
You know NOTHING about the 1964 coup, asshole.
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Nova Scotia? What kind of work is there in NS besides working on fishing boats? Seriously, I've never heard of NS having any kind of tech work; in Canada, the two main places known for tech work are Vancouver and Toronto. Montreal might have some, but you probably need to speak French.
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Hmm...why can't we enact something sensible like this in the USA?
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And here at 34 I was hoping to move to new zealand since they need programmers
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It's the water.
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It's not racism, it's linguistic simplicity.
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AUS/NZ have some pretty messed up governments in many ways though compared to Canada.
Re: To any Canadians (Score:2)
Whereas your side had the ever so democratic forces of France and Spain.
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After the US revolution we had a significant number of of citizens who did not really agree to the aims of the revolution, possibly a majority. There was intimidation to keep people in line during the revolution though (tar and feathering was not just a humorous joke). We were just a pawn in a global power struggle. And the US was very weak and pitiful for a very long time, only turning strong after WW1, and then into a strong dominating bully after WW2.
So we're not that different from Canada except for
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Dear Canucks, under your provincial consumer protection laws(varies by province) you are likely entitled to a full refund of the product price regardless of when you bought it. Revocation of a lifetime agreement, even when the company is bought out is considered a breach of said warranty and support agreement under the law, and you are permitted to a full refund. Remember, if refused it only costs $20-40 to file in small claims court over this, and you do not have to settle for arbitration in Canada, jumping through that hoop is not required.
So, tell us what we've won? A $300 judgment in a Canadian court against an international entity. Let's hope that 100 or more people win similar judgements so that it might attract the attention of an attorney who might start a class action injunction against said company and potentially motivate them to either: pay up, or quit doing business in the country. I don't know about Canadian laws in this area for collection of legal fees, but if the class action attorney can't collect his fees separately, I'm s
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Under UK law its the seller that is on the hook, so if you bought it from Amazon then Amazon provide the refund - someone invoked this when Sony stripped the OtherOS out of their Playstations with an update, got their money back in full.
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$75 to file at small claims. This was 8 years ago so I'm assuming it's probably closer to $100 now. The fees incurred to go to small claims in most cases cannot be added to the damage claimed.
Also, last I checked, most electronic manufacturers that offer lifetime warranties only offer it for a year after EOL. If your product has a revision that was EOL, you need to make sure you are within the window specified in the small print.
If enough of these cases come through, the vendor will make arrangements with t
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Re:To any Canadians (Score:4, Insightful)
Lifetime of the product. Not of you.
I've seen software companies abuse this interpretation in funny ways by simply renaming the software after so many years. That evidently shouldn't be the case. Does it use the same code base of the "previous" software? Then it is the same product and the "lifetime" clause should be respected. Entirely new code base? Then yes, it's a new product.
In the case of devices, the only common sensincal meaning of "lifetime" is until your unit break and cannot be repaired due to lack of parts or the company going bankrupt and no one else acquiring those assets. Reinterpreting it to mean the company deciding that product line has been discontinued is disingenuous, and even more so if the company itself adds to that intentionally bricking the unit.
Re:To any Canadians (Score:5, Funny)
I tried to use it to get craftsman parts for a push lawn mower built in the 20s. They tried to claim the other lifetime was the applicable one.
Google likes to hose hardware (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Google likes to hose hardware (Score:5, Informative)
The Nexus 4 *never* had LTE enabled in official software builds. It wasn't FCC certified to use LTE. The fact that they made the unsupported hack to enable LTE more difficult with a firmware update is not a remotely comparable situation to this. And besides, I did have LTE enabled on my Nexus 4 (was possible even with the most recent updates using hybrid radio firmware) but left it off most of the time. The power hungry first-gen LTE radio made the already bad battery life of the Nexus 4 even worse.
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Re:Google likes to hose hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
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On most carriers, theres a tool on google play that reloads the correct radio/modem that readds LTE.. My Nexus 4 is on Ting/tmobile, and it works peachy here...
https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
Why don't they release the source? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why doesn't Google just release the source code and/or the protocols needed to make it work? They can keep proprietary bits that they don't own the source for (radio drivers, etc) as closed source blobs and open the rest of the code that they own.
Re:Why don't they release the source? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because limiting control to vendor-only is part of the "smart" in "smart home". If the owner (or "inhabitant") has control, then its automatically dumb and anti-progress. Your homes become the colonization ground for the big tech companies. And you even pay for it, willingly. What a great accomplishment of the marketing department.
If a majority of the people don't like it, the companies will find ways to lure them to do that deal. But they always will do products as restricted as possible, that still sell, because with that they can make most money. That's the new business model of the digital age. It will come to other areas too.
In the end we will have re-introduced serfdom, you don't own anything anymore, but the companies control every tiny part of your life. The owners of the companies will be the new upper class.
Re:Why don't they release the source? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because it isn't worth the effort for a product that obviously isn't selling?
As it is, it's just safer (from a liability standpoint) to brick the devices and pay off the owners. If they just leave them "unsupported", what happens 2-3 years down the road when somebody discovers a vulnerability that allows remote access? Who is liable when somebody remotely unlocks your front door and walks off with all your stuff?
Better to just brick them and force people to find a supported solution.
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Because the device doesn't allow enough spying on you and the EULA for the service and hub don't allow Google a way to increase the spying on you.
In short, its anti-google, it doesn't let them watch you fuck your wife and know everything else you do in your home, so they don't want it to exist. If they give you the source you may continue using it instead of buying the next version that REQUIRES the ability to spy on you.
This sh*t again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, we were already over this earlier this week, with the story that lied about them bricking the hubs. There's nothing to stop anyone from reverse-engineering the protocol and getting the devices to work as intended again - nothing but money. This is what you get for trusting the cloud.
You wanted an app that could work from your phone from anywhere else in the world? Either run your own server, pay someone else to, or do without the remote functionality.
Yet another IoT fail.
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There's nothing to stop anyone from reverse-engineering the protocol and getting the devices to work as intended again - nothing but money
The vendors argue with the DMCA that you can't install foreign ROMs on the devices. And thanks to key pinning and other techniques, its impossible to replace the server side with at least changing small parts of the ROMs.
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Re:This sh*t again? (Score:5, Insightful)
The product will 100% stop working as sold. Period.
Sure, it's not technically bricking the device, but they're throwing all functionality away, telling you it won't work, and basically saying you could feel free to replicate the service by writing your own app, server, and re-engineering the protocol to recreate what you have to recreate the functionality.
But it's a completely dishonest thing to claim that article lied about bricking the device.
You will 100% end up with a non-functioning device, and none of the parts to make it work without a considerable amount of engineering going into it. Like, a massive bit of engineering and creation of infrastructure.
This is kind of like Boeing saying they'll no longer support your aircraft, but you're free to go and build your own aircraft maintenance program by reverse engineering the plane you have. It's pretty much bullshit.
The product has neither functionality nor value without the stuff which makes it work, so for all intents and purposes, they really have bricked the damned thing, because it will entirely cease to function as sold to you.
The hub will DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING after that date. That's not just remote functionality, that's all of the damned functionality. And that's what Revolv's own FAQ says.
How you can claim that making it 100% useless is any different isn't the same as bricking is beyond me.
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How about we allow the damn things to at least work in our home network without having to use the cloud - that's what pisses me off about the IoT things I have, everything on my end is up and running, but if "the cloud is down" it still doesn't work.
You hardware is now obsolete... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You hardware is now obsolete... (Score:5, Funny)
I totally agree, in fact I think we should ...connection disconnected... router software licensing agreement expired...
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I suppose that is something of an improvement from $*Y&%(*&$***** CARRIER LOST
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This is one horror story amongst thousands of success story. You can't crap on the model because one went belly up.
There are benefits to offline or online and hosted or not hosted. Just a matter of picking your poison.
Email is a perfect example of a hosted service that most rely on and never give a second thought.
Re: You hardware is now obsolete... (Score:2)
Gmail doesn't cost $300 or in fact any money at all and doesn't come with a lifetime guarantee
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I'm not so sure it's that simple. A lot of times when shit like this goes down, nobody was expecting it from *THAT* company, and it catches the "owners" entirely off guard. At least initially, yes... I'd say that it is a situation where people are uninformed.
As for why people keep going back, I would suggest that apathy plays less of a part in the matter more than the inconvenience of doing without whatever product or service that the company has offered.
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exactly, and as to why people keep going with the cloud option has more to do with the lack of any other option. If you are using the cloud without any real reason to then you are using the cloud to sell your customers info as an added income source, which should be a big fucking warning sign.
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I did felt for this kind of trap myself. I did bough a netatmo thermostat for my home. I though it was some kind of home thermostat with an integrated web server for use with my tablet. But actually that thing connect to the internet to the netatmo servers :-( I tried to ask on the netatmo forum for information about their politic about the EOL of their products but got no response from them. I really hate that. I am looking how I can revert my mistake (searching for any current reverse engineering project
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I hate to say it, but the general population doesn't really care. If they did, they wouldn't buy/use this stuff and the companies would go out of business. It's not a situation where people aren't informed, they just don't care.
Not quite, most people actually aren't informed, and if they were then more of them would care (certainly not all, but more.) It's why stories like this are important, to raise awareness and hopefully push product development in more consumer friendly directions. Not just "we know what consumers want, they want us to control everything so they don't have to care" directions, also in the direction of "our products still have value even after the next internet bubble pops."
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Is it REALLY don't care or is it more a DON'T KNOW situation? Perhaps they didn't understand that the thing wouldn't work at all if the server went away. Perhaps they actually believed that "lifetime" meant something other than "until we take it down on a whim".
Re: People are buying this stuff (Score:2)
Of course they care, but there haven't been enough high profile examples yet to bring it to general attention yet. People didn't care about DRM on music, and then after enough exposure to the bullshit they did. Stop lording it over other people, you're not better, you're just in this field therefore aware of stuff earlier.
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The general population has gotten used to a world of generally good consumer protections and safety requirements. While some of us have seen this coming for a little while longer with things like the early iPods and what not most simply don't get how much power this "cloud" model takes from them. They have not been burned much with those techy toys because by and large the support for them lasted as long as anyone wanted to use one any. By the time M$ abandon the Zune, most people had moved on to a bette
This is not new (Score:2)
There are two classes of product that we might get upset about:
(1) A product (hardware and/or software) that requires a Service to operate. Examples include a multiplayer video game, which may stop working if they turn off the servers. This appears to be the situation with the Revolv.
(2) A product that does not require a Service to operate. Like a Wii, or a Blu-ray player. This product might use a Service to update itself, or gain additional features, but should keep working indefinitely without the Service
Does anybody believe in lifetime, really? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder if the high level of technological obsolescence (whether planned or just practical) makes the notion of "lifetime support" kind of wink-and-a-nod sort of thing where most people think that lifetime only matters for the next three years and that nobody really expects support for the next 10 years.
If technology lasted as long as my washer-dryer, I might take lifetime more seriously.
(Yes, you in the back taking notes on a Palm Pilot, you are an outlier.)
You still own it (Score:3)
As an aside, are there any decent non-cloud-dependent home automation controllers that a) don't cost a fortune (aka most commercially available ones), b) actually work properly*, and c) work with common off-the-shelf protocols like zigbee and zwave?
*and by that, I mean something who's primary property isn't being a Rube Goldberg contest entry?
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So when someone cubes your car, you'll be good with that because you still own the cube sitting in your driveway?
Dear Pacemaker user (Score:5, Funny)
We are shutting down your pacemaker at the end of this month as we are focusing on artificial hearts instead.
We recommend getting your affairs in order prior to that date.
As a sign of thanks for your years of loyalty, we've randomly picked the exact time that your pacemaker will stop working, so your actual death will still be genuine surprise.
We hope you continue to use our products for years to come,
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A better joke might have been "We are shutting down your pacemaker at the end of this month as we are focusing all of our efforts going forward on our new casket business (click here to see our new line of products!)"
control == ownership (Score:2, Informative)
Yet another example of:
"The lesson everyone should take from this is: you don't own something which requires a network connection and can be updated via the network."
http://boingboing.net/2012/07/03/cisco-locks-customers-out-of-t.html
The only way (Score:2)
to avoid this nonsense is to drop the object like a hot potato, write off the loss and try to avoid this BS in the future.
In a way, any use of toys makes you dependent for the sole purpose to transfer $$'s into different pockets, once it's there, you are at other's whim and open for frustration having your expectations killed.
Does one really need all this hype? Good question, seems to stimulate something in people's nervous systems.
Same goes for those popup intrusions - open in a new window/tab and if it a
Dupe (Score:2)
I last saw this sordid tale yesterday [slashdot.org].
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KISS (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, I've never had a light switch or door key get bricked by the manufacturer. The more I go through life the more I want less electronics in places where the value is dubious. My time is worth a lot, and having to unearth documentation, or deal with software revisions is a real pain. I want the Easy Button for all the day to day stuff I don't want to think about.
There will always that small subset (over represented here) that get joy and fulfillment fiddling with things for the sake of fiddling with things. In some parts of my life I am the same. Home automation is not one of them. Having the source code to compile my own distro for home automation is not desired, I want it so simple and bullet proof that I never have to think about it after installation, or I don't want it (no matter what "it" is).
My fridge should never phone home, get viruses, get bricked, lose/gain features, spy on me, or have a touch panel. It should make cold using the smallest amount of energy for as many years as possible, full stop.
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There are lots of electronic keypad door locks available which connect to mains power, have a backup battery and a key which bypasses the numeric pad if all else fails but why go that way when there is a much simpler solution?
Because just like you're using a remotely hosted forum for your recreational communication and socializing (instead of driving someplace to a room full of people that meet in person every Thursday to joke about Natalie Portman and Hot Grits), some people DO want to remotely unlock their front door for the neighbor to feed their dog (or whatever). You're not looking for a simpler solution, you're looking to stick with simpler problems.
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I think we're seeing one facet of the internet of things which in this case has become a problem of a solution in search of a problem.
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There will always that small subset (over represented here) that get joy and fulfillment fiddling with things for the sake of fiddling with things.
There will always be a subset that will assume a product is fiddling just for the sake of fiddling because they either don't understand or don't have the requisite user case for the product.
I've never had anything bricked by the manufacturer either. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy living in highly networked world where technology has made things simple for me. e.g. keyless entry into a car. Sounds stupid right until you're the one doing the shopping every day and you're trying desperately to juggle shopping
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Hopefully your keyless car fails safe and you actually have a mechanical key. For that one time when your battery dies and you need to unlock the dead car to grab your jumper cables.
Any decent car is indeed designed to handle these scenarios. On my new Mazda, if the keyfob's battery is low, it warns you on the dashboard with a light. If you let it die, you can still get in the car with a mechanical key that's built into the fob, and then you can start the car by holding the fob to the start button as you
Verizon just did the same thing! (Score:5, Interesting)
Verizon just recently discontinued their XBOX and Smart TV apps, giving us exactly two weeks notice. I was using this service to avoid renting cable boxes at $10/mo each. When I called to complain they said "Rent some cable boxes." Instead I used the opportunity to cut the cord. Bye Bye Verizon!
Verizon also closed their Android app store (Score:2)
It is very unwise to purchase non-core telecommunications products from Verizon, as they do not last [theverge.com].
Digital and/or software products are an especially risky purchase.
The Internet of Things, ownership, & privacy (Score:2, Insightful)
he Internet of Things falls into a few categories:
1) Devices that are to be used against you.
Example: The "Smart Meters", which form a 'mesh' network, and can be turned off remotely to 'save power', etc. Water meters have been made doing the same thing, "to save water". Expect them to first be 'voluntary', and then 'mandatory'. Usage patterns will then be flagged, for 'suspicious' behavior.
2) Devices that function like the extension of the supermarket loyalty card.
Example: The "Smart refrigerator" which
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The Internet of Things falls into a few categories:
1) Devices that are to be used against you.
Example: The "Smart Meters", which form a 'mesh' network, and can be turned off remotely to 'save power', etc. Water meters have been made doing the same thing, "to save water". Expect them to first be 'voluntary', and then 'mandatory'. Usage patterns will then be flagged, for 'suspicious' behavior.
Smart Meters are far more about saving money for the utility company. Unless you're outsourcing to the post office (which is designed for this), sending people out to read everyone's meter is expensive and time consuming when simple telemetry can provide what's needed. They only send people out when they think there might be a problem.
Maybe you're thinking of NEST-like thermostats and whatnot, but those are different from "Smart Meters" as the phrase is currently used in the US.
2) Devices that function like the extension of the supermarket loyalty card.
Example: The "Smart refrigerator" which keeps track of your diet, what's inside, and what your ordering from the supermarket. All helpfully passed onto 3rd party marketeers. You are the product being sold.
Maybe it's different where yo
Ownership hasn't changed at all (Score:2)
Not comparable (Score:2)
How you can compare the hardware or software of a video game, used for entertainment, to things like light switches and other parts of a functioning home is beyond me. I've been holding back from making purchases in this particular growth area of technology and the attitude of the market leader tells me I should continue to do so. This is a total crock.
Summary is really biased (Score:2)
Google disabled privacy settings on Android
App ops was obviously test software and had not been advertised as a feature. You needed third party apps to enable it and many apps would crash since the (correct, I might add) assumption was that the app would have access to all permissions it had requested. While it's take
Trade Agreements (Score:2)
And guess what? The Corpocrats know exactly how this game works, so together with the Bureaucrats they concoct verbiage in Trade Agreements that protect this scheme, not allowing you to remove/bypass the DRM (unless you want to be a criminal). The elected representative only get to say Yay or Nay against the whole thing ("I'll have the Deluxe burger but hold the tomato" doesn't work here, you're going to have to swallow the tomato as well).
Say, has anybody had the courage to ask Mrs. Clinton what her curren
This is why copyright deserves no respect (Score:2)
Business is too one sided. The buyers need to be much more assertive regarding their rights. When a company abandons a product, they should not be allowed to have any rights over it. It all has to be put into the public domain. If we don't demand it, then we will continue to suffer.
Nest is designed to be a data collection device (Score:3)
I really dont get it... (Score:2)
I just don't get how even the people that are (rightfully) up in arms about all this will still inevitably go right out and buy another product (even from the same manufacturer that screwed them once already) that blatantly uses proprietary lock-in crap to remove ultimate control/ownership from the customer, and even allows the manufacture to data mine your life and decide what you can do with your own damn property, including disabling the it at any time with no comebacks.
Where does this ridiculously naiv
And people ask me (Score:3)
Let it go. (Score:2)
Sony took away the ability to run GNU/Linux on a Playstation 3.
If you upgraded the firmware.
Which almost everyone did without a second thought.
It was a clever hack buying wholesale lots of the heavily subsidized PS3 to build your high performance computer. Rather than SONY's more expensive commercial grade Cell hardware. But it guaranteed that the Other OS was going away and never coming back.
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Re: It's not Nest, it's Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Technically Alphabet was created to protect the Google brand from the evil they do.
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Yes, they've changed their mission statement from,
"Don't be evil" to "See no evil, hear no evil."
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It was always "Don't, be evil".
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I thought their new slogan was "We Don't Even Know What Evil Is!"
Cauterize Google services (Score:3)
I would like to see a button in Android that disables all Google functions, applications, and connectivity to Google servers.
The FCC, or perhaps the FTC, would be wise to force this.
I would rather not see the European Union mandate this "forced feature" - the U.S. still lacks the "right to be forgotten" (AFAIK).
There are many who omit gapps when they load Cyanogenmod, but the carriers are making a wipe of /system increasingly difficult.
There are times when I want Google completely off of my devices.
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I would like to see a button in Android that disables all Google functions, applications, and connectivity to Google servers.
It's not a single button, but you can do it. Remove any Google account, turn off location services, and disable all of the Google apps, including play services (actually, disabling play services will make most Google apps unable to contact Google, I would expect). You'll also need to turn off Verify Apps, which is rather unfortunate for your device security, but it also relies on Google servers.
Another thing a more technical user could do is to configure a VPN on the device to route all connections to a V
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Re: Property rights are history (Score:2)
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no. you are just doing mental gymnastics to justify their theft. my deed says i own the property my house sits on. i never signed anything placing my house as collateral if i failed to pay "rent" on the land.
they are taking what's not theirs and the law needs to be changed.
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Didn't you get the memo? We're Libertarians. We don't like taxes, government, or civilization. Oh, and we put the rights of the business ahead of the rights of the individual. I've been hearing people tell me that's what I believe for a while now. The funny thing is, I was with the party when they were first getting going - way back in the 1970s. Well, they'd been around a bit before that but things started to get a bit formal then.
And yet, I've never once minded paying my taxes. I don't even complain about
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There are practical advantages to owning a home. But, yes, the government can take it away from you if you don't pay on it.
On the other hand, there was never a time that a government or stronger person couldn't take away from you what you "owned" so you're pretty much no worse off than before, and considerably better in most respects.
Yes, tax is sort of like "rent" but it is truly its own thing. A property tax could theoretically be repealed and then your ownership would remain intact and you wouldn't owe
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Sadly, I have bosses like this. If it's not an "app", it's not consider to be "cool" software and the project probably won't get approved.