Comment by ISL
8 years ago
There are absolutely situations in which a substantially cheaper but less-secure/safe solution to a problem can make economic sense.
Suppose you have $5k, you need a car in order to feed your family, and that only the following two options are available: You can buy the safe car for $10k or a less safe car for $5k.
In that situation, less safety can be a reasonable choice.
Indeed, there was a long period of time in which Volvos were demonstrably more safe than other lower-cost vehicles, yet people bought the lower-cost vehicles.
In the cloud-offering world, instead of marketing servers as "less-secure", they can simply offer "more-secure" options that run on non-HT hardware. HIPAA-compliant cloud-buyers will have to upgrade, and then the cloud vendors can slowly lower the prices on both, making the less-secure option lower cost than the present day.
Consumers make less safe but cheaper decisions all the time. My point wasn't about the choice. It was about the seller trying to market it as such.
With two $5k cars, you can guarantee safety by having a leader car clear the road while you follow at very low speed.
Is there a hyperthreading joke here somewhere?