Terrorist or prankster? Let's see, manifesto? nope. Political demand? nope. People intentionally hurt? Nope.
Is the prank harmless? No, not really, there is potential for harm here, but it's exactly the sort of harm that often doesn't occur to pranksters.
By all means, find them, and give them community service.
If it is pranksters, a night in jail might be sobering rather than merely a slap on the wrist. This is the equivalent of calling in a bomb threat to a school which is generally considered fairly serious.
I wouldn't discount the idea of a more systematic and nefarious cyber attack if that's what this was. Like when overseas attackers robocalled in multiple bomb threats to schools. Most attackers aren't discriminating their targets but just casting the net wide and seeing where the vulnerabilities are. If this was part of a wider attack then I stand by the call to throw the book at them. They put people's lives in danger and only luckily was nobody hurt.
And don't blame the victims for not spending more money on technology when they are struggling to make ends meet.
The annoying part is that this happened in 2017 as well in the north Dallas area. It happened in the middle of the night and went on for over an hour. You'd think the other cities in the area would have learned from this vulnerability and fixed the problem. Although that would require local governments to be competent.
Go ahead, blame the victims. You would have thought we would have learned that criminals and terrorists that pull this shit need to be hunted down, jailed and made an example of.
If there's something particularly chilling, technologists thinking their task is to "solve" politics is pretty high on the list. (Among politicians and politically motivated public commentators the parallel approach is to claim their political stance is pure scientific truth without a whiff of political stance.) My personal take on such approaches is that the cure may be more dangerous than the problem that has been framed to be the problem.
Politics is politics. There are no solutions that turn it into something else. Or at least solutions that would really fix it, but there are plenty of "solutions" which break things that actually work as a side effect, while mostly replacing the problem with another, trendier problem...
We should be allowed to have private conversations and interactions with our friends.
This isn't about politics, this is about Liberty. If you believe in Liberty then you should be concerned with corporations and governments mediating, manipulating and censoring your communications.
Especially at a time when so many people are using electronic communications to reveal minute aspects of their lives.
Look at the communications providers today. At one level it is just about spying on your communications in order to target you with advertising. At the other level it is about spying on your communications in order to manipulate society for the benefit of whomever is doing the manipulating.
People often seem to arrogantly believe they are some mystical being above study and calculation. People are fundamentally machines. Amazing, fantastic machines with imaginations limited only by our perceptions.
And it is the ability to control, manipulate and so thoroughly control our perceptions that is a key issue at stake.
We should be allowed to have private conversations and interactions with our friends.
They're just moving from one of Facebook's data collecting websites (facebook.com) to a different one (instagram.com). They're still giving Facebook roughly the same amount of data.
Not for much longer. Social Media as a platform (as a advertising/government surveillance program) is being targeted and destroyed for the threat to our Liberty and well being that it is.
Sorry Mark. Whats App and "private" messaging platforms that can spy on us are next on the chopping block too.
The only way for Facebook to survive is to go hard into gaming and real value added content. The Internet doesn't like a man in the middle just collecting value from content we create by taking away our privacy.
If you want to create content and provide additional value in exchange for information about us then that is something we can talk about.
... people who break the law or don't pay dept are low value and, depending, denied employment, guns, voting rights, incarcerated, evicted, fined, denied credit, denied loans...
The approach is certainly newsworthy but the outcome is similar.
Noted. Came here to post the same thing. There are important distinctions and lines that shouldn't be crossed. In the US there is no formal way to punish people for simply stating an opinion that is prior to the regime. And doing so in a business, might get you fired, but you can usually find a new job or move to someplace else to find a new job.
A totalitarian regime controls all aspects of people's lives because it doesn't trust people unless they are verified to be compliant. In the US we don't trust our government.
We do not yet know *every single exact* effect the modification of this gene will do to a human being outside of a lab.
That is the reason why. No data = big problem.
Which is why gene editing should take a cautious approach... but it should proceed similarly to a drug trials and it should meet similar standards at least initially. There should be some demonstrated need. Immunity from disease would be one of those benefits that meets that threshold like any vaccine would. Also such studies should be subject to longer term study so we don't mess up our species genome inadvertently in some widespread manner, but I would also say that drug treatments should receive the same longer term scrutiny to make sure the negatives aren't just slow to emerge.
And if you take a twenty to forty year approach where a small group study is followed from birth to adulthood then that would seem to me to be an appropriate approach.
The point is that a blanket prohibition can't and shouldn't work because it makes no distinction between harm and benefits. And even overly onerous regulations are going to leave a huge black market for this and create a more dangerous situation overall just as the current FDA drug system creates a huge black market for pain killing drugs by making them too expensive and forcing them into a black market.
People are going to want things like this for their children. A good set of regulations should separate the fraudulent claims from the real benefits of such treatments. I don't want my kids or grandchildren to get HIV. A long lasting vaccine would be great, but a permanent gene editing to prevent this disease for life and generations to come (which has been validated in a clinical trial) is much better.
Anyone else would be in jail by now for these practices.
Well... if they were a little more open about what they were doing I think that would be better. But when was the last time your telecom provider told you it was sucking up all your communications and selling your data in real time to a variety of marketing companies and at least one government directly and probably multiple other foreign governments indirectly.
We need to get away from this unsigned, unreviewed, wild code (like javascript) running on your machines.
Lock it down and stuff like this won't be a problem.
Systems for whitelisting apps and websites can help. But then the problem just shifts to how much do you trust whichever app stores or website whitelists you are using which are basically the same thing as a signing system. I mean I try to be careful about which apps I download, but if you want your computer to be a general purpose computer then you have to have some flexibility to run unsigned code. As a developer that often means my own code. Otherwise it is an appliance.
The main problem is looking at health care as a profit driven business in the first place. Take a look at Europe / Scandinavia for examples of much better models.
If it were true that that alone makes it more likely to find cures then Europe/Scandinavia would be coming up with cures that Americans could then just benefit from.
Whether it be a "non-profit" or for profit company there seems to be a problem in the economics and incentives of cures versus treatments. There is just going to be more money in treatments than there will be in cures. I think there is something more fundamental that needs to be recognized there that affects either type of business model. And something that the government should recognize so we can find ways to get to more cures.
In the case of a non-profit business model that doesn't mean people aren't making a living doing some sort of work... that means more money for them or more people getting more money.
The for-profit aspect just layers additional mouths to feed (investors) on top of the people that work there and the interests on any loans. Think of "for-profit" just as loans with interest rates that depend on how good the revenue is compared with expenses. Depending on the terms of the shares and how much money is taken out of the business then it can be onerous, but so too can terms on loans.
This statement of what should be obvious is a great service. They are saying what we have suspected for quite some time. That the for profit biotech business model is very likely against the best interests of individuals and society in circumstances where there could be a cure for disease.
Society and individuals have great interests in curing people at least cost. Biotechs clearly have the contrary interest of creating treatments that create dependency and not cures. Having this stated succinctly is the kind of frank discussion we need.
The answer isn't immediately clear, since there is nothing wrong in finding treatments that make people's lives better. And if there is "no cure" then a treatment is better than nothing.
If cures are being ignored because resources are all going toward predatory dependency inducing treatments (like the opiods), then government regulation that encourages more free market competition to push the business interest further towards making cheap cures and better treatments should be on the table. In a free market would you rather pay a doctor to cure you or to just treat your symptoms? If there is only one doctor in town, then good luck. If there is only one doctor in town because government makes it so onerous to become a doctor or stay in private practice... then shame on the government. Likewise many government regulations appear to benefit big pharma and big biotech. Yes quality is of great importance when lives are on the line, but innovation is also of great importance when lives are on the line and we see areas of stagnation in medical advancement with only expensive treatments making it to market.
Also on the table should be treating the discovery of cures as a critical public interest to be funded with more government dollars instead of private. Government funded research has a mixed track record also. But here too there should be a big enough pool of money that it allows for sustained competition between the Universities and non-profit, or even for-profits getting grants.
The government should be in the business of making sure we have a healthy and efficient free market and stepping in with regulation, policing, and even some money when we don't.
The rule of law means one set of rules for everyone. There shouldn't be an insurmountable wall of regulations and taxes in the first place that requires all this negotiated one-off deal making. If you want a business friendly climate then stop playing favorites to the corporations that don't need favoritism.
If you want to know what caused the systemic risk of the Great Recession of 2009, then look no further than the government regulations that failed to regulate and actually promoted the centralization and consolidation that created too big to fail institutions. And then step back and take a look at whether you can even say that the US has a free market system with the regimes of regulations that make a free market impossible.
Seriously... what? So an airline gets someone to pay for a ticket and they save the airline money by not taking up space and weight... presumably someone could have flown on standby also so there is potential for the airline to double dip if someone doesn't show up for their flight... and they are pissed 'cause their pricing model didn't account for people who might want to actually go to the layover city. They aren't losing money by someone paying for, but not fully utilizing the service. The airlines should be liable for court costs plus penalty if they pull this shit.
I should add... wealthy people's ongoing income once they are already wealthy is rarely a result of the value created by their own labor or contributions. If you are taxing the wealthy then more often than not they have the ability to pass through taxing the people that work to create value as their employees, tenants of their real estate or otherwise creating value from the capital and property they control.
I don't agree or disagree with taxing individual wealth, I mean it makes some sense from a societal perspective to prevent accumulation of wealth and power... on the other hand we encourage the accumulation of wealth and power in corporations and governments which are controlled in a hierarchical fashion by individuals. If you don't allow people to accumulate as much wealth and you don't also prevent people from accumulating power through corporations and institutions then you are just shifting the problem and giving it another name.
Also, some things simply require large amounts of capital and sometimes committees of people don't have the vision to take good risks and make good investments on disruptively good innovations.
Imagine a world without the kind of innovation that Elon Musk has enabled because he actually reinvested his Ebay windfall into technology startups. No reusable rockets lowering the cost of space exploration, no electric cars that are forcing the market to compete, no national model for solar leasing with tesla battery walls... that is just one man using capital towards solving problems instead of simply buying more houses and luxury goods and calling it a day.
Big established companies and governments are often too risk averse to spend capital on those sorts of projects and it does take individuals willing to take big risks on big bets.
The ENTIRE POINT of net neutrality is so that the telecoms can't reach into your data and try to squeeze you for more money based on how valuable the data is to you.
Like listening to your phone calls to decide how much money to charge you based on how much you love talking to your mom.
I haven't found a Supreme court opinion on the subject, but a Federal district court judge granted a preliminary injunction against the City/Police in Ellisville Missouri regarding this. See "Elli vs Ellisville" from 2014. (I am not the same AC you asked for a citation, just thought I'd give googling for one a shot)
And the standard here isn't that people were helping people get away with criminal behavior. Flashing your lights at someone (and by anology letting people know about a police checkpoint) is the equivalent of telling someone not to commit that crime. This isn't the equivalent of a look out for a drug lab radioing in to let them know about a police raid.
So if you are speeding and I flash my lights to warn you of a speed trap that doesn't help the furtherance of a crime, you are going to slow down and comply with the speed limit. Likewise if there is a police checkpoint then you are going to drive more carefully or might just decide to stop driving if you had a couple. People are going to stop the criminal behavior, at least for a period of time.
Deterrence is the whole point of having speed traps and police check points... which is completely in-line with people being made aware of them.
Because if that data is available from carriers, Google won't be able to monetize it exclusively themselves. They don't want any competition.
There is some truth to that, but so what? In this case Google preventing competition means preventing a free (gray) market in buying and selling your personal data.
Society needs better privacy laws which mandate disclosure down to specific transactions and amounts when personal data about customers is shared with third parties without specific authorization or at least specific disclosure so people have a chance to end their business relationship with that company.
Sure, that would give Google a competitive advantage since they don't sell your personal data to third parties... they are just so big and collect so much and have a business model that can monetize that personal data without selling it to third parties. But I would be more than happy to give Google a competitive advantage if it meant putting an end to this gray marketplace of personal data.
Although I wonder if they do in-fact buy personal data from third parties?... that is a more interesting question to me and one which would mean they are really feeding the beast.
Unfortunately it probably isn't illegal for companies to sell customer data like this... but it should be illegal to sell intimate customer data without explicit consent and ongoing updates about specifically which companies are being given access to the data and in turn which other companies are getting access to the data further down the line.
Maybe I would be ok with specific reputable ad companies using this data for specific advertising services, but not so ok if anyone can pay $300 and track my location.
This is another chapter in the saga of export-grade cryptography.
Bingo... The US will hobble itself in the name of national security and then China will get everything anyway because they have hacked and back doored US IT hardware, firmware and software.
We need to sort out our issues with China peacefully. I agree with playing hardball up to a point because we can't all just roll over and give up our Liberty and democracy as China takes over the world... but this isn't about allowing China access to US technology, they have everything they need already from hacking and disclosures, a bigger economy to fund additional R&D, and more people to throw at any problem.
This is about giving US companies the ability to collaborate with the rest of the world without registering their software as a weapon and without the threat of jailing researchers and software developers for just sharing software.
We should be dealing with China, not threatening US citizens because the US government can't get its shit together.
On the one hand the people of a geographically defined area should have every right to self determination, on the other hand basing self determination on ethnic majorities in arbitrarily defined regions isn't something that the modern more metropolitan world wants to be based on... but ethnic groups predominantly still is the dominant political organizing principle in the world.
So if we go with democracy and recognize that organizing along ethnic lines is a valid way to organize politically, then we should support the kurds and the right of any ethnic group that gains majority status in a large enough geographic area. But if we go with democracy and reject ethnicity as a valid way to organize politically, then we have to somehow reconcile that there is some better overarching commonality that we should be organizing around.
Otherwise, humanity are just a bunch of thugs working towards the biggest gang that can control the most turf using whatever BS excuse they can to include some and exclude others.
With mandated e-currencies in the name of tax collection and total monitoring of electronic communications and transactions... that is pretty much the nuts and bolts of democracy all wrapped up in a totalitarian package. Hopefully there is enough democracy left in India to give the government a good swift kick to the curb, but it seems that totalitarians have gotten better at making the loss of Liberty sweet enough to swallow.
Taxes should never be so high as to require a government to make the nation itself a prison in order to collect.
Slashdot Mirror
Terrorist or prankster? Let's see, manifesto? nope. Political demand? nope. People intentionally hurt? Nope.
Is the prank harmless? No, not really, there is potential for harm here, but it's exactly the sort of harm that often doesn't occur to pranksters.
By all means, find them, and give them community service.
If it is pranksters, a night in jail might be sobering rather than merely a slap on the wrist. This is the equivalent of calling in a bomb threat to a school which is generally considered fairly serious.
I wouldn't discount the idea of a more systematic and nefarious cyber attack if that's what this was. Like when overseas attackers robocalled in multiple bomb threats to schools. Most attackers aren't discriminating their targets but just casting the net wide and seeing where the vulnerabilities are. If this was part of a wider attack then I stand by the call to throw the book at them. They put people's lives in danger and only luckily was nobody hurt.
And don't blame the victims for not spending more money on technology when they are struggling to make ends meet.
The annoying part is that this happened in 2017 as well in the north Dallas area. It happened in the middle of the night and went on for over an hour. You'd think the other cities in the area would have learned from this vulnerability and fixed the problem. Although that would require local governments to be competent.
Go ahead, blame the victims. You would have thought we would have learned that criminals and terrorists that pull this shit need to be hunted down, jailed and made an example of.
If there's something particularly chilling, technologists thinking their task is to "solve" politics is pretty high on the list. (Among politicians and politically motivated public commentators the parallel approach is to claim their political stance is pure scientific truth without a whiff of political stance.) My personal take on such approaches is that the cure may be more dangerous than the problem that has been framed to be the problem.
Politics is politics. There are no solutions that turn it into something else. Or at least solutions that would really fix it, but there are plenty of "solutions" which break things that actually work as a side effect, while mostly replacing the problem with another, trendier problem...
We should be allowed to have private conversations and interactions with our friends.
This isn't about politics, this is about Liberty. If you believe in Liberty then you should be concerned with corporations and governments mediating, manipulating and censoring your communications.
Especially at a time when so many people are using electronic communications to reveal minute aspects of their lives.
Look at the communications providers today. At one level it is just about spying on your communications in order to target you with advertising. At the other level it is about spying on your communications in order to manipulate society for the benefit of whomever is doing the manipulating.
People often seem to arrogantly believe they are some mystical being above study and calculation. People are fundamentally machines. Amazing, fantastic machines with imaginations limited only by our perceptions.
And it is the ability to control, manipulate and so thoroughly control our perceptions that is a key issue at stake.
We should be allowed to have private conversations and interactions with our friends.
They're just moving from one of Facebook's data collecting websites (facebook.com) to a different one (instagram.com). They're still giving Facebook roughly the same amount of data.
Not for much longer. Social Media as a platform (as a advertising/government surveillance program) is being targeted and destroyed for the threat to our Liberty and well being that it is.
Sorry Mark. Whats App and "private" messaging platforms that can spy on us are next on the chopping block too.
The only way for Facebook to survive is to go hard into gaming and real value added content. The Internet doesn't like a man in the middle just collecting value from content we create by taking away our privacy.
If you want to create content and provide additional value in exchange for information about us then that is something we can talk about.
... people who break the law or don't pay dept are low value and, depending, denied employment, guns, voting rights, incarcerated, evicted, fined, denied credit, denied loans ...
The approach is certainly newsworthy but the outcome is similar.
Noted. Came here to post the same thing. There are important distinctions and lines that shouldn't be crossed. In the US there is no formal way to punish people for simply stating an opinion that is prior to the regime. And doing so in a business, might get you fired, but you can usually find a new job or move to someplace else to find a new job.
A totalitarian regime controls all aspects of people's lives because it doesn't trust people unless they are verified to be compliant. In the US we don't trust our government.
We do not yet know *every single exact* effect the modification of this gene will do to a human being outside of a lab.
That is the reason why. No data = big problem.
Which is why gene editing should take a cautious approach... but it should proceed similarly to a drug trials and it should meet similar standards at least initially. There should be some demonstrated need. Immunity from disease would be one of those benefits that meets that threshold like any vaccine would. Also such studies should be subject to longer term study so we don't mess up our species genome inadvertently in some widespread manner, but I would also say that drug treatments should receive the same longer term scrutiny to make sure the negatives aren't just slow to emerge.
And if you take a twenty to forty year approach where a small group study is followed from birth to adulthood then that would seem to me to be an appropriate approach.
The point is that a blanket prohibition can't and shouldn't work because it makes no distinction between harm and benefits. And even overly onerous regulations are going to leave a huge black market for this and create a more dangerous situation overall just as the current FDA drug system creates a huge black market for pain killing drugs by making them too expensive and forcing them into a black market.
People are going to want things like this for their children. A good set of regulations should separate the fraudulent claims from the real benefits of such treatments. I don't want my kids or grandchildren to get HIV. A long lasting vaccine would be great, but a permanent gene editing to prevent this disease for life and generations to come (which has been validated in a clinical trial) is much better.
Anyone else would be in jail by now for these practices.
Well... if they were a little more open about what they were doing I think that would be better. But when was the last time your telecom provider told you it was sucking up all your communications and selling your data in real time to a variety of marketing companies and at least one government directly and probably multiple other foreign governments indirectly.
We need to get away from this unsigned, unreviewed, wild code (like javascript) running on your machines.
Lock it down and stuff like this won't be a problem.
Systems for whitelisting apps and websites can help. But then the problem just shifts to how much do you trust whichever app stores or website whitelists you are using which are basically the same thing as a signing system. I mean I try to be careful about which apps I download, but if you want your computer to be a general purpose computer then you have to have some flexibility to run unsigned code. As a developer that often means my own code. Otherwise it is an appliance.
The constraints on deep learning AI aren't going to be solved with squeezing 10% better performance out of the software.
And you don't program AI. You educate an AI.
The main problem is looking at health care as a profit driven business in the first place. Take a look at Europe / Scandinavia for examples of much better models.
If it were true that that alone makes it more likely to find cures then Europe/Scandinavia would be coming up with cures that Americans could then just benefit from.
Whether it be a "non-profit" or for profit company there seems to be a problem in the economics and incentives of cures versus treatments. There is just going to be more money in treatments than there will be in cures. I think there is something more fundamental that needs to be recognized there that affects either type of business model. And something that the government should recognize so we can find ways to get to more cures.
In the case of a non-profit business model that doesn't mean people aren't making a living doing some sort of work... that means more money for them or more people getting more money.
The for-profit aspect just layers additional mouths to feed (investors) on top of the people that work there and the interests on any loans. Think of "for-profit" just as loans with interest rates that depend on how good the revenue is compared with expenses. Depending on the terms of the shares and how much money is taken out of the business then it can be onerous, but so too can terms on loans.
This statement of what should be obvious is a great service. They are saying what we have suspected for quite some time. That the for profit biotech business model is very likely against the best interests of individuals and society in circumstances where there could be a cure for disease.
Society and individuals have great interests in curing people at least cost. Biotechs clearly have the contrary interest of creating treatments that create dependency and not cures. Having this stated succinctly is the kind of frank discussion we need.
The answer isn't immediately clear, since there is nothing wrong in finding treatments that make people's lives better. And if there is "no cure" then a treatment is better than nothing.
If cures are being ignored because resources are all going toward predatory dependency inducing treatments (like the opiods), then government regulation that encourages more free market competition to push the business interest further towards making cheap cures and better treatments should be on the table. In a free market would you rather pay a doctor to cure you or to just treat your symptoms? If there is only one doctor in town, then good luck. If there is only one doctor in town because government makes it so onerous to become a doctor or stay in private practice... then shame on the government. Likewise many government regulations appear to benefit big pharma and big biotech. Yes quality is of great importance when lives are on the line, but innovation is also of great importance when lives are on the line and we see areas of stagnation in medical advancement with only expensive treatments making it to market.
Also on the table should be treating the discovery of cures as a critical public interest to be funded with more government dollars instead of private. Government funded research has a mixed track record also. But here too there should be a big enough pool of money that it allows for sustained competition between the Universities and non-profit, or even for-profits getting grants.
The government should be in the business of making sure we have a healthy and efficient free market and stepping in with regulation, policing, and even some money when we don't.
Yes. This.
The rule of law means one set of rules for everyone. There shouldn't be an insurmountable wall of regulations and taxes in the first place that requires all this negotiated one-off deal making. If you want a business friendly climate then stop playing favorites to the corporations that don't need favoritism.
If you want to know what caused the systemic risk of the Great Recession of 2009, then look no further than the government regulations that failed to regulate and actually promoted the centralization and consolidation that created too big to fail institutions. And then step back and take a look at whether you can even say that the US has a free market system with the regimes of regulations that make a free market impossible.
Solar IS fusion. We're directly harvesting the results of a fusion reaction happening 1AU away.
Oil IS fusion. Ancient plants were directly harvesting the results of a fusion reaction happening 1AU away. :P
It all averages out after a few million years right?
Seriously... what? So an airline gets someone to pay for a ticket and they save the airline money by not taking up space and weight... presumably someone could have flown on standby also so there is potential for the airline to double dip if someone doesn't show up for their flight... and they are pissed 'cause their pricing model didn't account for people who might want to actually go to the layover city. They aren't losing money by someone paying for, but not fully utilizing the service. The airlines should be liable for court costs plus penalty if they pull this shit.
I should add... wealthy people's ongoing income once they are already wealthy is rarely a result of the value created by their own labor or contributions. If you are taxing the wealthy then more often than not they have the ability to pass through taxing the people that work to create value as their employees, tenants of their real estate or otherwise creating value from the capital and property they control.
I don't agree or disagree with taxing individual wealth, I mean it makes some sense from a societal perspective to prevent accumulation of wealth and power... on the other hand we encourage the accumulation of wealth and power in corporations and governments which are controlled in a hierarchical fashion by individuals. If you don't allow people to accumulate as much wealth and you don't also prevent people from accumulating power through corporations and institutions then you are just shifting the problem and giving it another name.
Also, some things simply require large amounts of capital and sometimes committees of people don't have the vision to take good risks and make good investments on disruptively good innovations.
Imagine a world without the kind of innovation that Elon Musk has enabled because he actually reinvested his Ebay windfall into technology startups. No reusable rockets lowering the cost of space exploration, no electric cars that are forcing the market to compete, no national model for solar leasing with tesla battery walls... that is just one man using capital towards solving problems instead of simply buying more houses and luxury goods and calling it a day.
Big established companies and governments are often too risk averse to spend capital on those sorts of projects and it does take individuals willing to take big risks on big bets.
This is my shocked face. :|
The ENTIRE POINT of net neutrality is so that the telecoms can't reach into your data and try to squeeze you for more money based on how valuable the data is to you.
Like listening to your phone calls to decide how much money to charge you based on how much you love talking to your mom.
I haven't found a Supreme court opinion on the subject, but a Federal district court judge granted a preliminary injunction against the City/Police in Ellisville Missouri regarding this. See "Elli vs Ellisville" from 2014. (I am not the same AC you asked for a citation, just thought I'd give googling for one a shot)
And the standard here isn't that people were helping people get away with criminal behavior. Flashing your lights at someone (and by anology letting people know about a police checkpoint) is the equivalent of telling someone not to commit that crime. This isn't the equivalent of a look out for a drug lab radioing in to let them know about a police raid.
So if you are speeding and I flash my lights to warn you of a speed trap that doesn't help the furtherance of a crime, you are going to slow down and comply with the speed limit. Likewise if there is a police checkpoint then you are going to drive more carefully or might just decide to stop driving if you had a couple. People are going to stop the criminal behavior, at least for a period of time.
Deterrence is the whole point of having speed traps and police check points... which is completely in-line with people being made aware of them.
Because if that data is available from carriers, Google won't be able to monetize it exclusively themselves. They don't want any competition.
There is some truth to that, but so what? In this case Google preventing competition means preventing a free (gray) market in buying and selling your personal data.
Society needs better privacy laws which mandate disclosure down to specific transactions and amounts when personal data about customers is shared with third parties without specific authorization or at least specific disclosure so people have a chance to end their business relationship with that company.
Sure, that would give Google a competitive advantage since they don't sell your personal data to third parties... they are just so big and collect so much and have a business model that can monetize that personal data without selling it to third parties. But I would be more than happy to give Google a competitive advantage if it meant putting an end to this gray marketplace of personal data.
Although I wonder if they do in-fact buy personal data from third parties?... that is a more interesting question to me and one which would mean they are really feeding the beast.
Also... "maybe I would be okay with" clearly means I would be giving consent. I have a right to give my data to whomever I damn well please.
Unfortunately it probably isn't illegal for companies to sell customer data like this... but it should be illegal to sell intimate customer data without explicit consent and ongoing updates about specifically which companies are being given access to the data and in turn which other companies are getting access to the data further down the line.
Maybe I would be ok with specific reputable ad companies using this data for specific advertising services, but not so ok if anyone can pay $300 and track my location.
This is another chapter in the saga of export-grade cryptography.
Bingo... The US will hobble itself in the name of national security and then China will get everything anyway because they have hacked and back doored US IT hardware, firmware and software.
We need to sort out our issues with China peacefully. I agree with playing hardball up to a point because we can't all just roll over and give up our Liberty and democracy as China takes over the world... but this isn't about allowing China access to US technology, they have everything they need already from hacking and disclosures, a bigger economy to fund additional R&D, and more people to throw at any problem.
This is about giving US companies the ability to collaborate with the rest of the world without registering their software as a weapon and without the threat of jailing researchers and software developers for just sharing software.
We should be dealing with China, not threatening US citizens because the US government can't get its shit together.
On the one hand the people of a geographically defined area should have every right to self determination, on the other hand basing self determination on ethnic majorities in arbitrarily defined regions isn't something that the modern more metropolitan world wants to be based on... but ethnic groups predominantly still is the dominant political organizing principle in the world.
So if we go with democracy and recognize that organizing along ethnic lines is a valid way to organize politically, then we should support the kurds and the right of any ethnic group that gains majority status in a large enough geographic area. But if we go with democracy and reject ethnicity as a valid way to organize politically, then we have to somehow reconcile that there is some better overarching commonality that we should be organizing around.
Otherwise, humanity are just a bunch of thugs working towards the biggest gang that can control the most turf using whatever BS excuse they can to include some and exclude others.
With mandated e-currencies in the name of tax collection and total monitoring of electronic communications and transactions... that is pretty much the nuts and bolts of democracy all wrapped up in a totalitarian package. Hopefully there is enough democracy left in India to give the government a good swift kick to the curb, but it seems that totalitarians have gotten better at making the loss of Liberty sweet enough to swallow.
Taxes should never be so high as to require a government to make the nation itself a prison in order to collect.
If you want Open Source to succeed, you have to make it easy for users, not just for programmers.
If you want open standards communications protocols to succeed you have to make them easy for programmers to make it easy for users.