Here's what would stop any massacre in any school: an unknown number of armed teachers.
How many deaths would there be from teachers who momentarily snapped and did something stupid? How many deaths would there be from children getting their hands on the guns and doing something stupid?
Well, let's see, it has been legal for teachers to carry in schools in Utah for more than 10 years now, and there have been zero incidents of either of the sort you mentioned.
It's hard to extrapolate from zero, but we can probably use it to set an upper bound. Let's suppose that an incident occurs next year, which will actually be the 12th year since teachers have been able to be armed. There are approximately 3M residents of the state, so that would give a rate of one incident per 36M resident-years, as an upper bound. So that means that we could expect at most 8 such incidents per year nationwide (again, remember this is an upper bound). As compared to observed school shootings, that would be a win, assuming the rate actually was that high, which I strongly doubt.
I fully expect that Utah will go 20+ years without any incident of either sort. There are other states which are also in the process of allowing teachers to be armed, or have allowed it recently, and some states in which it's up to the school district and some school districts have chosen to allow it, so the reliability of our statistics will be improving over time.
How many deaths would there be from the cross-fire during a school shooting?
What a ridiculous argument. Which do you really think will cause more deaths, a stray bullets from armed people shooting at one another, or unopposed, aimed bullets from a rampage shooter methodically picking people off?
Again, there's no need to guess, though, because it actually does happen that rampage shooters get stopped by other armed people, both police and civilians. On average, when rampage shooters are stopped by civilians, 2.33 people die. When they're stopped by police 14.29 people die. The difference lies in response time. The time it takes for armed people to arrive is the time that a shooter has to go about his bloody business. When an armed person is already present, rampages end quickly and deaths are low.
And, in fact, I haven't seen a single example of a case where innocents were killed "in the crossfire" between civilian carriers and bad guys.
Besides, the point is moot since nobody can expect an average user to sue giant corporations - given their army of lawyers.
Class action. Or, alternatively, legislative action. Google is fully cognizant of both of those possibilities, and that at Google's size and public visibility one or both would happen.
When I type google.com into a browser, I am not expressing any intent for Google to track me.
Intent, no, permission yes.
Google is simply assuming that the fact that any packets are routed through their networks gives them the right to inspect and track/save them.
Do your packets get routed through Google's network? Not unless you're on Google Fiber, and if you are Google doesn't assume any such right.
But you're not talking about packets which you're sending somewhere else which happen to flow through Google, you're talking about packets that you send to Google's data centers, expecting those data centers to do some useful work for you. The price for that useful work is targeted advertising and the tracking which supports it. Though, of course, Google being Google, the company does provide you with tools to opt out of that (aside: do you use the Google opt outs? I think you should, based on your expressed philosophy).
What if every single internet backbone provider starting mining data packets?
Sorry, but I think this is a red herring. That's a completely different situation. And, personally, I think you should encrypt all of your traffic to make it impossible for middlemen to see anything.
What if Google decides that people who click on ads should have their traffic/service prioritized?
Conceptually I don't see any problem with that. In practice it wouldn't gain Google anything, since any motivation to click other than interest in potentially buying the advertised product ultimately does Google no good. It increases clicks, but decreases the value of those clicks to advertisers, which in turn causes them to bid less. There's a good reason that Wall Street pays a lot of attention to Google's "cost per click" metric; higher values mean advertisers are bidding higher, which means that Google is providing more effective advertising.
Another point to consider is that Google isn't an advertising company. Google is a technology company which has historically found that the easiest way to monetize its technology is through advertising. But Google's non-advertising revenues have been growing far faster than its ad revenues for some time now. They still only constitute 10% of total revenues, but that's up from 4% a couple of years ago.
Once you create a successful business which relies primarily on user data/clicks/impressions - the only way to grow in a saturated market is to give the 1-2% "paying customers" who click on ads something extra.
Actually, Google's advertising market is far from saturated. Google owns a big chunk of online advertising, but online advertising is still small potatoes compared to total advertising. There's lots of room for growth.
And I'm not even getting to what can happen if data is used to manipulate peoples psychology.
Interestingly enough, while I disagree with you on this point, because I'm a cold-eyed libertarian who thinks people should be responsible for themselves, the vast majority of Googlers, including Google management, agree with you, that Google could but absolutely should not do anything like that. Not that my reassurances that Google is a bunch of bleeding hearts will really give you any comfort, because that could change.
I doubt I can be comfortable with any business that charges no money upfront for their products.
Suppose Google offered an alternative, a way that you could choose to make micropayments in lieu of seeing ads. Would you si
Where are they "badmouthing" Linux? All they said was that Linux is over-kill for running a single application within a VM.
Considering we used to run Linux and our applications in 32MB of RAM and 64MB of Flash in embedded systems, I have a hard time seeing Linux as over-kill for running anything in a VM. The application will probably require more RAM and CPU than the kernel.
We used to run Linux on a hell of a lot less than that. But that was a different Linux.
Please explain this [artima.com] and why I can get "pure virtual function called errors in C++.
Because you were an idiot and called a virtual function from a constructor, which can work, sort of, sometimes, but is always a bad idea.
The kernel is not full of macros for RB trees, linked lists/etc. Those are libraries that use malloc and dealloc, which when doing kernal programming you really can't use.
Huh? The Linux kernel has lots of such libraries, for all kinds of useful data structures which use dynamic memory allocation, though they don't use libc's malloc, obviously. They use kmem_cache_alloc and kmem_cache_free, mostly. And some of them have extensive macro wrappers to make them more or less typesafe, like templates. Take a look at include/linux/btree-type.h for one example. The GP may have overstated his case a bit, but you're just wrong.
The horrifically inefficient petrol engine still wins, it seems.
Not with those numbers, especially not when you include the ~15% gain from regenerative braking and when you remove all of the weight of an ICE and drive train. An EV needs no transmission to speak of, and the motor is a small fraction of the size and weight of an ICE. Factor those in and while the ICEV still edges ahead of the EV, it's margin of superiority is not that large.
And then when you further factor in the benefits of not burning gasoline... EVs are pretty compelling. Their one downside is that batteries are so expensive that getting 200+ mile range makes the cars really pricey. With smaller batteries they're very competitive -- I bought my LEAF based on pure economic analysis. Over an eight year time horizon it was significantly cheaper than any ICEV (break even at just under six years), even without the tax credits, and with the state and federal tax credits it was cheaper after two years.
But that only works if you don't need the longer range. For me the LEAF is a perfect commuter car. Range is not an issue, and it's extremely cheap to own and operate, and a lot of fun to drive. I still have to have another vehicle for longer trips, which is fine for me because I would have another vehicle anyway. That's not the case for everyone, of course (though I think it might work well for some people to own one short-range EV and rent an ICE for the occasional long trip).
For electric cars with a 200+ mile range there's a $7,500 federal tax credit so yeah, it would end up at ~$25k after discount but plus fees.
The car doesn't have to have a 200+ mile range to get the full federal tax credit. Any pure EV with a battery of not less than 4 Kwh capacity. Actually the requirements don't even say it has to be a pure EV, but apparently the Volt doesn't qualify.
Privacy Policies are not legally binding - so its merely a PR thing. TOS gives Google rights - for e.g. to kick a user out of their service whenever they want - without giving the *user* any rights - other than what the privacy policy states they might do.
I think privacy policies are more meaningful than you imply. I believe they create promissory estoppel.
Well, nothing stops individual employees from leaking/spying on data anyway. And it has happened.. at Google/Facebook/etc, so all the security in the world will only stop external script-kiddies and other low-level information hackers but cant stop anyone who is motivated enough.
Actually, there is a lot that stops individual employees from leaking/spying. The article you mentioned was three years old, and it described things that happened earlier. There is a lot of infrastructure in place today to prevent unauthorized employee access that wasn't there 3-4 years ago. I happen to know that very well, because I design and build a lot of it -- and 95% of all of my effort is devoted to internal threats. Not because we believe that there are a lot of malicious Googlers, but because if you can guarantee that insiders can't get at the data, outsiders have no chance -- and to prevent examples like the one you cited (which AFAIK was the last such case).
Of course, you'll note that the preceding paragraph was just reassurances with no details. Unfortunately, that's because I can't provide details -- which I actually think is a mistake on Google's part, and something I regularly bring up with management. Google has a really excellent security story, and I think we should be telling it. But since we aren't all I can say is: It's awesome, trust me:-)
So, I'd much rather the data stay in house at Google, who does a good job of securing it, is willing to fight back against government intrusion, and even gives me the option of seeing what data they have collected (through the privacy dashboard) and allowing me to opt out and/or have my data deleted. And I'd rather that Yahoo! promise to keep what they collect on me in-house as well, rather than selling it, even if I don't have quite as much confidence in their integrity.
Your statement contains an implicit assumption that data *must* be collected. I am of the opposite view. Personal data should never be automatically collected, even in an anonymous fashion. All data collection must be done through a specific means (e.g. user submitted form) via an explicit opt-in event - not just clicking "I Agree" on some large wall of text that nobody can understand.
We disagree on the need for an explicit opt-in, and I do think that Google's business model is a reasonable one, and one that's good for users. Google can provide the array of great services that it does because of the trade it makes with users: You allow Google to collect data and use it to target ads to you, and in exchange you get all this stuff. You are free to opt out of this deal, but, frankly, Google wants to make it such a great deal that you don't want to -- and being responsible with your data, ensuring that you know that it won't be used for any other purposes and won't leak, is an important part of the deal.
and even gives me the option of seeing what data they have collected (through the privacy dashboard) and allowing me to opt out and/or have my data deleted.
I have never seen any option of permanently deleting data. I assume deleted just means hidden from the user. One reason being google cant guarentee that the data is deleted from all the backups, and another reason is - even deleted data is valuable for targeting ads.
No, deleted means deleted. I don't think Google is goi
We do not share personal information with companies, organizations and individuals outside of Google unless one of the following circumstances apply:
We provide personal information to our affiliates or other trusted businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly and with our partners – like publishers, advertisers or connected sites. For example, we may share information publicly to show trends about the general use of our services.
----------------
Not exactly comforting.
No? Perhaps we have different standards of comfort, but it seems pretty good to me. The first clause says that Google may outsource data processing, but that whoever they outsource to must follow the same rules as Google. The second says Google will only sell aggregated, anonymized data.
When things are going good user privacy is important from a PR perspective but when things go bad and wall street/investors/other idiot MBA types turn on the pressure, most companies fold and will sell out to make money.
Well, at least as long as Page, Brin and Schmidt are in charge, Wall Street and other MBAs don't have much say. Those three outvote the rest of the shareholders combined. And Google is pretty light on MBAs in general, especially in managerial and executive positions. It's very engineer-heavy all the way up to (and including) the top:-)
I don't think that's what DataSift is doing though. They appear to be selling individual user information.
Maybe but why would individual user information be useful to anyone? I mean.. if I was trying to sell a product, I'd want to target an entire class of people conforming to certain criteria rather than specifically Bob or Sally.
What you really want is the contact details for all of the individuals in that class, so that you can advertise to them directly.
Frankly, if that were all that was done, I wouldn't care. Given that I have to see ads (or find some other way of paying for content), I'd rather see targeted ads than shotgun ads. The problem is that once the data has been sold, there's no way to call it back, and no way to keep track of what was done with it. I also don't have a lot of confidence in the security practices of, well, most everyone. I was a security consultant for 15 years, working with all kinds of fortune 500 companies -- mostly financial institutions! -- and security practices are generally appalling.
So, I'd much rather the data stay in house at Google, who does a good job of securing it, is willing to fight back against government intrusion, and even gives me the option of seeing what data they have collected (through the privacy dashboard) and allowing me to opt out and/or have my data deleted. And I'd rather that Yahoo! promise to keep what they collect on me in-house as well, rather than selling it, even if I don't have quite as much confidence in their integrity.
Google's ability to use the data more effectively than advertisers themselves would is a big part of Google's success.
The only big part of googles success was buying Doubleclick.
Google was hugely successful long before buying Doubleclick, and the impression ads business is still much smaller than the click ad business.
BTW How much do you people get paid to post on slashdot? I'd imagine an advertising company like google has special employees for "social media outreach".
Google does have PR people, but I'm not aware of anyone who does "social media outreach". Of course, I hardly know about everything. Personally, I get paid to write code. I do post on/. during business hours, but, just like the rest of you, it's time taken away from what I'm supposed to be doing.
Yes, aggregated, anonymized trend data is sold. It's a minor, but not trivial, revenue source for Google. I don't think that's what DataSift is doing though. They appear to be selling individual user information.
Deforest an area, pave it, over graze and strip off vegetation, have long term droughts and poor forest management that guarantee huge fires that denude the hills, over log and what do you expect will happen?
Ponies. I expect that ponies will happen.
Nah, they're out in the desert, stripping the land bare, trampling what's left into mulch.
Deforest an area, pave it, over graze and strip off vegetation, have long term droughts and poor forest management that guarantee huge fires that denude the hills, over log and what do you expect will happen?
Duh....
Deforest? You've never been to Colorado, have you.
Snowden won't blackmail... but you bet your booties his handlers (and their version of "enhanced interrogation" techniques) over in Russia and China are using every bit from his laptop to their advantage, politically, economically, and militarily. Anyone who thinks differently is plain naive.
AFAIK Snowden never even took any of the data with him to Russia and China. He said he'd turned it all over to the Guardian before he fled.
Go look up the story rather than randomly guessing.
The fact is that his wife's searches had nothing to do with it, and it's likely his didn't either. Something on his computer at work (we don't know what) made his boss suspicious, who called the cops. The cops went and talked to them. The couple assumed it was because of their web searches and made a big scene out of it all for publicity... which they have done before, though never with so much success.
The original story was all their viewpoint and they were intentionally sensationalizing it and capitalizing on our paranoia. Later stories cleared it up, but of course didn't get nearly as much press (though/. did cover them).
If adherents of both parties defected to Green/Libertarian in roughly equal numbers, Duverger's law would be irrelevant. Also, the law really only impacts individual races. There's plenty of room in a representational government to, say, hand a few Democrat seats over to Greens and a few Republican seats over to Libertarians. It doesn't work with the office of the president, but that's hardly all that matters.
The problem is both the Green and Libertarian parties ignore practical needs to compromise on strict ideology. And, those compromises are where corruption creep in.
It's not like enough of them are going to get into office to be able to implement their policies. The point isn't to put a, say, Libertarian government in place, the point is to make the Ds and Rs realize that they've got to change.
I really, really dislike that model for targeted advertising, and I'm surprised Mayer would sign up for it, rather than using the Google model of keeping the data in house and doing the targeting themselves, so that advertisers never see it. At least that way you only have to keep your eye on one possible misuser of your data (well, plus government agencies who decide to target you for their user data requests).
I suppose making effective use of the data yourself is a lot harder than selling it. But, as I understand it, Google's ability to use the data more effectively than advertisers themselves would is a big part of Google's success. I guess Mayer doesn't think Yahoo! has the know-how to do it as well.
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, which may bias me here. I don't think it does, because I felt the same way before I started working for Google, but it's possible.)
Or there's also the higher-tech approach taken by BioLite. While obviously more expensive, that stove not only improves efficiency and health, but also provides electrical power generation capabilities suitable for charging smartphones and other low-energy electronic devices. Given how transformative cellphones are proving to be in developing economies, that's a non-trivial benefit.
The answer is to distribute the benefits of automation. If your factory has 1000 workers each doing 40 hours a week, and automation makes 250 of those human jobs unnecessary, instead of laying off 250 people altogether while keeping the remaining 750 on a 40 hour schedule, keep everyone on board at 30 hours a week.
And your best employees will leave, because they don't want a 30 hour job and they can go elsewhere. And your overall efficiency will decline so you'll have to work the remaining people more than 30 hours per week, which will make them happy, but will mean that you're paying more than you would have. Meanwhile your competitor will have implemented the same automation and slashed the jobs from his workforce, selecting the least effective employees to can, so his costs will be significantly lower than yours. He'll then cut his prices, taking market share away from you and as your volume declines you become even less efficient -- and and you also have to cut your workers' hours back farther, causing more of them to bail.
Unless you wise up at some point, pretty soon your competitor will eat your lunch, you'll be out of business and all of your employees will be looking for jobs.
And that's ignoring the (very valid) point you made about overhead costs.
Yeah, it's called building where the river DOESN'T flood.
To be fair, they're calling this a 500-year event. Just up the road from my house (Firestone, CO), the St. Vrain river, normally about 10 feet wide and three feet deep, is a half mile wide and has risen a good 8 feet above its normal high water mark. I talked with a farmer whose family has been farming the same fields for over 100 years and their fields have never flooded, until yesterday. Their fields are five feet under water.
So, yeah, not building on the regular flood plains is smart, but this is well beyond that. Much of what has been flooded this week has never flooded in recorded history.
Slashdot Mirror
Then why can't their navigation give me any better instructions then "turn slight right then merge onto street you are already on"?
Different problem. And the one you mention is being worked on, I'm sure.
Agreed. There is simply no way that autonomous cars can safely be used on the same roads as human-operated ones. It just isn't going to happen.
Google's fleet of self-driving cars have logged over a million miles driving on the same roads as human-operated cars.
[Citation Needed]
Citation for what?
Here's what would stop any massacre in any school: an unknown number of armed teachers.
How many deaths would there be from teachers who momentarily snapped and did something stupid? How many deaths would there be from children getting their hands on the guns and doing something stupid?
Well, let's see, it has been legal for teachers to carry in schools in Utah for more than 10 years now, and there have been zero incidents of either of the sort you mentioned.
It's hard to extrapolate from zero, but we can probably use it to set an upper bound. Let's suppose that an incident occurs next year, which will actually be the 12th year since teachers have been able to be armed. There are approximately 3M residents of the state, so that would give a rate of one incident per 36M resident-years, as an upper bound. So that means that we could expect at most 8 such incidents per year nationwide (again, remember this is an upper bound). As compared to observed school shootings, that would be a win, assuming the rate actually was that high, which I strongly doubt.
I fully expect that Utah will go 20+ years without any incident of either sort. There are other states which are also in the process of allowing teachers to be armed, or have allowed it recently, and some states in which it's up to the school district and some school districts have chosen to allow it, so the reliability of our statistics will be improving over time.
How many deaths would there be from the cross-fire during a school shooting?
What a ridiculous argument. Which do you really think will cause more deaths, a stray bullets from armed people shooting at one another, or unopposed, aimed bullets from a rampage shooter methodically picking people off?
Again, there's no need to guess, though, because it actually does happen that rampage shooters get stopped by other armed people, both police and civilians. On average, when rampage shooters are stopped by civilians, 2.33 people die. When they're stopped by police 14.29 people die. The difference lies in response time. The time it takes for armed people to arrive is the time that a shooter has to go about his bloody business. When an armed person is already present, rampages end quickly and deaths are low.
And, in fact, I haven't seen a single example of a case where innocents were killed "in the crossfire" between civilian carriers and bad guys.
Besides, the point is moot since nobody can expect an average user to sue giant corporations - given their army of lawyers.
Class action. Or, alternatively, legislative action. Google is fully cognizant of both of those possibilities, and that at Google's size and public visibility one or both would happen.
When I type google.com into a browser, I am not expressing any intent for Google to track me.
Intent, no, permission yes.
Google is simply assuming that the fact that any packets are routed through their networks gives them the right to inspect and track/save them.
Do your packets get routed through Google's network? Not unless you're on Google Fiber, and if you are Google doesn't assume any such right.
But you're not talking about packets which you're sending somewhere else which happen to flow through Google, you're talking about packets that you send to Google's data centers, expecting those data centers to do some useful work for you. The price for that useful work is targeted advertising and the tracking which supports it. Though, of course, Google being Google, the company does provide you with tools to opt out of that (aside: do you use the Google opt outs? I think you should, based on your expressed philosophy).
What if every single internet backbone provider starting mining data packets?
Sorry, but I think this is a red herring. That's a completely different situation. And, personally, I think you should encrypt all of your traffic to make it impossible for middlemen to see anything.
What if Google decides that people who click on ads should have their traffic/service prioritized?
Conceptually I don't see any problem with that. In practice it wouldn't gain Google anything, since any motivation to click other than interest in potentially buying the advertised product ultimately does Google no good. It increases clicks, but decreases the value of those clicks to advertisers, which in turn causes them to bid less. There's a good reason that Wall Street pays a lot of attention to Google's "cost per click" metric; higher values mean advertisers are bidding higher, which means that Google is providing more effective advertising.
Another point to consider is that Google isn't an advertising company. Google is a technology company which has historically found that the easiest way to monetize its technology is through advertising. But Google's non-advertising revenues have been growing far faster than its ad revenues for some time now. They still only constitute 10% of total revenues, but that's up from 4% a couple of years ago.
Once you create a successful business which relies primarily on user data/clicks/impressions - the only way to grow in a saturated market is to give the 1-2% "paying customers" who click on ads something extra.
Actually, Google's advertising market is far from saturated. Google owns a big chunk of online advertising, but online advertising is still small potatoes compared to total advertising. There's lots of room for growth.
And I'm not even getting to what can happen if data is used to manipulate peoples psychology.
Interestingly enough, while I disagree with you on this point, because I'm a cold-eyed libertarian who thinks people should be responsible for themselves, the vast majority of Googlers, including Google management, agree with you, that Google could but absolutely should not do anything like that. Not that my reassurances that Google is a bunch of bleeding hearts will really give you any comfort, because that could change.
I doubt I can be comfortable with any business that charges no money upfront for their products.
Suppose Google offered an alternative, a way that you could choose to make micropayments in lieu of seeing ads. Would you si
Where are they "badmouthing" Linux? All they said was that Linux is over-kill for running a single application within a VM.
Considering we used to run Linux and our applications in 32MB of RAM and 64MB of Flash in embedded systems, I have a hard time seeing Linux as over-kill for running anything in a VM. The application will probably require more RAM and CPU than the kernel.
We used to run Linux on a hell of a lot less than that. But that was a different Linux.
Please explain this [artima.com] and why I can get "pure virtual function called errors in C++.
Because you were an idiot and called a virtual function from a constructor, which can work, sort of, sometimes, but is always a bad idea.
The kernel is not full of macros for RB trees, linked lists/etc. Those are libraries that use malloc and dealloc, which when doing kernal programming you really can't use.
Huh? The Linux kernel has lots of such libraries, for all kinds of useful data structures which use dynamic memory allocation, though they don't use libc's malloc, obviously. They use kmem_cache_alloc and kmem_cache_free, mostly. And some of them have extensive macro wrappers to make them more or less typesafe, like templates. Take a look at include/linux/btree-type.h for one example. The GP may have overstated his case a bit, but you're just wrong.
OK - 30% of 46 = 13.8; 95% of 9 = 8.55
The horrifically inefficient petrol engine still wins, it seems.
Not with those numbers, especially not when you include the ~15% gain from regenerative braking and when you remove all of the weight of an ICE and drive train. An EV needs no transmission to speak of, and the motor is a small fraction of the size and weight of an ICE. Factor those in and while the ICEV still edges ahead of the EV, it's margin of superiority is not that large.
And then when you further factor in the benefits of not burning gasoline... EVs are pretty compelling. Their one downside is that batteries are so expensive that getting 200+ mile range makes the cars really pricey. With smaller batteries they're very competitive -- I bought my LEAF based on pure economic analysis. Over an eight year time horizon it was significantly cheaper than any ICEV (break even at just under six years), even without the tax credits, and with the state and federal tax credits it was cheaper after two years.
But that only works if you don't need the longer range. For me the LEAF is a perfect commuter car. Range is not an issue, and it's extremely cheap to own and operate, and a lot of fun to drive. I still have to have another vehicle for longer trips, which is fine for me because I would have another vehicle anyway. That's not the case for everyone, of course (though I think it might work well for some people to own one short-range EV and rent an ICE for the occasional long trip).
For electric cars with a 200+ mile range there's a $7,500 federal tax credit so yeah, it would end up at ~$25k after discount but plus fees.
The car doesn't have to have a 200+ mile range to get the full federal tax credit. Any pure EV with a battery of not less than 4 Kwh capacity. Actually the requirements don't even say it has to be a pure EV, but apparently the Volt doesn't qualify.
There are quite a few EVs that qualify.
Privacy Policies are not legally binding - so its merely a PR thing. TOS gives Google rights - for e.g. to kick a user out of their service whenever they want - without giving the *user* any rights - other than what the privacy policy states they might do.
I think privacy policies are more meaningful than you imply. I believe they create promissory estoppel.
Well, nothing stops individual employees from leaking/spying on data anyway. And it has happened .. at Google/Facebook/etc, so all the security in the world will only stop external script-kiddies and other low-level information hackers but cant stop anyone who is motivated enough.
Actually, there is a lot that stops individual employees from leaking/spying. The article you mentioned was three years old, and it described things that happened earlier. There is a lot of infrastructure in place today to prevent unauthorized employee access that wasn't there 3-4 years ago. I happen to know that very well, because I design and build a lot of it -- and 95% of all of my effort is devoted to internal threats. Not because we believe that there are a lot of malicious Googlers, but because if you can guarantee that insiders can't get at the data, outsiders have no chance -- and to prevent examples like the one you cited (which AFAIK was the last such case).
Of course, you'll note that the preceding paragraph was just reassurances with no details. Unfortunately, that's because I can't provide details -- which I actually think is a mistake on Google's part, and something I regularly bring up with management. Google has a really excellent security story, and I think we should be telling it. But since we aren't all I can say is: It's awesome, trust me :-)
So, I'd much rather the data stay in house at Google, who does a good job of securing it, is willing to fight back against government intrusion, and even gives me the option of seeing what data they have collected (through the privacy dashboard) and allowing me to opt out and/or have my data deleted. And I'd rather that Yahoo! promise to keep what they collect on me in-house as well, rather than selling it, even if I don't have quite as much confidence in their integrity.
Your statement contains an implicit assumption that data *must* be collected. I am of the opposite view. Personal data should never be automatically collected, even in an anonymous fashion. All data collection must be done through a specific means (e.g. user submitted form) via an explicit opt-in event - not just clicking "I Agree" on some large wall of text that nobody can understand.
We disagree on the need for an explicit opt-in, and I do think that Google's business model is a reasonable one, and one that's good for users. Google can provide the array of great services that it does because of the trade it makes with users: You allow Google to collect data and use it to target ads to you, and in exchange you get all this stuff. You are free to opt out of this deal, but, frankly, Google wants to make it such a great deal that you don't want to -- and being responsible with your data, ensuring that you know that it won't be used for any other purposes and won't leak, is an important part of the deal.
and even gives me the option of seeing what data they have collected (through the privacy dashboard) and allowing me to opt out and/or have my data deleted.
I have never seen any option of permanently deleting data. I assume deleted just means hidden from the user. One reason being google cant guarentee that the data is deleted from all the backups, and another reason is - even deleted data is valuable for targeting ads.
No, deleted means deleted. I don't think Google is goi
And your privacy policy states:
We do not share personal information with companies, organizations and individuals outside of Google unless one of the following circumstances apply:
We provide personal information to our affiliates or other trusted businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly and with our partners – like publishers, advertisers or connected sites. For example, we may share information publicly to show trends about the general use of our services. ----------------
Not exactly comforting.
No? Perhaps we have different standards of comfort, but it seems pretty good to me. The first clause says that Google may outsource data processing, but that whoever they outsource to must follow the same rules as Google. The second says Google will only sell aggregated, anonymized data.
When things are going good user privacy is important from a PR perspective but when things go bad and wall street/investors/other idiot MBA types turn on the pressure, most companies fold and will sell out to make money.
Well, at least as long as Page, Brin and Schmidt are in charge, Wall Street and other MBAs don't have much say. Those three outvote the rest of the shareholders combined. And Google is pretty light on MBAs in general, especially in managerial and executive positions. It's very engineer-heavy all the way up to (and including) the top :-)
I don't think that's what DataSift is doing though. They appear to be selling individual user information.
Maybe but why would individual user information be useful to anyone? I mean .. if I was trying to sell a product, I'd want to target an entire class of people conforming to certain criteria rather than specifically Bob or Sally.
What you really want is the contact details for all of the individuals in that class, so that you can advertise to them directly.
Frankly, if that were all that was done, I wouldn't care. Given that I have to see ads (or find some other way of paying for content), I'd rather see targeted ads than shotgun ads. The problem is that once the data has been sold, there's no way to call it back, and no way to keep track of what was done with it. I also don't have a lot of confidence in the security practices of, well, most everyone. I was a security consultant for 15 years, working with all kinds of fortune 500 companies -- mostly financial institutions! -- and security practices are generally appalling.
So, I'd much rather the data stay in house at Google, who does a good job of securing it, is willing to fight back against government intrusion, and even gives me the option of seeing what data they have collected (through the privacy dashboard) and allowing me to opt out and/or have my data deleted. And I'd rather that Yahoo! promise to keep what they collect on me in-house as well, rather than selling it, even if I don't have quite as much confidence in their integrity.
Google's ability to use the data more effectively than advertisers themselves would is a big part of Google's success.
The only big part of googles success was buying Doubleclick.
Google was hugely successful long before buying Doubleclick, and the impression ads business is still much smaller than the click ad business.
BTW How much do you people get paid to post on slashdot? I'd imagine an advertising company like google has special employees for "social media outreach".
Google does have PR people, but I'm not aware of anyone who does "social media outreach". Of course, I hardly know about everything. Personally, I get paid to write code. I do post on /. during business hours, but, just like the rest of you, it's time taken away from what I'm supposed to be doing.
Yes, aggregated, anonymized trend data is sold. It's a minor, but not trivial, revenue source for Google. I don't think that's what DataSift is doing though. They appear to be selling individual user information.
Ponies. I expect that ponies will happen.
Nah, they're out in the desert, stripping the land bare, trampling what's left into mulch.
Deforest an area, pave it, over graze and strip off vegetation, have long term droughts and poor forest management that guarantee huge fires that denude the hills, over log and what do you expect will happen?
Duh....
Deforest? You've never been to Colorado, have you.
Snowden won't blackmail... but you bet your booties his handlers (and their version of "enhanced interrogation" techniques) over in Russia and China are using every bit from his laptop to their advantage, politically, economically, and militarily. Anyone who thinks differently is plain naive.
AFAIK Snowden never even took any of the data with him to Russia and China. He said he'd turned it all over to the Guardian before he fled.
Go look up the story rather than randomly guessing.
The fact is that his wife's searches had nothing to do with it, and it's likely his didn't either. Something on his computer at work (we don't know what) made his boss suspicious, who called the cops. The cops went and talked to them. The couple assumed it was because of their web searches and made a big scene out of it all for publicity... which they have done before, though never with so much success.
The original story was all their viewpoint and they were intentionally sensationalizing it and capitalizing on our paranoia. Later stories cleared it up, but of course didn't get nearly as much press (though /. did cover them).
If adherents of both parties defected to Green/Libertarian in roughly equal numbers, Duverger's law would be irrelevant. Also, the law really only impacts individual races. There's plenty of room in a representational government to, say, hand a few Democrat seats over to Greens and a few Republican seats over to Libertarians. It doesn't work with the office of the president, but that's hardly all that matters.
The problem is both the Green and Libertarian parties ignore practical needs to compromise on strict ideology. And, those compromises are where corruption creep in.
It's not like enough of them are going to get into office to be able to implement their policies. The point isn't to put a, say, Libertarian government in place, the point is to make the Ds and Rs realize that they've got to change.
I really, really dislike that model for targeted advertising, and I'm surprised Mayer would sign up for it, rather than using the Google model of keeping the data in house and doing the targeting themselves, so that advertisers never see it. At least that way you only have to keep your eye on one possible misuser of your data (well, plus government agencies who decide to target you for their user data requests).
I suppose making effective use of the data yourself is a lot harder than selling it. But, as I understand it, Google's ability to use the data more effectively than advertisers themselves would is a big part of Google's success. I guess Mayer doesn't think Yahoo! has the know-how to do it as well.
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, which may bias me here. I don't think it does, because I felt the same way before I started working for Google, but it's possible.)
Am I the only one who thinks that these idiots are creating 3D printed guns solely to provoke TPTB into regulating 3D printers?
The only one? Almost certainly not. Of course, all of you are wrong. The guys making the 3D-printed guns are quite clear about their rationale.
Or there's also the higher-tech approach taken by BioLite. While obviously more expensive, that stove not only improves efficiency and health, but also provides electrical power generation capabilities suitable for charging smartphones and other low-energy electronic devices. Given how transformative cellphones are proving to be in developing economies, that's a non-trivial benefit.
The answer is to distribute the benefits of automation. If your factory has 1000 workers each doing 40 hours a week, and automation makes 250 of those human jobs unnecessary, instead of laying off 250 people altogether while keeping the remaining 750 on a 40 hour schedule, keep everyone on board at 30 hours a week.
And your best employees will leave, because they don't want a 30 hour job and they can go elsewhere. And your overall efficiency will decline so you'll have to work the remaining people more than 30 hours per week, which will make them happy, but will mean that you're paying more than you would have. Meanwhile your competitor will have implemented the same automation and slashed the jobs from his workforce, selecting the least effective employees to can, so his costs will be significantly lower than yours. He'll then cut his prices, taking market share away from you and as your volume declines you become even less efficient -- and and you also have to cut your workers' hours back farther, causing more of them to bail.
Unless you wise up at some point, pretty soon your competitor will eat your lunch, you'll be out of business and all of your employees will be looking for jobs.
And that's ignoring the (very valid) point you made about overhead costs.
Yeah, it's called building where the river DOESN'T flood.
To be fair, they're calling this a 500-year event. Just up the road from my house (Firestone, CO), the St. Vrain river, normally about 10 feet wide and three feet deep, is a half mile wide and has risen a good 8 feet above its normal high water mark. I talked with a farmer whose family has been farming the same fields for over 100 years and their fields have never flooded, until yesterday. Their fields are five feet under water.
So, yeah, not building on the regular flood plains is smart, but this is well beyond that. Much of what has been flooded this week has never flooded in recorded history.
Selling $1B worth of user data to the NSA doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
That $1B is from Google Apps for Enterprise and related products. Google doesn't sell user data to the NSA, or anyone else.