This is why people should be extremely cautious about becoming too attached to (or, worse, dependent on) any particular product or service. It can change ownership (and therefore policies) at any time.
Not really, no. The software space was much, much richer and you could get along extremely well without using much software from the big guys.
Today we have the illusion of speaking globally but have been gatekept out by a handful of companies.
I don't do automatic updates and actively prevent that from happening. Automatic updates are a plague that means you can't rely on the software anymore, if for no other reason than an update may (and likely will, eventually) remove or otherwise bork the very aspect that made it valuable to you.
But I'm a weirdo and take care to ensure that I actually own and control the software I use. I see people getting burned because they're at the mercy of a company all too often.
I've switched to FreeBSD and things mostly stay working, but I've already seen steps in the direction that Linux has gone, so I fear it's just a matter of time.
Plus, a lot of these server dependencies are added to create that dependency and the software would be better off without them anyway.
Remember when Java and MySQL weren't owned by Oracle?
I do.
2000-2005, the biggest automatic updates that consumers had to deal with were Windows (Office, OS, etc) updates and games. Valve's Steam, which had come into prevalence (notably Counterstrike:Source), World of Warcraft, etc.
By 2008 (Google Chrome), automatic updates were common. I would say the ship had sailed by 2005. Yes, this is 1 full generation ago.
On several different SaaS softwares used at my employer I have found myself asking if they have entire teams of highly compensated UX professionals and graphics designers who justify their continued employment by changing the interface every 3 months by just enough to annoy me after I finally remap my brain to the latest locations of the tools and buttons.
I don't think he meant "deserves" in the literal sense.
Many seem to be well known because they're memorable, but some people assume they're well know because they contain wisdom.
E.g., "It's always darkest before dawn." or (the often misconstrued) "The exception proves the rule."
Here's a discussion about it[0].
First, here's the TL;DR:
SIEGEL: So far from being a pro-privacy quotation, if anything, it's a pro-taxation and pro-defense spending quotation.
WITTES: It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means.
And here's the detail, discussed just before the TL;DR (I put in some paragraph breaks):
SIEGEL: And what was the context of this remark?
WITTES: He was writing about a tax dispute between the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the family of the Penns, the proprietary family of the Pennsylvania colony who ruled it from afar.
And the legislature was trying to tax the Penn family lands to pay for frontier defense during the French and Indian War.
And the Penn family kept instructing the governor to veto.
Franklin felt that this was a great affront to the ability of the legislature to govern. And so he actually meant purchase a little temporary safety very literally. The Penn family was trying to give a lump sum of money in exchange for the General Assembly's acknowledging that it did not have the authority to tax it.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
At the very least, software needs to do what it used to do: make security updates separate from all other updates so users can just get the security bits.
Of course, in a world of walled gardens versus git repos, none of this very powerful use of ideas and computation can be done. I can't go to the Apple app store and easily cobble together my own franken app from what I find there. It's like a step back for innovation for our species when we set up these stupid profit seeking moats and gardens.
It seems less risky to continue automatic updates and just accept the possibility of malicious ownership change.
Hopefully that abuse will reach a point where the camels back breaks, and the pain of freeing yourself from vendor lock-in becomes worth it, prompting smart consumers and businesses in large numbers to use and support principled software projects through contributions of money, code and labor.
People can learn and have personal responsibility, but the companies would rather use such examples for leverage to keep them ignorant and corral them into putting nooses of control around their necks.
Except that this was due to a vulnerability in Windows which was fixed _after_ those worms ravaged the Windows users.
Plus if you look at the app store updates, most of the apps post nonsense in the release notes such as "fixed bugs", "Thank you for being a user of Lyft this update will make your experience even better!", or the worst kind:
"You know how sometimes you just become aware of how much tension you're holding in your body, then take a deep breath and slowly let it out? This update is like that. It's still Slack, just with a tiny bit less friction."
HOGWASH Slack, this update will likely cause friction! If only those people that write this crap got laid off, the world would be a tiny bit better :/
Maybe its time to declutter software that you don't control in your life just like how people declutter stuff. Every item is an additional tiny mental burden and the same goes for each closed source app installed on your phone. Maybe its better if we just forgo any "benefits" the app may provide and not bother anymore.
It's pretty clear Microsoft seems to think nobody cares (and to be honest they're probably right).
For example, I doubt that Debian would would take an update from an upstream that is detrimental to their users. They would follow a friendlier fork first. Debian maintainers follow their users' interests first.
(I'm a Debian Developer)
Edit: and that means you can generally trust automatic updates on Debian.
I'd much rather have my applications run unrestricted but vetted and if neccessary patched by a trusted third party (the distro) than lock whatever dark patters and anti-features developers come up with into a box ... where it still has access to all interactions with that box.
In particular, I wouldn't trust a Firefox distributed by Mozilla without oversight but I still use the Firefox packaged by my distro.
But in the case of something like Firefox, distros are barely vetting anything, and are reluctant to patch because such patching rapidly becomes unmaintainable. Most dependencies don't end up unbundled, either. So distribution Firefox packages are really external packages in distribution package clothing, more so than any other package, really.
This is why I want sandboxing anyway - because I understand the limits of what is practical.
And sandboxing and limiting interaction through well-defined interfaces is better for security anyway, because security vulnerabilities happen regardless, and sandboxing does provide some level of mitigation.
Finally, the distribution packaging model is insufficient for many users. Even if you are fine with it, most users want something newer than their distribution release, and we can see that they are prepared to give up security and system stability for it. This is a real need for these users, and sandboxed third party packaging mechanisms provide a real solution for them, even if you can manage without.
1. They usually mostly work in the background, don't need much interaction. It's almost like a built-in browser feature changing owners.
2. They are pretty difficult to find a business model for - as opposed to SaaS stuff and mobile apps, which people pay for rather commonly. So the choice is to a) Make no money b) Ask for donations (seems to only work if it's somewhat obnoxious) c) Make money in some creative (often shady) way d) Sell the thing.
I think it's an unconscionable clause.
The loan servicer is more important --- some of them are terrible at their job and tend to misapply payments etc, causing extra work for the borrower.
That's not what causes loans to be transferred to others in the vast majority of cases.
(This is about as convenient, pleasant, and useful advice as the "just quit your job" advice).
Note that your first mortgage in CA is nonrecourse, but a refinanced mortgage is not nonrecourse (meaning the lender can come after you personally if you end up underwater).
The company matters just as much as the product or service.
Refinanced with a local CU and stayed with them ever since.
If in the US, I would be surprised to find out about prepayment penalties at all.
https://money.usnews.com/loans/mortgages/articles/what-is-a-...
> A lender cannot assess a prepayment penalty unless the penalty was included in the original terms of the loan.
> According to the Federal Register, Dodd-Frank Act provisions “generally prohibit prepayment penalties except for certain fixed-rate qualified mortgages where the penalties satisfy certain restrictions and the creditor has offered the consumer an alternative loan without such penalties.”
> For lenders that do charge these penalties, prepayment penalties cannot be imposed after the first three years of the loan term.
Are you sure? Whether a mortgage has prepayment penalties or not is one of the things that is specifically declared in every mortgage contract I've ever seen. They can't just change it after the fact.
WaMu pays after several phone calls. Then sends me a notice that my escrow account is $5000 in appears. So WaMu says that the 2000 was a mistake and I need to send that back, and that they are allowed to maintain an excess balance for taxes and insurance, so I need to send them another 3000 to bring the account current.
I refinanced with a different organization that week.
I was very happy to see them crater during the financial crisis.
For sure, there is an adverse impact to a borrower who is not well versed in how mortgages work, but in terms of financial agreements, but unfortunately, the US does not punish financial companies for negligence in customer service.
No, because if (as here) the original mortgage contract included an escrow account, that contract surely allowed the mortgage holder to demand money to keep the escrow balance where they want it to be.
So no, they didn't change the terms of the mortgage contract.
Not a great example because the terms of the mortgage are fixed by the original contract, regardless of who they sell it to later.
Whereas the extension (or any software) can radically change their terms (privacy policy, etc) in a single ugprade.
The entire purpose of trademarks is to protect consumers. Being able to use them to mislead consumers is the opposite of that.
Instead, this is the kind of thing that needs to be solved on the policy level: Google and Mozilla have an interest in maintaining high-quality extension ecosystems, and ought to take a dim view of these kinds of ownership transfers.
AFAIK, it is not easy (or maybe not possible) to opt out of extensions updates.
As other commenters have pointed out, it doesn't apply as much to actual physical products.
So this leads to reason, should any of this be accepted as the norm?
Any time a company has physical access to your data, and says they will not sell it, they are lying (unless it is privately held, and never takes on debt / pays after delivery).
In particular, EULAs and other contracts do not protect your information in the above situations, since debt and shareholder obligations generally come before customer obligations, and the data is considered an asset.