That there is any carrier lockdown at all is a pretty hilarious illustration of just how much some companies don't get it.
It's not a binary thing. My Desire has some level of lockdown, which essentially means I'd have to root it to have full control over the firmware/OS, but I can install any app I like. It has some bloatware that I can't remove, but isn't intrusive enough to bother me.
Whether to root it, or whether to buy something more open, is a matter of risk, reward, and cost.
It's cheaper for me to buy this locked down model than to buy a fully open phone. The cost in terms of time/effort, plus the risk of bricking it, don't justify the extra functionality I'd get by rooting it.
this could be solved requesting the lock passkey/password/pattern before installing (no needed when updating), that way you can lend your phone to anybody and they will not be able to install any spying tool
Most people seem to be focussing on the jealous spouse as the potential installer.
I think most spouses would be able to shoulder-surf their other half's phone lock pattern.
My Android phone has a checkbox in the settings to control whether apps can be installed other than from the marketplace.
If it's configured to allow it, installing is just a matter of launching a package file.
What's significant is that inclusion in the marketplace could be perceived as some kind of minimal Google "blessing", which of course Google doesn't want to be seen to give, in this case.
Try telling my mom that. Or my girlfriend. Good luck! Wave was pointless because you had to get people to use it, and they didn't have any good way to do that. If they had pitched it as the next great social network where they wouldn't rape your mom then they could have got people to sign up,
These would be good points if: (a) Wave was a social network - it isn't (b) It was aimed at your mom (or my mum) - it wasn't
Her school is crazy about any photos of the teachers online and a few have been fired for something as simple as a photo of the teacher *holding* a beer bottle in a pic. It's insane and while I don't agree with the school, what can you do?
*This* is the problem, and it should be fixed in law, not by Facebook/Flickr/etc. Drinking beer (just an example) is perfectly acceptable behaviour, sharing photographs of your friends doing so is perfectly acceptable too. These are simply not reasonable grounds for firing someone -- nor for any other issues at work.
In Europe, the employer wouldn't get away with it. Americans might not be comfortable with the level of employee protection we get here (it seems that as long as you call it Freedom, people are happy to get screwed by The Man), but they should campaign for some reasonable minimums.
I've known UK teachers ask to have photos untagged because it might undermine their position as an authority figure (in some schools, teachers have to adopt a persona in order to maintain order); but it's never been a matter of their job being at risk.
I have a friend who's a software engineer and was gleefully using Google's location feature that sends pings everywhere you go. Now, this is someone who *should* know better.
Perhaps they've thought about the implications, and don't care. I'm personally quite happy to see photos of myself drunk at parties on the public internet (Flickr pictures visible to everyone) but publishing my location in real time makes me feel a little queasy. And yet it's not for any tangible reason. I don't think burglary etc. is a realistic threat.
I suppose it's that if I were to stream my location, it would set a precedent such that if one day I want to go off-the-radar (I dunno, some traumatic personal episode. Abortion clinic? Court?) people would wonder why.
But perhaps your engineer friend has thought about these things, and genuinely is comfortable with the implications.
BTW doesn't Latitude let you limit the info to specific contacts?
He became an instant billionaire by selling what is basically personal web pages that broadcast updates automatically.
Tesla did more for humanity and he died penniless.
Excuse me, I'm having an attack of mumbling "Bullshit!"
You can mumble "bullshit" all you like; he became rich by creating something people wanted. It's not the first time "worthy" and "profitable" failed to overlap, and it won't be the last.
Wave was a bit like Etherpad. OK that's three syllables.
But never mind, imagine Etherpad -- you are typing into a text area; so is someone else on another browser; you can see each other's edits. The document is persistent. If nobody else is there, you can still work on it. If others are working on it, you needn't stop.
Now imagine that as well as that, you can "reply" to a text window by creating a new one below it. Just like this Slashdot reply. That reply is also group-editable.
Now imagine that it's rich text, and can have embedded HTML widgets, like maps, images etc. There's an API so that anyone can develop a widget.
And that, in a nutshell, is Wave.
A typical use case might be that you're collaborating on some sort of document. For example, let's say you're writing a press release; or planning a holiday; or a party; or architecting some software. You'd treat one text area as the press release -- everyone makes changes as they see fit. There is a change history, annotated with who made the changes. Below that, it's a forum-like discussion of what's going on. Except you can see the forum update in real-time, as if it was IM. If you join late, or if you go away and come back again, everything's there.
The other bonus, is that it has support for robot agents -- with all the editing powers of a human user, but working through an API. Their standard spellcheck worked this way -- it would watch the conversation, notice misspelt words, and update the message on the fly with HTML to implement a spelling correction pulldown. Google had robot agents that did all kinds of things: live translation, Eliza, etc. and again, any developer could write their own.
I remember after looking at the demo, thinking how painful it might have been to actually use in the real world.
The difficult bit was "Hey we'll use Wave... Oh you're not on Wave? I'll have to send you an invite, and then we can wait a few days, and maybe you'll get an invite, and then you'll get a signup link from Google, and then we can start using it..." multiplied by as many people you wanted to collaborate with.
Once you were on, it was easy and pretty self-explanatory.
It was a threaded BBS, much like the Slashdot comments system; and you could use it exactly that way.... except that if someone else was typing as you were looking, you could see them writing it live... and you could modify other people's comments (with history and annotation)... and there were plugins for rich media such as photos, sketches, maps, polls, etc.
It was good. But that issue of getting people on board was serious enough to kill it.
The other issue was that it was a complex GWT app that put a lot of strain on the browser. Performance improved toward the end of its life, but by then many people had made up their minds.
What, you think being a prostitute is popular because these women like to have sex?
Oo-hoo, what a tangent!
1. Is being a prostitute "popular"? 2. I'm sure there are lots women working as prostitutes, who don't enjoy it but can find no alternative. 3.... but they wouldn't be the only people in the world who don't enjoy their job 4. Yet equally, some people enjoy their jobs, and they tend to be the ones who are best at it 5. So I bet there's women working as prostitutes who have alternatives, but enjoy the sex (as well as the money) and are good at it
I have never been a prostitute's client, but if I were to, and I could afford it, I'd want it to be one who enjoyed her work.
(OTOH I believe there are men who get off on the exploitation and misogyny)
google should have marketed it as an IM which had additional features, or as a facebook replacement with same. Instead they tried to advertise all it could do and confused people.
But it was really neither of those things. It was nothing like Facebook. IM was a secondary feature.
It was a BBS with Etherpad-like collaborative editing; which could segue into an IM-like realtime experience if two users happened to be on the same Wave at the same time.... and it had a plugin architecture that so that you could communicate using more than just text. (sketches, maps, polls etc.)
Let's say Alice knows Bob, Alice knows Carol, Carol does not know Bob.
If Bob publishes a photo of Alice, and tags it as her, then yes, Carol can see the picture by default.
Alice can prevent this (by setting the privacy settings for "Things others share/Photos and videos I'm tagged in"), and she can limit it by friend-type. I have it set to "Friends only, except Limited Profile".
Now, if Alice publishes a photo of Carol, then of course both Bob and Carol can see the photo, even though Bob doesn't know Carol. This is regardless of any tagging, and I don't see how it could be prevented, unless we're to say we're opposed to anyone ever putting personal photos on the Internet.
You can be fired for showing up at work early, because you boss doesn't like the color of your shoes, or just for the heck of it.
This is most certainly not the case in the United Kingdom, and if it's true of the US, it makes me think your legal framework is more than a little backward. Here, there's a short list of fair reasons for dismissal (misconduct, inability to do the job, redundancy etc.) and if the employer can't demonstrate one of those, they can't dismiss you.
OTOH I have seen American colleagues have their employment ended on a whim on several occasions, so nothing surprises me.
Still, the answer is to campaign to firm up your employment law, not spend your life trying to hide stuff from your boss.
Facebook is the first stop after Google for HR people. It is possible to make many innocent comments or jokes that an HR person may not like and decide to see that you never get the job.
Even with the default settings, I don't think an arbitrary person can see your comments or jokes. This HR person would need to get you to add her, or, for a more limited view of you, get added by a mutual friend. That seems like quite a stretch.
Of course, you can set it up so that anyone can see everything about you -- but that would be your choice.
Except that these days going to the pub while on vacation and having a photo show up is enough to get you sacked from your teaching job.
The solution is so simple though - don't use facebook.
Not in any part of the world with reasonable employment laws.
I've seen the story you're referring to, and it seems to me that once it pans out, she should have her job back and some compensation too. Also it seems to me that it's an outlier situation -- if it was common it wouldn't be newsworthy.
The solution to this kind of thing is *not* to start getting furtive about perfectly innocent activities. It's to stand up for our rights. That woman has an absolute right to share pictures of herself with a beer, and to keep her job.
You can categorise your contacts into groups which you can think of as ACLs. These are entirely under your control, and you'd probably have groups like "very close friends", "close family", "extended family", "acquaintances" etc. Those are the ones I was talking about, and no, nobody else can modify them.
The other kind is something more like a newsgroup. They'd have names more like "Penweddig Comprehensive School Alumni", and yes there are various options about who can join, which are configurable by the creator. You might choose to have it completely open, or allow any member to invite people, keep admin rights for yourself only, or add additional admins.
I'd suggest that *probably* Facebook isn't the right medium for this rubber pee party fetish group of yours.
The things you do with one set of friends is not necessarily something you want known to another set or with your family, etc. But with Facebook, the only way to accomplish this is to not use Facebook in the first place.
No, this can be accomplished using Facebook's "groups" feature.
Or instead of Doritos you're drinking a beer and then you get fired.
That looks like a cut and dried case of unfair dismissal.
Either that or there's more to the story than the article gives us. (e.g. it's some wacky religious school where the contract stipulates no drinking even outside work)
Slashdot Mirror
There could be many legit uses of the app, for example parents have a right to check the messages of their kids if they want to.
A legal right? A moral right?
I'm not sure about either.
That there is any carrier lockdown at all is a pretty hilarious illustration of just how much some companies don't get it.
It's not a binary thing. My Desire has some level of lockdown, which essentially means I'd have to root it to have full control over the firmware/OS, but I can install any app I like. It has some bloatware that I can't remove, but isn't intrusive enough to bother me.
Whether to root it, or whether to buy something more open, is a matter of risk, reward, and cost.
It's cheaper for me to buy this locked down model than to buy a fully open phone. The cost in terms of time/effort, plus the risk of bricking it, don't justify the extra functionality I'd get by rooting it.
this could be solved requesting the lock passkey/password/pattern before installing (no needed when updating), that way you can lend your phone to anybody and they will not be able to install any spying tool
Most people seem to be focussing on the jealous spouse as the potential installer.
I think most spouses would be able to shoulder-surf their other half's phone lock pattern.
I wonder if the real reason is because someone without a good texting plan would go over the number of messages allowed and get a big bill?
Ooh, as the attacker, you wouldn't want it to send the CCs as SMS messages. Those would show up on the itemised bill and you'd get rumbled.
No, you'd send them over a TCP/IP based protocol, and you'd use a queue in case there's no internet at that moment.
Facebook openly sells its data to advertisers. Where are you coming from?
Aggregated statistical data, keywords for directing ads, sure.
Photographs? I'd like to see evidence for this.
There goes all the fuel behind the "Google's App Store is completely open" argument.
Google's app store has never been completely open AFAIK.
However, you don't need to root your phone in order to install apps from sources other than the app store (on most Android handsets).
My Android phone has a checkbox in the settings to control whether apps can be installed other than from the marketplace.
If it's configured to allow it, installing is just a matter of launching a package file.
What's significant is that inclusion in the marketplace could be perceived as some kind of minimal Google "blessing", which of course Google doesn't want to be seen to give, in this case.
Try telling my mom that. Or my girlfriend. Good luck! Wave was pointless because you had to get people to use it, and they didn't have any good way to do that. If they had pitched it as the next great social network where they wouldn't rape your mom then they could have got people to sign up,
These would be good points if:
(a) Wave was a social network - it isn't
(b) It was aimed at your mom (or my mum) - it wasn't
No, the data is no longer free as in beer. It's available to anyone willing to pay Facebook for it.
Source? Or is this baseless speculation?
Her school is crazy about any photos of the teachers online and a few have been fired for something as simple as a photo of the teacher *holding* a beer bottle in a pic. It's insane and while I don't agree with the school, what can you do?
*This* is the problem, and it should be fixed in law, not by Facebook/Flickr/etc. Drinking beer (just an example) is perfectly acceptable behaviour, sharing photographs of your friends doing so is perfectly acceptable too. These are simply not reasonable grounds for firing someone -- nor for any other issues at work.
In Europe, the employer wouldn't get away with it. Americans might not be comfortable with the level of employee protection we get here (it seems that as long as you call it Freedom, people are happy to get screwed by The Man), but they should campaign for some reasonable minimums.
I've known UK teachers ask to have photos untagged because it might undermine their position as an authority figure (in some schools, teachers have to adopt a persona in order to maintain order); but it's never been a matter of their job being at risk.
I have a friend who's a software engineer and was gleefully using Google's location feature that sends pings everywhere you go. Now, this is someone who *should* know better.
Perhaps they've thought about the implications, and don't care. I'm personally quite happy to see photos of myself drunk at parties on the public internet (Flickr pictures visible to everyone) but publishing my location in real time makes me feel a little queasy. And yet it's not for any tangible reason. I don't think burglary etc. is a realistic threat.
I suppose it's that if I were to stream my location, it would set a precedent such that if one day I want to go off-the-radar (I dunno, some traumatic personal episode. Abortion clinic? Court?) people would wonder why.
But perhaps your engineer friend has thought about these things, and genuinely is comfortable with the implications.
BTW doesn't Latitude let you limit the info to specific contacts?
No, he didn't.
He became an instant billionaire by selling what is basically personal web pages that broadcast updates automatically.
Tesla did more for humanity and he died penniless.
Excuse me, I'm having an attack of mumbling "Bullshit!"
You can mumble "bullshit" all you like; he became rich by creating something people wanted. It's not the first time "worthy" and "profitable" failed to overlap, and it won't be the last.
Just look at the dominant languages in Google: not C++ or C. Not serious languages.
Google only normally permits their developers to commit C++, Java, Python and Javascript to their source tree.
(maybe now Go as well)
Without being snide about Javascript (since it's fairly obvious why they use it), which of these is not a serious language?
Wave was a bit like Etherpad. OK that's three syllables.
But never mind, imagine Etherpad -- you are typing into a text area; so is someone else on another browser; you can see each other's edits. The document is persistent. If nobody else is there, you can still work on it. If others are working on it, you needn't stop.
Now imagine that as well as that, you can "reply" to a text window by creating a new one below it. Just like this Slashdot reply. That reply is also group-editable.
Now imagine that it's rich text, and can have embedded HTML widgets, like maps, images etc. There's an API so that anyone can develop a widget.
And that, in a nutshell, is Wave.
A typical use case might be that you're collaborating on some sort of document. For example, let's say you're writing a press release; or planning a holiday; or a party; or architecting some software. You'd treat one text area as the press release -- everyone makes changes as they see fit. There is a change history, annotated with who made the changes. Below that, it's a forum-like discussion of what's going on. Except you can see the forum update in real-time, as if it was IM. If you join late, or if you go away and come back again, everything's there.
The other bonus, is that it has support for robot agents -- with all the editing powers of a human user, but working through an API. Their standard spellcheck worked this way -- it would watch the conversation, notice misspelt words, and update the message on the fly with HTML to implement a spelling correction pulldown. Google had robot agents that did all kinds of things: live translation, Eliza, etc. and again, any developer could write their own.
I remember after looking at the demo, thinking how painful it might have been to actually use in the real world.
The difficult bit was "Hey we'll use Wave... Oh you're not on Wave? I'll have to send you an invite, and then we can wait a few days, and maybe you'll get an invite, and then you'll get a signup link from Google, and then we can start using it..." multiplied by as many people you wanted to collaborate with.
Once you were on, it was easy and pretty self-explanatory.
It was a threaded BBS, much like the Slashdot comments system; and you could use it exactly that way. ... except that if someone else was typing as you were looking, you could see them writing it live... and you could modify other people's comments (with history and annotation)... and there were plugins for rich media such as photos, sketches, maps, polls, etc.
It was good. But that issue of getting people on board was serious enough to kill it.
The other issue was that it was a complex GWT app that put a lot of strain on the browser. Performance improved toward the end of its life, but by then many people had made up their minds.
What, you think being a prostitute is popular because these women like to have sex?
Oo-hoo, what a tangent!
1. Is being a prostitute "popular"? ... but they wouldn't be the only people in the world who don't enjoy their job
2. I'm sure there are lots women working as prostitutes, who don't enjoy it but can find no alternative.
3.
4. Yet equally, some people enjoy their jobs, and they tend to be the ones who are best at it
5. So I bet there's women working as prostitutes who have alternatives, but enjoy the sex (as well as the money) and are good at it
I have never been a prostitute's client, but if I were to, and I could afford it, I'd want it to be one who enjoyed her work.
(OTOH I believe there are men who get off on the exploitation and misogyny)
google should have marketed it as an IM which had additional features, or as a facebook replacement with same. Instead they tried to advertise all it could do and confused people.
But it was really neither of those things. It was nothing like Facebook. IM was a secondary feature.
It was a BBS with Etherpad-like collaborative editing; which could segue into an IM-like realtime experience if two users happened to be on the same Wave at the same time. ... and it had a plugin architecture that so that you could communicate using more than just text. (sketches, maps, polls etc.)
I'm not sure what you're saying here.
Let's say Alice knows Bob, Alice knows Carol, Carol does not know Bob.
If Bob publishes a photo of Alice, and tags it as her, then yes, Carol can see the picture by default.
Alice can prevent this (by setting the privacy settings for "Things others share/Photos and videos I'm tagged in"), and she can limit it by friend-type. I have it set to "Friends only, except Limited Profile".
Now, if Alice publishes a photo of Carol, then of course both Bob and Carol can see the photo, even though Bob doesn't know Carol. This is regardless of any tagging, and I don't see how it could be prevented, unless we're to say we're opposed to anyone ever putting personal photos on the Internet.
In most states, employment is "at will".
You can be fired for showing up at work early, because you boss doesn't like the color of your shoes, or just for the heck of it.
This is most certainly not the case in the United Kingdom, and if it's true of the US, it makes me think your legal framework is more than a little backward. Here, there's a short list of fair reasons for dismissal (misconduct, inability to do the job, redundancy etc.) and if the employer can't demonstrate one of those, they can't dismiss you.
OTOH I have seen American colleagues have their employment ended on a whim on several occasions, so nothing surprises me.
Still, the answer is to campaign to firm up your employment law, not spend your life trying to hide stuff from your boss.
Facebook is the first stop after Google for HR people. It is possible to make many innocent comments or jokes that an HR person may not like and decide to see that you never get the job.
Even with the default settings, I don't think an arbitrary person can see your comments or jokes. This HR person would need to get you to add her, or, for a more limited view of you, get added by a mutual friend. That seems like quite a stretch.
Of course, you can set it up so that anyone can see everything about you -- but that would be your choice.
Except that these days going to the pub while on vacation and having a photo show up is enough to get you sacked from your teaching job.
The solution is so simple though - don't use facebook.
Not in any part of the world with reasonable employment laws.
I've seen the story you're referring to, and it seems to me that once it pans out, she should have her job back and some compensation too. Also it seems to me that it's an outlier situation -- if it was common it wouldn't be newsworthy.
The solution to this kind of thing is *not* to start getting furtive about perfectly innocent activities. It's to stand up for our rights. That woman has an absolute right to share pictures of herself with a beer, and to keep her job.
Aha, unfortunately "group" is an overloaded term.
You can categorise your contacts into groups which you can think of as ACLs. These are entirely under your control, and you'd probably have groups like "very close friends", "close family", "extended family", "acquaintances" etc. Those are the ones I was talking about, and no, nobody else can modify them.
The other kind is something more like a newsgroup. They'd have names more like "Penweddig Comprehensive School Alumni", and yes there are various options about who can join, which are configurable by the creator. You might choose to have it completely open, or allow any member to invite people, keep admin rights for yourself only, or add additional admins.
I'd suggest that *probably* Facebook isn't the right medium for this rubber pee party fetish group of yours.
The things you do with one set of friends is not necessarily something you want known to another set or with your family, etc. But with Facebook, the only way to accomplish this is to not use Facebook in the first place.
No, this can be accomplished using Facebook's "groups" feature.
Before Janet joined Facebook, what was preventing your comment from reaching her out-of-band?
Information can easily leak from Facebook into good old fashioned gossip.
Or instead of Doritos you're drinking a beer and then you get fired.
That looks like a cut and dried case of unfair dismissal.
Either that or there's more to the story than the article gives us. (e.g. it's some wacky religious school where the contract stipulates no drinking even outside work)