Yes: to be able to use a non-3G iPad to connect to the Internet via a Bluetooth modem or something that plugs into the bottom of the device. You can't do that anywhere.
That's a part of the OS. If you can't do it, it probably means that you're in the US,
You can't do that anywhere.
- custom touch keyboards
This would be nice, but it wouldn't exactly be an app. It would be replacing driver-level components. There are serious pros and cons to allowing this no a platform.
There's nothing "driver-level" about it, not even on iOS. The reason Apple restricts it is because of branding: they want you to have their user experience, not someone else's. Also, iOS doesn't have the security architecture to deal with this securely.
- non-Apple music and video stores
Has any music store tried to write apps?
And have what happened to Google and Adobe companies happen to them? What's the point?
Rhapsody is very much like a store--you can download the music and then play it offline.
Yes, a cumbersome, non-integrated, separate offering. And its business model is no threat to Apple. As long as it's cumbersome enough and doesn't threaten Apple's revenue stream, they'll approve it.
- in-device software development
Why would you want this, out of curiosity?
Scientific data analysis, among other things.
It seems like developing with a touchscreen device would be annoying.
It's not that hard to type on the iPad, you don't need to type much, and you can use Bluetooth keyboards. Also, there are special touch-based development tools.
- WiFi music sync
This would be very nice. If you Jailbreak your phone, you can buy an app that does this. There's no damned good reason for Apple to not develop this officially.
Well, it's just one of many bad decisions Apple has made; that's why Apple shouldn't be able to limited what runs on the phone: no single company is smart enough to make these decisions. Apple is just too arrogant for its own good.
- on-device file management
Files? What are files?
With iOS, Apple is trying to make a simple, yet powerful device. They are trying to abstract away the concept of files. Any app can let you manage its own data files however the developer wishes.
In different words, every app has its own file manager (and often web browser and E-mail client), and they are all inconsistent and a mess to use. Other platforms have the notion of "files" not because people want them, but because nobody has come up with something better.
Apple's pretending that files don't exist on the platform when they actually do means that even trivial operations, like getting a file in the web browser and then using it in some other operation, often don't work right; they also mean that the same file exists in multiple copies in multiple locations.
- full synchronization and backup with box.net
What does this mean exactly? Full backup? Of what? Apps and app data?
box.net, from my glance at the website, looks like just a file dump. Kinda like dropbox. Is it more than that?
No, it's not "more than that". It's a place where I can put my presentations and files that I work on and access them from anywhere and any machine. There is nothing like that for iOS. Apple actually recognizes the importance of this, which is why they are creating their own offering, but like many Apple offerings, it doesn't work well with other platforms (and it will likely be expensive).
Has anyone actually said you couldn't do this now? I know at least on the iPad you can use bluetooth keyboards.
We are talking about soft, on-screen keyboards. Apple doesn't allow third party on-screen keyboards, and Apple's on-screen keyboard is a usability disaster.
Public broadcasts would be streaming to a web page for all to see?
Which part of "public" and "broadcast" do you not understand?
This was people sitting in city, suburbia, connected to a webpage, email, yahoo and having their packets collected without their understanding or approval.
Yes, it was.
Just like a telco site, military server or any encrypted networking.
No, not "just like" at all. Those kinds of servers and networking don't broadcast; you need to actually intrude into them using active measures: tapping into a line, transmitting data at them, etc.
They still have the legal protection of networking laws in some parts of the world, no encryption needed, expensive hardware ect.
Yes, some countries give them "legal protection"; those laws are bad laws. Passive reception of the electromagnetic spectrum from a public location should not be illegal.
There is also nothing "expensive" about the hardware; every standards-compliant piece of WiFi hardware has encryption built in.
What exactly do you think those laws accomplish? They don't make anybody any safer.
Google recorded unencrypted WiFi packets and took pictures on public streets. There is nothing "shady" about that, allegedly or otherwise. They shouldn't have to ask permission to do that, nor should they have to answer to anybody for it.
I'm not even making any statements about the morality or legality of Google's actions.
Well, but I am: what they did was certainly moral, and it was probably legal in the US.
Google does plenty of things that are of concern from a privacy point of view; this is not one of them. Anybody concerned with civil liberties and democracy should firmly defend Google's right to do what they did.
A major corporation fibs to the government about their shady acts?
There is nothing "shady" about what Google did, nor have they "fibbed" about it. In fact, Google shouldn't even be asked about this.
What is shady is the way governments have been using this for political gain.
Particularly shady has been the behavior of the German government, who not only has been lying through their teeth about what happened, but also is using Google as an excuse to undermine basic data protection principles.
But, hey, it's not like German governments ever did anything bad with private data, right?
No, because writing the spec doesn't affect anybody's privacy, implementing it does. The fact that Apple and others are implementing the spec tells you that there is broad agreement that this is useful.
Besides, this is nothing new: applications, phone companies, and governments have been able to determine your location from your cell phone for years now. The fact that Google does it too now, and that it becomes accessible to web applications, doesn't make the situation significantly different.
I'm tired of Google being painted as the bad guys here. All they did was receive unencrypted, public broadcasts. That should not be illegal. In fact, it probably is not illegal in the US.
If you don't want people to listen to your WiFi packets, encrypt them. Don't abuse the court system or the police to cover up for your own incompetence.
Apple allow non-Apple music and video solutions - they allow e.g. spotify, wimp, netflix and many more.
They don't allow me to connect to an online music or video store and buy music there that I can then play in the regular music play.
Their real goal is to avoid development environments that abstracts away their platform - and target the lowest common denominator, and won't give access to new iOS features when available.
Well, we have had cross-platform tollkits and smartphones for more than a decade, and that sort of thing just doesn't happen. The only major platform (Java) to attempt a lowest-common denominator approach paid for it with failing miserably on the client. Successful cross-platform tools let you abstract what works across platforms and then let you add conditional support for advanced features on each platform.
On the other side, the quality of the apps is higher
Higher than what? What does that even mean? There are tons of high quality apps for all major mobile platforms, and there are tons of stinkers on iPhone/iPad.
and I prefer a phone experience with no flash.
Well, you can choose not to use it on other platforms. I like to have the option.
What scares me more than their technical requirements, is their content censoring [gizmodo.com]. I don't want a walled, Disney-like "think of the children!" world.
But their censorship is made possible through their control of the applications.
against Adobe's Flash-to-iPhone compiler as part of Apple's broader effort to keep third-party meta-platforms from eroding the user experience and stifling innovation as developers become reliant upon them to roll out support for new features introduced by Apple
Translation: "... Apple's broader effort against a fair and competitive market place, and their attempts to translate their early lead into a monopoly".
What they are afraid of is people using non-Apple music and video stores and people creating applications that also work on Android. And in doing so, Apple stifles innovation and manages to extract more money out of people's pockets.
Oh, I don't knpw...let me think: I probably wouldn't post it to the internet and protect the identity of the person who emailed it to me at all costs.
Well, fortunately, other people actually have a sense of moral responsibility and weigh the facts before they make such decisions.
And because we live in a democracy and a free society, these people have fairly significant legal protections to do so, because people in free and democratic societies realize that governments are not inerrant and that their societies only remain free and democratic if citizens show moral responsibility, courage, and vigilance.
In free and democratic societies, an individual deciding on his or her own to leak classified information is a subversion of that very democratic process. In the US, we have collectively decided, as a society, that some information should be kept secret, even from The People, and we have empowered and entrusted the government with the power to do so.
In a free and democratic society, citizens have responsibilities. Those responsibilities include refusing unlawful orders when they are in the military. If you obey an unlawful order, you may actually be committing a crime.
Your own personal view on whether something should or shouldn't be classified is irrelevant. There are well-known and established processes that govern classification.
Your personal view is very much relevant, because that's the ultimate arbiter for determining whether you should obey an order or not. That doesn't mean that merely believing that an order is unlawful necessarily gets you off the hook, but following orders (including classification) is not automatically legal or safe (let alone moral).
If you read Manning's side of the story, he believed he had been ordered to manipulate documents in a way that resulted in innocent people being thrown in prison. He also believed that the US was trying to conceal crimes. He may or may not have been right in his assessments, and that may or may not be sufficient as a defense, but it is certainly not as clearcut as you seem to think it is--in particular because we live in a "free and democratic society".
Or, for any reasonable alternative other than any and all information should always be able to be indiscriminately leaked without fear of reprisal.
Who, other than you, has said that "all information should always be able to be indiscriminately leaked without fear of reprisal"? How does what Manning did or what Wikileaks is doing possibly fall under such a heading? Manning and Wikileaks may or may not be right in what they are doing, but they are doing it out of conviction, they are not doing it "indiscriminately", and they are certainly not doing it "without fear of reprisals".
I hope for intelligent responses to this post that actually acknowledge the need for some information to be protected
Of course, some information needs to be protected. Your problem is that you argue as if (1) you can trust the government completely, and (2) being in the military absolves people from personal, moral, and legal responsibility. Both are clearly wrong. I mean, have you slept through the last decade of politics? Have you not read your history about war crimes trials?
It's people like you who are a threat to our free and democratic society. And your glib, straw-man dismissal of the risks and motivations of the people who leak documents makes you a rotten human being in my opinion.
Except that it will be released as an open standard.
So, Apple ignores existing standards, puts together some protocol out of existing technologies, including the patented h.264, builds a proprietary product around it, and then promises to release what they call an "open standard" some time in the future. Pardon me for not getting excited.
But, hey, that way you can keep thinking anything Apple does is evil.
No, not everything Apple does is evil, just some of the things they do. And not everything they do is technically inferior, just some of the things they do.
Wouldn't want to have your preconceptions challenged, would you now?
No preconceptions, just business as usual for Apple.
Like they said in the keynote, this isn't some new idea, this is a "vision of the future" that predates Apple
Gosh, you mean like this people have already been able to use on their Nokia phones for quite a while? The latest software to support it is Skype/Fring (but it's been available for others before):
Not to mention that Apple's version of it will probably be about as simple as making a phone call.
Yeah, and it will probably only let you talk to other iPhone users. But, hey, that way you can maintain your illusion that this is something new or unique to Apple. Wouldn't want to have your preconceptions challenged, would you now.
It's revolutionary when someone else fails to start a revolution with their idea and it just languishes until you take it up and start a revolution in the industry with it.
In what sense of the word has that technology been "languishing"? Other phones have had multitasking, high-resolution cameras and screens, and front-facing video cameras for years and continue to be shipping at many times the volume of Apple's shipments (and a fraction of the price).
Front-facing camera, video conferencing, HD recording, multitasking all have been around for a while. 960x640 at 326ppi is not different in any practical sense from the 800x480 272ppi screens found on many other phones; the oddball resolution is probably mainly a concession to lack of resolution independence in many iPhone apps, allowing for simple pixel-doubling (hello, Palm!).
This device is a nice upgrade for iPhone users, but it just gives them parity with other smartphones, nothing more.
Yes, you did not give consent for Google to record your WLAN. Yes, one can make that illegal. Yes, it may be illegal in Germany. Why do you keep repeating that? We know all that.
Wants the open hotspot details, saves your data as it is transmitted and keeps it- not fine.
And why is it not fine? Do you think laws should just be made based on your gut feeling? Or the gut feeling of the German masses? Is that your understanding of democracy?
I think laws need to be justified based on their utility, their risks, precedent, analogy, and their effect on democracy. I have yet to see any justification for what Germany is doing.
You type in you address and if the images are there, they'll pop up. There are two things that make it not quite like Streetview. (1) The coverage is not there yet because many people don't have GPS in their cameras yet, but that's not a technological restriction. (2) The images aren't integrated across views, but that is unrelated to the privacy concerns. You keep talking about. For the purposes of the privacy issues, this technology is equivalent to Streetview. Anything you could possibly be concerned about in Streetview you can be concerned about in Flickr map search.
Anything going beyond that is putting words in my mouth and ascribing positions to me that I haven't taken.
I'm not putting words in your mouth, I'm trying to get you to take a clear position. Instead you hide behind vague innuendo with words like "issue". It's the same kind of FUD that governments use to push their anti-data-protection agendas.
Bottom line; I said that I considered Google's large-scale, consistent data gathering to be different- in *effect*- to disparate, uncoordinated data gathering by random people.
No, you did not just say that it was "different in effect", you said that it was "an issue" (your words, in bold). The term "issue" means more than just being "different in effect", you're implying that there is a problem that needs a solution.
So, what is the "issue"? Who is (negatively) affected by the "issue" and how? How do you want this "issue" addressed? Is it feasible to address it?
The need to have clear network intrusion laws and prevent public/private database sharing.
Well, such laws exist in the US. That's why it takes a court order in the US to get at private data. It's also why so many people use Google in the US.
In Germany, some administrator can simply decide he wants Google's data and get it without a court order.
The problem here isn't Google, the problem is German laws and the German government.
Google has the data,
Yes, Google has the data: they have the addresses, E-mails, search histories, and documents of hundreds of millions of people. Gathering WLAN data doesn't give them anything they don't already get in a much better form.
What allows people to use services like Google is a certain degree of trust that Google will not just give up this data to the government for data mining purposes.
The German government has broken this trust because, apparently, in Germany, the executive branch can simply obtain data of millions of Germans, data it contends is private.
They have to enforce German law, law that Google was expected to follow and gave every indication of understanding.
It is far from clear that German law is what the data protection agency says it is. In particular, considering unencrypted WLAN data to be "private" is inconsistent other rules and regulations holding people responsible for using unencrypted WLAN data.
A vital issue to take up, speak out about, but does not clarify what Google was doing around the world with other peoples data.
What Google was doing with the WLAN packets is pretty clear to anybody working with networks, and Google collecting this data doesn't affect either your privacy or security in any way.
(There are things Google shouldn't be doing (e.g., using web bugs, third party cookies, etc.), but everybody uses those and has to use them in order to stay competitive. That's where we need some legislation.)
The German government and EU direction in data access laws and storage are going to be very very bad, but how does that undo Googles data gathering issues?
I don't see what "data gathering issues" there are supposed to be. Google stores people's data on their behalf and with their consent; that's an inevitable part of the services they offer. Any other company that offers the same services is going to retain the same data. They aren't "gathering" this data, they are getting it shipped to them voluntarily by the boatload. And they are going to get this data even if you don't subscribe to them directly. Microsoft, Yahoo, Telekom, and lots of other companies do as well. Unless you go back to using an Apple 2 and quit the Internet, that's inevitable.
The issue is that in Europe, this data isn't sufficiently protected from access by the government. That's the real data protection issue in Europe, and Google has no influence over it. In fact, the demonization of Google is a convenient political distraction by European governments, allowing them to pass horrendous privacy-invading data-sharing legislation because they have successfully neutralized one of the major forces that traditionally opposes them, the online service providers themselves.
Go back and read my original post. I was criticising the implication that small-scale data gathering is the same as Google's large-scale system, and that because the former wasn't a big deal, we should disregard the latter because it was the same.
We've already seen that that argument is bogus: small-scale data gathering is the same as Google's large-scale system because sharing this data on the web makes the distinction irrelevant. If a billion people upload geolocated snapshots to a thousand photo sharing sites, that's Streetview, and that's what's happening.
is that it will be used in conjunction with other technologies to do that- however, I already acknowledged that when I said "I think it's possible that technology will make that doable sooner rather than later").
No, not "sooner rather than later", it's now. And there is no new "technology" there, it's the sharing, crawling, and searching thousands of companies have been doing for years. The only thing that's new is that there are better algorithms for using that data and that cameras add geolocation. Logically, if you don't like the outcome, either you have to make one of the existing technologies illegal (sharing, crawling, searching), or one of the new ones (3D reconstruction, geolocation of images). So, stop dissembling, admit you're wrong, and say which of those technologies you see as the culprit and which of them you want to make illegal. Because if you can't commit to making any of them illegal, then you basically also allow Streetview-like services.
"And if anybody from halfway around the globe really wants a picture of your location and really can't find it online, they can hire someone to take it." Except that that's expensive and inconvenient. Really, they could have done that 150 years ago. In such a case, you'd realistically have to know that a particular location was of interest beforehand.
Except that it isn't expensive and inconvenient anymore. And people can scout locations using pictures taken from satellites and airplanes. Or are you going to make those illegal, too?
Way to go with the kneejerk cliche "anyone who doesn't let me do what I want is a commie/fascist" (updated for the modern age with the Taliban, yay).
Ignoring for the moment that your self-righteous indignation is over something I didn't actually say, let me respond to that. The positions you take aren't themselves totalitarian, but they are a hallmark of totalitarian regimes and conducive to totalitarianism. If you look at history, and in particular German history, totalitarianism doesn't usually arise out of malice, it arises out of fear and ignorance, and the hope that the government can fix all your problems for you.
Instead of accusing me of "kneejerk cliches", why don't you actually face German history and explain how these policies fit into German historical contexts? Over the past 100 years, who in Germany has actually been misusing private data? Which data has been misused and for what purposes? Under what circumstances and for what reasons did the German government restrict the taking and distribution of photographs? What were the justifications they gave? How do these modern German privacy principles and personality rights look in the context of, say, the photographic documentation of the Warsaw Ghetto?
I don't think "unlimited" plans ever made much sense because some people will abuse it. Costs are proportional to volume, so pricing should be too.
Reasonably priced universal plans do, however, make sense. In Europe, you can get data plans for something like EU20 / month for 5Gytes with no restrictions on how you use it (cell phone, laptop, etc.). Some companies even give you multiple SIM cards for the same account.
the law is your data is protected on any network - from been kept by a 3rd party
No, the law may make intercepting the data illegal, but that doesn't actually protect your data, for the reasons I gave.
Will the data "really be of no value to anyone" and it was all just a code/setting error?
If you use quotes, please quote correctly. I said "the data really is of no value to them." The data is of value to both crooks and governments. Actually, the data protection agency could probably prosecute thousands of people based on the data.
A "State Secrets Privilege" solution and it all just ends with a press release that the data was destroyed. That would be interesting.
I see, so I suppose the political witch hunt German politicians are cooking up against Google really is just for show? If you actually follow the news, you'll see that Google keeps trying to fend off governments getting at private data. It's not surprising that the German government is trying to ruin Google's reputation; they want companies to be subserviant to the German government and give them data whenever and for whatever purpose they request. And why not? After all, no German government has ever violated anybody's civil rights, right?
Well, golly gee, maybe that's why I wrote: "You don't seriously expect your average law-and-order Republican politician or judge to decide differently, do you?"
Look at Obama and Israel right now (since that's a current big issue)
I don't think most Americans really give a damn about Israel either way; I certainly don't. If anything, I'd like to see less change or activity there because Israel is only a distraction from things that actually matter.
but where it really matters, they're not that far apart.... Directly, nothing, but indirectly the people that were attracted to his supposed platform of "change" don't seem to generating much change... Obama included. Is Obama better than McCain/Palin? Probably, but I do not think the differences are anything more than marginal.
Health care reform--whether you like it or not--alone is a huge change. And there are tons of other changes, some big some some small. What more do you expect?
Look, man, you clearly have some psychological issues to work out, and that's cool with me, just try to keep a calm head.
Instead of feeble ad hominems, try sticking to the facts and reading a bit more carefully what you respond to.
Would you please read what I actually wrote? The API in Google's browser is based on JavaScript and IP addresses. The geolocation API for iPhone apps is based on Skyhook. And HTML5's is based on whatever the platform provides. The fact that Google also may provide additional services doesn't change that.
The point is not that Google can provide this feature, the point is that plenty of other companies do too, and that you probably don't even know which service you're using.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes: to be able to use a non-3G iPad to connect to the Internet via a Bluetooth modem or something that plugs into the bottom of the device. You can't do that anywhere.
You can't do that anywhere.
There's nothing "driver-level" about it, not even on iOS. The reason Apple restricts it is because of branding: they want you to have their user experience, not someone else's. Also, iOS doesn't have the security architecture to deal with this securely.
And have what happened to Google and Adobe companies happen to them? What's the point?
Yes, a cumbersome, non-integrated, separate offering. And its business model is no threat to Apple. As long as it's cumbersome enough and doesn't threaten Apple's revenue stream, they'll approve it.
Scientific data analysis, among other things.
It's not that hard to type on the iPad, you don't need to type much, and you can use Bluetooth keyboards. Also, there are special touch-based development tools.
Well, it's just one of many bad decisions Apple has made; that's why Apple shouldn't be able to limited what runs on the phone: no single company is smart enough to make these decisions. Apple is just too arrogant for its own good.
In different words, every app has its own file manager (and often web browser and E-mail client), and they are all inconsistent and a mess to use. Other platforms have the notion of "files" not because people want them, but because nobody has come up with something better.
Apple's pretending that files don't exist on the platform when they actually do means that even trivial operations, like getting a file in the web browser and then using it in some other operation, often don't work right; they also mean that the same file exists in multiple copies in multiple locations.
No, it's not "more than that". It's a place where I can put my presentations and files that I work on and access them from anywhere and any machine. There is nothing like that for iOS. Apple actually recognizes the importance of this, which is why they are creating their own offering, but like many Apple offerings, it doesn't work well with other platforms (and it will likely be expensive).
Has anyone actually said you couldn't do this now? I know at least on the iPad you can use bluetooth keyboards.
We are talking about soft, on-screen keyboards. Apple doesn't allow third party on-screen keyboards, and Apple's on-screen keyboard is a usability disaster.
Public broadcasts would be streaming to a web page for all to see?
Which part of "public" and "broadcast" do you not understand?
This was people sitting in city, suburbia, connected to a webpage, email, yahoo and having their packets collected without their understanding or approval.
Yes, it was.
Just like a telco site, military server or any encrypted networking.
No, not "just like" at all. Those kinds of servers and networking don't broadcast; you need to actually intrude into them using active measures: tapping into a line, transmitting data at them, etc.
They still have the legal protection of networking laws in some parts of the world, no encryption needed, expensive hardware ect.
Yes, some countries give them "legal protection"; those laws are bad laws. Passive reception of the electromagnetic spectrum from a public location should not be illegal.
There is also nothing "expensive" about the hardware; every standards-compliant piece of WiFi hardware has encryption built in.
What exactly do you think those laws accomplish? They don't make anybody any safer.
Fine, their "allegedly shady" acts.
Google recorded unencrypted WiFi packets and took pictures on public streets. There is nothing "shady" about that, allegedly or otherwise. They shouldn't have to ask permission to do that, nor should they have to answer to anybody for it.
I'm not even making any statements about the morality or legality of Google's actions.
Well, but I am: what they did was certainly moral, and it was probably legal in the US.
Google does plenty of things that are of concern from a privacy point of view; this is not one of them. Anybody concerned with civil liberties and democracy should firmly defend Google's right to do what they did.
A major corporation fibs to the government about their shady acts?
There is nothing "shady" about what Google did, nor have they "fibbed" about it. In fact, Google shouldn't even be asked about this.
What is shady is the way governments have been using this for political gain.
Particularly shady has been the behavior of the German government, who not only has been lying through their teeth about what happened, but also is using Google as an excuse to undermine basic data protection principles.
But, hey, it's not like German governments ever did anything bad with private data, right?
No, because writing the spec doesn't affect anybody's privacy, implementing it does. The fact that Apple and others are implementing the spec tells you that there is broad agreement that this is useful.
Besides, this is nothing new: applications, phone companies, and governments have been able to determine your location from your cell phone for years now. The fact that Google does it too now, and that it becomes accessible to web applications, doesn't make the situation significantly different.
I'm tired of Google being painted as the bad guys here. All they did was receive unencrypted, public broadcasts. That should not be illegal. In fact, it probably is not illegal in the US.
If you don't want people to listen to your WiFi packets, encrypt them. Don't abuse the court system or the police to cover up for your own incompetence.
Apple allow non-Apple music and video solutions - they allow e.g. spotify, wimp, netflix and many more.
They don't allow me to connect to an online music or video store and buy music there that I can then play in the regular music play.
Their real goal is to avoid development environments that abstracts away their platform - and target the lowest common denominator, and won't give access to new iOS features when available.
Well, we have had cross-platform tollkits and smartphones for more than a decade, and that sort of thing just doesn't happen. The only major platform (Java) to attempt a lowest-common denominator approach paid for it with failing miserably on the client. Successful cross-platform tools let you abstract what works across platforms and then let you add conditional support for advanced features on each platform.
On the other side, the quality of the apps is higher
Higher than what? What does that even mean? There are tons of high quality apps for all major mobile platforms, and there are tons of stinkers on iPhone/iPad.
and I prefer a phone experience with no flash.
Well, you can choose not to use it on other platforms. I like to have the option.
What scares me more than their technical requirements, is their content censoring [gizmodo.com]. I don't want a walled, Disney-like "think of the children!" world.
But their censorship is made possible through their control of the applications.
Those are the top three reasons because few people even bother writing the interesting apps anymore; just to name a few that ought to be there:
- Bluetooth DUN
- USB 3G modem driver
- custom touch keyboards
- non-Apple music and video stores
- in-device software development
- WiFi music sync
- on-device file management
- full synchronization and backup with box.net
The prohibition on interpreted code taken literally
You don't have to "take it literally"; Apple doesn't have to stick by their own rules, they can approve and disapprove whatever they like.
against Adobe's Flash-to-iPhone compiler as part of Apple's broader effort to keep third-party meta-platforms from eroding the user experience and stifling innovation as developers become reliant upon them to roll out support for new features introduced by Apple
Translation: "... Apple's broader effort against a fair and competitive market place, and their attempts to translate their early lead into a monopoly".
What they are afraid of is people using non-Apple music and video stores and people creating applications that also work on Android. And in doing so, Apple stifles innovation and manages to extract more money out of people's pockets.
Oh, I don't knpw...let me think: I probably wouldn't post it to the internet and protect the identity of the person who emailed it to me at all costs.
Well, fortunately, other people actually have a sense of moral responsibility and weigh the facts before they make such decisions.
And because we live in a democracy and a free society, these people have fairly significant legal protections to do so, because people in free and democratic societies realize that governments are not inerrant and that their societies only remain free and democratic if citizens show moral responsibility, courage, and vigilance.
In free and democratic societies, an individual deciding on his or her own to leak classified information is a subversion of that very democratic process. In the US, we have collectively decided, as a society, that some information should be kept secret, even from The People, and we have empowered and entrusted the government with the power to do so.
In a free and democratic society, citizens have responsibilities. Those responsibilities include refusing unlawful orders when they are in the military. If you obey an unlawful order, you may actually be committing a crime.
Your own personal view on whether something should or shouldn't be classified is irrelevant. There are well-known and established processes that govern classification.
Your personal view is very much relevant, because that's the ultimate arbiter for determining whether you should obey an order or not. That doesn't mean that merely believing that an order is unlawful necessarily gets you off the hook, but following orders (including classification) is not automatically legal or safe (let alone moral).
If you read Manning's side of the story, he believed he had been ordered to manipulate documents in a way that resulted in innocent people being thrown in prison. He also believed that the US was trying to conceal crimes. He may or may not have been right in his assessments, and that may or may not be sufficient as a defense, but it is certainly not as clearcut as you seem to think it is--in particular because we live in a "free and democratic society".
Or, for any reasonable alternative other than any and all information should always be able to be indiscriminately leaked without fear of reprisal.
Who, other than you, has said that "all information should always be able to be indiscriminately leaked without fear of reprisal"? How does what Manning did or what Wikileaks is doing possibly fall under such a heading? Manning and Wikileaks may or may not be right in what they are doing, but they are doing it out of conviction, they are not doing it "indiscriminately", and they are certainly not doing it "without fear of reprisals".
I hope for intelligent responses to this post that actually acknowledge the need for some information to be protected
Of course, some information needs to be protected. Your problem is that you argue as if (1) you can trust the government completely, and (2) being in the military absolves people from personal, moral, and legal responsibility. Both are clearly wrong. I mean, have you slept through the last decade of politics? Have you not read your history about war crimes trials?
It's people like you who are a threat to our free and democratic society. And your glib, straw-man dismissal of the risks and motivations of the people who leak documents makes you a rotten human being in my opinion.
Except that it will be released as an open standard.
So, Apple ignores existing standards, puts together some protocol out of existing technologies, including the patented h.264, builds a proprietary product around it, and then promises to release what they call an "open standard" some time in the future. Pardon me for not getting excited.
But, hey, that way you can keep thinking anything Apple does is evil.
No, not everything Apple does is evil, just some of the things they do. And not everything they do is technically inferior, just some of the things they do.
Wouldn't want to have your preconceptions challenged, would you now?
No preconceptions, just business as usual for Apple.
Like they said in the keynote, this isn't some new idea, this is a "vision of the future" that predates Apple
Gosh, you mean like this people have already been able to use on their Nokia phones for quite a while? The latest software to support it is Skype/Fring (but it's been available for others before):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GjfMO9lziE
Not to mention that Apple's version of it will probably be about as simple as making a phone call.
Yeah, and it will probably only let you talk to other iPhone users. But, hey, that way you can maintain your illusion that this is something new or unique to Apple. Wouldn't want to have your preconceptions challenged, would you now.
It's revolutionary when someone else fails to start a revolution with their idea and it just languishes until you take it up and start a revolution in the industry with it.
In what sense of the word has that technology been "languishing"? Other phones have had multitasking, high-resolution cameras and screens, and front-facing video cameras for years and continue to be shipping at many times the volume of Apple's shipments (and a fraction of the price).
Front-facing camera, video conferencing, HD recording, multitasking all have been around for a while. 960x640 at 326ppi is not different in any practical sense from the 800x480 272ppi screens found on many other phones; the oddball resolution is probably mainly a concession to lack of resolution independence in many iPhone apps, allowing for simple pixel-doubling (hello, Palm!).
This device is a nice upgrade for iPhone users, but it just gives them parity with other smartphones, nothing more.
Yes, you did not give consent for Google to record your WLAN. Yes, one can make that illegal. Yes, it may be illegal in Germany. Why do you keep repeating that? We know all that.
Wants the open hotspot details, saves your data as it is transmitted and keeps it- not fine.
And why is it not fine? Do you think laws should just be made based on your gut feeling? Or the gut feeling of the German masses? Is that your understanding of democracy?
I think laws need to be justified based on their utility, their risks, precedent, analogy, and their effect on democracy. I have yet to see any justification for what Germany is doing.
Show me a website that makes that data accessible in a consistent and easy-to-use manner that's comparable to Streetview as of today or
Here you go:
http://www.flickr.com/map/
You type in you address and if the images are there, they'll pop up. There are two things that make it not quite like Streetview. (1) The coverage is not there yet because many people don't have GPS in their cameras yet, but that's not a technological restriction. (2) The images aren't integrated across views, but that is unrelated to the privacy concerns. You keep talking about. For the purposes of the privacy issues, this technology is equivalent to Streetview. Anything you could possibly be concerned about in Streetview you can be concerned about in Flickr map search.
Anything going beyond that is putting words in my mouth and ascribing positions to me that I haven't taken.
I'm not putting words in your mouth, I'm trying to get you to take a clear position. Instead you hide behind vague innuendo with words like "issue". It's the same kind of FUD that governments use to push their anti-data-protection agendas.
Bottom line; I said that I considered Google's large-scale, consistent data gathering to be different- in *effect*- to disparate, uncoordinated data gathering by random people.
No, you did not just say that it was "different in effect", you said that it was "an issue" (your words, in bold). The term "issue" means more than just being "different in effect", you're implying that there is a problem that needs a solution.
So, what is the "issue"? Who is (negatively) affected by the "issue" and how? How do you want this "issue" addressed? Is it feasible to address it?
The need to have clear network intrusion laws and prevent public/private database sharing.
Well, such laws exist in the US. That's why it takes a court order in the US to get at private data. It's also why so many people use Google in the US.
In Germany, some administrator can simply decide he wants Google's data and get it without a court order.
The problem here isn't Google, the problem is German laws and the German government.
Google has the data,
Yes, Google has the data: they have the addresses, E-mails, search histories, and documents of hundreds of millions of people. Gathering WLAN data doesn't give them anything they don't already get in a much better form.
What allows people to use services like Google is a certain degree of trust that Google will not just give up this data to the government for data mining purposes.
The German government has broken this trust because, apparently, in Germany, the executive branch can simply obtain data of millions of Germans, data it contends is private.
They have to enforce German law, law that Google was expected to follow and gave every indication of understanding.
It is far from clear that German law is what the data protection agency says it is. In particular, considering unencrypted WLAN data to be "private" is inconsistent other rules and regulations holding people responsible for using unencrypted WLAN data.
A vital issue to take up, speak out about, but does not clarify what Google was doing around the world with other peoples data.
What Google was doing with the WLAN packets is pretty clear to anybody working with networks, and Google collecting this data doesn't affect either your privacy or security in any way.
(There are things Google shouldn't be doing (e.g., using web bugs, third party cookies, etc.), but everybody uses those and has to use them in order to stay competitive. That's where we need some legislation.)
The German government and EU direction in data access laws and storage are going to be very very bad, but how does that undo Googles data gathering issues?
I don't see what "data gathering issues" there are supposed to be. Google stores people's data on their behalf and with their consent; that's an inevitable part of the services they offer. Any other company that offers the same services is going to retain the same data. They aren't "gathering" this data, they are getting it shipped to them voluntarily by the boatload. And they are going to get this data even if you don't subscribe to them directly. Microsoft, Yahoo, Telekom, and lots of other companies do as well. Unless you go back to using an Apple 2 and quit the Internet, that's inevitable.
The issue is that in Europe, this data isn't sufficiently protected from access by the government. That's the real data protection issue in Europe, and Google has no influence over it. In fact, the demonization of Google is a convenient political distraction by European governments, allowing them to pass horrendous privacy-invading data-sharing legislation because they have successfully neutralized one of the major forces that traditionally opposes them, the online service providers themselves.
Go back and read my original post. I was criticising the implication that small-scale data gathering is the same as Google's large-scale system, and that because the former wasn't a big deal, we should disregard the latter because it was the same.
We've already seen that that argument is bogus: small-scale data gathering is the same as Google's large-scale system because sharing this data on the web makes the distinction irrelevant. If a billion people upload geolocated snapshots to a thousand photo sharing sites, that's Streetview, and that's what's happening.
is that it will be used in conjunction with other technologies to do that- however, I already acknowledged that when I said "I think it's possible that technology will make that doable sooner rather than later").
No, not "sooner rather than later", it's now. And there is no new "technology" there, it's the sharing, crawling, and searching thousands of companies have been doing for years. The only thing that's new is that there are better algorithms for using that data and that cameras add geolocation. Logically, if you don't like the outcome, either you have to make one of the existing technologies illegal (sharing, crawling, searching), or one of the new ones (3D reconstruction, geolocation of images). So, stop dissembling, admit you're wrong, and say which of those technologies you see as the culprit and which of them you want to make illegal. Because if you can't commit to making any of them illegal, then you basically also allow Streetview-like services.
"And if anybody from halfway around the globe really wants a picture of your location and really can't find it online, they can hire someone to take it." Except that that's expensive and inconvenient. Really, they could have done that 150 years ago. In such a case, you'd realistically have to know that a particular location was of interest beforehand.
Except that it isn't expensive and inconvenient anymore. And people can scout locations using pictures taken from satellites and airplanes. Or are you going to make those illegal, too?
Way to go with the kneejerk cliche "anyone who doesn't let me do what I want is a commie/fascist" (updated for the modern age with the Taliban, yay).
Ignoring for the moment that your self-righteous indignation is over something I didn't actually say, let me respond to that. The positions you take aren't themselves totalitarian, but they are a hallmark of totalitarian regimes and conducive to totalitarianism. If you look at history, and in particular German history, totalitarianism doesn't usually arise out of malice, it arises out of fear and ignorance, and the hope that the government can fix all your problems for you.
Instead of accusing me of "kneejerk cliches", why don't you actually face German history and explain how these policies fit into German historical contexts? Over the past 100 years, who in Germany has actually been misusing private data? Which data has been misused and for what purposes? Under what circumstances and for what reasons did the German government restrict the taking and distribution of photographs? What were the justifications they gave? How do these modern German privacy principles and personality rights look in the context of, say, the photographic documentation of the Warsaw Ghetto?
I don't think "unlimited" plans ever made much sense because some people will abuse it. Costs are proportional to volume, so pricing should be too.
Reasonably priced universal plans do, however, make sense. In Europe, you can get data plans for something like EU20 / month for 5Gytes with no restrictions on how you use it (cell phone, laptop, etc.). Some companies even give you multiple SIM cards for the same account.
the law is your data is protected on any network - from been kept by a 3rd party
No, the law may make intercepting the data illegal, but that doesn't actually protect your data, for the reasons I gave.
Will the data "really be of no value to anyone" and it was all just a code/setting error?
If you use quotes, please quote correctly. I said "the data really is of no value to them." The data is of value to both crooks and governments. Actually, the data protection agency could probably prosecute thousands of people based on the data.
A "State Secrets Privilege" solution and it all just ends with a press release that the data was destroyed. That would be interesting.
I see, so I suppose the political witch hunt German politicians are cooking up against Google really is just for show? If you actually follow the news, you'll see that Google keeps trying to fend off governments getting at private data. It's not surprising that the German government is trying to ruin Google's reputation; they want companies to be subserviant to the German government and give them data whenever and for whatever purpose they request. And why not? After all, no German government has ever violated anybody's civil rights, right?
No, they're not the same on every instance,
Well, golly gee, maybe that's why I wrote: "You don't seriously expect your average law-and-order Republican politician or judge to decide differently, do you?"
Look at Obama and Israel right now (since that's a current big issue)
I don't think most Americans really give a damn about Israel either way; I certainly don't. If anything, I'd like to see less change or activity there because Israel is only a distraction from things that actually matter.
but where it really matters, they're not that far apart. ... Directly, nothing, but indirectly the people that were attracted to his supposed platform of "change" don't seem to generating much change... Obama included. Is Obama better than McCain/Palin? Probably, but I do not think the differences are anything more than marginal.
Health care reform--whether you like it or not--alone is a huge change. And there are tons of other changes, some big some some small. What more do you expect?
Look, man, you clearly have some psychological issues to work out, and that's cool with me, just try to keep a calm head.
Instead of feeble ad hominems, try sticking to the facts and reading a bit more carefully what you respond to.
Would you please read what I actually wrote? The API in Google's browser is based on JavaScript and IP addresses. The geolocation API for iPhone apps is based on Skyhook. And HTML5's is based on whatever the platform provides. The fact that Google also may provide additional services doesn't change that.
The point is not that Google can provide this feature, the point is that plenty of other companies do too, and that you probably don't even know which service you're using.