They've been irrelevant bloatware for a decade. I used to LOVE their products. Especially their enterprise AV. Then slowly the install got bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and I was looking at installers 5x the size they used to be. And customer computers (when I was a consultant) running slower and slower.

The only way they've managed to stay in business is via preinstall agreements with PC vendors.

People just dont seem to understand personal responsibility. If you are afraid, dont go. Problem solved.

Yeah. it is cloud CONTROLLED. So when the vendor goes out of business or decides to stop supporting it, You're also done whether your hardware is still functional or not.

Linksys did this about a decade ago. They introduced their "Smart Routers". It required a cloud account to access some of the features. And you HAD to register it to configure it. Within 6 months they depreciated several features/functions. Really ticked off a bunch of customers that purchased a router that had advertised features X, Y, and Z, and one day they woke up and it now only had X and Y.

...To cloud only devices.

Nothing good comes of it in the long run.

I was a consultant at the time and got one of the emails about the discounted copy. Something significant like a 50% off copy. I didnt want to miss out so I dropped the $50 bucks (?) and got my shrink wrapped box. I was hesitant so I literally put it on my bookshelf until I had a chance to play with it via my clients.

Fast forward to 2003, I was packing to move into my first house. I discovered the still sealed box on my bookshelf. It went into the trash. Thanks to the experience of my customers, I never had to personally experience just how awful it was. Thank God that all of my experience with it was being paid to tolerate it.

Years ago they screwed me when they slowly walked back features. By the time I realized what they were doing, it was too late. I went from a perfectly working version of quickbooks including the ability to send invoices via email freely, to requiring me to subscribe to a paid service to keep the features I paid for. Since they change the database file at every update, I was screwed. If I wanted to get the feature I paid for back, I'd have to wipe and reinstall, disable updates, and oh, by the way hand key every transaction since the current database is incompatible with the OOB version.

And my wife spent LITERALLY a week and a half on the phone with them over the course of a month and a half fixing their screw ups with our Church's account/payroll. I lost track of how many reps she talked to that assured her she was in good hands, and then would ghost her when they hit a wall. So she'd have to start over troubleshooting from scratch.

They could fall off the earth and I would have zero Fs to give.

If its a simple chiller, What are they doing to the water that it cant be returned to the river for use downstream? If its for chillers, doesnt the water just pass through pipes and heat exchangers and exit the system warmer than when it entered?

Or is that the reason, that warming the river would be harmful? How would that be any different than a natural shallow section that absorbed solar heat, heating the water naturally?

On the surface, this doesnt make sense to me. And the tinfoil hat says "what are they REALLY doing in there with the water? "

ESPECIALLY Pelosi who recently claimed They're "Just lucky" in regards to their investment success. Luckier than Mr. Success himself, Warren Buffett ho is considered one of the best investors out there.

  The Pelosis have had annual average investment returns of $6m/year since she took office. That aint luck.

But this is happening in SA, not the USA. I dont think the FCC has any jurisdiction overseas. That is why its the *F*CC not the *I*CC.

I help run a 1200 node network. Our users dont have admin rights by default. Because of that we have to deploy printers via GPO, or use a MDM to temporarily elevate privileges remotely so they can install the printer.

So I wonder what has actually changed, or if we over-tweaked our policies? Because we haven't been able to install printers without admin rights for over a year.

I noticed that some of these states also ban shipments of UPS units with sealed lead-acid batteries. If you want a UPS in vermont, it has to be equipped with the more expensive Lithium Ion batteries.

Idiots.

During closing, I believe they can do basic verification of funds to verify liquidity as part of the final checks. ("can you confirm she has $X in the bank) I know we had the option of disclosing our cash on hand when we did our mortgage and were told it cannot fall below that until after closing. (So dont go out buying lots of stuff for the new house until afterward) Or possibly it red flagged her credit. Not sure.

On a much smaller scale, I witnessed something similar happen to one of my coworkers.

One morning she called me in a panic. Her inbox was being innundated by spam. I'd never seen anything like it. Literally one message per second or more at times. And they were coming from all over like a DDOS. A hacker had used a malicious service to subscribe her to every conceivable mailing list on the planet, so she started getting tons of messages. We didnt give it much thought, because we were in the middle of investigating a string of vulgar, sexually inappropriate emails that appeared to be coming in to her and another lady with insider info that only a coworker would know. In the moment, we chalked it up to that suspected pervert ex-employee taking the harassment to the next level.

Later that day, I heard back from her again. It turns out somebody had hacked her account and had harvested enough info about her bank to do a password reset and transfer almost all of the money out of her bank. The emails were a smoke screen so that she hopefully wouldnt notice the password reset email come through. And it worked. The reset message scrolled right by and she never saw it due to the confusion. She found it after talking to her bank after finding out she suddenly had no money in her checking account to buy lunch.

I'm not sure if she ever got her money back. But I found out she lost her new dream home. They were in the middle of closing when it happened. When the finance company saw the attack during the final credit check, they immediately halted the sale because as far as they could see, she had just emptied her bank accounts, making her a risk.

People suck.

Nope. You are off base, looking for a problem that doesnt exist. Lose the tinfoil hat.

There is no residential in our grid. Its available to all companies for no insane costs. Comcast is also available to us. The "last mile" charge is typically under $250 to extend to us for fiber as I recall. From both fiber providers. Comcast charged nothing to run from the street to one of my buildings for a tertiary failover.

And I wouldnt have paid it if they wanted it. We are upgrading all 26 of our locations' backup circuits from T1 to something (anything) else MPLS. Ive told two carriers to pound sand because they wanted $10k+ for last mile build-out. (we switched to LTE)

Its not as dire as you want it to be.

How does the lack of purchasing something that exists indicate need? Need would be nobody buying it because its not available. If a store sells haggis but nobody buys it, is that also demonstrating a NEED for haggis? LOL

My point was simply that the map is flawed due to flawed logic. I know of several pockets in town where there is need because there is no service. (typically because the carrier doesnt want to hassle with crossing a right of way.) But its instead showing areas of "need" simply because they dont have voluntary report data. In our case, a commercial district of about 15 businesses, probably none of which have participated in the specific speed test they are referencing.

Its typical .gov ineptitude.

But I applaud them for trying.