Arguing that technology has ensured that "complete privacy does not exist," Google contends that a Pennsylvania family has no legal grounds to sue the search giant for publishing photos of their home on its popular "Street View" mapping feature.
In your first few sentences you're arguing that Google does not sell their information. I would really love to know how you know that. Let me guess, Google said they are not selling the information, correct? Did you know that Google, nor any other company for that matter, is somehow contractually obligated to tell you the truth. Google is held responsible to nobody but their stockholders and only the controlling stock holders at that. And even if Google does not sell the information, what makes you think that one day they won't turn around and start selling it. All it would take is a little down turn in the economy and maybe a 10% loss in the google stock to make google rethink their oh-so-kind ways. There is certainly no law stopping them from doing it, and it would make a lot of money for their shareholders!
As far as the technicalities are concerned, I said that I realize why the do it the way that do it, and I much prefer it to the 301's that yahoo uses in their methods. I am not technically naive my any measure, and that's also why I won't disable cookies in an attempt to 'block' google. Google has so much information about your computer that blocking a cookie would do nothing, disabling JS may help a bit, but your IP address, user agent string, referrer and time are always available no matter what you do, and with JS enabled there are enough variables in about your computer (screen resolution, time zone, IP, user agent) that are readily available to any site you go to, it might as well be a sessionID on a cookie.
As for anyone who shuts off JS and cookies, you still give out your IP, user agent, OS, CPU, compression types etc, almost enough to construct a unique ID, and if you have a DB that has good track of everyone else, google can easily piece together the puzzle using the process of elimination. I don't want to disable JS, there is a reason JS is included in all browsers: so you can execute JS! With JS off, well, you can't use JS which is a really bad thing if you're into the web, especially web2.0 which is almost 100% JS. And I won't turn off cookies for the same reason, it's a tool web sites use to perform innocent tasks, such as tracking what items you added to your cart, or if you're logged on to a secure area, without cookies you're going to have a more difficult time using the net than with cookies. Just because someone abuses cookies by tracking you across sites is no reason to quite using them.
I think googles information gathering could be best analogized by having some huge agency that stuck a guy with a video camera on every corner in an attempt to see where everyone is going. Of course it's legal to do that, but once you start analyzing the information, and you start tracking when people leave a building and when people go to work and go to the store, you're skirting the law in regards to an individual's right to privacy. And that's not so far from what google has already done.
It's been months since I discovered google doing this, I can't remember exactly what event was fired and what data was sent. I'm sure they have everything they can possibly extract about you, IP, referrer, screen resolution, OS type, etc.. I'm not saying they are using it in a bad way, but this coupled with the analytics, gives google the ability to track you as an individual almost anywhere you go, rather than just as another hit. If they just counted the link you clicked it would be one thing, but you've got a session ID attached to everything you do on google and rest assured this data makes it back to the algorithmic melting pot for some really neat applications you and I can only dream of. I'm not too worried about being tracked myself, but I'm worried about our country as a whole being tracked and the power that gives. Wouldn't you love to know all the web sites your political rival visited?
As I mentioned in my post, I rather like the way google does it compared to the 301 redirect headers yahoo uses, and I make no claims other than to point out google is gathering info even when the average users thinks they cannot. I'm sure many power users don't know that this can happen. Most people think if they click on a link the web site they are coming from does not know they clicked on a link, let alone "that" link at "this" time. It's creepy because they add the code after the page loads, and even on moueover events, preventing all but the most inquisitive of people to miss the fact that the code was ever there. I'm not saying this is "proof" of any kind of malfescence, it's just under the radar of the average user so I wanted to point it out, seeing how it related to the article.
I really don't care when/where the events are created or fired, but I could see how someone would care, I was just pointing out what I saw happening. I do too much programming to shut off JS, and wouldn't much like the net without JS.
This is a little bit like saying: "here you have a gun but don't shoot!". If you love capitalism then you have to live with the fact that there are people that will do everything to make money and don't care shit about your privacy (because that doesn't generate money).
Screwing customers, by selling their private information, is going to make it so you have fewer customers, and you'll generate less money. Google can read their financial statements better than I, but don't act as if there is no disincentive to gathering and distributing private information. Not giving a shit about your customer's privacy is really bad PR.
Of course they are obfuscating their code as good as possible. Otherwise they could directly ring MS's door bell and tell them "here, we just added that to improve the quality of our search results". This way it takes the competitors at least a little bit of time and effort to figure out what they are doing.
It's obfuscated not compiled. And it's the code that tells google what's been clicked on, hardly their search algorithms. If it was done to save space, they would use variables like "f" not "fanaiidhjanii3888" as they are doing. You make it sound like there is some "secret" code in their JS that would somehow help MS. It's just JS, very simple stuff, nothing to learn from it, but I would like to know exactly what they are doing with the data. MS has it's own engineers, in fact MS made their own implementation of JS, I think they have very little to learn about JS from google.
Do you really think that they obfuscate the code so the users will not see what's going on? 99.9% of the google users probably don't even know what the code does, even if you would print it out and document it for them with red arrows "look here".
I do think they obfuscate their code so the users will not see what's going on. That's the whole reason anyone obfuscates their code. I'm sure 99.9% of the public also does not know how to program JS, I do and I would be interested if they ever did document it. But to claim because not that many people can read it, somehow it's irrelevant, just ignores the whole argument.
Why is everyone getting paranoid about Google but noone cares that the government is stripping you naked every time you get close to an airport or the like? There the issues are!
Additionally I trust Google more than most (if not all) of the Governments in this world, explicitely including the German and US government.
I'm not sure about Germany, but in the U.S. we vote our leaders in. I can't say the same for google, or any company. They are beholden to their shareholders and no one else. You also said in your first statment, you implied that google "...will do everything to make money and don't care shit about your privacy...". How can you trust and orginization if you really feel that way about them? I'm also not sure you can really compare google and any government as Google has sovereignty over nothing. You also say "...no one cares that the government...". Meanwhile, back in reality, everyone cares about that the government does XYZ, you do read slashdot don't you? You know they have a YRO section and a Politics section almost exclusively about what you say "no one cares" about. Maybe just, you, don't care. You say "most (if not all)", what governments are you undecided about?
And on a personal note. If someone near the airport asks you to "strip naked" run screaming "RAPE" and he/she well be dealt with by the proper authorities, these people are not from the government.
While doing some debugging on some AJAX work, using tamper data (FF) and Fiddler (IEx) I stumbled upon some nefarious network communications between my mouse* events (over,move,out, click etc.) attached to every single link in googles search results. And there's more! Not only are these events present but they are silently inserted after the page is rendered. Some may say "well this is for older browsers", to that I say, they are not replacing the HREF property on the anchors, they are adding event handlers to mouse* events, and perhaps more that I'm not detecting. You can not see this stuff just by viewing the source. You would need to activate the event that creates the mouse* functions. E.g.: mouse over, and then mouse click gains a new event, so trying to look at the source before the mouse over event occurs yields an null function. Any attempt to look at the source code that google is running (the script handling the events) will be met with a really good obfuscator. Google does this to just about all their public code, e.g.: google maps. The most I can realize about the extra events is that they send a LOT of information to google whenever you click on anything. But don't take my word for it, fire up FF and the latest version of Tamper Data, click 'stop on next line' or whatever engages the debugger (I can't be bothered to look, I'm working on err. something.) and mouse over or click the links on googles search results and watch your data fly over to google, in a rather secretive manner.
It may just be nothing. Every search engine tracks what link you click on, and I think this is one of the more elegant, albeit backwardly incompatible, ways of tracking what links are clicked on. Yahoo does something similar, but they use the 301 permanently moved header with a specially crafted HREF in the anchors, you can see this pretty plainly if you open up yahoo and mouse over the links, they all point to yahoo, then you're redirected to the search. From a coding perspective this is more compatible but annoying to the end user as the link is not what it says it is going to be, it's a yahoo redirector. This means if you try and copy the link from the result you'll get some yahoo bullshit. I like googles method better, but it leaves a lot to be desired in the 'forthcoming' area.
Google also maintains a network of 'adsense' tracker scripts on hundreds of thousands of 3rd party sites, I have several customers that swear by their visitor tracker. It's kinda neat, and it's free, however, I'm sure google does not just ignore the statistics gathered by its tracker. These numerous sites make up a good chunk of the internet, so even if you don't visit google, google sees you indeed. They can track every site that participates, reading referrers and IP addresses, I could imagine some very simple algorithms that could, for the most part, piece together what other non-participating sites you've visited based on the information gathered when you do eventually visit a participating site.
Google Underhandedness IMHO:
1. Adding the even handlers after the page has loaded. There may be a technical reason, but it's just creepy.
2. Sending volumes of information back after each click. There really needs to be a limit. Do you really need my browsing history!?
3. Creating a GPS like grid of sensors on 3rd party sites. This is the creepiest. Google can tell where you are, where you've been and where you're probably going to go with this, and you don't even need to visit google a single time to be added to this network! in fact you don't have any choice whatsoever in the matter!
What Google can do to fix this perception:
1. Quit obfuscating your damn code! It just makes you look guilty when you basically say "Don't look here" in something that is "sneaking" it's way into the source. It's not like google came up with the damn cure for cancer in their JS, what are you try
I agree with almost everything you stated. I really like the more teachers for less pay. People teach, for the most part, because it's what they want to do. As apposed to making money being what most people want to do. Teaching is more like being a social worker than it is like being a professional in whatever field you teach. That is not to say that teachers are somehow less than professionals, they just choose to be teachers. There is a lot less stress teaching, say C++, than actually working on a C++ project in real life, with real deadlines that could cost your job, where your overall performance compared to your piers makes the difference between becoming a sniveling peon or a project manager. In school, you teach the supplied curriculum, put forth the required tests, hand out a grade, take 4 months off.
There is one point I disagree with you on. For some kids, it's just not possible for them to go to school and participate on the same level as normal student (I dare not say average). For some there is a language barrier, for the less fortunate there is a parental barrier, the latter being far more detrimental. There are degrees of course, it's not black and white. Someone can be a crack addict and still love their kid and see that they do well. The parents that really are, as we say in soviet Russia, breakers, are the ones who proactively teach their children to misbehave. The tell their kids they can do whatever they want when ever they want rules be damned. "You don't have to listen to the teacher!" is their adage. This extreme acting out has become "in" and kids that would otherwise be good kids are terribly influenced, and a teacher that cares not at all can quickly loose the entire class to a single individual terrorizing everyone.
It used to be when this extreme acting out occurred the student would be suspended or expelled. In today's litigious climate, however, the school is more likely to give the student detention and he'll be back at it tomorrow. It's not just law suits, but also the school administration that vies to keep the disruptive child in class, as kid = money in their eyes more than job = educate. This commodifying of children is, perhaps, the base cause of the presence of these hyper disruptive kids, that and irresponsible parents seeing the equation. The better the school, the lower the tolerance for acting out, and the public school system is inherently hamstrung in disciplining it's students, by parents, administrators, teachers unions and the courts. I think every kid should be given a few chances, but only a few, and after you screw up a number of times you're out of the system, it's there for everyone, not just you.
You are correct, in my haste to write the message my brain glossed over that. It really should have said "teachers unions are in it for teachers unions". Now that you bring that up I would like append #5 to the list:
5. Contributions to teachers unions should not be compulsory.
1. Make going to school non-compulsory
Kids that don't want to be in school, who have parents that don't care if they are in school, do not need to go to school. They are nothing but a distraction for the kids who want to learn. Any teacher will tell you one disruptive student will ruin the class for everyone. Public schools in the U.S. force kids who have no discipline go to school, then they are surprised when they don't listen to the teachers. The kids know the teachers can nothing to discipline them, the kids know their parents will do nothing to discipline them. I fail to see the disincentive to goof off in class here, and so do the kids, so they will goof off. Schools do not need these children and in public schools, not only do they have to go, but the public schools want them to go so that make that ever important buck from the federal and state government, education be damned. I personally know more than one teacher who cannot kick a particular kid out of their class because the school administrators tell them they can't.
2. Privatize
There is a ratio of teachers to administrators in all schools, public or private. An administrator would be like a vice principal, guidance councilor, text book researcher, sensitivity director. In a private school, the ratio is about 1:7 in public schools it's almost 1:1. Meaning for every teacher there is an administrator. And every time someone says "there's something wrong with our schools" they just tac on more administrators in a blind attempt to "fix" the problem. Administrators fix nothing, ever. Which leads me to..
3. Do away with tenure and teachers unions
The idea that teachers unions somehow are for kids has got to be the biggest lie I've ever heard. Teachers unions are for, teachers. Some people didn't know this, but if you've worked in the LAUSD for more than 3 years you cannot be fired for anything short of molesting a child, it's called tenure. Tenure is for, teachers. There is no way you can argue that keeping poor teachers (tenure) or keeping teachers that have broken the rules (teachers unions) somehow helps the kids. With these two "protective" organization are in place it takes an act of god to get rid of poor teachers. There are no teacher's unions in private schools and the level of education you get in a private school by far exceeds that in a public school. Without tenure, without teacher's unions. So at the very least it's proof that excellence does not require tenure or unions. And there is a strong argument that they do more harm than good.
4. Allow parents to take their kids out of failing schools.
I think it's a travesty that the government is going to force parents to place kids into school that they know are going to be a bad influence on the child. Parents should be able to send their child to whatever school that is reasonably in their area. It's so bad that people actually buy houses in order to get their kids sent to a particular school, and I guess for those who can't afford to move or afford a private school... to bad? That's just wrong. If we are going to be forced to pay for schools we should at least be able to select which one we're going to send our kids too, or at least let us get our money back so we can send them to a private school. The only obstacle that stops this 'voucher' system is the teachers unions. I would love to hear how the lack of a voucher system helps kids, because I'm pretty sure it only helps teachers at failing schools.
I have no belief that any of these things will change, teachers unions are far to powerful. It a huge union with almost limitless money, but it's a self perpetuating bureaucracy with the honest belief that teachers should be paid more than any other profession in the world. More than doctors, lawyers etc.. no matter how much anyone else thinks teachers deserve.
What you're saying makes a lot of since. I didn't know the connections were so slow or intermittent. But even at 256kbps you should be able to download quite a few high resolution images, especially considering the amount of time they have had. Even with JAXA's Kaguya probe, they only released low resolution (low dimensions 800x600 for example), I only looked at the images when they came out a few months ago, but they were very small, maybe they released higher resolution images now.
This is a baseless guess, but I figured there was some monetary value attached to the full resolution image, and they were just waiting to auction it off to the highest bidder. And if that's ever been the case, seems like a publicly funded organization like NASA ought to act more like a library and less like the gift shop at Disneyland. I don't know they do that so it's just a suspicion, not trying to make accusations. It's not baseless though! We (the people) pay for the roads and sidewalks, but that does not stop the government from making parking meters.
These images are amazing! I'm curious why all the 'newer' images are always low quality (small). I know they have larger, higher quality images, and I've seen some of the larger images on the JPL and NASA site, however, the large images are usually older missions and there are quite a few poor images, Mars rover mission for instance, that are obviously smaller versions of the original. I hope I'm mistaken and these full resolution images are available, but I've looked pretty good and can't seem to find them, so if there there it's not obvious where they are. Can anyone enlighten me?
There are so many dynamic pages on the net now that one web site, like slashdot as an earlier poster commented, can contain literally millions of pages. People use programs like modrewrite, isapirewrite and linkfreeze to manipulate spiders into crawling pages that are near identical. For more than one customer I've made meta, title and content randomization, serialization and or URL rewriting schemes to make damn sure spiders index every possible dynamic page, and it works. I have a single dynamic page that must have been indexed hundreds, maybe thousands of times with slightly different content, and they are all in the index.
Google tries to detect a dynamic page by looking for ampersands and equal signs, as well as looking at the content of the page, it is really quite easy to fool.
So 1 billion web pages could be, and I know a few thousand pages like this, just a few hundred thousand dynamic pages. Not that the pages don't have relevant information, some of the stuff can be redundant though. For instance, when the spider crawls across "Records per page = 10" > "Records per page = 20" > "Records per page = 30" etc.. or when lazy programmers don't use cookies and databases to store information but try and concatenate the URL with the user's selections. Thank god for that GET limit. People need to use POST!
If someone knows how to stop this message board from creating links out of false URLs please, let me know.
Every network is different. Just because it seems simple to you, does not mean it will be simple for everyone else. A lot of people's customers run hardware far older than 1998 and we the people who are supposed to patch this DNS error have to fix all the DNS servers we are responsible for, not just the easy ones.
You provide me with a link to wikipedia in your initial message, then you claim wikipedia is an invalid source of information once I provide you with a link to wikipedia that contradicts something you just made up, and on top of that you don't even provide a link that would refute what you call "...not an authoritative source..." . You sir, are an ignoramus and a hypocrite.
The noun RAM disk has one meaning:
Meaning #1: (computer science) a virtual drive that is created by setting aside part of the random-access memory to use as if it were a group of sectors
NOTE WELL: This update causes BIND to choose a new, random UDP port for
each new query; this may cause problems for some network configurations,
particularly if firewall(s) block incoming UDP packets on particular
ports.
I'll get this patch applied as soon as I reconfigure my entire network topology.
Where do you keep pulling 1992 from? Your digestive tract?
It seems like you didn't even read the reply because you ask, again, questions I put to rest in the previous message:
I don't know why you keep bringing 1992 up.
Ahh, you brought 1992 up when you compared Vista to your 1992 server, not me.
Here you ask a question in your message for the first time.
So what's the real minimal footprint of Vista?
Then before you even finish the message you insult me for not answering it.
That's why I bloody asked, isn't it?
I looked back at all of our messages and could not find where you "bloody asked" earlier, but your first message sounded like you already knew how much it took:
Why does a Vista install need more disk space than our main development server had in 1992? I don't know. I don't know what the hell is in there. Sentient programs looking for Megadeth rips and pirated copies of Office, for all I know. It's a bloody mystery.
I'm not sure what "software RAM disk" or "hardware RAM disk" are, you seem to have made up a new piece of hardware here. There is only one kind of RAM disk I'm aware of.
THIS sub-subthread is about the feasibility of using a hardware RAM disk since a software one is infeasible...The point is that the idea of running Vista from a RAM disk isn't automatically insane, which is what you were arguing about.
As I said before, the I-RAM is not a RAM Disk. Please do not continue to portray this as such. I said this before, but you continue to call it a RAM disk, it is a SATA drive, and yes it may use RAM but that does not make it a RAM disk.
I'm pretty sure it would work...
One of my problems with your argument is that it is based on pure conjecture. You have no facts whatsoever to backup your claims, you just keep making things up. The other is you clearly have no clue what you're talking about because you say things like "software RAM disk" and continue to claim that the I-RAM is a RAM disk when I've told you already that it is not a RAM disk and not relevant to any conversations about RAM disks. I'm not going to continue to restate this stuff.
And have the common courtesy to read the messages I post before you reply to them, or I won't reply to you anymore.
freedom_india and I were talking about RAM drives in vista. That's the We. The whole topic is about vista not NT4, not XP, not Amiga.
Really? It will actually let you do that? It won't crash? Every version of NT I've used has required one. If it's not given one it'll make a small (20 MB, I think) pagefile anyway.
Yes you can run XP, XP64, and Vista64 (never used 32) with absolutely no page file there is no trick or hack, you just go into the options and disable it as you would if you wanted to set the size manually. I've run with no page file on all three OSs for years, the only down side, and it warns you as you set it, is that you can't retain kernel dumps in the case of a BSOD.
So if I don't have a TV tuner card can I uncheck that during the install and not have all that crap pulled in?
Yes.
Um, no, that's not true. A server should have the server OS and the applications you require the server for... not just the OS.
You are so right. However, the applications on a server, without their data can be very small such as IIS or SNMP, and at least those two services come with the OS. And if you include the actual data on the server you are going to go way beyond what Vista requires, I have a small mail server at work with more than 1TB of data online, want to compare that to the Vista install? What I was trying to point out is that you're comparing apples and oranges when you say "but my server is smaller than vista". A server's roll, and therefore the software you install on it, is not like vista, XP, OSX or any other desktop OS. I have servers running FreeBSD - are you going to compare their footprint (fits on a floppy disk!) to OSX? They are the same OS after all.
I don't know why you keep bringing 1992 up.
Ahh, you brought 1992 up when you compared Vista to your 1992 server, not me.
Hang on a second, Kemosabe. My computer's three years old. Do you think it's got Vista on it? Where did I say it had Vista on it?
I said earler:
I'm saying you don't have a 10GB RAM disk, and your assertion that Vista makes RAM run poorly is pure conjecture.
To which you replied:
My i-RAM [wikipedia.org] doesn't have that problem.
But you don't even need a battery backed SATA RAM drive to make a RAM disk that survives reboots.
The topic was about Vista, this thread was about vista, you said you didn't have that problem, implying that you had Vista. I'm not going to sit here and guess what OS you're running when you're participating in a topic, and thread about Vista, I'm going to assume that you have Vista, seeing how as you "don't have that problem" when I was talking about Vista, and you go on to say in the latest message here that I-RAM doesnt have those problems in Vista.
Now that I know you don't have Vista, it makes me wonder how you know so much about it. Do you actually know how much the minimum, typical or maximum vista install takes? No? Then how can you compare it to a server you ran in '92?
none of the asymmetrical access times that Vista is tuned to minimize and none of the asymmetrical write issues that the SSDs being discussed are allegedly having problems with.
You have never run this device on Vista, you don't know what kind of performance it would give you, you don't know if it would even work. Everything you say about this device and Vista is just pure conjecture. Maybe when you have some numbers, and don't just say stuff like " It will actually let you do that? It won't crash?" then we can continue this conversation.
So I must concede, my secret formula is as follow:
754617600 is the unix time stamp for the year that Carl Sagn sued Apple. It all begins from this key epoch. Now take the epoch in binary 101100111110101000110100000000 if you remove all of the zeros from this binary number, becuase there are no 0's at Apple! Apple is #1, you get the decimal number 8191. Take tangent of (8191*Pi) because all things at Apple are circular from a certain point of view you now get: -0.12658781837828924382846055790048. Now take this number and multiply it by E getting -0.3441013664019776161079362032018 rounded up, now if you carefully pick out the numbers "6(11)" "3(30)" "8(33)" and add a % sign (which everyone knows is JS for MOD and not percent as you so callously imply) you get the calculation 638 MOD less and of course LESS is base 36 for 998956. So what you assumed was 638 Percent was actually the formula 638 MOD 998956 which everyone knows is 638. Therefore the calculated formula is really just 638, and everyone knows about IEEE 638 "Standard for Qualification of. Class 1E Transformers for Nuclear Power Generating Stations." which if you would have spent the time to read clearly states:
To calculate life expectancy, use the equations in A2.2 and A3.4.1
Upon completing the calculations in the specification the result is the base 36 number: " and reverse course as to not be so ".
When we put the whole calculation together we get: Apple needs to become about and reverse course as to not be so litigious.
Which, when I read it, really doesn't make a lot of since, but I have Top Men working on it already.
I really hope this fits better with your expectations, thanks! I'll be here all week.
My calculations are my own intellectual property. By backwards engineering them you are in violation my EULA which you accepted when you replied to what was clearly a satirical part in an otherwise serious message.
Well I gota say I had one, and it sucked. It had a dead pixel and was going in the trash so I thought I could use it as a TV. Should have known that Apple as going to try and get that last $100 out of the damn screen before the end of it's life. It broke almost 2 months after I got the ADC to DVI box thingy, bad main board, I tried to repair it, but you have to be an "authorized Apple repair shop" to order any hardware for monitors from Apple. This was after I took it to an "authorized Apple repair shop" who told me they didn't know what was wrong with it, and that I should but a whole new one. I found a repair manual for the screen and even found the problem with the aid of my cheap ass multi meter and Acrobat reader. It was a blown "dual P channel MOS Fett" IC, and no, I have no clue what that is, but I have a soldering gun and it knows what it is. I went to the electronics store, the internet and everywhere else I could think of. Nobody sells the "dual P channel MOS Fett" IC. Still can't find a replacement main board, or the IC, though I've given up now, it's just collecting dust now. Someday I'll take it out to the desert and put a few 7.62mm rounds through it. That would make me "feel better".
Your analogy of console systems is almost right, but MS(Xbox) and Sony don't allow you to just download their SDK. They don't offer a 'store' where you can give away your certified creations either. I'm not sure about Sony, but with the XBOX you actually need a special XBOX to work with the SDK. But most importantly, the SDK's are not publicized.
Your analogy of the TI's is a lot closer to the mark, but I'll bet they allowed users to talk to one another about the calculator without the threat of a lawsuit.
TI-99: My fist computer, I know it's not what you were talking about but you made me feel really nostalgic just then. I even had the voice synthesizer module, a rather large 'box' that plugged into the left side of the machine, and I played Alpiner like that damn bear was my nemesis, if my burnt out husk of a brain serves me well "Danger! Falling rocks!".
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0730081google1.html
In your first few sentences you're arguing that Google does not sell their information. I would really love to know how you know that. Let me guess, Google said they are not selling the information, correct? Did you know that Google, nor any other company for that matter, is somehow contractually obligated to tell you the truth. Google is held responsible to nobody but their stockholders and only the controlling stock holders at that. And even if Google does not sell the information, what makes you think that one day they won't turn around and start selling it. All it would take is a little down turn in the economy and maybe a 10% loss in the google stock to make google rethink their oh-so-kind ways. There is certainly no law stopping them from doing it, and it would make a lot of money for their shareholders!
As far as the technicalities are concerned, I said that I realize why the do it the way that do it, and I much prefer it to the 301's that yahoo uses in their methods. I am not technically naive my any measure, and that's also why I won't disable cookies in an attempt to 'block' google. Google has so much information about your computer that blocking a cookie would do nothing, disabling JS may help a bit, but your IP address, user agent string, referrer and time are always available no matter what you do, and with JS enabled there are enough variables in about your computer (screen resolution, time zone, IP, user agent) that are readily available to any site you go to, it might as well be a sessionID on a cookie.
As for anyone who shuts off JS and cookies, you still give out your IP, user agent, OS, CPU, compression types etc, almost enough to construct a unique ID, and if you have a DB that has good track of everyone else, google can easily piece together the puzzle using the process of elimination. I don't want to disable JS, there is a reason JS is included in all browsers: so you can execute JS! With JS off, well, you can't use JS which is a really bad thing if you're into the web, especially web2.0 which is almost 100% JS. And I won't turn off cookies for the same reason, it's a tool web sites use to perform innocent tasks, such as tracking what items you added to your cart, or if you're logged on to a secure area, without cookies you're going to have a more difficult time using the net than with cookies. Just because someone abuses cookies by tracking you across sites is no reason to quite using them.
I think googles information gathering could be best analogized by having some huge agency that stuck a guy with a video camera on every corner in an attempt to see where everyone is going. Of course it's legal to do that, but once you start analyzing the information, and you start tracking when people leave a building and when people go to work and go to the store, you're skirting the law in regards to an individual's right to privacy. And that's not so far from what google has already done.
It's been months since I discovered google doing this, I can't remember exactly what event was fired and what data was sent. I'm sure they have everything they can possibly extract about you, IP, referrer, screen resolution, OS type, etc.. I'm not saying they are using it in a bad way, but this coupled with the analytics, gives google the ability to track you as an individual almost anywhere you go, rather than just as another hit. If they just counted the link you clicked it would be one thing, but you've got a session ID attached to everything you do on google and rest assured this data makes it back to the algorithmic melting pot for some really neat applications you and I can only dream of. I'm not too worried about being tracked myself, but I'm worried about our country as a whole being tracked and the power that gives. Wouldn't you love to know all the web sites your political rival visited?
As I mentioned in my post, I rather like the way google does it compared to the 301 redirect headers yahoo uses, and I make no claims other than to point out google is gathering info even when the average users thinks they cannot. I'm sure many power users don't know that this can happen. Most people think if they click on a link the web site they are coming from does not know they clicked on a link, let alone "that" link at "this" time. It's creepy because they add the code after the page loads, and even on moueover events, preventing all but the most inquisitive of people to miss the fact that the code was ever there. I'm not saying this is "proof" of any kind of malfescence, it's just under the radar of the average user so I wanted to point it out, seeing how it related to the article.
I really don't care when/where the events are created or fired, but I could see how someone would care, I was just pointing out what I saw happening. I do too much programming to shut off JS, and wouldn't much like the net without JS.
Screwing customers, by selling their private information, is going to make it so you have fewer customers, and you'll generate less money. Google can read their financial statements better than I, but don't act as if there is no disincentive to gathering and distributing private information. Not giving a shit about your customer's privacy is really bad PR.
It's obfuscated not compiled. And it's the code that tells google what's been clicked on, hardly their search algorithms. If it was done to save space, they would use variables like "f" not "fanaiidhjanii3888" as they are doing. You make it sound like there is some "secret" code in their JS that would somehow help MS. It's just JS, very simple stuff, nothing to learn from it, but I would like to know exactly what they are doing with the data. MS has it's own engineers, in fact MS made their own implementation of JS, I think they have very little to learn about JS from google.
I do think they obfuscate their code so the users will not see what's going on. That's the whole reason anyone obfuscates their code. I'm sure 99.9% of the public also does not know how to program JS, I do and I would be interested if they ever did document it. But to claim because not that many people can read it, somehow it's irrelevant, just ignores the whole argument.
I'm not sure about Germany, but in the U.S. we vote our leaders in. I can't say the same for google, or any company. They are beholden to their shareholders and no one else. You also said in your first statment, you implied that google "...will do everything to make money and don't care shit about your privacy...". How can you trust and orginization if you really feel that way about them? I'm also not sure you can really compare google and any government as Google has sovereignty over nothing. You also say "...no one cares that the government...". Meanwhile, back in reality, everyone cares about that the government does XYZ, you do read slashdot don't you? You know they have a YRO section and a Politics section almost exclusively about what you say "no one cares" about. Maybe just, you, don't care. You say "most (if not all)", what governments are you undecided about?
And on a personal note. If someone near the airport asks you to "strip naked" run screaming "RAPE" and he/she well be dealt with by the proper authorities, these people are not from the government.
While doing some debugging on some AJAX work, using tamper data (FF) and Fiddler (IEx) I stumbled upon some nefarious network communications between my mouse* events (over,move,out, click etc.) attached to every single link in googles search results. And there's more! Not only are these events present but they are silently inserted after the page is rendered. Some may say "well this is for older browsers", to that I say, they are not replacing the HREF property on the anchors, they are adding event handlers to mouse* events, and perhaps more that I'm not detecting. You can not see this stuff just by viewing the source. You would need to activate the event that creates the mouse* functions. E.g.: mouse over, and then mouse click gains a new event, so trying to look at the source before the mouse over event occurs yields an null function. Any attempt to look at the source code that google is running (the script handling the events) will be met with a really good obfuscator. Google does this to just about all their public code, e.g.: google maps. The most I can realize about the extra events is that they send a LOT of information to google whenever you click on anything. But don't take my word for it, fire up FF and the latest version of Tamper Data, click 'stop on next line' or whatever engages the debugger (I can't be bothered to look, I'm working on err. something.) and mouse over or click the links on googles search results and watch your data fly over to google, in a rather secretive manner.
It may just be nothing. Every search engine tracks what link you click on, and I think this is one of the more elegant, albeit backwardly incompatible, ways of tracking what links are clicked on. Yahoo does something similar, but they use the 301 permanently moved header with a specially crafted HREF in the anchors, you can see this pretty plainly if you open up yahoo and mouse over the links, they all point to yahoo, then you're redirected to the search. From a coding perspective this is more compatible but annoying to the end user as the link is not what it says it is going to be, it's a yahoo redirector. This means if you try and copy the link from the result you'll get some yahoo bullshit. I like googles method better, but it leaves a lot to be desired in the 'forthcoming' area.
Google also maintains a network of 'adsense' tracker scripts on hundreds of thousands of 3rd party sites, I have several customers that swear by their visitor tracker. It's kinda neat, and it's free, however, I'm sure google does not just ignore the statistics gathered by its tracker. These numerous sites make up a good chunk of the internet, so even if you don't visit google, google sees you indeed. They can track every site that participates, reading referrers and IP addresses, I could imagine some very simple algorithms that could, for the most part, piece together what other non-participating sites you've visited based on the information gathered when you do eventually visit a participating site.
Google Underhandedness IMHO:
1. Adding the even handlers after the page has loaded. There may be a technical reason, but it's just creepy.
2. Sending volumes of information back after each click. There really needs to be a limit. Do you really need my browsing history!?
3. Creating a GPS like grid of sensors on 3rd party sites. This is the creepiest. Google can tell where you are, where you've been and where you're probably going to go with this, and you don't even need to visit google a single time to be added to this network! in fact you don't have any choice whatsoever in the matter!
What Google can do to fix this perception:
1. Quit obfuscating your damn code! It just makes you look guilty when you basically say "Don't look here" in something that is "sneaking" it's way into the source. It's not like google came up with the damn cure for cancer in their JS, what are you try
I agree with almost everything you stated. I really like the more teachers for less pay. People teach, for the most part, because it's what they want to do. As apposed to making money being what most people want to do. Teaching is more like being a social worker than it is like being a professional in whatever field you teach. That is not to say that teachers are somehow less than professionals, they just choose to be teachers. There is a lot less stress teaching, say C++, than actually working on a C++ project in real life, with real deadlines that could cost your job, where your overall performance compared to your piers makes the difference between becoming a sniveling peon or a project manager. In school, you teach the supplied curriculum, put forth the required tests, hand out a grade, take 4 months off.
There is one point I disagree with you on. For some kids, it's just not possible for them to go to school and participate on the same level as normal student (I dare not say average). For some there is a language barrier, for the less fortunate there is a parental barrier, the latter being far more detrimental. There are degrees of course, it's not black and white. Someone can be a crack addict and still love their kid and see that they do well. The parents that really are, as we say in soviet Russia, breakers, are the ones who proactively teach their children to misbehave. The tell their kids they can do whatever they want when ever they want rules be damned. "You don't have to listen to the teacher!" is their adage. This extreme acting out has become "in" and kids that would otherwise be good kids are terribly influenced, and a teacher that cares not at all can quickly loose the entire class to a single individual terrorizing everyone.
It used to be when this extreme acting out occurred the student would be suspended or expelled. In today's litigious climate, however, the school is more likely to give the student detention and he'll be back at it tomorrow. It's not just law suits, but also the school administration that vies to keep the disruptive child in class, as kid = money in their eyes more than job = educate. This commodifying of children is, perhaps, the base cause of the presence of these hyper disruptive kids, that and irresponsible parents seeing the equation. The better the school, the lower the tolerance for acting out, and the public school system is inherently hamstrung in disciplining it's students, by parents, administrators, teachers unions and the courts. I think every kid should be given a few chances, but only a few, and after you screw up a number of times you're out of the system, it's there for everyone, not just you.
You are correct, in my haste to write the message my brain glossed over that. It really should have said "teachers unions are in it for teachers unions". Now that you bring that up I would like append #5 to the list:
5. Contributions to teachers unions should not be compulsory.
How to fix education in 4 easy steps
1. Make going to school non-compulsory
Kids that don't want to be in school, who have parents that don't care if they are in school, do not need to go to school. They are nothing but a distraction for the kids who want to learn. Any teacher will tell you one disruptive student will ruin the class for everyone. Public schools in the U.S. force kids who have no discipline go to school, then they are surprised when they don't listen to the teachers. The kids know the teachers can nothing to discipline them, the kids know their parents will do nothing to discipline them. I fail to see the disincentive to goof off in class here, and so do the kids, so they will goof off. Schools do not need these children and in public schools, not only do they have to go, but the public schools want them to go so that make that ever important buck from the federal and state government, education be damned. I personally know more than one teacher who cannot kick a particular kid out of their class because the school administrators tell them they can't.
2. Privatize
There is a ratio of teachers to administrators in all schools, public or private. An administrator would be like a vice principal, guidance councilor, text book researcher, sensitivity director. In a private school, the ratio is about 1:7 in public schools it's almost 1:1. Meaning for every teacher there is an administrator. And every time someone says "there's something wrong with our schools" they just tac on more administrators in a blind attempt to "fix" the problem. Administrators fix nothing, ever. Which leads me to..
3. Do away with tenure and teachers unions
The idea that teachers unions somehow are for kids has got to be the biggest lie I've ever heard. Teachers unions are for, teachers. Some people didn't know this, but if you've worked in the LAUSD for more than 3 years you cannot be fired for anything short of molesting a child, it's called tenure. Tenure is for, teachers. There is no way you can argue that keeping poor teachers (tenure) or keeping teachers that have broken the rules (teachers unions) somehow helps the kids. With these two "protective" organization are in place it takes an act of god to get rid of poor teachers. There are no teacher's unions in private schools and the level of education you get in a private school by far exceeds that in a public school. Without tenure, without teacher's unions. So at the very least it's proof that excellence does not require tenure or unions. And there is a strong argument that they do more harm than good.
4. Allow parents to take their kids out of failing schools.
I think it's a travesty that the government is going to force parents to place kids into school that they know are going to be a bad influence on the child. Parents should be able to send their child to whatever school that is reasonably in their area. It's so bad that people actually buy houses in order to get their kids sent to a particular school, and I guess for those who can't afford to move or afford a private school... to bad? That's just wrong. If we are going to be forced to pay for schools we should at least be able to select which one we're going to send our kids too, or at least let us get our money back so we can send them to a private school. The only obstacle that stops this 'voucher' system is the teachers unions. I would love to hear how the lack of a voucher system helps kids, because I'm pretty sure it only helps teachers at failing schools.
I have no belief that any of these things will change, teachers unions are far to powerful. It a huge union with almost limitless money, but it's a self perpetuating bureaucracy with the honest belief that teachers should be paid more than any other profession in the world. More than doctors, lawyers etc.. no matter how much anyone else thinks teachers deserve.
What you're saying makes a lot of since. I didn't know the connections were so slow or intermittent. But even at 256kbps you should be able to download quite a few high resolution images, especially considering the amount of time they have had. Even with JAXA's Kaguya probe, they only released low resolution (low dimensions 800x600 for example), I only looked at the images when they came out a few months ago, but they were very small, maybe they released higher resolution images now.
This is a baseless guess, but I figured there was some monetary value attached to the full resolution image, and they were just waiting to auction it off to the highest bidder. And if that's ever been the case, seems like a publicly funded organization like NASA ought to act more like a library and less like the gift shop at Disneyland. I don't know they do that so it's just a suspicion, not trying to make accusations. It's not baseless though! We (the people) pay for the roads and sidewalks, but that does not stop the government from making parking meters.
I hope you're right and I'm just paranoid.
These images are amazing! I'm curious why all the 'newer' images are always low quality (small). I know they have larger, higher quality images, and I've seen some of the larger images on the JPL and NASA site, however, the large images are usually older missions and there are quite a few poor images, Mars rover mission for instance, that are obviously smaller versions of the original. I hope I'm mistaken and these full resolution images are available, but I've looked pretty good and can't seem to find them, so if there there it's not obvious where they are. Can anyone enlighten me?
There are so many dynamic pages on the net now that one web site, like slashdot as an earlier poster commented, can contain literally millions of pages. People use programs like modrewrite, isapirewrite and linkfreeze to manipulate spiders into crawling pages that are near identical. For more than one customer I've made meta, title and content randomization, serialization and or URL rewriting schemes to make damn sure spiders index every possible dynamic page, and it works. I have a single dynamic page that must have been indexed hundreds, maybe thousands of times with slightly different content, and they are all in the index.
Google tries to detect a dynamic page by looking for ampersands and equal signs, as well as looking at the content of the page, it is really quite easy to fool.
e.g.: http://somesite.com/itemlist.php?listmode=1&category=beds&orderby=7
when 'rewritten' shows up as
http://somesite.com/items/1/beds/7.html
So 1 billion web pages could be, and I know a few thousand pages like this, just a few hundred thousand dynamic pages. Not that the pages don't have relevant information, some of the stuff can be redundant though. For instance, when the spider crawls across "Records per page = 10" > "Records per page = 20" > "Records per page = 30" etc.. or when lazy programmers don't use cookies and databases to store information but try and concatenate the URL with the user's selections. Thank god for that GET limit. People need to use POST!
If someone knows how to stop this message board from creating links out of false URLs please, let me know.
I don't necessarily agree with Stern, just adding some relevant info.
Every network is different. Just because it seems simple to you, does not mean it will be simple for everyone else. A lot of people's customers run hardware far older than 1998 and we the people who are supposed to patch this DNS error have to fix all the DNS servers we are responsible for, not just the easy ones.
RAM disk
I'll get this patch applied as soon as I reconfigure my entire network topology.
It seems like you didn't even read the reply because you ask, again, questions I put to rest in the previous message:
Here you ask a question in your message for the first time.
Then before you even finish the message you insult me for not answering it.
I looked back at all of our messages and could not find where you "bloody asked" earlier, but your first message sounded like you already knew how much it took:
I'm not sure what "software RAM disk" or "hardware RAM disk" are, you seem to have made up a new piece of hardware here. There is only one kind of RAM disk I'm aware of.
As I said before, the I-RAM is not a RAM Disk. Please do not continue to portray this as such. I said this before, but you continue to call it a RAM disk, it is a SATA drive, and yes it may use RAM but that does not make it a RAM disk.
One of my problems with your argument is that it is based on pure conjecture. You have no facts whatsoever to backup your claims, you just keep making things up. The other is you clearly have no clue what you're talking about because you say things like "software RAM disk" and continue to claim that the I-RAM is a RAM disk when I've told you already that it is not a RAM disk and not relevant to any conversations about RAM disks. I'm not going to continue to restate this stuff.
And have the common courtesy to read the messages I post before you reply to them, or I won't reply to you anymore.
Post his IP on slashdot and say " No h4ax0r can pooon my box bitches! ", he'll never bother you again.
Maybe you can come up with some better BS at 4am! I was just too tired to be serious. I have failed you, I apologise.
freedom_india and I were talking about RAM drives in vista. That's the We. The whole topic is about vista not NT4, not XP, not Amiga.
Yes you can run XP, XP64, and Vista64 (never used 32) with absolutely no page file there is no trick or hack, you just go into the options and disable it as you would if you wanted to set the size manually. I've run with no page file on all three OSs for years, the only down side, and it warns you as you set it, is that you can't retain kernel dumps in the case of a BSOD.
Yes.
You are so right. However, the applications on a server, without their data can be very small such as IIS or SNMP, and at least those two services come with the OS. And if you include the actual data on the server you are going to go way beyond what Vista requires, I have a small mail server at work with more than 1TB of data online, want to compare that to the Vista install?
What I was trying to point out is that you're comparing apples and oranges when you say "but my server is smaller than vista". A server's roll, and therefore the software you install on it, is not like vista, XP, OSX or any other desktop OS. I have servers running FreeBSD - are you going to compare their footprint (fits on a floppy disk!) to OSX? They are the same OS after all.
Ahh, you brought 1992 up when you compared Vista to your 1992 server, not me.
I said earler:
To which you replied:
The topic was about Vista, this thread was about vista, you said you didn't have that problem, implying that you had Vista. I'm not going to sit here and guess what OS you're running when you're participating in a topic, and thread about Vista, I'm going to assume that you have Vista, seeing how as you "don't have that problem" when I was talking about Vista, and you go on to say in the latest message here that I-RAM doesnt have those problems in Vista.
Now that I know you don't have Vista, it makes me wonder how you know so much about it. Do you actually know how much the minimum, typical or maximum vista install takes? No? Then how can you compare it to a server you ran in '92?
You have never run this device on Vista, you don't know what kind of performance it would give you, you don't know if it would even work. Everything you say about this device and Vista is just pure conjecture. Maybe when you have some numbers, and don't just say stuff like " It will actually let you do that? It won't crash?" then we can continue this conversation.
754617600 is the unix time stamp for the year that Carl Sagn sued Apple. It all begins from this key epoch. Now take the epoch in binary 101100111110101000110100000000 if you remove all of the zeros from this binary number, becuase there are no 0's at Apple! Apple is #1, you get the decimal number 8191. Take tangent of (8191*Pi) because all things at Apple are circular from a certain point of view you now get: -0.12658781837828924382846055790048. Now take this number and multiply it by E getting -0.3441013664019776161079362032018 rounded up, now if you carefully pick out the numbers "6(11)" "3(30)" "8(33)" and add a % sign (which everyone knows is JS for MOD and not percent as you so callously imply) you get the calculation 638 MOD less and of course LESS is base 36 for 998956. So what you assumed was 638 Percent was actually the formula 638 MOD 998956 which everyone knows is 638. Therefore the calculated formula is really just 638, and everyone knows about IEEE 638 "Standard for Qualification of. Class 1E Transformers for Nuclear Power Generating Stations." which if you would have spent the time to read clearly states:
Upon completing the calculations in the specification the result is the base 36 number: " and reverse course as to not be so ".
When we put the whole calculation together we get: Apple needs to become about and reverse course as to not be so litigious.
Which, when I read it, really doesn't make a lot of since, but I have Top Men working on it already.
I really hope this fits better with your expectations, thanks! I'll be here all week.
My calculations are my own intellectual property. By backwards engineering them you are in violation my EULA which you accepted when you replied to what was clearly a satirical part in an otherwise serious message.
Well I gota say I had one, and it sucked. It had a dead pixel and was going in the trash so I thought I could use it as a TV. Should have known that Apple as going to try and get that last $100 out of the damn screen before the end of it's life. It broke almost 2 months after I got the ADC to DVI box thingy, bad main board, I tried to repair it, but you have to be an "authorized Apple repair shop" to order any hardware for monitors from Apple. This was after I took it to an "authorized Apple repair shop" who told me they didn't know what was wrong with it, and that I should but a whole new one. I found a repair manual for the screen and even found the problem with the aid of my cheap ass multi meter and Acrobat reader. It was a blown "dual P channel MOS Fett" IC, and no, I have no clue what that is, but I have a soldering gun and it knows what it is. I went to the electronics store, the internet and everywhere else I could think of. Nobody sells the "dual P channel MOS Fett" IC. Still can't find a replacement main board, or the IC, though I've given up now, it's just collecting dust now. Someday I'll take it out to the desert and put a few 7.62mm rounds through it. That would make me "feel better".
Your analogy of console systems is almost right, but MS(Xbox) and Sony don't allow you to just download their SDK. They don't offer a 'store' where you can give away your certified creations either. I'm not sure about Sony, but with the XBOX you actually need a special XBOX to work with the SDK. But most importantly, the SDK's are not publicized.
Your analogy of the TI's is a lot closer to the mark, but I'll bet they allowed users to talk to one another about the calculator without the threat of a lawsuit.
TI-99: My fist computer, I know it's not what you were talking about but you made me feel really nostalgic just then. I even had the voice synthesizer module, a rather large 'box' that plugged into the left side of the machine, and I played Alpiner like that damn bear was my nemesis, if my burnt out husk of a brain serves me well "Danger! Falling rocks!".