The Ministry of Search - Googleplex in leetspeak - was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous outstretched structure of glittering steel and glass. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Corporation:
CLOSED IS OPEN
CENSORSHIP IS FREEDOM
SURVEILLANCE IS PRIVACY
The content is hosted (presumably) in the US. Google should give a shit where their traffic is coming from.Except of course Google cares very much where you are from and this whole thing is probably just to make it easier for Google to serve you location-dependent ads. The fact that it'll lead to censorship is just collateral damage. I'm not going to go on a rant about how "evil" this move is or isn't, I'll just say I expected better of Google. Who needs governments to censor the web when Google and Twitter are laying the groundwork for them ?
Exactly. Plug it in and it's a fucking toaster. No more complicated than that. Microsoft are still nowhere near toaster-level ease of use OoBE, but they're closer than any Linux distribution given the undeniable fact that the vast, vast majority of new hardware ships with Windows! Apple are marginally closer with Mac OS but they're still not there either.
Apple's there: it's called the iPad. Toaster level of complexity, UNIX at the core. Everybody with eyes in their head can see it's the future. Of course some geeks don't like it and would rather stick their head in the sand but it (or a butchered version of it, like Windows was a butchered version of a GUI OS) will take over. Oh people will say "It's just a toy" and "I can't get any real work done on it." but that's what people said about the GUI too at the time.
Several million users, most of whom use a free, as in beer, version of the OS. Most of whom are actually proud they don't pay for software but use "free software", in every sense of the word, exclusively. Most of whom have a fanatical attachment to whatever they are using now and are fragmented over several different versions. Yeah, I can just see companies line up to jump into that market ! After all it worked out so well for Corel, Caldera, Linspire, Sun with their Linux version or any of the other abortive attempts to get any kind of paying business out of the Linux desktop market. Frankly I'm surprised Mandriva lasted this long.
Lets disregard that it's been hacked repeatedly and easily
Hardly easily. The first jailbreak admittedly was easy, but take a look at the iOS hackers blogs: jail breaking these things is now crazy hard. Jailbraking now takes multiple exploits and a phone which is physically connected to your system. The latest exploits took months to develop, all the while people are told not to upgrade because the upgrades invariably patch the holes.
Anyway jail breaking is a red herring, what counts is exploits used in the wild. And to the best of my knowledge that's still a big fat 0 for iOS, which is why these articles invariably talk about Android.
and lets also forget the tens of thousands of people who've had there iTunes accounts hacked and been charged for apps they have never downloaded (I know of 3 personally, none of whom ever got their money back)
But yes, the 50 (out of 400,000) malware infected apps are scary.
iTunes is not iOS. They are completely separate products. The security of one has no bearing on the security of the other.
Maybe they'll do that over time but it seems pretty smart to start "small" ramping Siri-users into the millions as iPhone4S's were sold instead of immediately serving hundreds of millions of users by issuing Siri in an OS update. And there's no way the Evi people could have done the same kind of ramp up without resorting to invites or a similar system.
One of those rare movies that managed to fold some social commentary into a good action flick. The other one that pulled it off was Robocop which might even be more apropos.
Skepticism is OK. But you're not applying your skepticism the same way to all your sources, why trust these articles ? Because they're older ? The reverse is true: the Wall Street Journal might have done additional research in the meantime and more official statements may have been made. There's a difference between skepticism and incredulity.
DO you have an actual link of the prosecutor saying that, besides the article? because it doesn't appear in any documents about the Chief executives agreeing to let this happen.
Jeez, the guy himself could whisper it in your ear and you'd still deny it:-) Like I said in an other comment: we'll never know because they settled out of court and any evidence there was (if any) will now not come out. So Google is de facto innocent. It'll now likely never be proven either way but they'll have to live with the speculation which is the downside of settling instead of fighting I guess.
Prosecutors are always biased. That's the basis of our adversarial justice system.
They also presumably don't even start proceedings against a big corporation like Google without having a case they think has some merit and has evidence to support it.
Don't get me wrong I'm all for legalization of recreational drugs but I'm not for letting just anyone sell stuff that'll put you on life support if they get their dosages wrong. There's nothing wrong with the pharmaceutical industry that can't be fixed without doing that, all you need is a government with some balls. Basically what you seem to support is complete deregulation which historically has turned out to be detrimental to consumers and a boon to corporate profits.
Oh, well it's not like the prosecutor could be biased in any way...
He could be biased, though I've not heard anyone make that accusation let alone substantiate it. Not even Google, the defendant. Occams' Razor: What's more likely, that the prosecutor is biased had no case and Google settled out of court anyway for some strange reason, or that the story is closer to what was reported ?
"The war on drugs" is on recreational drugs. We're talking about illegally sold legal substances, medicine, here. But the same argument holds true for illegal recreational drugs too, which is why more forward thinking countries like The Netherlands actually have agencies that will test illegal drugs for you so you can at least have an independent entity confirm what active substances you are using.
Well, it's confirmed by the prosecutor as I've stated in my reply above so it's not like there's a single source for the story. Of course we might never get actual proof because rather than go to court and risk the actual mails becoming a matter of public record brave sir Google ran away and settled for 500 million. Brave, brave sir Google.
All of the information about executives knowing something is affirmed by a single self confessed con artist. What I think is fair to ask for is more confirmation of these affirmations by someone who is not a known liar or would otherwise gain from divulging such information.
And by the prosecutor : "Mr. Page, now Google's chief executive, knew about the illicit conduct, said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who led the multiagency federal task force that conducted the sting."
"People will sell low-quality drugs online, advertising them as even something else entirely!" If you buy drugs online and you don't do a thorough check to make sure the seller is reputable or you're getting what you asked for, then you kind of have it coming to you.
Yes, it would require people to take more responsibility for their actions. But the benefit is that you wouldn't have the government-enforced pharmaceutical monopoly, which I think would benefit consumers far more than these other effects would hurt them.
It doesn't have to because of a scam, it could just be an exotic allergy someone has and the pills could work great for the other 99% of the population. People cannot check this for themselves, that's why in most (all?) developed countries the government has an agency that does it for them and practitioners that can be held accountable to dispense advice. When there's no verification that what's in the box actually corresponds to what's claimed on the box people will get killed. When people can just decide for themselves how to dose or rely an inexpert advice instead of that of a doctor or pharmacist people will get killed. Now you might consider that a reasonable trade-off to get rid of a "government tyranny", I do not.
If you're using a climbing rope or installing a brake part you probably have the expertise to check its quality. Who can test drugs at home ? Most of us aren't chemists. Even if you take the drug and it performs the function you bought it for it still could contain some cheaper active ingredient, or some binding agent, that some people could be allergic to. Drugs are dangerous, even the ones most people would consider harmless, when improperly used.
So you don't trust the con man, how about Google itself :
"Google acknowledged in the settlement that it had improperly and knowingly assisted online pharmacy advertisers allegedly based in Canada to run advertisements for illicit pharmacy sales targeting U.S. customers."
Or the prosecutor :
"Mr. Page, now Google's chief executive, knew about the illicit conduct, said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who led the multiagency federal task force that conducted the sting." "But the company's ad executives worked with Mr. Whitaker to find a way around Google rules, according to prosecutors and Mr. Whitaker's account." "The federal task force, which also included the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Criminal Investigation, was preparing criminal charges against the company and its executives for aiding and abetting criminal activity online, prosecutors said." "Suffice to say this was not two or three rogue employees at the customer service level doing this on their own," said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney. "This was corporate decision to engage in this conduct."
No ? How about the shareholders :
"Six private shareholder lawsuits have so far been filed against Google's executives and board members, alleging they damaged the company by not taking earlier action against the illegal pharmacy ads."
"Mr. Whitaker, who pleaded guilty and faced a maximum 65-year prison term, was sentenced in December to six years, following what federal prosecutors called "rather extraordinary" cooperation. He is due for release in two years."
So your ethical code is OK with breaking the legal code whenever you feel like it ? I could see the point when talking about individuals and civil disobedience but anyone who thinks it's OK for corporations to ignore the law should have their head examined. It's enough that corporations as an entity are psychopathic and that some actively recruit psychopaths, let's not give them a license to break the law too.
The day will come where consumers get iTired and ditch their iPhones en masse, that is just textbook mass psychology. I presume that this is what MS has been waiting for with their tardy WP7 rollout.
Slashdot Mirror
There had versions 3.5 and 4 too before they switched to year-type labeling.
The Ministry of Search - Googleplex in leetspeak - was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous outstretched structure of glittering steel and glass. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Corporation:
CLOSED IS OPEN
CENSORSHIP IS FREEDOM
SURVEILLANCE IS PRIVACY
The content is hosted (presumably) in the US. Google should give a shit where their traffic is coming from.Except of course Google cares very much where you are from and this whole thing is probably just to make it easier for Google to serve you location-dependent ads. The fact that it'll lead to censorship is just collateral damage. I'm not going to go on a rant about how "evil" this move is or isn't, I'll just say I expected better of Google. Who needs governments to censor the web when Google and Twitter are laying the groundwork for them ?
Exactly. Plug it in and it's a fucking toaster. No more complicated than that. Microsoft are still nowhere near toaster-level ease of use OoBE, but they're closer than any Linux distribution given the undeniable fact that the vast, vast majority of new hardware ships with Windows! Apple are marginally closer with Mac OS but they're still not there either.
Apple's there: it's called the iPad. Toaster level of complexity, UNIX at the core. Everybody with eyes in their head can see it's the future. Of course some geeks don't like it and would rather stick their head in the sand but it (or a butchered version of it, like Windows was a butchered version of a GUI OS) will take over. Oh people will say "It's just a toy" and "I can't get any real work done on it." but that's what people said about the GUI too at the time.
Several million users, most of whom use a free, as in beer, version of the OS. Most of whom are actually proud they don't pay for software but use "free software", in every sense of the word, exclusively. Most of whom have a fanatical attachment to whatever they are using now and are fragmented over several different versions. Yeah, I can just see companies line up to jump into that market ! After all it worked out so well for Corel, Caldera, Linspire, Sun with their Linux version or any of the other abortive attempts to get any kind of paying business out of the Linux desktop market. Frankly I'm surprised Mandriva lasted this long.
There was a time when Android executed every single keystroke you typed as root in the background. No platform can lay claim to being perfect. What matters is exploits that are out there in use in the wild.
So we are once again stuck onthe myth perpetuated by the Apple marketing machine that iOS is secure.
Oh boy, "Apple marketing machine" eh? Queue "imperial march."
Lets disregard that it's been hacked repeatedly and easily
Hardly easily. The first jailbreak admittedly was easy, but take a look at the iOS hackers blogs: jail breaking these things is now crazy hard. Jailbraking now takes multiple exploits and a phone which is physically connected to your system. The latest exploits took months to develop, all the while people are told not to upgrade because the upgrades invariably patch the holes.
Anyway jail breaking is a red herring, what counts is exploits used in the wild. And to the best of my knowledge that's still a big fat 0 for iOS, which is why these articles invariably talk about Android.
and lets also forget the tens of thousands of people who've had there iTunes accounts hacked and been charged for apps they have never downloaded (I know of 3 personally, none of whom ever got their money back)
But yes, the 50 (out of 400,000) malware infected apps are scary.
iTunes is not iOS. They are completely separate products. The security of one has no bearing on the security of the other.
Maybe they'll do that over time but it seems pretty smart to start "small" ramping Siri-users into the millions as iPhone4S's were sold instead of immediately serving hundreds of millions of users by issuing Siri in an OS update. And there's no way the Evi people could have done the same kind of ramp up without resorting to invites or a similar system.
One of those rare movies that managed to fold some social commentary into a good action flick. The other one that pulled it off was Robocop which might even be more apropos.
Skepticism is OK. But you're not applying your skepticism the same way to all your sources, why trust these articles ? Because they're older ? The reverse is true: the Wall Street Journal might have done additional research in the meantime and more official statements may have been made. There's a difference between skepticism and incredulity.
DO you have an actual link of the prosecutor saying that, besides the article? because it doesn't appear in any documents about the Chief executives agreeing to let this happen.
Jeez, the guy himself could whisper it in your ear and you'd still deny it :-)
Like I said in an other comment: we'll never know because they settled out of court and any evidence there was (if any) will now not come out. So Google is de facto innocent. It'll now likely never be proven either way but they'll have to live with the speculation which is the downside of settling instead of fighting I guess.
Prosecutors are always biased. That's the basis of our adversarial justice system.
They also presumably don't even start proceedings against a big corporation like Google without having a case they think has some merit and has evidence to support it.
500 million buys you a lot of lawyering. And presumably they've got a legal department or some firms on retainer already.
Don't get me wrong I'm all for legalization of recreational drugs but I'm not for letting just anyone sell stuff that'll put you on life support if they get their dosages wrong. There's nothing wrong with the pharmaceutical industry that can't be fixed without doing that, all you need is a government with some balls. Basically what you seem to support is complete deregulation which historically has turned out to be detrimental to consumers and a boon to corporate profits.
Oh, well it's not like the prosecutor could be biased in any way...
He could be biased, though I've not heard anyone make that accusation let alone substantiate it. Not even Google, the defendant.
Occams' Razor: What's more likely, that the prosecutor is biased had no case and Google settled out of court anyway for some strange reason, or that the story is closer to what was reported ?
"The war on drugs" is on recreational drugs. We're talking about illegally sold legal substances, medicine, here. But the same argument holds true for illegal recreational drugs too, which is why more forward thinking countries like The Netherlands actually have agencies that will test illegal drugs for you so you can at least have an independent entity confirm what active substances you are using.
Well, it's confirmed by the prosecutor as I've stated in my reply above so it's not like there's a single source for the story. Of course we might never get actual proof because rather than go to court and risk the actual mails becoming a matter of public record brave sir Google ran away and settled for 500 million. Brave, brave sir Google.
All of the information about executives knowing something is affirmed by a single self confessed con artist. What I think is fair to ask for is more confirmation of these affirmations by someone who is not a known liar or would otherwise gain from divulging such information.
And by the prosecutor : "Mr. Page, now Google's chief executive, knew about the illicit conduct, said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who led the multiagency federal task force that conducted the sting."
"People will sell low-quality drugs online, advertising them as even something else entirely!" If you buy drugs online and you don't do a thorough check to make sure the seller is reputable or you're getting what you asked for, then you kind of have it coming to you.
Yes, it would require people to take more responsibility for their actions. But the benefit is that you wouldn't have the government-enforced pharmaceutical monopoly, which I think would benefit consumers far more than these other effects would hurt them.
It doesn't have to because of a scam, it could just be an exotic allergy someone has and the pills could work great for the other 99% of the population. People cannot check this for themselves, that's why in most (all?) developed countries the government has an agency that does it for them and practitioners that can be held accountable to dispense advice. When there's no verification that what's in the box actually corresponds to what's claimed on the box people will get killed. When people can just decide for themselves how to dose or rely an inexpert advice instead of that of a doctor or pharmacist people will get killed. Now you might consider that a reasonable trade-off to get rid of a "government tyranny", I do not.
If you're using a climbing rope or installing a brake part you probably have the expertise to check its quality. Who can test drugs at home ? Most of us aren't chemists. Even if you take the drug and it performs the function you bought it for it still could contain some cheaper active ingredient, or some binding agent, that some people could be allergic to. Drugs are dangerous, even the ones most people would consider harmless, when improperly used.
So you don't trust the con man, how about Google itself :
"Google acknowledged in the settlement that it had improperly and knowingly assisted online pharmacy advertisers allegedly based in Canada to run advertisements for illicit pharmacy sales targeting U.S. customers."
Or the prosecutor :
"Mr. Page, now Google's chief executive, knew about the illicit conduct, said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who led the multiagency federal task force that conducted the sting."
"But the company's ad executives worked with Mr. Whitaker to find a way around Google rules, according to prosecutors and Mr. Whitaker's account."
"The federal task force, which also included the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Criminal Investigation, was preparing criminal charges against the company and its executives for aiding and abetting criminal activity online, prosecutors said."
"Suffice to say this was not two or three rogue employees at the customer service level doing this on their own," said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney. "This was corporate decision to engage in this conduct."
No ? How about the shareholders :
"Six private shareholder lawsuits have so far been filed against Google's executives and board members, alleging they damaged the company by not taking earlier action against the illegal pharmacy ads."
Yes, lets allow everyone to sell drugs over the internet without any oversight or checks whatsoever. What's the worst that could happen, right ?
The wall Street Journal (who wrote the original article) is a pretty reputable source as these things go. So when they write all the same facts and then follow up with :
"Mr. Whitaker, who pleaded guilty and faced a maximum 65-year prison term, was sentenced in December to six years, following what federal prosecutors called "rather extraordinary" cooperation. He is due for release in two years."
I tend to believe it.
So your ethical code is OK with breaking the legal code whenever you feel like it ? I could see the point when talking about individuals and civil disobedience but anyone who thinks it's OK for corporations to ignore the law should have their head examined. It's enough that corporations as an entity are psychopathic and that some actively recruit psychopaths, let's not give them a license to break the law too.
The day will come where consumers get iTired and ditch their iPhones en masse, that is just textbook mass psychology. I presume that this is what MS has been waiting for with their tardy WP7 rollout.
That's what people said about the iPod too.