Silly me, I thought that was the governments job!

I understand Intuit and others' objections to free tax filing software... I *don't* understand anyone else's objection. The government ALREADY TAKES your tax money away from you automatically (which is the dangerous bit)... Why complain about making it easier for them to give it back to you?

Wake up!

https://www.veeam.com/company/...

I'd have to say that it is actually you who must be ignorant of what a hyperlink is then...

It has been happenning for a long time, but EVERY place wants you to STAY in their place. Google search showing snippets, Facebook showing previews of links, then adding their own click tracking info to any links posted, and then just opening links inside of Facebook.. Twitter popularized link shortening services, The rise in popularity of video (TikTok, etc.) which make linking difficult, or at least buried in a link tree in the users bio or similar...

Even old fashioned email hasn't been spared.. Newsletters, etc. almost never post direct links, instead they post links to tracking/redirect/shortening services which (hopefully) eventually load the page you were hoping to see...

For every company out there spending thousands (and thousands) of dollars trying to teach their employees not to click on suspicious links in emails, how to spot suspicious links, etc... There are 100 companies making it impossible to follow any of that advice other than "don't click on anything"...

Then on top of all of that cultural pressure, add in company firewalls, web filters, etc. Many countries actively censoring/blocking sites and traffic they deem "unfit",

Hell.. Most ISP provided DNS servers filter traffic and send you to an ad-laden portal if you misspell or fat-finger a URL (For our own safety, of course!)...

The sad truth is that links scare a lot of people, and if some place can make money by ensuring nobody ever leaves their little walled garden, then that's what they will do.

Because we all know those are the only two options, right? Monthly in perpetuity, or once every 20 years?

Just imagine if some rogue startup would come along with something in between.. Say.. Release a bit of software, agree to support that version for a specific period of time. Perhaps 3 years? 4? A lifecycle, if you will... Maybe they release new versions 6-12 months before they quit supporting the previous version?

Alas, mere mortals could only dream....

Those days never existed, or if they did, you were already doing it wrong. A firewall is a living breathing thing, and if you neglect it, it will fail you as surely as you failed it.

Putting it in the cloud does nothing to change that basic fact. And saying it makes it someone else's responsibility is patently bullshit. Even if it WAS their responsibility, it is still YOUR house in front of the fan when the crap starts flying.

Never happen.. How are they going to cram 300 students into one room, with one barely qualified teacher they pay just above subsistence wages if that one teacher ALSO has to sit through oral exams?

The universities would rather sacrifice integrity than money.

Clinton won because he was not Bush, then Bush won because he was not Clinton (Gore,Clinton... at the time could anyone really tell the difference?) Then Obama won because he was not Bush, won again because McCain was still too close to being Bush and then finally Trump won because he was not Hillary.

So if Biden only wins because he is not Trump then it would seem he is merely honoring a now long-held tradition in American Politics.

And all those lazy sods having other people grow their food! They should be ashamed of themselves... And don't get me started on those people passing the buck to dentists and not pulling their own teeth like real 'Muricans!

Or perhaps we have realized that with enough resources, specialization is possible, and some people may be brilliant at (for example) farming, but absolute shite at teaching others...

I believe the point is that we are supposed to be BETTER than them, not sink to their level...

It doesn't even have to be anything as drastic as "Population control" and all of the negative connotations tied into the phrase (However much I've started to sympathize with Thanos, none of us can snap our fingers and make it happen.) We don't need to limit the number of allowed births, or taxing second children into oblivion... We don't need to star (or end) a major war.

We *DO* need out governments (and eventually businesses and entire economies) to stop relying on (and thus planning for and promoting) continual growth as a method of survival. Stop relying on having more people in order to have more dollars.

(Unrelated aside - I do notice that those people promoting extreme forms of population control or reduction invariably (even Thanos) are absolutely certain THEY will be among the surviving portion of the population. That fact is not lost on me.)

Waaaahhhh!!!

To use the standard "Locked in a safe" analogy.. The bad guy has something locked ina safe. The government gets a warrant to see all the things in that safe... So far so good... Now they are mad that the manufacturer of the safe doesn't have the combination to that safe, and won't help the government break into it.

If it were a physical safe they would pay good money to some very skilled locksmith (and wait for them to break into it) and be done with it. But since this is a phone they are raising a stink at having to pay some highly skilled safe cracker and wait for them to open it.

Since you asked...
https://www.sciencealert.com/s...

They have these things called WIRES now, which are capable of carrying electricity from one geographical location to another... Would you be terribly surprised to hear that the power you are using right this instant could very well have been generated many many miles from where you are using it?

(More seriously, I know there are transmission costs and line loss, etc. You keep spouting "what about when the sun doesn't shine!" like nobody else has ever thought about it, and refusing to believe any answer anyone provides when you say it again...)