Going to see this a lot...(Photobucket)

http://www.csoonline.com/article/32...ed-millions-of-images-with-ransom-demand.html

Apparently the easiest way to link pictures is now $400 a year... Unless I'm really missing something here. Already noticed some of the classified threads have broken links.

If this sticks, it's going to break a lot of helpful threads across the web. I guess that's the price of "free"?

 

I need to pull all my photos from Photobucket. I must have almost 15 years worth. If they stick with this crap, they'll be gone before long.

 

Yup, their business model is in for a rude awakening real soon.

 

It's a shoddy approach to the classic entrepreneurial model; build a following via a free product/service/platform then monetise a few years later. Hopefully without destroying the business, like they are about to do.

Would be interested how they figured $400 was a reasonable price. Maybe its for valuation purposes? They have something like 100m users afterall.

 

So who is switching to what?
Google is free but limited. Flickr is kind of annoying.
What's a good free service?

 

I use postimg.org. I'm not married to any free service, though. I fully understand that I will get what I paid for.

I kinda expect that 'free' image hosts will come up with some way to wrap your images in an ad. Which will probably create lots of problems at the outset, when forum moderators/owners ban people for the subject matter of the ads that the poster had no control over.

 

I'm still looking for another good option in case Photobucket doesn't realize how bad this decision is before I nuke my account. I just can't fathom paying $400 per year for image linking. For that money I can buy an awful lot of hard drives... I probably would have paid $25-50 per year without complaining too much, but $400? Hell no.

On the plus side, in a couple of weeks some rotten bastard (from Photobucket's POV) will hammer out a few lines of code and create a new, free image linking site, "just like Photobucket used to be!"

 

I used to use and pay Phanfare until they went belly up. I loved what I was able to do on the site for editing and adding music etc. They moved me to SmugMug which is also pay but sucks. I am still looking.

 

Photobucket has been a pain in the ass for a while now. So many ads that the page will barely load and when it does it is super slow. I'm ready for something different.

 

No kidding. I’ll be glad when everyone stops using it.

 

As far as the business side is concerned, it isn't a bad idea. BUT, they fucked themselves with that $400 bullshit. That is enough that people will look for other options.

Tens of millions of people use photobucket. Instead of $400, they should have made it $19.99/year. That is low enough that people will be like "eh, fine...I won't miss $19 and don't feel like saving/moving everything somewhere else". At $20 a pop, they could have made hundreds of millions over the years.

But for $400, people will be like "fuck that".

 

At $400, they only need to retain 5% of their users to beat the $19.99.

 

Already hitting home......

http://forums.13x.com/index.php?thr...l-axle-enclosed-trailer-basically-new.342617/

 

Sorta like that insane virus that took over the Ukraine (and a lot of Europe) about 10 days ago. Not only did it affect my Drilling company, it hit the parent company. The Drilling company is just one branch; they also have container ships, anchor handling boats, oil refineries, etc. Not to mention over 400 million cargo containers that they couldn't track.

Every single computer in the entire network...from the parent company in Denmark, down through each division...every boat, every drilling rig, onshore office in every country etc...all locked up and held captive.

And that's just our company. It also hit Siemens, Merck, and a lot of hospitals.

The screen went black and said "You are probably busy trying to recover your files, but don't waste your time. Your files have been encrypted and can only be recovered with our access key. You can safely recover your files by sending $300 worth of bitcoin to the following address. Once you have obtained your decryption key, please enter it below".

They should have made it $10 or some shit. That is low enough that most people would have actually done it. Make it too much and many people will just say to hell with it.

That virus was legit. It instantaneously went from one computer (it originated at one of our terminals in the Ukraine), then immediately hacked all the passwords and gave itself the highest administrative permissions, then infiltrated the primary network in Copenhagen, and spread itself to over 10 million computers worldwide, taking them hostage...all within less than 30 seconds.

It has been 10 days ago and we still don't have things back to normal. The computers had to be wiped clean and restored from scratch, and it could be up to 2 weeks before we get all of our files back...if it is even possible.

 

That's the kind of shit that gets a corporation to hire some retired SEALS to go find you and put a couple bullets into the back of your head.

 

Dude. They haven't even finished calculating the billions it cost the company.

 

They take the approach so many do: Why settle for a reasonable and fair profit when there's the chance for an obscene level of profit?
If they want my account, they can have it. There are no pictures on there that I don't still have on my memory cards and can print them at my leisure. Also, I don't do enough "sharing" to care if I am never able to do it again.

 

Oh Noz!!!! My Blog, whatever shall I do???
















What's a blog?

 

Your corporate IT department is likely run by a bunch of buffoons or they are competent and those above them who think they are smarter didn't listen to them. This was an easily avoidable attack as the patch to fix the exploit was released months before it was exploited.

 

It doesn't work quite like that. Sure, on my home laptop, go for it. But on the rigs, it doesn't work like that.

There are so many other systems, hydraulic equipment, drilling programs, logging programs, maintenance systems, safety systems, pipe tallying programs, blowout prevention monitoring systems, station motoring and keeping systems (these are dynamically positioned vessels that utilize thrusters based on GPS...they can keep the ship within 1' of an exact spot on the ocean floor, in 10,000' of water), so on and so forth.

These 6th and 7th Generation Drilling rigs and Drillships are all computerized. They can't simply just roll out a fleet-wide patch without rigorous testing and simulations to see exactly how that patch is going to affect the other 250 systems that tie into the computer.

Luckily the safety critical systems have redundancies built in, and most of them aren't constantly plugged into the network.