On 2020-09-01, Mayayana  wrote:

> "Charlie Gibbs"  wrote
>
>>> Java was being phased out.
>>
>> That's because M$ tried to add proprietary extensions
>> to it - in violation of their licensing agreement with
>> Sun - and they got caught at it.
>
>   I don't understand why so many people want to cast
> Microsoft as the only villain. Yes, MS tried to come up
> with their own version of Java. But that's not why Java
> was phased out.

No, but it's why M$ lost interest in it.  They wanted
something they could manipulate to maximize lock-in,
and Sun had taken measures to ensure Java wasn't it.

> Long story short, I don't see how you can blame Java's
> failure on MS.

We're not.  We're just always on the lookout for
opportunities to do a little Microsoft-bashing.

>> Remember those science fiction stories where you could do
>> stuff like that?  Back then it worked because it was assumed
>> that smart houses would be independent entities (with suitable
>> access controls), rather than slaves of the Cloud.
>
>   It's my impression that people are doing it. People
> get calls from their surveillance cameras to say someone
> has broken into their house, for instance.

And hackers will break into the surveillance cameras
to figure out when it's safe to break into the house.

But most of all, the owners of the centralized sites that
co-ordinate it all will be able to compile a dossier on
all users' movements, with Alexa filling in the details.

(Excuse me, my tinfoil hat is pinching.  Let me adjust it...)

> Soon, the more feebleminded will probably be calling their frig
> to see if they need milk. And they'll be bragging about it.

Of course they will.  Ancient Chinese emperors grew their
fingernails so long that their hands were useless, and in
Victorian times the upper classes wore clothing so complex
and restrictive that they could hardly do anything for
themselves.  This was a point of pride, for it demonstrated
that these people were sufficiently powerful to have others
do things for them.

>   There was an interesting story some years ago about
> 2 men who were rich, flying a private plane to a hunting
> cabin one of them owned. The owner used his iPhone
> to call his thermostat, so the cabin would be warm when
> they arrived. It turned out that a squirrel had built a nest
> in the furnace exhaust pipe and there were no working
> CO alarms. When the two men arrived they were dead
> before they had time to notice something was wrong.

 Another entry for the Darwin Awards.

>   I've also seen stories about hacked e-front door locks.
> People are eating up the IoT, no matter how dumb. I
> suppose it is all cloud-linked, but isn't that really
> a privacy issue rather than a functionality issue?

Perhaps, but isn't privacy important too?  Or is everyone
really happy that Orwell's telescreens have been deployed?
Given the rise of authoritarianism everywhere in the world
(especially in the U.S.), I consider it cause for alarm.

The point is that it doesn't have to be cloud-linked
(FSVO "cloud").  This was not the vision of the creators
of the Internet; they saw it as a peer-to-peer thing,
not a return to the centralized model of the '60s.

--
/~\  Charlie Gibbs                  |  Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ /        |  Apple is a cult.
 X   I'm really at ac.dekanfrus     |  Linux is anarchy.
/ \  if you read it the right way.  |  Pick your poison.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05