Do NOT buy so-called "Smart" TVs. Do you really think this is a "security flaw"? It's a FEATURE, designed to be used by corporations and governments. It just so happened that someone stumbled on it, so they're calling it a "bug".
..and YOU, you Cowardly Bastard, are EXACTLY the sort of person I'm talking about. You've been so thoroughly indoctrinated by governents, the media, and the corporations behind them all, that you actually believe what you're saying is The One And Only Truth, and that anyone that disagrees with you has a screw loose.
People, especially the current generation, have been indoctrinated to the concept that "privacy" is an outmoded concept, and in some cases that a lack of privacy is the normal, natural order of things. This, of course, is wrong and needs to be corrected before the problems with corporations and governments can be corrected. As always, the free flow of information and education of the masses leads to what's best for people.
How can Google be responsible for content that it's just indexing and not generating themselves? The site owner and/or content owner are responsible for libelous statements. By their "logic",/. could also be held liable just for reporting on this!
Next time you see your step-father? Please tell him for me, "Good job raising your son", and I don't in any way shape or form mean that in a sarcastic way; he accomplished his goal with you, and the world is a fractionally better place because of it. I don't hate religion in and of itself, I hate the blind, thoughtless acceptance of it, and I hate it being used as a tool to gather and maintain power over the masses that it has largely become.
Are you worried more people will be like me? Making their own choices and their own decisions?
See, leaders of organized religon do fear you and people like you, because people who think for themselves and make their own decisions, free of the bias that relgious leaders feed them, threaten their power base.
The things you refer to here are, in a large part, the sort of abuses of human rights in general that I would like to see stopped. That, and if I never ever again hear of some asshole throwing acid in a little girl's face because she dared to go to school to learn to read and write, it'll still be too soon for me.
My eldest has passed fifteen, and considers every religion she has encountered to be a collection of superstitions which are manipulated by fruitcakes for purposes which are often nasty. The few useful guidelines or truths they contain - buried in steaming piles of fantasy - are largely derived from decidedly non-religious social antecedents. She decided to become an atheist, and aspires to being an astronaut.
Good for her. She sounds like a delightfully intelligent and thoughtful young lady who will likely go far in whatever interests she chooses to pursue. As for you sir: Good job.:-)
What I want to see is children encouraged to question everything and be taught to think critically, not have a doctrine pounded into their heads literally from birth to the point where even as adults they can't shake it and think for themselves.
See, here's the problem with that: Net-nanny software doesn't work for several reasons. Desired content gets inadvertently blocked. Undesired content manages to get through. Whitelists and blacklists, when managed by third parties (especially governments) end up reflecting someone's agenda, rather than the actual intent (i.e. it'll eventually end up being used as a tool for censorship instead of a tool for protecting children). Your best way of protecting your children from internet content you don't want them seeing? Monitor them personally; sit there with them when they're using the internet. If you don't have time or wherewithall to do that, then perhaps you should either tell them "no internet" or re-evaluate your priorities in life. Remember: when you vote away your right to choose, you usually don't get to vote to take it back again.
I'll second this -- and I'll do it openly, not as an AC. Children should be protected from religion until the age of 18, so they have some chance of actually making an intelligent decision about it, rather than being indoctrinated/brainwashed by it while their brains are still forming.
If anything is going to utterly destroy the Internet, it's going to be censorship, because once you open the door to censoring one type of speech, you start an avalanche of censoring all types of speech. It's like bigotry and racism: Once you cross that line and devalue one group of class of people, you can devalue any group or class of people. Before too long the only way to avoid eventual prosecution would be to stay off the Internet completely.
I don't agree with that at all. Bad data is worse than no data at all. People get foxed into spending all sorts of time, money, and energy on useless products based on dodgy-at-best science (if not outright lies), and in the end many of them conclude that it just isn't possible for them to be healthy. It's a dangerous trend that can't be allowed to continue.
The irony to your comment, which was intended to be funny I'm sure, is that that Police song wasn't a love song like you might think it to be -- it's a direct reference to George Orwell's 1984.
You mean: How little they SHOW you is stored. You have no idea how much data it's actually generating. You also are ignoring the fact that it can tell when you're active and when you're not, and that data is determined using accelerometers; with a starting location and time (not hard to determine with some datamining of most people's Facebook posts) you could generate a map of someone's movements to a fair degree of accuracy. Inertial navigation isn't a new idea or technology, it's just made easier by modern electronics.
The "constant alarmism" that you erroneously refer to is that corporations, and likely by extension, governments, are acquiring more and more ways to track the thoughts and movements of private citizens, usually without their consent. If you don't think this is a bad thing, then you haven't thought it all the way through. How would you feel if someone wanted to install cameras and microphones in every room of your house, GPS transponders in your vehicles, and a tracking transponder on your person to be carried with you 24 hours a day? If you are OK with all that then I'm wasting my breath, but chances are you wouldn't be OK with that, and will now proceed to tell me "Nobody is going to do that, that's absurd!" but the fact of the matter is that we're not that far from all that being 100% right now. There are cameras all over the place in public places, and they're all tied into the internet for easy access. You carry a smartphone with you? Even if you somehow managed to turn the GPS receiver in it off completely, you can still be tracked with a fair degree of accuracy by which cell towers the phone is connected to (something you have no control over, often even if it's turned off). If you're like most people, you have at least a Facebook account; your posts there are data-mined constantly, obstensibly for marketing purposes, but they also tell much about your daily actitivies. Do you pay cash for everything you purchase? Probably not, you use plastic like most people do; your purchases pinpoint your location in time and space, and your purchasing habits are, like Facebook posts, analyzed for "marketing purposes" -- and can also be analyzed to determine how you think. Did your local utility company recently send you a letter of intent to change your electric and gas meters to wireless models, so, obstensibly, they don't have to send someone to visually read the meter? The power and gas company can, with that technology, get readings on demand of your power and gas usage -- which can be determined if you're home, and to a certain extent, what you're doing in your home. Further advancements in this technology will be in upcoming "smart appliances" that will be connected to the internet, allowing power companies to turn off high-usage appliances like clothes dryers and furnaces when there is a power shortage; these can also be used to further refine the ability to determine when you're home and what you're doing while there -- as well as overruling you on what you can do while you're at home by remotely controlling access to your appliances. So you see: the only elements to my original scenario, which you probably scoffed at and dismissed as paranoid ravings of a lunatic mind, is only missing one or two things: cameras and microphones in your house. But wait! That's not very far off! They want to develop televisions that have cameras and microphones in them, similar to a Kinect. Then not only will your TV viewing habits be tracked, but they'll be able to watch you watch your TV, and hear everything going in in the room, perhaps your entire house or apartment.
Are you paranoid now? If so: Good. You should be. If not, then you're scoffing at me as someone desperately in need of medication and/or being locked away where I can't hurt myself or others; that's disappointing, because it means that the corporations and governments of the world have already indoctrinated you so thoroughly and completely that you may never be able to accept the truth for what it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Do NOT buy so-called "Smart" TVs. Do you really think this is a "security flaw"? It's a FEATURE, designed to be used by corporations and governments. It just so happened that someone stumbled on it, so they're calling it a "bug".
It amounts to censorship. Enough said.
..and YOU, you Cowardly Bastard, are EXACTLY the sort of person I'm talking about. You've been so thoroughly indoctrinated by governents, the media, and the corporations behind them all, that you actually believe what you're saying is The One And Only Truth, and that anyone that disagrees with you has a screw loose.
Sadly, there may be no hope for people like you.
Why would you want to destroy the microphone in your cellphone?
People, especially the current generation, have been indoctrinated to the concept that "privacy" is an outmoded concept, and in some cases that a lack of privacy is the normal, natural order of things. This, of course, is wrong and needs to be corrected before the problems with corporations and governments can be corrected. As always, the free flow of information and education of the masses leads to what's best for people.
Microphone: Find the hole in the enclosure, poke it hard with something sharp, destroy microphone.
Camera(s): Cover with electrical tape.
Privacy protected, problem solved!
..and he wants his Ironman 2 scene back.
How can Google be responsible for content that it's just indexing and not generating themselves? The site owner and/or content owner are responsible for libelous statements. By their "logic", /. could also be held liable just for reporting on this!
There are sockets available for CPU packages that don't have pins. I work with one type of them every day.
Next time you see your step-father? Please tell him for me, "Good job raising your son", and I don't in any way shape or form mean that in a sarcastic way; he accomplished his goal with you, and the world is a fractionally better place because of it. I don't hate religion in and of itself, I hate the blind, thoughtless acceptance of it, and I hate it being used as a tool to gather and maintain power over the masses that it has largely become.
Are you worried more people will be like me? Making their own choices and their own decisions?
See, leaders of organized religon do fear you and people like you, because people who think for themselves and make their own decisions, free of the bias that relgious leaders feed them, threaten their power base.
It's not like a lot of religions have forced themselves on people....
Parents of children will take them to church, usually not giving them a choice, because the parents believe that it's the right thing to do.
The things you refer to here are, in a large part, the sort of abuses of human rights in general that I would like to see stopped. That, and if I never ever again hear of some asshole throwing acid in a little girl's face because she dared to go to school to learn to read and write, it'll still be too soon for me.
My eldest has passed fifteen, and considers every religion she has encountered to be a collection of superstitions which are manipulated by fruitcakes for purposes which are often nasty. The few useful guidelines or truths they contain - buried in steaming piles of fantasy - are largely derived from decidedly non-religious social antecedents. She decided to become an atheist, and aspires to being an astronaut.
Good for her. She sounds like a delightfully intelligent and thoughtful young lady who will likely go far in whatever interests she chooses to pursue. As for you sir: Good job. :-)
What I want to see is children encouraged to question everything and be taught to think critically, not have a doctrine pounded into their heads literally from birth to the point where even as adults they can't shake it and think for themselves.
Ah, I see. And organized religion is so much better? Check yourself before you start pointing a finger at me.
100% true. You can't really prevent people from seeing what they want to see on the internet, you can only slow them down.
See, here's the problem with that: Net-nanny software doesn't work for several reasons. Desired content gets inadvertently blocked. Undesired content manages to get through. Whitelists and blacklists, when managed by third parties (especially governments) end up reflecting someone's agenda, rather than the actual intent (i.e. it'll eventually end up being used as a tool for censorship instead of a tool for protecting children). Your best way of protecting your children from internet content you don't want them seeing? Monitor them personally; sit there with them when they're using the internet. If you don't have time or wherewithall to do that, then perhaps you should either tell them "no internet" or re-evaluate your priorities in life.
Remember: when you vote away your right to choose, you usually don't get to vote to take it back again.
I'll second this -- and I'll do it openly, not as an AC.
Children should be protected from religion until the age of 18, so they have some chance of actually making an intelligent decision about it, rather than being indoctrinated/brainwashed by it while their brains are still forming.
Excuse me.. was there an actual point to your reply?
If anything is going to utterly destroy the Internet, it's going to be censorship, because once you open the door to censoring one type of speech, you start an avalanche of censoring all types of speech. It's like bigotry and racism: Once you cross that line and devalue one group of class of people, you can devalue any group or class of people. Before too long the only way to avoid eventual prosecution would be to stay off the Internet completely.
I don't agree with that at all. Bad data is worse than no data at all. People get foxed into spending all sorts of time, money, and energy on useless products based on dodgy-at-best science (if not outright lies), and in the end many of them conclude that it just isn't possible for them to be healthy. It's a dangerous trend that can't be allowed to continue.
The irony to your comment, which was intended to be funny I'm sure, is that that Police song wasn't a love song like you might think it to be -- it's a direct reference to George Orwell's 1984.
..and see how little is stored
You mean: How little they SHOW you is stored. You have no idea how much data it's actually generating. You also are ignoring the fact that it can tell when you're active and when you're not, and that data is determined using accelerometers; with a starting location and time (not hard to determine with some datamining of most people's Facebook posts) you could generate a map of someone's movements to a fair degree of accuracy. Inertial navigation isn't a new idea or technology, it's just made easier by modern electronics.
The "constant alarmism" that you erroneously refer to is that corporations, and likely by extension, governments, are acquiring more and more ways to track the thoughts and movements of private citizens, usually without their consent. If you don't think this is a bad thing, then you haven't thought it all the way through. How would you feel if someone wanted to install cameras and microphones in every room of your house, GPS transponders in your vehicles, and a tracking transponder on your person to be carried with you 24 hours a day? If you are OK with all that then I'm wasting my breath, but chances are you wouldn't be OK with that, and will now proceed to tell me "Nobody is going to do that, that's absurd!" but the fact of the matter is that we're not that far from all that being 100% right now. There are cameras all over the place in public places, and they're all tied into the internet for easy access. You carry a smartphone with you? Even if you somehow managed to turn the GPS receiver in it off completely, you can still be tracked with a fair degree of accuracy by which cell towers the phone is connected to (something you have no control over, often even if it's turned off). If you're like most people, you have at least a Facebook account; your posts there are data-mined constantly, obstensibly for marketing purposes, but they also tell much about your daily actitivies. Do you pay cash for everything you purchase? Probably not, you use plastic like most people do; your purchases pinpoint your location in time and space, and your purchasing habits are, like Facebook posts, analyzed for "marketing purposes" -- and can also be analyzed to determine how you think. Did your local utility company recently send you a letter of intent to change your electric and gas meters to wireless models, so, obstensibly, they don't have to send someone to visually read the meter? The power and gas company can, with that technology, get readings on demand of your power and gas usage -- which can be determined if you're home, and to a certain extent, what you're doing in your home. Further advancements in this technology will be in upcoming "smart appliances" that will be connected to the internet, allowing power companies to turn off high-usage appliances like clothes dryers and furnaces when there is a power shortage; these can also be used to further refine the ability to determine when you're home and what you're doing while there -- as well as overruling you on what you can do while you're at home by remotely controlling access to your appliances. So you see: the only elements to my original scenario, which you probably scoffed at and dismissed as paranoid ravings of a lunatic mind, is only missing one or two things: cameras and microphones in your house. But wait! That's not very far off! They want to develop televisions that have cameras and microphones in them, similar to a Kinect. Then not only will your TV viewing habits be tracked, but they'll be able to watch you watch your TV, and hear everything going in in the room, perhaps your entire house or apartment.
Are you paranoid now? If so: Good. You should be. If not, then you're scoffing at me as someone desperately in need of medication and/or being locked away where I can't hurt myself or others; that's disappointing, because it means that the corporations and governments of the world have already indoctrinated you so thoroughly and completely that you may never be able to accept the truth for what it is.