They get away with it because it's hidden from the customers.

Most people who bought the sensor either went to GoToMyDevices.com and were delighted to see the sensor data there or didn't go to the website, didn't see the option in the configuration, and never even knew it was happening.

If every single person who noticed and cared that this was happening returned the item, those returns would likely still count fewer than returns of units that should have failed QA. The whole thing wouldn't make a blip on the manufacturer's radar and they'd keep getting away with it. Informed and savvy users are not very common and almost never figure into these businesses' decisions.

Awww.

That's a bit of an oversimplification. There's a whole class of crimes that involve willing, if misinformed or deceived, people: fraud.

And while the definition of "willing" is debatable, the impact of consent is also subject to reasonable (IMHO) constraints, as with minors or people of otherwise diminished capacity (drugged, intoxicated, or mentally retarded). Once you start accounting for the nuances of reality, your maxim doesn't have quite the same truthy ring to it anymore.

Boo hoo.

Why would your government bother to act in your interest when you are so willing to blame others for them selling you down the river?

Trade retaliations are in violation of international treaty. If you stop rolling over and taking it, maybe the bully will stop dishing it out...

I'd say that it's actually the opposite situation. Auditors are there so that all of the information doesn't come directly from upper management. If management needs the cooperation of all of the rank-and-file to commit fraud, then the whole organization is a criminal operation or somebody's going to blow the whistle.

Upper management are the people who benefit the most from fraudulent schemes like these. How many low level employees are going to take on criminal liability so that the CxOs can roll in their piles of cash?

You had me until this:

Thanks, America ... this really is your fault.

By blaming the malice or incompetence of the rest of the world's governments on the dirty stinking Americans, you absolve everybody else of responsibility for their actions. Bad American laws are internalized by other countries (especially OECD members) because their lawmakers have the same goals.

Why is the focus here on "apps" instead of protocols? Wouldn't it make the most sense to decide on suitable protocols and work forward from there? Many of the tools that are scored use the same underlying protocol and thus pass/fail the same criteria.

Several of the criteria are not ever likely to be met by most "tech companies" (available for independent review or audit), so why not push a set of robust protocols and encourage everyone to adopt them? A thousand messaging "apps", each with their own incompatible protocol is a security nightmare and only builds impediments to communication (users settle for the least secure, most commonly available protocol).

You're having a hard time seeing the problem here because you're familiar with the units. FWIW, what you're feeling right now (the whole, "what's the problem?" feeling), is exactly how people in the US feel about their non-metric units. I use SI every day for work, so I'm familiar with metric (and like it very much), but not with the customary metric units (which break the elegance of SI to make people feel comfortable).

The issue with the units we've been discussing is "due to the many different conversion factors". All of the factors are multiples of ten, which helps, but the nice consistency in order of magnitude is lost. For example, mass is measured in grams and masses larger or smaller than a gram can be denoted by changing the order of magnitude associated with "gram"... except if the mass is above 10^6, in which case a new unit is used without a prefix (or sometimes with one). Converting between megagrams and milligrams is easy, as metric should be. But converting between tens of thousands of tonnes and milligrams is much less elegant.

You'll keep your tonnes and hectares for the same (invalid) reasons as Americans (and sometimes Brits) will keep their odd units and no argument will convince them otherwise.

I understand the rationalization for the creation of new units. What is happening with these new units, though, is the birth of a customary system. The origins of this particular customary system will be much more rational than any that came before it, but it will be just as clumsy and inconsistent as any other in the end. It's not that bad now, but wait until more silly units are made and people forget what twisted rationalizations begat those units.

What you're describing here is, quite literally, a "customary" system.

You've totally lost me here. "Megagram" is one of the most awesome unit names in existence. Seriously, work it in to conversation the next time you'd use tonne and see how much better the world is because of it.

The use of hectare (along with tonne, angstrom, and all the other customary metric units) deserves mockery. What's the point of having a nice metric system if you're going to make up new units instead of using the actual units provided by the system? This path leads directly back to customary units that can't be easily converted or computed (even if they were originally crafted from a rational system of units).

Yikes, you guys are just aching to get back to some customary system of units, aren't you? You have a beautiful system of easily scaled and converted units and immediately start shoehorning in goofy units like hectares and tonnes.

The highest DSL speed from CenturyLink at my house in Denver (in the city itself) is 1.5Mbps and they've been telling me that they'll be bumping up the speeds "soon" for years. They even send me flyers occasionally advertising speeds that they won't sell me.

My recommendation is to sign up for Comcast's business service is you are stuck with them. It's only marginally more expensive than residential service and it doesn't suck nearly as much.

So?

Replace "terrorists" with anything from "transvestite midgets that want to fondle my feet" to "billionaires that want to patronize my painting career" and the statement still has no bearing on your life if you don't ever come into contact with them.

He's not claiming that terrorists don't exist. Only that he has never, and is not likely to ever, interact with one in any meaningful way. Structuring your life around incredibly improbable events is a waste of time. Ordinary citizens who make any changes to their routine in anticipation of a terrorist attack in Canada (or the US or most of the world) are very likely in need of therapy.

What can't kill or otherwise impair the health of people? If we start down that road, Surgeon General's warning labels will become as helpful as Prop 65 warning labels are now.