I would like to hope so... but I've just got this nagging feeling that Apple's going to try and do this anyways. When it finally does start to hurt them, they'll ultimately lighten up on the policy, of course, but by then it will probably be too late, and the Mac platform may meet a premature end.
It doesn't take very much resources for somebody who happened to see you at two different places in the same day to go "hey, I saw that person at [X], and later at [Y]". The correlation between those events or locations alone can reveal information about you that you don't ordinarily disclose. Your only protection from this is other people's apathy - something you have *NO* control over, and something you cannot ever rely upon to give you all the anonymity you might want.
My point is that as soon as you go into public, you've effectively revealed things about yourself that the *ONLY* reason you might remain anonymous (and there's much more to real anonymity than simply knowing your name or personal information) is because the people who might be around you do not have any particular interest in you.... you are, in effect, just a needle in a haystack. And just like any other implementation of security through obscurity, it is far from impregnable.
The options for Mac developers will be to either sell their app on the app store, or else only make it available to jailbroken devices - and although I won't refute the popularity of jailbraking on portable devices, on a device like a full-fledged desktop computer, I'd suspect that jailbraking would be far less common, because one would probably no longer be able to obtain important updates to system software, and security is a potentially far more serious issue on an internet-connected desktop computer than it is on typical handheld devices.
While it's certainly true that a lot of Mac developers will leave Apple behind when this transition occurs, I think that the number of remaining loyal Mac users will keep no small number of them behind - and like iOS itself, may also draw the interest of other software houses that had not previously been interested in that platform.
No... it does not. In the end, the only *REAL* anonymity that people actually enjoy in public is achieved solely by whatever indifference that others might have towards them.
I never said that there was a "line".... I only said that giving a person privacy is something entirely different from expecting to always have the ability to be anonymous when one is in public. In the end, the only anonymity anyone *REALLY* has when they are in public is by virtue of whatever public's indifference exists towards that person. Nobody can really control what other people think (or don't think) of them, however... and it's only a waste of energy to even try.
Why should people nearby that I am not interacting with in ANY way have any reason to know my name? Nonetheless, when in public, I know that the only anonymity I really have is only what exists by virtue of the level of indifference the general population has in me.
Human beings typically have a desire to have some degree of privacy.
There is a difference between privacy and anonymity. Giving people privacy is respectful to that person. There is nothing disrespectful to an individual when they simply do not have anonymity in public. Note: public, which, I might add, is the *OPPOSITE* of private.
Then stop worrying so much about other people's anonymity.
I don't worry about people's anonymity, or even my own. I merely accept the premise that I don't really have any online. I feel I might have a right to privacy when I do things in private, but not in public.. It seems to me that YOU are the one who is expending energy worrying about anonymity... and for naught, since in the end, you might find you actually have far less control over it than you might like. You are perfectly welcome to spend your entire life trying to change that, if you are really so inclined to do so... I'd put odds on the unfairness of the world beating you, however.
Anonymity allows people to tell others things that they normally wouldn't say
Unless a person does not have a sense of integrity, I'm not sure why that would be. I don't sympathize with people who are afraid to be responsible for their own actions... and that includes speaking their mind.
allows people to avoid stalkers
The police can help with that too, when it is a problem.
allows people to speak out against perceived injustices when the enemy is perhaps an angry mob
If it's worth speaking out about, then why is it not also worth facing the possible consequences for?
and allows people to avoid getting fired for saying things
If that's an issue, then don't say those things... or find another job. In other cases, it may fall under unlawful dismissal if a person's been keeping their records straight.
Personally, I feel that if a person want's anonymity, then they should keep to themselves. Somebody who so desperately wants to speak out against whatever they might find improper and who is afraid, for whatever reason, to take ownership of saying those things because of the consequences, is, as far as I can see, afraid to take responsibility for their actions.
Anything that isn't worth taking ownership of or facing the consequences for is small stuff, and if you spend your entire life worrying about or picking apart the small stuff, then all you're going to do is give yourself high blood pressure and probably die a whole lot sooner. Life is short enough as it is. Enjoy it. You only get to do it once.
... on this issue and say that I actually don't have a problem with Google doing this.
This is *NOT* because I believe the premise that if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide, because, in fact, that premise is wholly specious (anyone who claims to genuinely believe that statement is true must be either a liar or else a public nudist).
Rather, I don't have a problem with Google doing this simply because I firmly believe in the principle of personal resposibility, and if a person is not prepared to be held personally accountable for the things that they do, then I'm afraid I'm just going to have a hard time recognizing any alleged right that they might have to do it. That's not to say that I don't think that people are entitled to privacy... giving people privacy shows them respect, and I resolutely believe that every human being is entitled to that level of respect. There is, however, a distinct difference between privacy and public anonymity. I don't see how not giving people anonymity in public disrespects them as individuals, so I simply don't see the importance of it.
... would be to just pay for the specific shows you watch
You watch shows X, Y, and Z on whatever channels? You watch them every day or every week? Fine... subscribe to those shows, and then the PVR provided by the cable company automatically records those shows for your perusal later (or you could watch it "live", if you happened to be around at the time).
Realistically, it's unlikely that the monthly bill will be any less than at least the most rudimentary cable subscription, which tends to start at about $45 per month. *ANYTHING* that you get over and above the basic channels is going to cost you extra, whether you go a-la-carte or get additional ones in package deals.
Why would anyone be remotely concerned about this?
*NOBODY* knows how a given individual voted in Canada, unless that individual tells somebody. They might be able to tell if or when you voted... and of course where you were at when you voted, but there is no possible way, short of doing something that *WILL* get you put under arrest (with a likely prison sentence), knowing how somebody else voted in any federal or provincial election is just not going to happen unless you can get them to tell you. And even then, the only way you could know for sure that they weren't telling the truth if they decided to lie about it is if they claimed to vote for somebody who received zero votes at the polling station where they voted (which in my experience working at those stations a few times isn't terribly likely, because even the weirdest ones on the ballots that you might think wouldn't get any votes always seem to get the odd person or persons voting for them at any given station).
The former can be solved with a micro projector installed in the phone, to project a larger display on a blank surface, such as a neutral colored wall.
I don't know if there are any currently existing technological ways to solve the latter problem practically, however. Maybe someday.
I mean, unless it's possible for anybody to arbitrarily bring up pictures of a person just by typing in their name, I'm really not so sure I see the point in wasting energy worrying about whether or not my own face is in such a database.
Some societies look upon things that we accept as normal as abominable though.... such as homosexuality. I'm not bringing this example up to argue that homosexuality is or even might be wrong, I'm suggesting that it seems to me that morality is always very much based on culture and upbringing, rather than on any sort of universal morality.
As for the idea that there could be some sort of universal morality around ideas such as murder, that's not really valid either... since what one considers to be "murder" in the first place can be subjective. One society might consider the killing of foreigners to not be considered murder, while another does. To bring it a little closer to home, one society might not consider the killing of unborn babies to be murder, while another does... and so on. The very notion of what constitutes murder itself is a decision made at a cultural level, and so there's no real universal morality even for something like that.
I'm not suggesting that we cannot judge different cultures... of course we can... but it seems to me that they are equally free to judge ours. It appears, in fact, that any culture is perfectly entitled to believe that it's own view of morality is the best one.... that doesn't make it necessarily true, however... nor does it even mean that there even *IS* a "truth" to be known.
I might agree with this conclusion, but I'm compelled to ask whether or not we still really live in a moral world, since the popular conception in industrialized societies these days seems to be to view ideas like "good" and "bad" as culturally subjective, rather than absolutes that exist for all human beings.
How does that work, exactly? Can you legally force somebody to publicly state something that, to the best of their knowledge and understanding, is not true?
Well, with multipage documents on paper, you *DO* get a visual indication of how far along you are, simply by looking at the volume of paper remaining to the volume of paper before your position. It's sort of like a scroll bar in that respect.
Slashdot Mirror
I would like to hope so... but I've just got this nagging feeling that Apple's going to try and do this anyways. When it finally does start to hurt them, they'll ultimately lighten up on the policy, of course, but by then it will probably be too late, and the Mac platform may meet a premature end.
It doesn't take very much resources for somebody who happened to see you at two different places in the same day to go "hey, I saw that person at [X], and later at [Y]". The correlation between those events or locations alone can reveal information about you that you don't ordinarily disclose. Your only protection from this is other people's apathy - something you have *NO* control over, and something you cannot ever rely upon to give you all the anonymity you might want.
My point is that as soon as you go into public, you've effectively revealed things about yourself that the *ONLY* reason you might remain anonymous (and there's much more to real anonymity than simply knowing your name or personal information) is because the people who might be around you do not have any particular interest in you.... you are, in effect, just a needle in a haystack. And just like any other implementation of security through obscurity, it is far from impregnable.
The options for Mac developers will be to either sell their app on the app store, or else only make it available to jailbroken devices - and although I won't refute the popularity of jailbraking on portable devices, on a device like a full-fledged desktop computer, I'd suspect that jailbraking would be far less common, because one would probably no longer be able to obtain important updates to system software, and security is a potentially far more serious issue on an internet-connected desktop computer than it is on typical handheld devices.
While it's certainly true that a lot of Mac developers will leave Apple behind when this transition occurs, I think that the number of remaining loyal Mac users will keep no small number of them behind - and like iOS itself, may also draw the interest of other software houses that had not previously been interested in that platform.
No... it does not. In the end, the only *REAL* anonymity that people actually enjoy in public is achieved solely by whatever indifference that others might have towards them.
I never said that there was a "line".... I only said that giving a person privacy is something entirely different from expecting to always have the ability to be anonymous when one is in public. In the end, the only anonymity anyone *REALLY* has when they are in public is by virtue of whatever public's indifference exists towards that person. Nobody can really control what other people think (or don't think) of them, however... and it's only a waste of energy to even try.
Why should people nearby that I am not interacting with in ANY way have any reason to know my name? Nonetheless, when in public, I know that the only anonymity I really have is only what exists by virtue of the level of indifference the general population has in me.
There is a difference between privacy and anonymity. Giving people privacy is respectful to that person. There is nothing disrespectful to an individual when they simply do not have anonymity in public. Note: public, which, I might add, is the *OPPOSITE* of private.
I don't worry about people's anonymity, or even my own. I merely accept the premise that I don't really have any online. I feel I might have a right to privacy when I do things in private, but not in public.. It seems to me that YOU are the one who is expending energy worrying about anonymity... and for naught, since in the end, you might find you actually have far less control over it than you might like. You are perfectly welcome to spend your entire life trying to change that, if you are really so inclined to do so... I'd put odds on the unfairness of the world beating you, however.
Unless a person does not have a sense of integrity, I'm not sure why that would be. I don't sympathize with people who are afraid to be responsible for their own actions... and that includes speaking their mind.
The police can help with that too, when it is a problem.
If it's worth speaking out about, then why is it not also worth facing the possible consequences for?
If that's an issue, then don't say those things... or find another job. In other cases, it may fall under unlawful dismissal if a person's been keeping their records straight.
Personally, I feel that if a person want's anonymity, then they should keep to themselves. Somebody who so desperately wants to speak out against whatever they might find improper and who is afraid, for whatever reason, to take ownership of saying those things because of the consequences, is, as far as I can see, afraid to take responsibility for their actions.
Anything that isn't worth taking ownership of or facing the consequences for is small stuff, and if you spend your entire life worrying about or picking apart the small stuff, then all you're going to do is give yourself high blood pressure and probably die a whole lot sooner. Life is short enough as it is. Enjoy it. You only get to do it once.
This is *NOT* because I believe the premise that if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide, because, in fact, that premise is wholly specious (anyone who claims to genuinely believe that statement is true must be either a liar or else a public nudist).
Rather, I don't have a problem with Google doing this simply because I firmly believe in the principle of personal resposibility, and if a person is not prepared to be held personally accountable for the things that they do, then I'm afraid I'm just going to have a hard time recognizing any alleged right that they might have to do it. That's not to say that I don't think that people are entitled to privacy... giving people privacy shows them respect, and I resolutely believe that every human being is entitled to that level of respect. There is, however, a distinct difference between privacy and public anonymity. I don't see how not giving people anonymity in public disrespects them as individuals, so I simply don't see the importance of it.
You watch shows X, Y, and Z on whatever channels? You watch them every day or every week? Fine... subscribe to those shows, and then the PVR provided by the cable company automatically records those shows for your perusal later (or you could watch it "live", if you happened to be around at the time).
Realistically, it's unlikely that the monthly bill will be any less than at least the most rudimentary cable subscription, which tends to start at about $45 per month. *ANYTHING* that you get over and above the basic channels is going to cost you extra, whether you go a-la-carte or get additional ones in package deals.
I know.... I'm just surprised that anyone would have figured that how a person voted could have ever hoped to make it into that kind of list.
Why would anyone be remotely concerned about this?
*NOBODY* knows how a given individual voted in Canada, unless that individual tells somebody. They might be able to tell if or when you voted... and of course where you were at when you voted, but there is no possible way, short of doing something that *WILL* get you put under arrest (with a likely prison sentence), knowing how somebody else voted in any federal or provincial election is just not going to happen unless you can get them to tell you. And even then, the only way you could know for sure that they weren't telling the truth if they decided to lie about it is if they claimed to vote for somebody who received zero votes at the polling station where they voted (which in my experience working at those stations a few times isn't terribly likely, because even the weirdest ones on the ballots that you might think wouldn't get any votes always seem to get the odd person or persons voting for them at any given station).
1. Bigger screen
2. Bigger keyboard
The former can be solved with a micro projector installed in the phone, to project a larger display on a blank surface, such as a neutral colored wall.
I don't know if there are any currently existing technological ways to solve the latter problem practically, however. Maybe someday.
I mean, unless it's possible for anybody to arbitrarily bring up pictures of a person just by typing in their name, I'm really not so sure I see the point in wasting energy worrying about whether or not my own face is in such a database.
I thought they were Lost in Space. And, as I recall, the series never did come to any sort of adequate closure.
Yeah.... good luck solving *THAT* problem.
Some societies look upon things that we accept as normal as abominable though.... such as homosexuality. I'm not bringing this example up to argue that homosexuality is or even might be wrong, I'm suggesting that it seems to me that morality is always very much based on culture and upbringing, rather than on any sort of universal morality.
As for the idea that there could be some sort of universal morality around ideas such as murder, that's not really valid either... since what one considers to be "murder" in the first place can be subjective. One society might consider the killing of foreigners to not be considered murder, while another does. To bring it a little closer to home, one society might not consider the killing of unborn babies to be murder, while another does... and so on. The very notion of what constitutes murder itself is a decision made at a cultural level, and so there's no real universal morality even for something like that.
I'm not suggesting that we cannot judge different cultures... of course we can... but it seems to me that they are equally free to judge ours. It appears, in fact, that any culture is perfectly entitled to believe that it's own view of morality is the best one.... that doesn't make it necessarily true, however... nor does it even mean that there even *IS* a "truth" to be known.
Isn't that what wiped out the dinosaurs?
I might agree with this conclusion, but I'm compelled to ask whether or not we still really live in a moral world, since the popular conception in industrialized societies these days seems to be to view ideas like "good" and "bad" as culturally subjective, rather than absolutes that exist for all human beings.
... yet.
How does that work, exactly? Can you legally force somebody to publicly state something that, to the best of their knowledge and understanding, is not true?
Well, with multipage documents on paper, you *DO* get a visual indication of how far along you are, simply by looking at the volume of paper remaining to the volume of paper before your position. It's sort of like a scroll bar in that respect.
That's all very well and good.
It isn't, however.
So where do we go from here?