A software tweak to Glass could easily allow it to satisfy the requirements of that law. Basically, just disable anything other than navigation when in a vehicle (perhaps detected by proximity to the vehicle bluetooth) and when the vehicle is moving.
While Google's infrastructure is no doubt secure, the technical security being meant is not the user's. It can't be, when a simple court order (or not even that) can trivially make the information accessible and searchable.
Unless the GP's VPS is located outside of the US, and any other governmental jurisdiction that issues search warrants, then that is the same. Also, I take issue with the "not even that" claim. Google has repeatedly stated that they only respond to proper, legal requests, which are narrowly tailored, properly written and very specific. They don't allow government agencies to go in and search. That may or not be the case with some small VPS provider... Google has legal staff to fight overly broad access requests, but small operations don't.
What people mean is that they want their data to be secure against viewing, usage, and modification by all third parties - That includes (but is not limited to) Google and law enforcement.
Google does strictly control access by Google employees. Looking at any user data -- even your own -- without a clear reason (e.g. debugging) is a termination offense. This is explained to all employees in their first orientation system, which is generally their first day of employment.
With respect to law enforcement, no data is safe from that, unless it's locked up inside your head, or falls into one of a very small number of other exceptions (attorney-client privilege, doctor-patient privilege, spousal privilege, confessional, etc.).
What about a civil suit for damages? Google's business has clearly been damaged, and I'll bet if they quantified it they would come up with a number in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Yeah, clearly reading a text is a bad idea, whether it's on a screen in your car or hand, or one projected out in front of you. Using it as a navigation display, however, is clearly superior to a similar display on a screen in your car.
Wow, way to go off on a completely unrelated -- and ridiculous! -- tangent. Or did you just completely miss the point that the law violated by wearing Glass appears to be equally violated by the screen in a Prius?
Just because the information is in your line of sight does not mean that it is in your focus. You have to shift focus to see information in the near plane.
Which makes Glass much better as an information display than your dashboard or your in-car GPS display, because the Glass focal plane is about 8 feet from you. So you have to shift focus from the road to a point somewhat forward of the end of your hood. Given the way lenses and focal distances work, that's a much smaller adjustment than the shift from that point to two feet from you.
Maybe she uses it for GPS? How do you know she uses it for something that takes her attention away from driving?
How about the fact that a cop was tailing her for a while and she didn't even notice him?
What makes you think she didn't notice him? She thought she was going 80 in a 75 mph zone. I don't know about you, but I don't bother adjusting my speed when I see police if I'm only going 5 over. That's pretty much normal speed. In fact, most of the time, I find that if I'm only going 5 over the cop will pass me.
Of course, the actual speed limit was 65, and 15 over is quite a bit different from 5 over. So you can ding her for not noticing the speed limit signs, but I don't think the fact that the cop tailed her means anything.
How, pray tell, is it able to put information in front of your eyes without blocking what's behind it?
It's above and to the right of your normal gaze. The comparison in another thread above with having a smartphone clipped to the visor is pretty accurate. You do have to shift your eyes and your focus away from the road to see it, but it's less of a transition than looking at your dashboard or your dash-mounted GPS receiver.
No you fucking moron, it means since there is no Encryption inside the "google cloud" (because it is added at the border) when they tap the links between data centres (those squares "inside" google are data centres) they get full unencrypted information.
They don't need to break encryption to do this, since google isn't encrypting the private fibre lines the NSA is tapping.
Correction: Google wasn't encrypting the private fibre lines. Google announced a month or two ago that they're now encrypting all traffic in transit, even inside.
Google (and the others) shrugged and played nice with the NSA, to what extent we don't know.
Google hasn't "shrugged and played nice" with the NSA. Google has flatly and emphatically denied any cooperation. And after the Snowden disclosures began, Google started taking a hard look at internal operations to see if there's anywhere that the NSA could have gotten unauthorized access. The result was a crash company-wide initiative to encrypt all data communications -- specifically to ensure that connections between data centers couldn't be tapped.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Google software engineer, focused on security infrastructure. I do have a great deal of insider knowledge about Google security infrastructure, but all of the above is from Google's public statements.)
I wonder if Google can sue? And if they can, will they?
Google has file a suit to be allowed to disclose the extent of the legal, government-required information sharing. I have no idea if they could sue for any illicit taps. There is no doubt in my mind that if they could sue for damages with some hope of success, they would. This is my own opinion, not an official statement.
The Gmail interface is tuned and honed by Google employees, and Google runs on e-mail, in a way that few other companies do. I get hundreds of e-mails per day from dozens of mailing lists and automated systems (no, I don't read them all); the Gmail UI makes it manageable. Labels, filters, searching and -- most of all -- the priority inbox are the keys. I could do most of what I do with a mail client like Thunderbird, but Thunderbird tends to bog down when you get huge amounts of mail in your mailbox, and any solution that is pinned to one particular machine isn't going to work well.
Oh, you should also invest a little time in learning the keyboard shortcuts. You can plow through a lot of e-mail very quickly if you don't have to keep wiggling the mouse around.
I think Gmail UI is very productive.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Google software engineer, though my interaction with Gmail is as a power user, not an engineer.)
I've decided to stop being Google's product after deciding I can't trust them any longer with my information.
Based on what? All of the people whose data Google has leaked?
Of course you're entitled to whatever opinion you like, but I strongly suspect that your decision here is based on misinformation. If you'd like to chat about it, I'd be happy to clarify things. If not, that's fine, too.
I opened a VPS to handle my own email services
Are you certain your VPS provider has as good a security record and infrastructure as Google? If it's a small company they probably benefit from being a smaller target, though I can just about guarantee they're not as secure.
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, as a security engineer focused primarily on protecting user data. I have no qualms about trusting Google's systems with my personal information. Even less since I started working here and got a better perspective.)
Why not just sit down and use a laptop rather than trying to be Star Trek? You might actually get work done, and save a ton of money in the process.
I have a desktop machine (12-core Xeon, 64 GiB RAM, with two large monitors), a laptop (MacBook Pro), a netbook (Samsung Chromebook), a Nexus 7, and a phone. Every single one of those devices has its place, none of them are redundant and they're all good for different things (though I think I could merge the phone and tablet into a phablet).
Likewise, Glass and a smartwatch will have their place. They're not an alternative to a laptop, they serve different purposes. Specifically, they're for times when I don't want to have to even pull out a phone or a tablet out of a pocket, much less get a laptop or netbook out of a backpack. In addition they're for times when I don't even want to have to fill my hands with a phone or a tablet, much less try to balance a laptop on something.
Responding to your subject line, I want a smart watch. I want one that's done right, which means the right functionality, integrated in the right way with my other personal electronics.
I ultimately want to have Google Glass (or similar), a smart watch and a smart phone with a large screen (6" is about right). I think the three devices could work very well together.
The phone, of course, is the brain, the connectivity, and the user interface for "heavy" work. Anything involving data entry or interacting with large amounts of data. Glass is an audio/video output device, to provide no-hands, no-interference content when I need it. Heads-up navigation, audio playback, video messages, etc. But it's not something I'd want to wear all of the time, both because I don't think the battery will stand up to constantly being on and because it's awkward in some social situations. A smartwatch is an ideal form factor for lightweight I/O. It can provide unobtrusive notifications and quick, easy access to small but important pieces of information. It can also be an input device for controlling Glass, one that's a lot more convenient than the frame-mounted touchpad (in fact, I hope a future version of Glass does away with the frame-mounted touchpad using smartwatch integration instead) and provides a lot more control than head gestures.
Galaxy Gear isn't yet the smartwatch that I want, though.
But if your corporation has multiple divisions/products, you can let one take massive losses while the others support it, until your competition is gone.
That just means you don't have to raise outside capital, it doesn't reduce or change the cost.
Second, assuming the monopolist does manage to drive out all competition, and begins charging obscene prices, it becomes not only possible but very profitable for competitors to enter
Unless there are infrastructure and other barriers to entry that would need to be overcome in order to enter/re-enter the market
But the competitors already have that infrastructure and/or have overcome those barriers. They're already in the market. Even if they shut down, unless they are forced by some extra-market forces to stay shut down for so long their infrastructure decays, the infrastructure is available to be re-used by the competitors, or by whoever bought them out in the fire sale.
Also, those sorts of barriers provide incentive for capital markets to fund weathering the price war, because once the war ends the competitors won't be easily displaced.
Really, though, rather than theoretical analyses, what you really should focus on is trying to find an example of where predatory pricing has actually worked in the real world, including recoupment of the costs. What you'll find is that there aren't any clear-cut examples of the scheme working -- though there are cases of companies trying it. Predatory pricing is a losing strategy for the predator.
Ah, you're referring to the legal term "fair use", as opposed to the genuinely fair concept of "I bought this book/CD/DVD/statuette, therefore I own it and can do as I please with it as long as I do not produce copies for people."
That definition would also not apply to this case, because it's more restrictive. In this case Antigua and Barbuda is able to legally produce and sell copies.
Note that all of this is distinct from a different scenario, in which the big player isn't being anti-competitive at all, but is instead is just much more efficient, and therefore has much lower costs. That sort of "monopolist" can maintain healthy profit margins while pricing goods below what the competition can afford. This, however, is not harmful to consumers, in fact it's good for consumers.
Of course, as we see with Walmart and its ilk, it is very harmful to consumers.
That's your opinion. Lots and lots of consumers disagree with you.
Walmart employees are consumers too. For a while now, they haven't been paid a living wage.
And yet they still choose to work there. I have a couple of relatives who work at Wal-mart, and it was an improvement over their previous jobs, which is why they took the Wal-mart jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
A much more basic and simpler and safer solution would be to just not wear the headset while driving.
Except that then you couldn't use it for navigation.
A software tweak to Glass could easily allow it to satisfy the requirements of that law. Basically, just disable anything other than navigation when in a vehicle (perhaps detected by proximity to the vehicle bluetooth) and when the vehicle is moving.
A HUD is better than Glass. Glass is better than a screen on or in your dashboard.
While Google's infrastructure is no doubt secure, the technical security being meant is not the user's. It can't be, when a simple court order (or not even that) can trivially make the information accessible and searchable.
Unless the GP's VPS is located outside of the US, and any other governmental jurisdiction that issues search warrants, then that is the same. Also, I take issue with the "not even that" claim. Google has repeatedly stated that they only respond to proper, legal requests, which are narrowly tailored, properly written and very specific. They don't allow government agencies to go in and search. That may or not be the case with some small VPS provider... Google has legal staff to fight overly broad access requests, but small operations don't.
What people mean is that they want their data to be secure against viewing, usage, and modification by all third parties - That includes (but is not limited to) Google and law enforcement.
Google does strictly control access by Google employees. Looking at any user data -- even your own -- without a clear reason (e.g. debugging) is a termination offense. This is explained to all employees in their first orientation system, which is generally their first day of employment.
With respect to law enforcement, no data is safe from that, unless it's locked up inside your head, or falls into one of a very small number of other exceptions (attorney-client privilege, doctor-patient privilege, spousal privilege, confessional, etc.).
Actually, the law is about television screens.
Interesting post.
What about a civil suit for damages? Google's business has clearly been damaged, and I'll bet if they quantified it they would come up with a number in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Hmm. I'd suggest not mixing your personal and business e-mail in the same account. For many reasons.
Yeah, clearly reading a text is a bad idea, whether it's on a screen in your car or hand, or one projected out in front of you. Using it as a navigation display, however, is clearly superior to a similar display on a screen in your car.
Wow, way to go off on a completely unrelated -- and ridiculous! -- tangent. Or did you just completely miss the point that the law violated by wearing Glass appears to be equally violated by the screen in a Prius?
Just because the information is in your line of sight does not mean that it is in your focus. You have to shift focus to see information in the near plane.
Which makes Glass much better as an information display than your dashboard or your in-car GPS display, because the Glass focal plane is about 8 feet from you. So you have to shift focus from the road to a point somewhat forward of the end of your hood. Given the way lenses and focal distances work, that's a much smaller adjustment than the shift from that point to two feet from you.
Maybe she uses it for GPS? How do you know she uses it for something that takes her attention away from driving?
How about the fact that a cop was tailing her for a while and she didn't even notice him?
What makes you think she didn't notice him? She thought she was going 80 in a 75 mph zone. I don't know about you, but I don't bother adjusting my speed when I see police if I'm only going 5 over. That's pretty much normal speed. In fact, most of the time, I find that if I'm only going 5 over the cop will pass me.
Of course, the actual speed limit was 65, and 15 over is quite a bit different from 5 over. So you can ding her for not noticing the speed limit signs, but I don't think the fact that the cop tailed her means anything.
How, pray tell, is it able to put information in front of your eyes without blocking what's behind it?
It's above and to the right of your normal gaze. The comparison in another thread above with having a smartphone clipped to the visor is pretty accurate. You do have to shift your eyes and your focus away from the road to see it, but it's less of a transition than looking at your dashboard or your dash-mounted GPS receiver.
If you can't see the difference between a Prius (and similar cars with on board displays) and Google Glass, you shouldn't be allowed to use either.
So, what you're saying is that you can't articulate the difference. Got it.
No you fucking moron, it means since there is no Encryption inside the "google cloud" (because it is added at the border) when they tap the links between data centres (those squares "inside" google are data centres) they get full unencrypted information.
They don't need to break encryption to do this, since google isn't encrypting the private fibre lines the NSA is tapping.
Correction: Google wasn't encrypting the private fibre lines. Google announced a month or two ago that they're now encrypting all traffic in transit, even inside.
Google (and the others) shrugged and played nice with the NSA, to what extent we don't know.
Google hasn't "shrugged and played nice" with the NSA. Google has flatly and emphatically denied any cooperation. And after the Snowden disclosures began, Google started taking a hard look at internal operations to see if there's anywhere that the NSA could have gotten unauthorized access. The result was a crash company-wide initiative to encrypt all data communications -- specifically to ensure that connections between data centers couldn't be tapped.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Google software engineer, focused on security infrastructure. I do have a great deal of insider knowledge about Google security infrastructure, but all of the above is from Google's public statements.)
I wonder if Google can sue? And if they can, will they?
Google has file a suit to be allowed to disclose the extent of the legal, government-required information sharing. I have no idea if they could sue for any illicit taps. There is no doubt in my mind that if they could sue for damages with some hope of success, they would. This is my own opinion, not an official statement.
For work, I suggest you dump the tabs.
The Gmail interface is tuned and honed by Google employees, and Google runs on e-mail, in a way that few other companies do. I get hundreds of e-mails per day from dozens of mailing lists and automated systems (no, I don't read them all); the Gmail UI makes it manageable. Labels, filters, searching and -- most of all -- the priority inbox are the keys. I could do most of what I do with a mail client like Thunderbird, but Thunderbird tends to bog down when you get huge amounts of mail in your mailbox, and any solution that is pinned to one particular machine isn't going to work well.
Oh, you should also invest a little time in learning the keyboard shortcuts. You can plow through a lot of e-mail very quickly if you don't have to keep wiggling the mouse around.
I think Gmail UI is very productive.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Google software engineer, though my interaction with Gmail is as a power user, not an engineer.)
I've decided to stop being Google's product after deciding I can't trust them any longer with my information.
Based on what? All of the people whose data Google has leaked?
Of course you're entitled to whatever opinion you like, but I strongly suspect that your decision here is based on misinformation. If you'd like to chat about it, I'd be happy to clarify things. If not, that's fine, too.
I opened a VPS to handle my own email services
Are you certain your VPS provider has as good a security record and infrastructure as Google? If it's a small company they probably benefit from being a smaller target, though I can just about guarantee they're not as secure.
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, as a security engineer focused primarily on protecting user data. I have no qualms about trusting Google's systems with my personal information. Even less since I started working here and got a better perspective.)
Why not just sit down and use a laptop rather than trying to be Star Trek? You might actually get work done, and save a ton of money in the process.
I have a desktop machine (12-core Xeon, 64 GiB RAM, with two large monitors), a laptop (MacBook Pro), a netbook (Samsung Chromebook), a Nexus 7, and a phone. Every single one of those devices has its place, none of them are redundant and they're all good for different things (though I think I could merge the phone and tablet into a phablet).
Likewise, Glass and a smartwatch will have their place. They're not an alternative to a laptop, they serve different purposes. Specifically, they're for times when I don't want to have to even pull out a phone or a tablet out of a pocket, much less get a laptop or netbook out of a backpack. In addition they're for times when I don't even want to have to fill my hands with a phone or a tablet, much less try to balance a laptop on something.
Responding to your subject line, I want a smart watch. I want one that's done right, which means the right functionality, integrated in the right way with my other personal electronics.
I ultimately want to have Google Glass (or similar), a smart watch and a smart phone with a large screen (6" is about right). I think the three devices could work very well together.
The phone, of course, is the brain, the connectivity, and the user interface for "heavy" work. Anything involving data entry or interacting with large amounts of data. Glass is an audio/video output device, to provide no-hands, no-interference content when I need it. Heads-up navigation, audio playback, video messages, etc. But it's not something I'd want to wear all of the time, both because I don't think the battery will stand up to constantly being on and because it's awkward in some social situations. A smartwatch is an ideal form factor for lightweight I/O. It can provide unobtrusive notifications and quick, easy access to small but important pieces of information. It can also be an input device for controlling Glass, one that's a lot more convenient than the frame-mounted touchpad (in fact, I hope a future version of Glass does away with the frame-mounted touchpad using smartwatch integration instead) and provides a lot more control than head gestures.
Galaxy Gear isn't yet the smartwatch that I want, though.
First, predatory pricing is ruinously expensive.
But if your corporation has multiple divisions/products, you can let one take massive losses while the others support it, until your competition is gone.
That just means you don't have to raise outside capital, it doesn't reduce or change the cost.
Second, assuming the monopolist does manage to drive out all competition, and begins charging obscene prices, it becomes not only possible but very profitable for competitors to enter
Unless there are infrastructure and other barriers to entry that would need to be overcome in order to enter/re-enter the market
But the competitors already have that infrastructure and/or have overcome those barriers. They're already in the market. Even if they shut down, unless they are forced by some extra-market forces to stay shut down for so long their infrastructure decays, the infrastructure is available to be re-used by the competitors, or by whoever bought them out in the fire sale.
Also, those sorts of barriers provide incentive for capital markets to fund weathering the price war, because once the war ends the competitors won't be easily displaced.
Really, though, rather than theoretical analyses, what you really should focus on is trying to find an example of where predatory pricing has actually worked in the real world, including recoupment of the costs. What you'll find is that there aren't any clear-cut examples of the scheme working -- though there are cases of companies trying it. Predatory pricing is a losing strategy for the predator.
Ah, you're referring to the legal term "fair use", as opposed to the genuinely fair concept of "I bought this book/CD/DVD/statuette, therefore I own it and can do as I please with it as long as I do not produce copies for people."
That definition would also not apply to this case, because it's more restrictive. In this case Antigua and Barbuda is able to legally produce and sell copies.
Why do you assume that traditional employment and (government-based) social welfare are the only options?
Note that all of this is distinct from a different scenario, in which the big player isn't being anti-competitive at all, but is instead is just much more efficient, and therefore has much lower costs. That sort of "monopolist" can maintain healthy profit margins while pricing goods below what the competition can afford. This, however, is not harmful to consumers, in fact it's good for consumers.
Of course, as we see with Walmart and its ilk, it is very harmful to consumers.
That's your opinion. Lots and lots of consumers disagree with you.
Walmart employees are consumers too. For a while now, they haven't been paid a living wage.
And yet they still choose to work there. I have a couple of relatives who work at Wal-mart, and it was an improvement over their previous jobs, which is why they took the Wal-mart jobs.
The problem is that nobody can become competition, unless you have enough money already.
Or unless you have access to capital markets, which everyone does if they bother to learn how, or hire someone who knows.
What you do is you change the law so that what they're doing is illegal. Nothing else will make a difference anyway.
So then they'll replace the low-paid workers with robots. Or will you pass a law against that, too?