[Cryptography] "push within the entire IT industry to, make everything "Web-centric"

[Tomasz Rola]

On Wed, Oct 20, 2021 at 12:41:40PM -0700, Ron Garret wrote:
> 
[...]
> 
> That’s not a dumb question, but it is the wrong question.  Suppose
> there were such a market.  How would you enforce this guarantee?
> For example:

I think there is no way to enforce the guarantee in real life. The
whole thing is not about us (buyers) enforcing anything. Thing is, a
seller/maker should declare this kind of guarantee and they would then
be a game for huge number of people with lots of time on their
hands, who would use this time to test a device. If there was a hidden
wifi interface, and it was found out, the maker/seller would have a
choice - stop declaring or investigate how it got there. And being
bigger than single buyer, a seller has bigger ability to find out.

Kind of, like every device you buy new comes with a guarantee - as
declared by the shop/manufacturer. They themselves say they will
replace faulty product. Without it, a single person would not have
much to do.

> > A tablet for reading books, can be used for .... reading books,
> > full stop.
> 
> How are you going to get the books onto the tablet without
> connecting to the internet?  And if you allow it to connect to the
> internet, how are you going to ensure that all it does with that
> connection is download books?

You know, I actually use a dedicated ebook reader for this (the one
with e-ink display, not some generic tablet). Since there is no way I
could enforce anything, I do not. But I can still make some consciuous
choices. Like:

 - avoid readers with Android - this one is going to be hard, but so
   far, Android is rather rare (last time I checked, which was
   ca. start of the year, when shopping for a new reader). If nothing
   else, I like huge battery life. My readers go for a month or longer
   on one charge, with few hours of reading per day (sure, the fact I
   turn the built-in light off helps, and is nice for my eyes).

 - only buy readers with sdcard slot - this one is going to be tricky
   too - few years ago the only readers without sdcard were those
   cheap cupouts from Amazon. Nowadays, slot is harder to have. Still,
   I have usb cable. Except one reader many years ago I do not wifi,
   as a rule of thumb. No connection -> no need to firmware upgrades,
   yoopi!

> It is the impossibility of enforcing such a guarantee that causes a
> market for such things not to exist.

Haha. No. Nobody cares about such guarantees and this is the real
reason. And, no maker wants do declare that their devices are going to
be harder to use, because "we do not internet". The clueless customer
mob wants internet because it is sign of being modern and successful.

Here, I hope I solved it for you...

-- 
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **