I could see something like your streamy-line-thing only updates once a day (or once per hour, etc) for free, but if you're a paid member then its realtime. Or paid members get realtime but free members live perpetually 30 minutes in the past...
That's be the best thing that could happen for Google+.
Could be a number of things, side effects from emancipation, a media that keeps harping the antihero middle-fingering the law as the ultimate person to be, the rush of continual instant gratification, and maybe something completely different. Or none at all...
Agreed. The plural of anecdote is not data. I recognize that. Perhaps it's nothing and I'm just coincidentally seeing a bunch of troubled cases, and I'm more sensitized to it because of my own daughter's troubles. I especially have to discount the troubles of my daughter's friends, because given her situation she tends to gravitate to others with problems -- and she's even been moved to a school that is especially for kids with special needs. Not all are troubled (one kid is an olympic athlete who needs a different approach to education to work around his intense training regimen) but many are.
Anyway, perhaps it's nothing. But I won't be surprised to find that it's not nothing.
Getting in trouble with the law? This seems like an outlier case to me. I would be extremely hesitant to chalk this up to modern technology. Sure, some slight differences in behavior, a general negative trend wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility; but something this serious likely has other, much larger, factors involved.
There's no doubt in my daughter's case that there are other factors. She has a pretty severe emotional disorder. But it's not the case with all of the girls I mention. The trouble with the law isn't even the key difference that I see, either. I knew of kids when I was young who got in trouble... that's nothing new. What is different is that what seem to be generally good kids, raised in good homes, taught by good parents go to unexpected extremes when denied gratification.
I know many kids (in my church) in the facebook/twitter generation who are not like that, so I don't think you can blame facebook/twitter/gadgets for that. They help out, do chores etc (heck many even seem to be more concerned about doing homework than I ever was;) ).
I know lots of good kids, too. I'm not saying these things cause problems for all of them, just that they may make some things worse for kids that might have on the edge anyway.
Those "bad kids" you're seeing are usually[1] the fault of their parents/guardians.
I disagree. Not that parents don't have an important job, but all of the cases I mentioned are girls who have good parents, who taught them responsibility, etc. from a young age. My daughter has always been required to be responsible and respectful, and besides our influence has always had lots of other good role models around through church. All of the other girls I mention except one have siblings who are responsible and respectful, and the one is an only child so it's impossible to know what her siblings might be like.
Now what? Will Google acquire Myspace and pick up the kids still on there?
(Does Myspace still actually have members, or is it just a promotional site for entertainment now?)
I just performed a quick survey of a dozen kids hanging out at my house (my kids and their friends)... and no one under 14 had any idea what myspace was. They're all on Facebook, even the ones under 13, and most are on Google+ as well.
Please do it in terms of something other than "the old farts say it was always done this way, so it should always be done this way".
Welcome to your children's world.
Maybe.
Okay, I'll say right up front that this is purely anecdotal, so take it with plenty of salt, but I've noticed what appears to me to be a disturbing trend among teenage girls, and I wonder if gadgets aren't at least a contributing factor.
Now, teenagers are selfish. That's nothing new. Learning that there are people outside of yourself, and that those people matter, is something that has always arrived in the late teens, or early 20s (and for some people it doesn't seem to really sink in until decades later than that). But I've seen multiple instances lately, with my daughter, a neighbor's daughter, my sister's daughter, and a some of my daughter's friends of a sort of extreme need for instant gratification, and extreme negative responses to lack of fulfillment.
The details don't matter, but in all of these cases, the girls were asked to do pretty reasonable things. Do the occasional chore around the house, keep their parents apprised of their location, etc. And their responses were total and utter defiance, including telling their parents that they don't have to follow any rules, that they can do whatever they want, etc. In four cases, the defiance escalated to violent aggression against their parents. In all of the cases, the girls ran away and several ended up in trouble with the law.
Now, I knew plenty of "bad" girls (from a distance, I was a pretty shy, geeky kid), who often fought with their parents and were pretty defiant. But what I've seen lately seems like it's on a completely different scale. My sister had a pretty checkered teenage history herself, dropping out of school, etc., and she hung out with a lot of problem kids both while still at home and when at Job Corps... but she agrees that she also didn't see anything like the sort of extreme anti-social behavior that seems to cropping up all over.
I'm hesitant to attribute too much to this, because every generation of parents believes their kids' generation is the worst ever... but this does seem to be different. I wonder if it's not related to the ingrained expectation of instant gratification provided by gadgets.
I don't know... all anecdotes and speculation. But it wouldn't surprise me at *all* to hear a few years from now of studies showing significant increases in certain types of anti-social behavior -- and I mean really negative stuff, not just not knowing how to talk to people -- associated with gadget usage.
As for the rest of it, Google doesn't actually offer anything so compelling that I can't either replace it with something at least equally good or just do without it.
Just because you settle a lawsuit does not mean that you are admitting to doing anything wrong. Sometimes it's easier, and cheaper, to pay instead of fight.
Not for $500M. If you settle rather than fight over that much money, it's because you're afraid you might lose. Maybe in court, maybe due to public opinion, but there's no way you spend $500M to avoid the cost of a court battle which will never reach even 10% of that figure.
Google screwed up. Google admitted they screwed up. Maybe out of greed, maybe because they didn't realize it was a crime, maybe because they thought it shouldn't be a crime... who knows? But it's pretty clear that they were in the wrong. So they paid up, and hopefully are now being more careful.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Google engineer, but I don't know anything about this subject other than what I've read in the public media. I don't speak for Google and they don't speak for me.)
One was misleading, and arguably the truth was positive (spin was "Google is changing their ToS so that everyone has to share their details across all their websites!"), reality was "Google has always shared information across their websites, and the ToS is being standardized and hence made easier to understand.
I have to correct this one.
I was one of the posters asserting that it wasn't a change in policy, but I was wrong, as another slashdotter pointed out. Some of Google's (numerous) privacy policies do not, in fact, allow Google to share information across different Google properties. I think most people always assumed (as I did) that if you typed something into gmail that the contents might be used to tailor ads you see on search, etc. But it wasn't the case, and as of March 1st it will be. So it is a change.
I still argue that it's a positive move by Google, though, because I don't see the change as one that's unreasonable or surprising, and I do think Google's attempt to create a short, readable privacy policy and to make it widely understood by their user base is a really positive move. Many on-line services have privacy policies that are pages of dense legalese, and which they feel free to change at any time without notice. Google could easily have done this quietly and gradually, one service at a time, burying the meaning in legalese, and probably avoided any significant press about it. I think a company that just wants to "stay legal" while exploiting its users would do exactly that. Google's up-front approach, and the coming media blitz about it, show a great deal of integrity IMO.
That probably sounds like spin, but I think it's pretty clear that Google honestly wants to ensure that it's not "tricking" people into giving up information about themselves, that it's an open and fair exchange of value -- personalized information for personalized advertising, basically. The company would rather people know about it and make a conscious decision one way or the other.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Google engineer, but I don't have anything to do with setting these policies, and all of this is just my own opinion, not official commentary.)
So, just the "creepiness factor" of being reminded of what Google is doing, meaning your objection to the cross-product data exchange is the increased opportunities for being reminded of that Google is collecting data across products.
No, no. You're conflating two different things. I was responding to your question about why I dislike targeted advertising. My objection to information-sharing between Google products has nothing to do with that.
My objection to cross-contamination is that there are many cases where I want to keep separate parts of my life separate.
Ah, okay. My apologies for misunderstanding.
When I started using Google products, there was no such information sharing. If there had been, I wouldn't have started using them.
In short, I don't want to have information about me pushed to others without my agreeing to it.
Another difference of perspective there; I've always seen Google as a single entity. Perhaps that's because I didn't read the previous privacy policies closely enough.
Google's new policy is to do just that. It's a dealbreaker for me. I actively don't want to use Google as a social network. If I wanted Facebook, I'd use Facebook.
I suppose another option for you is to use multiple Google accounts. That's actually not unreasonable; Google's multi-login works pretty well, so it only takes a couple clicks to switch between identities (for most Google services; there are a handful that don't support multi-login well -- yet). I use three accounts in a daily basis, my google.com account, my willden.org account (a Google Apps domain) and a gmail.com account.
Since Google can't safely assume separate accounts belong to different people, it can't allow information to leak between them, which would accomplish your goal. It may be more inconvenience than you want to accept, however.
This case focused mainly on the bad faith of the creator of the second photo, and I agree that he did act in bad faith -- first using the original photo without paying for it, and then making the second as a workaround
Specifically this statement: IMO, copyright is fundamentally a good idea, if implemented with an appropriate sense of balance.
Sorry, I've said that same thought before, so you owe me royalties now.
You clearly didn't use any of the same words I've used, but you expressed the exact same idea I had, and so both broke UK law as well as admitted in writing you agree what you did should be a crime.
UK law, maybe. But I did not agree that it should be a crime. In fact I was arguing that it should NOT be a crime.
When implemented properly, copyright does not cover ideas, only expressions (that's part of that balance I mentioned), and it doesn't even cover independent but identical expressions, so it wouldn't matter if you had used exactly the same words.
Names like GNOME, Metacity, Eclipse, Octave, Amarok, Brasero, Evolution, LyX, Empathy, Kopete, Gwibber, Thunderbird and Meld are so much more descriptive. Not to mention Skyrim, Galaga, Pac Man, Halo and Tetris. Or Adium, Quicksilver, Hazel, Pzizz, Avenir, Yojimbo, Xylescope, or Kies. Or Gladinet, Bulkr, Everest, DC++ or DeadLine (grabbed off a web site because I don't know Windows apps).
Web sites definitely have more descriptive names, like google, twitter, slashdot, reddit, ebay, amazon, bing, skype, craigslist, tumblr or pandora.
Oh and the names of retail establishments, like McDonald's, Dillard's, Target, Wal-mart, Piggly Wiggly, Safeway, King Soopers or (my favorite) Kum & Go... it's abundantly clear just from the name what each of those is about.
Dude, MOST names are just names, not descriptions.
Though this ruling reaches a little bit further than most, that's already been the case for a while. If you write a book that uses characters and plot are too similar to an existing book, you can be successfully sued for copyright infringement. Same for movies, same for movies made from books and vice versa, or video games, etc.
This case focused mainly on the bad faith of the creator of the second photo, and I agree that he did act in bad faith -- first using the original photo without paying for it, and then making the second as a workaround -- but the precedent it sets is frightening.
IMO, copyright is fundamentally a good idea, if implemented with an appropriate sense of balance. But it's an idea based on a social contract that is intended to benefit the public as a whole, not creators. This ruling and many more of similar ilk, not to mention all of the massive legislative expansions of copyright, in time, space and subject matter, are all based on a misapplication of copyright, one where copyright is assumed to be for the benefit of the creator, not for the benefit of the public domain. That view of copyright is, IMO, a fundamentally bad idea that impoverishes the public domain rather than enriching it. It's just dumb for society to spend time and effort impoverishing itself.
So, just the "creepiness factor" of being reminded of what Google is doing, meaning your objection to the cross-product data exchange is the increased opportunities for being reminded of that Google is collecting data across products. Interesting. I actually expect this correlation between my usage and the ads, so it doesn't bother me, whether it's useful or not. And I do sometimes find personalized ads useful.
I can relate, though. When I joined Google I had to relocate to Colorado a few months before my family moved. In the interim, I stayed in an apartment with some college girls (it was cheap and they were quiet). A couple weeks ago I was on LinkedIn and got a suggestion that I should connect to one of my former roommates -- now there is ZERO intersection between my life and interests and hers, other than the two months we happened to live in the same building. I'm sure the intersection that mattered was that we both used the same IP address to browse LinkedIn.
That creeped me out because I didn't expect it and, until I thought about it, I couldn't figure out how LinkedIn had connected us. Interestingly, I realize now that I would have been pleased rather than annoyed had the recommendation been someone I really wanted to connect to.
I'm not trying to change your mind, but would you mind elaborating on what bothers you about targeted advertising? I'm just really curious as to how it could be offensive. The one way I can see is that it might reveal information about me to people who are looking over my shoulder when I use Google products. Is that it, or is there more?
Thanks for the links. I'll definitely consider those. The Outlaw looks like a lot of bike for the money (relatively speaking -- they all seem awfully expensive to me).
Steven Levy's In the Plex has a great quote about Google's prospectus and it's aspirational language:
Meanwhile the Securities and Exchange Commission was unimpressed by the charms of Page's "Owner's Manual." "Please revise or delete the statements about providing 'a great service to the world', 'to do things that matter', 'greater positive impact on the world, don't be evil', and 'making the world a better place,'" they wrote. (Google would not revise the letter.)
Everything I've read and heard from the Google founders indicates to me that money, in many ways, is a means to an end of bigger goals. Certainly money is driving factor - Page has referenced Tesla, who died in poverty despite his great contributions to the world, as an example of what he doesn't want to see happen with Google - but there are lot of things Google wouldn't be doing if it was a purely profit motivated enterprise.
That is absolutely in line with what I see inside of the company. Making the world a better place for everyone is the goal; money is the means to that end. Not that money isn't quite nice, mind you.
I would be much more skeptical of Google once the founder's are no longer at the helm. That's when companies start to mutate in profit creation beasts that have no relation to what its founders originally set out to do (e.g. Disney).
I agree with this as well, as do lots of other Google employees. A common sort of question that comes up in the weekly company-wide Q&A sessions is "Okay, this is fine, but what if Google changes in the future and does X?". And the answer is generally of the form "But we won't do that". It's a very unsatisfactory answer. You can be assured that the founders aren't the only ones with their eyes on bigger goals than just profit, a hypothetical future Evil Google would also have to have a very different culture.
Of course, that could happen. My opinion is that we just need to make sure that Google is legally obligated to follow the terms of the privacy agreements under which they collect data. As long as they're truly limited to doing nothing with the data other than targeted advertising, it's hard to see how they could do significant harm. I also wouldn't object to some real privacy legislation to limit the risks.
I could write one of several variations on the theme of Google's "sheep's clothing" strategy
You could, but I'm convinced that is simply not the case. It's not impossible, mind you, but I certainly don't see it from where I sit. If there's a strategy to hide the truth, they're hiding it from employees pretty effectively, as well as the rest of the worlds. And given how transparent Google's operations are to employees, it's a truly masterful snow job.
but seeing as how the bought-and-paid-for mods are already clicking away on a lot of these comments (-1 on my earlier post, based on...what exactly?)
So are you claiming that Google has bought off the moderators? I don't know why you might have gotten modded down; sorry. I thought your post was wrong, but still contributed to the discussion. I wouldn't have moderated you down.
You explained a lot about why Google should be perceived differently based on the fuzziness of "Don't Be Evil" but you can't disagree about it's corporate priority.
Nor did I try to. But then I don't think there's anything inherently evil in a profit motive, so perhaps we differ there. I certainly like to profit on my endeavors, and I like all of the companies my retirement funds are invested in to do the same.
However, my point is that due to the factors I mentioned, Google has considerably more latitude than most public companies to pursue long-term profits, rather than being focused on quarterlies. I think that's an important difference because in the long term Google will be best-served by making its users happy, which includes not abusing their private data.
But there is, in fact, a change of policy. I'm not worried about targeted advertising (well, I am, but that horse has long left the barn), but rather that Google is now talking about trading information between products with no opt-out possible.
Hasn't it always been that way? I really think that is just a reiteration of the status quo, not a change. But I have to admit that I haven't read all of the old privacy policies carefully.
As for the desirability, either way, I guess I don't see how it's different to get targeted ads in my mail reader based on the contents of my e-mail, plus targeted ads in my search results, based on my search history, etc., vs targeted ads in all of them based on my activities in all of them.
But, then, I don't mind targeted ads. In fact, I like them. I'd rather not have ads at all, but if they have to be there (and I'd rather they were than to have to pay for all these services directly), then I prefer they be for things that I might actually be interested in buying.
Overall, this is Google being evil. A small evil, perhaps, but evil nonetheless.
I'd say that depends on what Google does with the data, whether it serves to benefit or harm the users.
In the short term at least, I see no harm and some potential benefit. If there's a risk of evil it's in the longer view... what might a future incarnation of Google do with this old data? As long as they're held to abide by this current policy, though, it's hard to see how they could do a lot of harm with it. The policy says they're pretty much restricted to using it for targeted advertising, and although it allows them to work with affiliates and partners, it states those other organizations will be held to the same standard.
Right, but the point is that Google are making their products less usable if you have to opt-out of stuff or keep two separate accounts going.
Oh, I don't know about that. Using two accounts works pretty smoothly. I do it because I don't want to use my work e-mail for personal stuff. There are a handful of Google services that don't properly support multi-login but they're rapidly getting fixed.
Tip: I've found that if you use Google multi-login, whichever account you log into first becomes your "default" login. So when you type the URL of a Google service you're on that account unless you switch. I always take care to log into my work account first on my work machine, and do the reverse at home. I do this mostly so that I don't post to the "wrong" Google+ account, but it would accomplish what you're describing as well.
Anyway, the point is that the "less usable" argument is more about the quality of the multi-account UI than the basic concept. Well, except for people who use one e-mail address for personal and work stuff, but I think that's pretty rare.
OTOH a proper 32bit CRC is big enough to push the likelyhood of an undetected error from "may happen a few times a year" to "not in your, or your kids lifetime".
Agreed on the deficiencies of the 16-bit 1's complement sum -- and I've also had data loss from it -- but I think you're overestimating the goodness of a 32-bit CRC. The exact performance depends on the nature of the corruption, but it's pretty much going to fail about 1 in 2^32 times. At 80K packets per second, with, say, 1% corruption (which is a bit high, but I've seen worse...), that's ~6 undetected corrupted packets per year.
You sure about that? I'm currently shopping for a bike. Right now I have a hybrid that is a little too heavy and inefficient for my commute to work (it's 26 miles each way) so I'm looking for a replacement. I thought about getting a real road bike, but I can't touch anything decent for less than $1500 new. I have found a couple of touring bikes and a couple of cyclocross-style bikes which are probably actually a better choice for my commute, and a little bit cheaper, but only a little bit. The budget I set for myself is $600, and I was hoping to include toe clips, rack, etc., for that, on a reasonably-light bike with disk brakes -- and I'm not finding it. Not new, anyway. I'll find something used, I'm sure.
Anyway, my point is that for the materials that go into them and the amount of labor it looks like they require, bikes seem to me to have quite a healthy profit margin.
If you'd like to continue discussing this with me, please adopt a less aggressive tone and language, and I'll be happy to continue
are you kidding? I'm not even reading your response. I'm not interested in rehashes of your opinions -- you made those quite clear, and it's just the usual shallow, spineless garbage.
no, I'm barking at you, telling you to go and fuck yourself. so do that, or don't, but don't tell me about it.
Slashdot Mirror
I could see something like your streamy-line-thing only updates once a day (or once per hour, etc) for free, but if you're a paid member then its realtime. Or paid members get realtime but free members live perpetually 30 minutes in the past...
That's be the best thing that could happen for Google+.
Mmm... pheasant for dinner tonight.
Could be a number of things, side effects from emancipation, a media that keeps harping the antihero middle-fingering the law as the ultimate person to be, the rush of continual instant gratification, and maybe something completely different. Or none at all...
Agreed. The plural of anecdote is not data. I recognize that. Perhaps it's nothing and I'm just coincidentally seeing a bunch of troubled cases, and I'm more sensitized to it because of my own daughter's troubles. I especially have to discount the troubles of my daughter's friends, because given her situation she tends to gravitate to others with problems -- and she's even been moved to a school that is especially for kids with special needs. Not all are troubled (one kid is an olympic athlete who needs a different approach to education to work around his intense training regimen) but many are.
Anyway, perhaps it's nothing. But I won't be surprised to find that it's not nothing.
Getting in trouble with the law? This seems like an outlier case to me. I would be extremely hesitant to chalk this up to modern technology. Sure, some slight differences in behavior, a general negative trend wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility; but something this serious likely has other, much larger, factors involved.
There's no doubt in my daughter's case that there are other factors. She has a pretty severe emotional disorder. But it's not the case with all of the girls I mention. The trouble with the law isn't even the key difference that I see, either. I knew of kids when I was young who got in trouble... that's nothing new. What is different is that what seem to be generally good kids, raised in good homes, taught by good parents go to unexpected extremes when denied gratification.
I know many kids (in my church) in the facebook/twitter generation who are not like that, so I don't think you can blame facebook/twitter/gadgets for that. They help out, do chores etc (heck many even seem to be more concerned about doing homework than I ever was ;) ).
I know lots of good kids, too. I'm not saying these things cause problems for all of them, just that they may make some things worse for kids that might have on the edge anyway.
Those "bad kids" you're seeing are usually[1] the fault of their parents/guardians.
I disagree. Not that parents don't have an important job, but all of the cases I mentioned are girls who have good parents, who taught them responsibility, etc. from a young age. My daughter has always been required to be responsible and respectful, and besides our influence has always had lots of other good role models around through church. All of the other girls I mention except one have siblings who are responsible and respectful, and the one is an only child so it's impossible to know what her siblings might be like.
Now what? Will Google acquire Myspace and pick up the kids still on there?
(Does Myspace still actually have members, or is it just a promotional site for entertainment now?)
I just performed a quick survey of a dozen kids hanging out at my house (my kids and their friends)... and no one under 14 had any idea what myspace was. They're all on Facebook, even the ones under 13, and most are on Google+ as well.
Please define "social problems"
Please do it in terms of something other than "the old farts say it was always done this way, so it should always be done this way".
Welcome to your children's world.
Maybe.
Okay, I'll say right up front that this is purely anecdotal, so take it with plenty of salt, but I've noticed what appears to me to be a disturbing trend among teenage girls, and I wonder if gadgets aren't at least a contributing factor.
Now, teenagers are selfish. That's nothing new. Learning that there are people outside of yourself, and that those people matter, is something that has always arrived in the late teens, or early 20s (and for some people it doesn't seem to really sink in until decades later than that). But I've seen multiple instances lately, with my daughter, a neighbor's daughter, my sister's daughter, and a some of my daughter's friends of a sort of extreme need for instant gratification, and extreme negative responses to lack of fulfillment.
The details don't matter, but in all of these cases, the girls were asked to do pretty reasonable things. Do the occasional chore around the house, keep their parents apprised of their location, etc. And their responses were total and utter defiance, including telling their parents that they don't have to follow any rules, that they can do whatever they want, etc. In four cases, the defiance escalated to violent aggression against their parents. In all of the cases, the girls ran away and several ended up in trouble with the law.
Now, I knew plenty of "bad" girls (from a distance, I was a pretty shy, geeky kid), who often fought with their parents and were pretty defiant. But what I've seen lately seems like it's on a completely different scale. My sister had a pretty checkered teenage history herself, dropping out of school, etc., and she hung out with a lot of problem kids both while still at home and when at Job Corps... but she agrees that she also didn't see anything like the sort of extreme anti-social behavior that seems to cropping up all over.
I'm hesitant to attribute too much to this, because every generation of parents believes their kids' generation is the worst ever... but this does seem to be different. I wonder if it's not related to the ingrained expectation of instant gratification provided by gadgets.
I don't know... all anecdotes and speculation. But it wouldn't surprise me at *all* to hear a few years from now of studies showing significant increases in certain types of anti-social behavior -- and I mean really negative stuff, not just not knowing how to talk to people -- associated with gadget usage.
As for the rest of it, Google doesn't actually offer anything so compelling that I can't either replace it with something at least equally good or just do without it.
We're working on that <grin type="evil"/>.
Kidding, of course.
Just because you settle a lawsuit does not mean that you are admitting to doing anything wrong. Sometimes it's easier, and cheaper, to pay instead of fight.
Not for $500M. If you settle rather than fight over that much money, it's because you're afraid you might lose. Maybe in court, maybe due to public opinion, but there's no way you spend $500M to avoid the cost of a court battle which will never reach even 10% of that figure.
Google screwed up. Google admitted they screwed up. Maybe out of greed, maybe because they didn't realize it was a crime, maybe because they thought it shouldn't be a crime... who knows? But it's pretty clear that they were in the wrong. So they paid up, and hopefully are now being more careful.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Google engineer, but I don't know anything about this subject other than what I've read in the public media. I don't speak for Google and they don't speak for me.)
One was misleading, and arguably the truth was positive (spin was "Google is changing their ToS so that everyone has to share their details across all their websites!"), reality was "Google has always shared information across their websites, and the ToS is being standardized and hence made easier to understand.
I have to correct this one.
I was one of the posters asserting that it wasn't a change in policy, but I was wrong, as another slashdotter pointed out. Some of Google's (numerous) privacy policies do not, in fact, allow Google to share information across different Google properties. I think most people always assumed (as I did) that if you typed something into gmail that the contents might be used to tailor ads you see on search, etc. But it wasn't the case, and as of March 1st it will be. So it is a change.
I still argue that it's a positive move by Google, though, because I don't see the change as one that's unreasonable or surprising, and I do think Google's attempt to create a short, readable privacy policy and to make it widely understood by their user base is a really positive move. Many on-line services have privacy policies that are pages of dense legalese, and which they feel free to change at any time without notice. Google could easily have done this quietly and gradually, one service at a time, burying the meaning in legalese, and probably avoided any significant press about it. I think a company that just wants to "stay legal" while exploiting its users would do exactly that. Google's up-front approach, and the coming media blitz about it, show a great deal of integrity IMO.
That probably sounds like spin, but I think it's pretty clear that Google honestly wants to ensure that it's not "tricking" people into giving up information about themselves, that it's an open and fair exchange of value -- personalized information for personalized advertising, basically. The company would rather people know about it and make a conscious decision one way or the other.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Google engineer, but I don't have anything to do with setting these policies, and all of this is just my own opinion, not official commentary.)
So, just the "creepiness factor" of being reminded of what Google is doing, meaning your objection to the cross-product data exchange is the increased opportunities for being reminded of that Google is collecting data across products.
No, no. You're conflating two different things. I was responding to your question about why I dislike targeted advertising. My objection to information-sharing between Google products has nothing to do with that.
My objection to cross-contamination is that there are many cases where I want to keep separate parts of my life separate.
Ah, okay. My apologies for misunderstanding.
When I started using Google products, there was no such information sharing. If there had been, I wouldn't have started using them.
In short, I don't want to have information about me pushed to others without my agreeing to it.
Another difference of perspective there; I've always seen Google as a single entity. Perhaps that's because I didn't read the previous privacy policies closely enough.
Google's new policy is to do just that. It's a dealbreaker for me. I actively don't want to use Google as a social network. If I wanted Facebook, I'd use Facebook.
I suppose another option for you is to use multiple Google accounts. That's actually not unreasonable; Google's multi-login works pretty well, so it only takes a couple clicks to switch between identities (for most Google services; there are a handful that don't support multi-login well -- yet). I use three accounts in a daily basis, my google.com account, my willden.org account (a Google Apps domain) and a gmail.com account.
Since Google can't safely assume separate accounts belong to different people, it can't allow information to leak between them, which would accomplish your goal. It may be more inconvenience than you want to accept, however.
This case focused mainly on the bad faith of the creator of the second photo, and I agree that he did act in bad faith -- first using the original photo without paying for it, and then making the second as a workaround
Specifically this statement: IMO, copyright is fundamentally a good idea, if implemented with an appropriate sense of balance.
Sorry, I've said that same thought before, so you owe me royalties now.
You clearly didn't use any of the same words I've used, but you expressed the exact same idea I had, and so both broke UK law as well as admitted in writing you agree what you did should be a crime.
UK law, maybe. But I did not agree that it should be a crime. In fact I was arguing that it should NOT be a crime.
When implemented properly, copyright does not cover ideas, only expressions (that's part of that balance I mentioned), and it doesn't even cover independent but identical expressions, so it wouldn't matter if you had used exactly the same words.
there are 3 more
Yeah, that's just stupid.
Names like GNOME, Metacity, Eclipse, Octave, Amarok, Brasero, Evolution, LyX, Empathy, Kopete, Gwibber, Thunderbird and Meld are so much more descriptive. Not to mention Skyrim, Galaga, Pac Man, Halo and Tetris. Or Adium, Quicksilver, Hazel, Pzizz, Avenir, Yojimbo, Xylescope, or Kies. Or Gladinet, Bulkr, Everest, DC++ or DeadLine (grabbed off a web site because I don't know Windows apps).
Web sites definitely have more descriptive names, like google, twitter, slashdot, reddit, ebay, amazon, bing, skype, craigslist, tumblr or pandora.
Oh and the names of retail establishments, like McDonald's, Dillard's, Target, Wal-mart, Piggly Wiggly, Safeway, King Soopers or (my favorite) Kum & Go... it's abundantly clear just from the name what each of those is about.
Dude, MOST names are just names, not descriptions.
Now a freaking IDEA is protected under copyright?
Though this ruling reaches a little bit further than most, that's already been the case for a while. If you write a book that uses characters and plot are too similar to an existing book, you can be successfully sued for copyright infringement. Same for movies, same for movies made from books and vice versa, or video games, etc.
This case focused mainly on the bad faith of the creator of the second photo, and I agree that he did act in bad faith -- first using the original photo without paying for it, and then making the second as a workaround -- but the precedent it sets is frightening.
IMO, copyright is fundamentally a good idea, if implemented with an appropriate sense of balance. But it's an idea based on a social contract that is intended to benefit the public as a whole, not creators. This ruling and many more of similar ilk, not to mention all of the massive legislative expansions of copyright, in time, space and subject matter, are all based on a misapplication of copyright, one where copyright is assumed to be for the benefit of the creator, not for the benefit of the public domain. That view of copyright is, IMO, a fundamentally bad idea that impoverishes the public domain rather than enriching it. It's just dumb for society to spend time and effort impoverishing itself.
So, just the "creepiness factor" of being reminded of what Google is doing, meaning your objection to the cross-product data exchange is the increased opportunities for being reminded of that Google is collecting data across products. Interesting. I actually expect this correlation between my usage and the ads, so it doesn't bother me, whether it's useful or not. And I do sometimes find personalized ads useful.
I can relate, though. When I joined Google I had to relocate to Colorado a few months before my family moved. In the interim, I stayed in an apartment with some college girls (it was cheap and they were quiet). A couple weeks ago I was on LinkedIn and got a suggestion that I should connect to one of my former roommates -- now there is ZERO intersection between my life and interests and hers, other than the two months we happened to live in the same building. I'm sure the intersection that mattered was that we both used the same IP address to browse LinkedIn.
That creeped me out because I didn't expect it and, until I thought about it, I couldn't figure out how LinkedIn had connected us. Interestingly, I realize now that I would have been pleased rather than annoyed had the recommendation been someone I really wanted to connect to.
Fair enough.
I'm not trying to change your mind, but would you mind elaborating on what bothers you about targeted advertising? I'm just really curious as to how it could be offensive. The one way I can see is that it might reveal information about me to people who are looking over my shoulder when I use Google products. Is that it, or is there more?
Thanks for the links. I'll definitely consider those. The Outlaw looks like a lot of bike for the money (relatively speaking -- they all seem awfully expensive to me).
Steven Levy's In the Plex has a great quote about Google's prospectus and it's aspirational language:
Everything I've read and heard from the Google founders indicates to me that money, in many ways, is a means to an end of bigger goals. Certainly money is driving factor - Page has referenced Tesla, who died in poverty despite his great contributions to the world, as an example of what he doesn't want to see happen with Google - but there are lot of things Google wouldn't be doing if it was a purely profit motivated enterprise.
That is absolutely in line with what I see inside of the company. Making the world a better place for everyone is the goal; money is the means to that end. Not that money isn't quite nice, mind you.
I would be much more skeptical of Google once the founder's are no longer at the helm. That's when companies start to mutate in profit creation beasts that have no relation to what its founders originally set out to do (e.g. Disney).
I agree with this as well, as do lots of other Google employees. A common sort of question that comes up in the weekly company-wide Q&A sessions is "Okay, this is fine, but what if Google changes in the future and does X?". And the answer is generally of the form "But we won't do that". It's a very unsatisfactory answer. You can be assured that the founders aren't the only ones with their eyes on bigger goals than just profit, a hypothetical future Evil Google would also have to have a very different culture.
Of course, that could happen. My opinion is that we just need to make sure that Google is legally obligated to follow the terms of the privacy agreements under which they collect data. As long as they're truly limited to doing nothing with the data other than targeted advertising, it's hard to see how they could do significant harm. I also wouldn't object to some real privacy legislation to limit the risks.
I could write one of several variations on the theme of Google's "sheep's clothing" strategy
You could, but I'm convinced that is simply not the case. It's not impossible, mind you, but I certainly don't see it from where I sit. If there's a strategy to hide the truth, they're hiding it from employees pretty effectively, as well as the rest of the worlds. And given how transparent Google's operations are to employees, it's a truly masterful snow job.
but seeing as how the bought-and-paid-for mods are already clicking away on a lot of these comments (-1 on my earlier post, based on...what exactly?)
So are you claiming that Google has bought off the moderators? I don't know why you might have gotten modded down; sorry. I thought your post was wrong, but still contributed to the discussion. I wouldn't have moderated you down.
You explained a lot about why Google should be perceived differently based on the fuzziness of "Don't Be Evil" but you can't disagree about it's corporate priority.
Nor did I try to. But then I don't think there's anything inherently evil in a profit motive, so perhaps we differ there. I certainly like to profit on my endeavors, and I like all of the companies my retirement funds are invested in to do the same.
However, my point is that due to the factors I mentioned, Google has considerably more latitude than most public companies to pursue long-term profits, rather than being focused on quarterlies. I think that's an important difference because in the long term Google will be best-served by making its users happy, which includes not abusing their private data.
But there is, in fact, a change of policy. I'm not worried about targeted advertising (well, I am, but that horse has long left the barn), but rather that Google is now talking about trading information between products with no opt-out possible.
Hasn't it always been that way? I really think that is just a reiteration of the status quo, not a change. But I have to admit that I haven't read all of the old privacy policies carefully.
As for the desirability, either way, I guess I don't see how it's different to get targeted ads in my mail reader based on the contents of my e-mail, plus targeted ads in my search results, based on my search history, etc., vs targeted ads in all of them based on my activities in all of them.
But, then, I don't mind targeted ads. In fact, I like them. I'd rather not have ads at all, but if they have to be there (and I'd rather they were than to have to pay for all these services directly), then I prefer they be for things that I might actually be interested in buying.
Overall, this is Google being evil. A small evil, perhaps, but evil nonetheless.
I'd say that depends on what Google does with the data, whether it serves to benefit or harm the users.
In the short term at least, I see no harm and some potential benefit. If there's a risk of evil it's in the longer view... what might a future incarnation of Google do with this old data? As long as they're held to abide by this current policy, though, it's hard to see how they could do a lot of harm with it. The policy says they're pretty much restricted to using it for targeted advertising, and although it allows them to work with affiliates and partners, it states those other organizations will be held to the same standard.
Right, but the point is that Google are making their products less usable if you have to opt-out of stuff or keep two separate accounts going.
Oh, I don't know about that. Using two accounts works pretty smoothly. I do it because I don't want to use my work e-mail for personal stuff. There are a handful of Google services that don't properly support multi-login but they're rapidly getting fixed.
Tip: I've found that if you use Google multi-login, whichever account you log into first becomes your "default" login. So when you type the URL of a Google service you're on that account unless you switch. I always take care to log into my work account first on my work machine, and do the reverse at home. I do this mostly so that I don't post to the "wrong" Google+ account, but it would accomplish what you're describing as well.
Anyway, the point is that the "less usable" argument is more about the quality of the multi-account UI than the basic concept. Well, except for people who use one e-mail address for personal and work stuff, but I think that's pretty rare.
OTOH a proper 32bit CRC is big enough to push the likelyhood of an undetected error from "may happen a few times a year" to "not in your, or your kids lifetime".
Agreed on the deficiencies of the 16-bit 1's complement sum -- and I've also had data loss from it -- but I think you're overestimating the goodness of a 32-bit CRC. The exact performance depends on the nature of the corruption, but it's pretty much going to fail about 1 in 2^32 times. At 80K packets per second, with, say, 1% corruption (which is a bit high, but I've seen worse...), that's ~6 undetected corrupted packets per year.
48 bits, or 64, would be much better.
It does have one fatal flaw - low profit margins.
You sure about that? I'm currently shopping for a bike. Right now I have a hybrid that is a little too heavy and inefficient for my commute to work (it's 26 miles each way) so I'm looking for a replacement. I thought about getting a real road bike, but I can't touch anything decent for less than $1500 new. I have found a couple of touring bikes and a couple of cyclocross-style bikes which are probably actually a better choice for my commute, and a little bit cheaper, but only a little bit. The budget I set for myself is $600, and I was hoping to include toe clips, rack, etc., for that, on a reasonably-light bike with disk brakes -- and I'm not finding it. Not new, anyway. I'll find something used, I'm sure.
Anyway, my point is that for the materials that go into them and the amount of labor it looks like they require, bikes seem to me to have quite a healthy profit margin.
are you kidding? I'm not even reading your response. I'm not interested in rehashes of your opinions -- you made those quite clear, and it's just the usual shallow, spineless garbage.
no, I'm barking at you, telling you to go and fuck yourself. so do that, or don't, but don't tell me about it.
Very well, IHBTHAND.
To opt out of account-associated tracking, you need to delete your account. To opt out of other tracking you can use the "keep my opt outs" extension.
If what you're looking for is a way to use Google's services while opting out of Google's business model then, no, you can't.