It is despicable that companies can and do get you to sign away your right to legal redress in the courts if you want to do business with them. I can't think of even one single good reason why that should be a thing that is allowed.
I don't think so. I think they're saying that the upstream servers will be changing how they work, and so over time your equipment will become incompatible with them.
How so? Your clarification matched what I understood from the article, so I'm not seeing the FUD there...
That you're OK with the data collection is fine, more power to you. But a lot of people aren't OK with it at all, regardless of how nice their system may be.
I think their wording was terrible. If you parse out what they actually said, though, it wasn't that they were going to push anything out to existing devices to make them stop working. They were saying that the devices won't get updates required to keep them working as they upgrade the software on their servers.
To a certain degree, it doesn't matter which it was. Your phone is clearly leaking data to somebody, and you probably want to fix that.
If you're running Android and have updated to a reasonably recent version of Google Maps, then that's probably your problem. They added a "feature" to allow this. If that's the cause, they did also add a new option to disable it, or (better) you can disable location services, or (best) you can uninstall the app entirely.
I don't mind ads as long as they're well-behaved. My problem is the tracking that comes with them. There are an awful lot of apps (and websites) that allow you to pay money to disable ads, but the tracking continues to take place anyway.
That's fine -- but in this case, the app is intentionally circumventing the user's express wishes and giving the impression that the user's wishes are being honored.
That's deceptive. An honest app would just refuse to run until you gave it the permissions that it demands. It wouldn't engage in hacks like this.
we take privacy issues very seriously," the spokesperson said. "We work to have our [terms of service and agreements] as current as the law is evolving and often beyond that which may be legally required to protect the privacy of our users."
If you're only doing what's "legally required", then you aren't, in fact, taking privacy issues "very seriously".
When I'm reading docs or explanations that talk about a specific version of something, I find it very helpful to know exactly what version is being referenced. Often, this lets me adapt what the documentation is saying so that it fits the version I have. Knowing precisely where the version sits in the lineage is very helpful for that.
You're correct -- strictly speaking, I could get by without that. However, lacking that reduces my confidence and increases the amount of time and energy required to be sure that I have the correct understanding.
It took me a long time, but I couldn't find anything fancy that didn't come with onerous restrictions like that. So I fell back on tried-and-true old tech: I wired old-school, high quality speakers to old-school good quality amplifiers. The amps are connected to some brick-style fanless computers that I put Linux on, and am using standard software to make everything talk.
I was genuinely surprised that it was so difficult to find acceptable equipment. I'm not even convinced that it exists as a single solution.
The second requires being willing to set your life aside to fight a corporation.
I'm with you in that, generally speaking, the court system in the US is not a viable alternative unless you're wealthy or willing to take on a mind-altering amount of debt.
However, there is an often-overlooked aspect of the court system that can still be of use to normal people: small claims. In small claims, you don't use lawyers, the filing fees are (relatively) small, and lots of large companies won't even bother to fight there, since they'll spend less just accepting the default judgement.
The downside is that there is a monetary limit of what you can be awarded (varies from state to state), and all a judgement in your favor gives you is the legal right to collect. It's still up to you to actually do so, which -- if the other party refuses to pay -- means that you'll have to spend more time and money doing things like getting liens.
But beware: when I updated my sound system, I bought a wireless streaming receiver with the intention of using it to connect speakers wirelessly. I selected the hardware because it claimed to use uPnP.
I suppose, maybe, technically, it does. But it still requires the use of a proprietary smartphone app to make it work. Which means that what I really bought was worthless garbage.
Lesson learned: don't buy any such equipment unless you can verify (personally or through someone you trust) that it is really what it claims to be.
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It is despicable that companies can and do get you to sign away your right to legal redress in the courts if you want to do business with them. I can't think of even one single good reason why that should be a thing that is allowed.
This was one of the reasons why, when I bought my NAS, I specifically looked for one that was running a standard Linux distro.
I don't think so. I think they're saying that the upstream servers will be changing how they work, and so over time your equipment will become incompatible with them.
But can the system be configured and work without having access to the internet? As near as I can tell, it can't.
That makes zero sense.
This is FUD.
How so? Your clarification matched what I understood from the article, so I'm not seeing the FUD there...
That you're OK with the data collection is fine, more power to you. But a lot of people aren't OK with it at all, regardless of how nice their system may be.
I think their wording was terrible. If you parse out what they actually said, though, it wasn't that they were going to push anything out to existing devices to make them stop working. They were saying that the devices won't get updates required to keep them working as they upgrade the software on their servers.
With that much data, I'd be tempted to spring for a high-capacity tape backup system and avoid the hit on my bandwidth.
Google runs Apple's app store now?
To a certain degree, it doesn't matter which it was. Your phone is clearly leaking data to somebody, and you probably want to fix that.
If you're running Android and have updated to a reasonably recent version of Google Maps, then that's probably your problem. They added a "feature" to allow this. If that's the cause, they did also add a new option to disable it, or (better) you can disable location services, or (best) you can uninstall the app entirely.
I don't mind ads as long as they're well-behaved. My problem is the tracking that comes with them. There are an awful lot of apps (and websites) that allow you to pay money to disable ads, but the tracking continues to take place anyway.
Which is part of why VCs are actively harmful to society at large.
In terms of security, I don't think there's much difference between using the browser and using the app.
That's fine -- but in this case, the app is intentionally circumventing the user's express wishes and giving the impression that the user's wishes are being honored.
That's deceptive. An honest app would just refuse to run until you gave it the permissions that it demands. It wouldn't engage in hacks like this.
we take privacy issues very seriously," the spokesperson said. "We work to have our [terms of service and agreements] as current as the law is evolving and often beyond that which may be legally required to protect the privacy of our users."
If you're only doing what's "legally required", then you aren't, in fact, taking privacy issues "very seriously".
When I'm reading docs or explanations that talk about a specific version of something, I find it very helpful to know exactly what version is being referenced. Often, this lets me adapt what the documentation is saying so that it fits the version I have. Knowing precisely where the version sits in the lineage is very helpful for that.
You're correct -- strictly speaking, I could get by without that. However, lacking that reduces my confidence and increases the amount of time and energy required to be sure that I have the correct understanding.
It took me a long time, but I couldn't find anything fancy that didn't come with onerous restrictions like that. So I fell back on tried-and-true old tech: I wired old-school, high quality speakers to old-school good quality amplifiers. The amps are connected to some brick-style fanless computers that I put Linux on, and am using standard software to make everything talk.
I was genuinely surprised that it was so difficult to find acceptable equipment. I'm not even convinced that it exists as a single solution.
My comment was not intended to be sneering, and I apologize that it came off that way. I agree with your comment here, by the way.
Tech should serve people, rather than the other way around
I particularly agree with this. Perhaps where we disagree is what counts as "serving people".
In a comment below, someone claiming to be a lawyer says this would be an unenforceable term. I am also not a lawyer, so I'll defer to that.
That's nice to know!
Yes, I did. Where does it say they're removing functionality?
The second requires being willing to set your life aside to fight a corporation.
I'm with you in that, generally speaking, the court system in the US is not a viable alternative unless you're wealthy or willing to take on a mind-altering amount of debt.
However, there is an often-overlooked aspect of the court system that can still be of use to normal people: small claims. In small claims, you don't use lawyers, the filing fees are (relatively) small, and lots of large companies won't even bother to fight there, since they'll spend less just accepting the default judgement.
The downside is that there is a monetary limit of what you can be awarded (varies from state to state), and all a judgement in your favor gives you is the legal right to collect. It's still up to you to actually do so, which -- if the other party refuses to pay -- means that you'll have to spend more time and money doing things like getting liens.
Yes, uPnP (formerly DLNA).
But beware: when I updated my sound system, I bought a wireless streaming receiver with the intention of using it to connect speakers wirelessly. I selected the hardware because it claimed to use uPnP.
I suppose, maybe, technically, it does. But it still requires the use of a proprietary smartphone app to make it work. Which means that what I really bought was worthless garbage.
Lesson learned: don't buy any such equipment unless you can verify (personally or through someone you trust) that it is really what it claims to be.
Exactly.
There are certain terms that strongly hint that you probably don't want to buy the product or service. "Cloud" or "internet connected" is among them.
This.
Sonos wants in on the whole "big data" gold rush. The advent of Big Data has been a huge step backward for us all.