they were better before "always-on" connections became the norm.
don't get me wrong here. i'm glad that we're all online and can be without, say, having to go through the nightmare that was dial-up, or hyper-expensive data-over-cell.
but once always-on connections became commonplace, it enabled all sorts of really awful behavior. suddenly you could just phone home whenever you want. instead of it being something the user explicitly allowed, it was just always there. and so it was made use of.
it's funny to me that we used to classify things that did this as "spyware" or "malware", and now it's just how things are. watch your cell phone's traffic and see a bunch of apps you haven't used in a week constantly phoning home. every application assumes that it can and should update out from under you with zero warning or choice.








