Industry officials say they want to assure their customers that the information that their cars stream back to automakers or that is downloaded from the vehicle's computers won't be handed over to authorities without a court order, sold to insurance companies or used to bombard them with ads for pizza parlors, gas stations or other businesses they drive past, without their permission.
By continuing to use this service, you agree that your information may be provided to law enforcement at our discretion, provided to your insurer, sold to third parties, and used to provide advertising.
See how easily they can change this?
In an age where EULA changes by the issuer have been upheld, and when we're talking about your car (which you likely can't readily replace)... in a few months they simply change the terms to read that you've given them permission.
This is an entirely empty promise, and since it's software (and therefore licensed) they can change the terms any time they like.
Tell you what, make it a law that you either have to provide a model which doesn't collect this data, or you have to remove the functionality when I take delivery if I ask you to.
Other than that, I don't believe a damned thing you say.
The check is in the mail. I promise I won't cum in your mouth. We promise we won't misuse your private data.
None of these statements is worth a damn.
The only solution is to not give it to them in the first place, and to have laws which dictate what they can and can't collect, and what they can do with it.
This is why other countries have actual privacy legislation which spells this kind of stuff out. Because trusting promise of a corporation is moronic.
This promise, or pledge, or PR stunt... is neither legally binding nor particularly meaningful.
Google was previously located out of Moffett. The private company which operates Google's planes got the benefit of buying discounted fuel which NASA had purchased.
In other words, the taxpayer subsidized the fuel price Google was paying for its private aircraft.
So, are you OK with a multi-billion dollar corporation, owned by multi-billionaires, getting cut rate jet fuel from the government because they fly their aircraft out of a federal facility?
Because that sounds kind of insane to me. Even if it is only a "few million", why is Google being given this gift?
No, you do not. You live in an oligarchy, but it definitely isn't socialist. Oligarchies are pretty much orthogonal to socialist. In fact, the oligarchy wants to remove the last bit of "social" you have left, and the people cheering the oligarchy who are in government are working to hasten in.
So how do you plan to fix that?
Summary rejection of all economic and political theories which assume people will play by the rules of your "ism" and it will be a perfect system once people accept it as perfect and infallible.
I am not required to have a plan to "fix it". Not my job. Nobody is gonna listen to me anyway.
But I can say that any system which has the in-built assumptions that you can rely on anything except corruption, and people being selfish bastards is probably complete crap, is built on ridiculously naive assumptions, and is likely inherently flawed by people who can't get past their own "ism".
So, in the same way that when the Communists say that "if only people can be made to see how awesome this is", or when the Anarcho-Capitalists say tell us the same thing.. these are people who are willing to burn the world to remake it in their own image.
I view some of the crap the Libertarians say to be as "burn the Earth and force it to match what we want" to be as scary and unfounded as half the crap Mao did.
Beware the person who tells you he has The Solution. He's probably a zealot.
I believe the shining path of Communism no more than I believe in the Utopian fantasy of Libertarian economics -- both are complete lies.
Either turn in your geek cred cards, or admit that the Ben Affleck movie was so terrible that you've erased any mention of Daredevil from your minds....
What are you talking about?
All Ben Affleck movies are terrible, you're going to have to be more specific.
You're probably even aware of it if you're married.
You arrive home after work, walk in through the garage and immediately know somethings different but you don't know what it is. You round the corner and your wife has bought a new rug... or cabinet... or something. Do you have ESP? No... the room "sounds" different
Are you sure you just haven't been rigorously conditioned to come in and assume she's done something that you need to identify?
'Cuz, really, I have no idea of WTF you're talking about.
Then again, my wife accepts that she's never going to have someone who fawns over such things... mostly because she doesn't give a shit either.
It's nice not to have to play the "notice anything different?" game... which with a few past girlfriends has led to some awkward moments as I say "look, if you want me to notice something, tell me... if you want me to guess what you're thinking give me a hint... if I'm supposed to know why you're angry and you won't tell me, I'm going to ignore you for a while and assume this has nothing to do with me".
Some of us really are un-trainable, and have no interest in being trained even if we were. Some of us are lucky enough to have wives which don't expect that.
You do realize that many of the people elected to the government of the US have interests in companies which do these exact same tax dodges, probably directly have off-shore accounts for themselves, and have precisely ZERO interest in changing things... right?
Find me 10 millionaire politicians. I'll bet they all personally hide taxes this way, and own (or are affiliated with) a company which does this.
There is no way in hell this would ever happen.
You cannot rely on the integrity of people who benefit from a scheme like this to police a scheme like this.
Follow the money to the lobbyists who bribed the politicians who wrote the loop holes and ask the corporations who paid for it.
Now, realize those same damned politicians who passed the law probably have off-shore accounts to do the exact same thing.
The system has been rigged so that the wealthy and corporations have way to skirt around tax law that the rest of us do not.
You really think all those millionaire politicians aren't doing tax avoidance? Or that they don't own companies which do this? Do you really think the politicians want too much scrutiny of this issue?
It is time that the tax man gets to decide whether these fictitious external companies are actually part and parcel of the same company and were merely created for the purpose of tax avoidance/evasion.
You must be some kind of communist.
Avoiding taxes is as American as apple pie. Won't someone think of the shareholders and the executive bonuses? How are they supposed to maintain those two if they actually paid taxes?
The system is inherently corrupt, and kept that way by the people who benefit from it.
If ISPs were common carriers, like Obama wants them to be... they would probably be breaking the law.
As it stands, where they're whatever they claim thy are this week, then I very much doubt this is anything other than "this is how we run our networks, suck it bitches".
If they were common carriers, injecting their super cookie would already be illegal.
This is precisely why they shouldn't be left in whatever state they are now, in which they can do anything they want to.
Between governments wanting to undermine encryption to spy on us, and private industry wanting to undermine it for analytics and commercial purposes, the end user is pretty much a commodity who has little say in this.
Besides, you and I can violate the DMCA, not the people who paid for it. It seems to have been written such that a corporation has so many loop holes that they can do anything they want to.
Because it's not a law intended to protect us, or to apply to us the same as it does a corporation. It's a tool intended to be used against us -- which is why it was so badly written in the first place.
Violating the DMCA, or being guilt of unauthorized computer access? That only applies if you're not a corporation or law enforcement -- because they're exempt.
It's pretty pathetic that so many one-sided laws keep getting passed for technology. But, when your politicians are bought and paid for by corporations, it's hardly a surprise.
PC gamers can always bring along a laptop with decent built-in speakers
Enough to create something at the volume of an actual gunshot?
Somehow I doubt that.
Your laptop would have to have one incredible set of built in speakers to be able to do that. My best guess, the speakers would be considerably larger than your laptop, and driven by an external power source.
Alternatively, off the shelf wi-fi enabled cameras could be purchased that would provide real-time video feeds throughout the school allowing law enforcement to not only "hear" where the gunman is but to be able to actually see the gunman and potential victims as they move
At which point you're saying your kids have zero right to privacy, and are expected to be monitored the entire time they're in school.
Awesome idea, get them used to it while they're young! That way they'll be nice and compliant when they're adults.
I'm sure Google and Facebook (and the government) will love to have the facial recognition cameras trained on everyone before they're old enough to understand.
And, of course, the perverts will want to hack your cameras because of all of the pictures of kids.
Oh, and of course the schools will sell the data to an analytics company. Because, you gotta pay for that somehow.
I really don't see your solution being anything other than a terrible idea. Neither for society, nor for the kids you think it will protect.
Should they install barriers in case of Zombie attacks?
Should they install anti-aircraft artillery in case of air attack?
Should everyone wear hazmat suits in case of anthrax attacks?
What, exactly, is the threshold for buying things to cover a hypothetical situation? Should all schools have gunfire detection systems installed?
Maybe all schools need an assigned SWAT team so there's no transportation delay if this ever happens?
I understand the source of the fear, but the idea that some company is going to make zillions in selling this to school boards on the off beat chance it ever happens there just seems a little shady.
You could drop metric butt loads of cash on this kind of problem, and it seems like it's going to be mostly wasted money. Because most places where you install it will never need it.
This sounds like an awesome outcome for the companies who sell these things. Very lucrative, good for shareholder value and executive bonuses.
I think you're using very negative words for a very normal part of the coding process.
No, I'm very aware of the fact that you need to know what you legally can and can't do with code you got elsewhere, because it may be copyrighted or otherwise encumbered.
This has been true for at least two decades, and probably more.
If you don't know this, you could get your company or yourself into some pretty deep shit.
I'm not saying don't avail yourself of code which says "use freely". I likes me some use freely. Everybody does.
I am saying that in an academic setting, the rules imposed by the school are different. And in a corporate setting, if you're not aware of the legalities you are probably a liability waiting to happen.
Not knowing this, or completely ignoring it? Well, good luck with that.
Just out of curiosity are there any professional programmers out there who don't regularly copy functions from the Internet?
Back when I was coding as my primary job, we never copied, we might have drawn inspiration.
We'd look at a tutorial, but we sure as heck wouldn't have looked at, say, code from Linux we planned on cribbing. Whereas if we had the FreeBSD or Apache source code, we just might.
Part of being a contemporary coder is knowing who you're legally allowed to borrow from, and who you're not.
But, part of getting your education involves not cheating. So, if "making use of available code" turns into "plagiarism and not meeting the school's academic policies"... well, you're pretty much screwed, aren't you?
Better yet, lets get rid of capitalism all together.
The concept of ownership?
No, not really.
The absurdity which is the notion of laissez faire, free market, unregulated capitalism which is a self healing entity which achieves optimal outcomes over time because it's infallible and people will play by the rules??
Now, that version of Capitalism is a complete fucking lie perpetrated by people who are either intellectually dishonest enough to believe it, or sociopathic enough to want it anyway.
That version of capitalism is a complete fiction, and is in fact nothing at all like what actually happens -- specifically because everyone in the system knows damned well the only way to win is lie, cheat, and steal.
So all of the assumptions of how it will regulate itself pretty much fall apart. Because those assumptions are about as stupid as the assumptions of Communism... or pretty much any other "ism" which is supposed to lead us to a wonderful utopia if only people would listen to the theorists and live as perfectly as they envision.
Go ahead, drink the Kool Aid of Capitalism. But don't for a minute believe half the stories you've been told about it -- because they're all complete fiction.
Pure Capitalism is just as dangerous as pure Marxism. The main difference is the lies its adherents use to justify it.
If you don't think these new regulations are going to be a burden, you are naive.
If you think having no regulations isn't already a burden on other people, you're also naive.
So, if companies want to take risks with the financial information of their customers, they should be the ones assuming the risk, not the customers.
Right now, in order to maximize corporate profits, customers are the ones bearing the risk for the crap the corporations do. Sorry, but screw corporate profits. We want to see some corporate responsibility and liability.
My credit card company has had to send me a new card three times in the last year, and I can never identify the source. If I knew who the hell was doing a shit job of security, I'd stop buying from them.
And I presume the large number of customers they lose would be an incentive to actually take this seriously.
So I'm afraid I have no sympathy for these companies. If you're going to hold onto my financial and personal information, you're going to have to do it in such a way as to not constantly expose it.
Wow, such a simplistic and reductionist world view you have.
Yes, laws which are written on behalf of corporate lobbyists are designed to game the system to give corporations the most freedom. This means you should stop the process of corporate lobbyists, because they don't help anybody except corporations.
But, environmental laws, consumer protection laws, banking laws, laws designed to stop insider trading... these are all intended to prevent corporations from being able to do anything they please without consequence. Those laws are the kind of things some people want to repeal under the notion that anything which prevents a company from acting like assholes is unfair.
So, if you say "all government regulations are bad", it's as stupid and meaningless as if you say "all government regulations are good".
One political end of the spectrum wants to pass laws to limit the amount of crap companies can do. Another end of the political spectrum wants it to be "anything goes" for corporations.
The latter of those two? They're the people behind your ALEC, and the people who would do away with any form of environmental and consumer protection. These are the people who want you to have an oligarchy in which humans are secondary to corporate profits.
Anybody who says "it should be ok to pollute, and to make toxic products because the free market will regulate itself and people will make good choices" is lying to you. Because it won't happen that way.
Slashdot Mirror
By continuing to use this service, you agree that your information may be provided to law enforcement at our discretion, provided to your insurer, sold to third parties, and used to provide advertising.
See how easily they can change this?
In an age where EULA changes by the issuer have been upheld, and when we're talking about your car (which you likely can't readily replace) ... in a few months they simply change the terms to read that you've given them permission.
This is an entirely empty promise, and since it's software (and therefore licensed) they can change the terms any time they like.
Tell you what, make it a law that you either have to provide a model which doesn't collect this data, or you have to remove the functionality when I take delivery if I ask you to.
Other than that, I don't believe a damned thing you say.
The check is in the mail. I promise I won't cum in your mouth. We promise we won't misuse your private data.
None of these statements is worth a damn.
The only solution is to not give it to them in the first place, and to have laws which dictate what they can and can't collect, and what they can do with it.
This is why other countries have actual privacy legislation which spells this kind of stuff out. Because trusting promise of a corporation is moronic.
This promise, or pledge, or PR stunt ... is neither legally binding nor particularly meaningful.
I think technically it's fraud, isn't it?
They didn't steal from you, they charged you for something they weren't giving you.
Of course, getting that sorted out is damned near impossible, and even if you did get them in court they could plead incompetence.
And, of course, their 'license' for their service probably says that you agree to this.
It really is time to take some of the power out of the hands of the corporations here.
I don't think this was "excess jet fuel".
Google was previously located out of Moffett. The private company which operates Google's planes got the benefit of buying discounted fuel which NASA had purchased.
In other words, the taxpayer subsidized the fuel price Google was paying for its private aircraft.
So, are you OK with a multi-billion dollar corporation, owned by multi-billionaires, getting cut rate jet fuel from the government because they fly their aircraft out of a federal facility?
Because that sounds kind of insane to me. Even if it is only a "few million", why is Google being given this gift?
No, you do not. You live in an oligarchy, but it definitely isn't socialist. Oligarchies are pretty much orthogonal to socialist. In fact, the oligarchy wants to remove the last bit of "social" you have left, and the people cheering the oligarchy who are in government are working to hasten in.
Summary rejection of all economic and political theories which assume people will play by the rules of your "ism" and it will be a perfect system once people accept it as perfect and infallible.
I am not required to have a plan to "fix it". Not my job. Nobody is gonna listen to me anyway.
But I can say that any system which has the in-built assumptions that you can rely on anything except corruption, and people being selfish bastards is probably complete crap, is built on ridiculously naive assumptions, and is likely inherently flawed by people who can't get past their own "ism".
So, in the same way that when the Communists say that "if only people can be made to see how awesome this is", or when the Anarcho-Capitalists say tell us the same thing .. these are people who are willing to burn the world to remake it in their own image.
I view some of the crap the Libertarians say to be as "burn the Earth and force it to match what we want" to be as scary and unfounded as half the crap Mao did.
Beware the person who tells you he has The Solution. He's probably a zealot.
I believe the shining path of Communism no more than I believe in the Utopian fantasy of Libertarian economics -- both are complete lies.
Well, in fairness, when everyone flies home for Thanksgiving, the airports and people who provide wifi will be able to do the exact same thing.
'Willing' can include "don't give a fuck as along as they have free wifi and can update their Facebook status/play whatever game they're all playing".
The modern definition of "willing" when you're discussing technology is "hasn't disabled this functionality or removed the battery from their phone".
Who needs consent when you own the network?
What are you talking about?
All Ben Affleck movies are terrible, you're going to have to be more specific.
Dwardovil? Never heard of it.
With Dark Silence, bitches!! :-P
Silence which is so quiet it can't even be detected, only theorized!
Are you sure you just haven't been rigorously conditioned to come in and assume she's done something that you need to identify?
'Cuz, really, I have no idea of WTF you're talking about.
Then again, my wife accepts that she's never going to have someone who fawns over such things ... mostly because she doesn't give a shit either.
It's nice not to have to play the "notice anything different?" game ... which with a few past girlfriends has led to some awkward moments as I say "look, if you want me to notice something, tell me ... if you want me to guess what you're thinking give me a hint ... if I'm supposed to know why you're angry and you won't tell me, I'm going to ignore you for a while and assume this has nothing to do with me".
Some of us really are un-trainable, and have no interest in being trained even if we were. Some of us are lucky enough to have wives which don't expect that.
You do realize that many of the people elected to the government of the US have interests in companies which do these exact same tax dodges, probably directly have off-shore accounts for themselves, and have precisely ZERO interest in changing things ... right?
Find me 10 millionaire politicians. I'll bet they all personally hide taxes this way, and own (or are affiliated with) a company which does this.
There is no way in hell this would ever happen.
You cannot rely on the integrity of people who benefit from a scheme like this to police a scheme like this.
Never gonna happen.
Follow the money to the lobbyists who bribed the politicians who wrote the loop holes and ask the corporations who paid for it.
Now, realize those same damned politicians who passed the law probably have off-shore accounts to do the exact same thing.
The system has been rigged so that the wealthy and corporations have way to skirt around tax law that the rest of us do not.
You really think all those millionaire politicians aren't doing tax avoidance? Or that they don't own companies which do this? Do you really think the politicians want too much scrutiny of this issue?
You must be some kind of communist.
Avoiding taxes is as American as apple pie. Won't someone think of the shareholders and the executive bonuses? How are they supposed to maintain those two if they actually paid taxes?
The system is inherently corrupt, and kept that way by the people who benefit from it.
Is your phone over 10 years old and just traveled millions of miles through space?
No, it isn't.
This will be, what, 14-15 year old tech by now?
Do let us know when you get your iPhone to a comet and can send back pictures with it. Then we might be impressed.
If ISPs were common carriers, like Obama wants them to be ... they would probably be breaking the law.
As it stands, where they're whatever they claim thy are this week, then I very much doubt this is anything other than "this is how we run our networks, suck it bitches".
If they were common carriers, injecting their super cookie would already be illegal.
This is precisely why they shouldn't be left in whatever state they are now, in which they can do anything they want to.
Between governments wanting to undermine encryption to spy on us, and private industry wanting to undermine it for analytics and commercial purposes, the end user is pretty much a commodity who has little say in this.
Besides, you and I can violate the DMCA, not the people who paid for it. It seems to have been written such that a corporation has so many loop holes that they can do anything they want to.
Because it's not a law intended to protect us, or to apply to us the same as it does a corporation. It's a tool intended to be used against us -- which is why it was so badly written in the first place.
Violating the DMCA, or being guilt of unauthorized computer access? That only applies if you're not a corporation or law enforcement -- because they're exempt.
It's pretty pathetic that so many one-sided laws keep getting passed for technology. But, when your politicians are bought and paid for by corporations, it's hardly a surprise.
Honest question ... have they done anything? Or given themselves the illusion of doing something?
This is like buying a rock which keeps tigers away. If in 5 years you've seen no tiger, you can declare it a success.
If every school installed one of these systems, the company which makes them would make a crap ton of money.
And easily 90% of all installations will be a complete waste of time and money.
But, really, what's the response time of your police, and how many people can be killed in that time?
Enough to create something at the volume of an actual gunshot?
Somehow I doubt that.
Your laptop would have to have one incredible set of built in speakers to be able to do that. My best guess, the speakers would be considerably larger than your laptop, and driven by an external power source.
At which point you're saying your kids have zero right to privacy, and are expected to be monitored the entire time they're in school.
Awesome idea, get them used to it while they're young! That way they'll be nice and compliant when they're adults.
I'm sure Google and Facebook (and the government) will love to have the facial recognition cameras trained on everyone before they're old enough to understand.
And, of course, the perverts will want to hack your cameras because of all of the pictures of kids.
Oh, and of course the schools will sell the data to an analytics company. Because, you gotta pay for that somehow.
I really don't see your solution being anything other than a terrible idea. Neither for society, nor for the kids you think it will protect.
Should they install barriers in case of Zombie attacks?
Should they install anti-aircraft artillery in case of air attack?
Should everyone wear hazmat suits in case of anthrax attacks?
What, exactly, is the threshold for buying things to cover a hypothetical situation? Should all schools have gunfire detection systems installed?
Maybe all schools need an assigned SWAT team so there's no transportation delay if this ever happens?
I understand the source of the fear, but the idea that some company is going to make zillions in selling this to school boards on the off beat chance it ever happens there just seems a little shady.
You could drop metric butt loads of cash on this kind of problem, and it seems like it's going to be mostly wasted money. Because most places where you install it will never need it.
This sounds like an awesome outcome for the companies who sell these things. Very lucrative, good for shareholder value and executive bonuses.
Is it money well spent for the school?
No, I'm very aware of the fact that you need to know what you legally can and can't do with code you got elsewhere, because it may be copyrighted or otherwise encumbered.
This has been true for at least two decades, and probably more.
If you don't know this, you could get your company or yourself into some pretty deep shit.
I'm not saying don't avail yourself of code which says "use freely". I likes me some use freely. Everybody does.
I am saying that in an academic setting, the rules imposed by the school are different. And in a corporate setting, if you're not aware of the legalities you are probably a liability waiting to happen.
Not knowing this, or completely ignoring it? Well, good luck with that.
Back when I was coding as my primary job, we never copied, we might have drawn inspiration.
We'd look at a tutorial, but we sure as heck wouldn't have looked at, say, code from Linux we planned on cribbing. Whereas if we had the FreeBSD or Apache source code, we just might.
Part of being a contemporary coder is knowing who you're legally allowed to borrow from, and who you're not.
But, part of getting your education involves not cheating. So, if "making use of available code" turns into "plagiarism and not meeting the school's academic policies" ... well, you're pretty much screwed, aren't you?
The concept of ownership?
No, not really.
The absurdity which is the notion of laissez faire, free market, unregulated capitalism which is a self healing entity which achieves optimal outcomes over time because it's infallible and people will play by the rules??
Now, that version of Capitalism is a complete fucking lie perpetrated by people who are either intellectually dishonest enough to believe it, or sociopathic enough to want it anyway.
That version of capitalism is a complete fiction, and is in fact nothing at all like what actually happens -- specifically because everyone in the system knows damned well the only way to win is lie, cheat, and steal.
So all of the assumptions of how it will regulate itself pretty much fall apart. Because those assumptions are about as stupid as the assumptions of Communism ... or pretty much any other "ism" which is supposed to lead us to a wonderful utopia if only people would listen to the theorists and live as perfectly as they envision.
Go ahead, drink the Kool Aid of Capitalism. But don't for a minute believe half the stories you've been told about it -- because they're all complete fiction.
Pure Capitalism is just as dangerous as pure Marxism. The main difference is the lies its adherents use to justify it.
I'm going with Ferengi, and not Starfleet.
I'm no longer willing to attribute quite so noble goals to Google. It's all about the rules of acquisition.
Think Grand Nagas, not Ghandi.
If you think having no regulations isn't already a burden on other people, you're also naive.
So, if companies want to take risks with the financial information of their customers, they should be the ones assuming the risk, not the customers.
Right now, in order to maximize corporate profits, customers are the ones bearing the risk for the crap the corporations do. Sorry, but screw corporate profits. We want to see some corporate responsibility and liability.
My credit card company has had to send me a new card three times in the last year, and I can never identify the source. If I knew who the hell was doing a shit job of security, I'd stop buying from them.
And I presume the large number of customers they lose would be an incentive to actually take this seriously.
So I'm afraid I have no sympathy for these companies. If you're going to hold onto my financial and personal information, you're going to have to do it in such a way as to not constantly expose it.
Wow, such a simplistic and reductionist world view you have.
Yes, laws which are written on behalf of corporate lobbyists are designed to game the system to give corporations the most freedom. This means you should stop the process of corporate lobbyists, because they don't help anybody except corporations.
But, environmental laws, consumer protection laws, banking laws, laws designed to stop insider trading ... these are all intended to prevent corporations from being able to do anything they please without consequence. Those laws are the kind of things some people want to repeal under the notion that anything which prevents a company from acting like assholes is unfair.
So, if you say "all government regulations are bad", it's as stupid and meaningless as if you say "all government regulations are good".
One political end of the spectrum wants to pass laws to limit the amount of crap companies can do. Another end of the political spectrum wants it to be "anything goes" for corporations.
The latter of those two? They're the people behind your ALEC, and the people who would do away with any form of environmental and consumer protection. These are the people who want you to have an oligarchy in which humans are secondary to corporate profits.
Anybody who says "it should be ok to pollute, and to make toxic products because the free market will regulate itself and people will make good choices" is lying to you. Because it won't happen that way.
Yeah, no, no they don't.
Which is why the Republicans have been de-regulating, because when corporations can do anything they want, that protects corporate interests.
Regulations protect us from corporations.
I wouldn't say "to the best of the ability of the retailers".
They've already demonstrated themselves to be lazy, incompetent, and largely indifferent to security.
They should be held to an entirely different standard than "the best of their ability", because we already know that's not good enough.