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Bill Gates Knows What You Did Last Summer
theodp writes "Give Bill Gates your 'pictures, videos, documents, e-mail, instant messages, addresses, calendar dates/scheduling information (e.g., birthdays, anniversaries, appointments), voice mail, phone logs, RSS feeds, subscriptions, bookmarks, mail lists, project management features, computing device data, tasks and location data,' and he'll improve your 'quality of life.' That's the promise behind a patent issued Thursday to Bill Gates and his 20 co-inventors for 'Personal Data Mining', which Microsoft notes 'can include a monetization component' that 'could initiate an auction to sell information to the highest bidder.'"
When Google does it, it's okay. Thats why Slashdot has the evil Borg for Bill Gates and the friendly Google logo for Google.
Being free from the manipulations of other people who think they know what is best for me is an absolutely indispensable part of a quality life. Be it marketers or moralists, I don't care.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Isn't that already called Google, where you give them your email, your pictures, your videos, your calendar, all your documents, all your web searches, and about half of your total web surfing (*cough* analytics *cough* doubleclick *cough)?
That's why double-click and google-analytics are on my blocked no-script list.
If you are confidant that others can not use personal information against you, then there is no need for privacy. For instance, if everyone knew everything about everyone, then everyone would know that someone was using your information against you, and could act against that person.
You don't think that a guarantee of privacy would have made, say, Alan Turing's life much better? If you do things that are not morally wrong, but other people think they are then privacy is very much essential for your quality of life.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You get such interesting stuff when it's way off.
I recently picked up, at a going out of business sale, a piece of jewelry that was normally $1200 for less than $200.
Since then, I've gotten several high end credit card offers, none of which I would normally qualify for.
So mess with the system.
Use your grocery store card... but only when buying beef jerkey and toilet paper.
Get your name on a couple strange mailing lists.
etc.
If the data becomes so worthless that they can't actually use it, they'll stop. But only if enough of us go through with this.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
A clean interface; not wanting to own my computer; not wanting me to do everything their way; not calling design flaws "features"; not charging me for beta software; not charging me hundreds of dollars for products that should cost, at most, tens; not being cutesy and pandering to ten year olds (including Clippy).
Google treats me like I'm a respectable adult. Microsoft treats me like I'm a retarded five year old.
Free Martian Whores!
Where are all the /. posters who've said the past few months that everyone should move to Bing over Google, because Google is the evil behemoth that doesn't respect your privacy?
I'm just curious.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I think it's time to post a link to this story again.
The fact that someone would do all those things is in itself more data about that person's habits. The real trick is to selectively limit your audit trail so that you still appear in the middle of the distribution curve. Like schooling fish and flocking birds, the best form of anonymity is to surround yourself with a few million things just like yourself.
Sadly, the end result of this sort of behavior is that Netflix recommends I watch Transformers 2. A high price to pay, but such are the wages of freedom.