I want to have a settings page where I can go in whenever I want and selectively disable permissions.
This just sounds like more dumbed down version.
And, cynically, I believe that Google is doing this to ensure they can still collect data on you, and the people using their advertising services can continue to do to.
This is why when I download a new app, the first thing I do is try it in airplane mode. If it's not an application which should require access to the interwebs, but tries to access it, it gets deleted.
I must say, I'm disappointed in this. Because I want more control over app permissions, not less.
Various oil companies have used varying degrees of 'private contractors' to intimidate, harass, murder, and otherwise mistreat the locals if they got in the way of exploration.
The US government hired some of these 'contractors' to do various things in Iraq, much of which sounds like it wasn't entirely above board.
To assume number of 32-bit systems in 2038 running Linux will be zero is more foolish than waiting to exhaustion before deploying IPv6.
Hmmm... 2038 is in 24 years.
24 years ago from now was 1990. That was just around the time the first 486 machines were released.
So, in the same way as nobody seriously gives a damn about ancient 486s, if you're still running 32-bit Linux in 24 years... well, that will be your damned problem.:-P
If this is an issue for you, I suggest you start pondering getting a 64-bit machine... you've got 24 years to do it.
The other problem is the entire wind chill factor is still being disputed about, here on earth.
That sounds like bullshit.
I've experienced -40C, which oddly enough, is also -40F.
The difference between wind and no wind at those temperatures is enormous, and can be the difference between your skin freezing in minutes or seconds.
Wind-chill is only experienced by things which generate their own heat (so it doesn't affect bridges), but if you don't think it affects animals... well, you've never really seen winter then.
As far as I know, the only dispute about wind-chill is how, exactly, you calculate it. That it exists and is real isn't really ever disputed.
Aside from the affects of evaporative cooling: wind chill also works due to air movement.
I don't know about you, but where I live, by the time they're discussing the wind-chill, there's no 'evaporative cooling'. There's a biting wind which travels through your clothes, pulls the heat from you, and tries to kill you. It also leads to things like frostbite happening faster.
You're describing the cooling effects of a breeze on a hot day... you want windchill? Think downtown Chicago in the dead of winter while the wind rips along at a zillion miles per hour.
I've never heard anybody describe wind-chill for anything less than well below freezing, so there isn't a whole lot of sweat to be subject to evaporative cooling, just having your body heat sucked out of you.
Only partially - its also the continual replenishment of cold air against the skin. You don't sweat when you'r really cold.
LOL... depends on the humidity.
I was in a coastal area in late summer once... the air temperature was enough to be chilly, but the soupy humidity meant I was sweating.
I didn't think that it was actually possible to be cold and sweating at the same time, but 90+% humidity and a temperature just below comfortable room temp showed me otherwise.
Now, I wasn't 'really' cold as you say... but, nonetheless, it sucked.
So I find it interesting that in a story about the tracking of all of the children's data by "big data", the provided link has an embedded tracking feature:
You know what the "?hp=l7" is? The source of the link. Without it, the page still loads, which means it's purely a tracking token.
So either the poster was too lazy/unaware to remove it, or someone is participating in an affiliate program. Seriously, Slashdot should be stripping this crap out, and be aware enough to understand WTF it is. Your job is to post links, which means you should understand the mechanics of them.
And, more on topic, I'm glad to see parents finally realizing the implications of school boards handing over the private data of children to private companies in exchange for shiny baubles. The long-term privacy implications of that are absolutely terrifying, and the practice should be illegal.
Schools should not be providing this data to anybody, let alone for-profit entities.
No, while the individual greed and douchebaggery of corporations has more or less remained constant, with the advent of the interwebs it can be done much more efficiently, on a larger scale, and usually involving acquisitions, outsourcing, and H1B visas.
The overall effectiveness of being a greedy, incompetent bastard has been vastly improved in its output. CEOs now can direct the suck from a centralized location in real time while viewing dashboard metrics, thereby vastly improving productivity.
I'd give you a smiley face to say I'm joking, except I'm not entirely sure I am.
It's not the DMCA letters you need to worry about.
It's the copyright trolls and law enforcement people.
Because when you get served with a copyright infringement suit for downloading thousands of videos, or get hauled off to jail because your location was used for something illegal... that's where the real problems begin.
Unless we're meant to believe that this will in no way trace back to the home-owner, and be a completely air-gapped and firewalled thing. And, I must say, I'm skeptical of that.
Because, really, as people have pointed out... set up a honey pot, collect a few login credentials, and then you can go anywhere in the city and download anything with complete impunity, because it all traces back to some other sucker.
And law enforcement is going to need to come after someone.
It is my understanding that this will be done only on Comcast-owned equipment, and using a separate logical connection (like a VLAN) from the local subscriber data.
That's the theory. I'll be curious to see it in practice.
Because I have far far less confidence in their ability to competently do this than you seem to.
Either Comcast will make their users pay because strangers will use their monthly quotas, or they have zero ability to calculate quotas in which case any current or past monthly quota overcharges are frauds.
And, if their security is incompetently implemented (which it likely will be), who bears liability?
If the police show up with a warrant saying you downloaded movies, or kiddie porn, or participated in a terrorist chatroom -- you're pretty much screwed, and all because Comcast decided to re-sell what you've bought.
And, really, if all of these routers are going to become public hotspots (which apparently has a limited interpretation to be "for other Comcast subscribers"), why wouldn't I just use someone else's hotspot?
I suspect this will cause more problems than it fixes, except for Comcast who will make out like bandits. As you say, billing for overages should be pretty lucrative -- "sorry sir, it says here you've used a massive amount of bandwidth, so here's your bill, no, we can't prove you did it, but it was on your hotspot so good enough for us."
I fail to understand how these companies keep saying "ZOMG, teh bandwidth it too expensive to give you" and then combine it with "and we'll now try to get 50% more subscribers on our already overloaded network". At least, I fail to see how they can be honest about that instead of just saying "of course we're screwing you over and selling more than we have, and of course our monthly charges are wrong".
So if you're not going to answer the questions to demonstrate your innocence, and your memory is fuzzy anyway, then the only reasonable conclusion is that you're guilty and therefore need to be thrown in jail?
No, I'm saying that when a court orders you to retain evidence as part of a legal proceeding in order that they can determine guilt or innocence, and you destroy the evidence... for the rest of us, that is a crime.
If their system is lawful, it should be possible to show evidence of that. If they knowingly destroy the evidence someone would use to determine that, they're either lying to us about how lawful it is, or deciding the law doesn't apply to them.
That's a bit of a dangerous precident to be setting.
Well, since that's not what I said, I'm not worried about it.
The court already told them to retain the data. If they couldn't do that, the time to say that was when the order was given, and then they would have been required to show just cause.
Because, in the world in which the rest of us live, under things like SOX (and other evidentiary rules), destroying records which are being held for purposes of the court is a crime.
I'm saying the NSA et al are either knowingly violating the law, and would prefer not to tell us, or incapable of adhering to the law (either due to incompetence or unwillingness).
They keep saying they operate in accordance with the law. But on numerous occasions they've been caught lying to us. At which point taking them at face value is utterly a stupid idea.
What the NSA is saying is "leave us alone with your pesky laws, we're busy collecting all of your data".
To which I say... "papers please, comrade", and point out that the oversight on these guys isn't nearly adequate to convince us they're not disregarding the law.
The kind of "just society" you want to achieve can only be achieved through totalitarianism, as centuries of European history show.
Horseshit.
I prefer having freedom to government-imposed uniformity; the fact that many people end up wealthier than me through chance or even "unfair advantages" doesn't bother me much.
When that 'chance' and 'unfair advantage' comes about because they can afford to pay more into the political system to ensure that their 'chance' comes about, you should be bothered too.
You should get over it too.
So you're officially saying you've accepted a broken system, but you're so apathetic you don't care any more?
So, basically, your saying that they should just expect everybody to simply trust that what they're doing is entirely legal? Because the logistics of actually proving this is so difficult they can't do it?
I say horseshit to that.
We know the data they scrape is massive. What we don't know is that they're complying with the law in order to do it.
And I fail to see why the benefit of the doubt should be given in this case.
Sorry, but it's "trust, but verify", and if you can't verify, you can't bloody well trust. The whole point of these lawsuits is that they likely go beyond the scope of their legal mandate. Saying you couldn't possibly be bothered to hold onto the evidence the court has demanded is just too damned bad.
If you can't have your data available to demonstrate what you're doing it lawful, and you are going to delete it, then only reasonable conclusion is what you are doing cannot be proven lawful.
Therefore, the program is not lawful, and you need to stop.
Problem solved.
This amounts to "your honor, we collect so damned much information we couldn't possibly hold onto it long enough to be subject to legal oversight. Trust us."
Slashdot Mirror
I want to have a settings page where I can go in whenever I want and selectively disable permissions.
This just sounds like more dumbed down version.
And, cynically, I believe that Google is doing this to ensure they can still collect data on you, and the people using their advertising services can continue to do to.
This is why when I download a new app, the first thing I do is try it in airplane mode. If it's not an application which should require access to the interwebs, but tries to access it, it gets deleted.
I must say, I'm disappointed in this. Because I want more control over app permissions, not less.
Well ... let's see, there's Blackwater (nor apparently called Academi).
There's Halliburton, which had some pretty shady dealings.
And, here's a list of more of them.
Various oil companies have used varying degrees of 'private contractors' to intimidate, harass, murder, and otherwise mistreat the locals if they got in the way of exploration.
The US government hired some of these 'contractors' to do various things in Iraq, much of which sounds like it wasn't entirely above board.
Hmmm ... 2038 is in 24 years.
24 years ago from now was 1990. That was just around the time the first 486 machines were released.
So, in the same way as nobody seriously gives a damn about ancient 486s, if you're still running 32-bit Linux in 24 years ... well, that will be your damned problem. :-P
If this is an issue for you, I suggest you start pondering getting a 64-bit machine ... you've got 24 years to do it.
That sounds like bullshit.
I've experienced -40C, which oddly enough, is also -40F.
The difference between wind and no wind at those temperatures is enormous, and can be the difference between your skin freezing in minutes or seconds.
Wind-chill is only experienced by things which generate their own heat (so it doesn't affect bridges), but if you don't think it affects animals ... well, you've never really seen winter then.
As far as I know, the only dispute about wind-chill is how, exactly, you calculate it. That it exists and is real isn't really ever disputed.
I don't know about you, but where I live, by the time they're discussing the wind-chill, there's no 'evaporative cooling'. There's a biting wind which travels through your clothes, pulls the heat from you, and tries to kill you. It also leads to things like frostbite happening faster.
You're describing the cooling effects of a breeze on a hot day ... you want windchill? Think downtown Chicago in the dead of winter while the wind rips along at a zillion miles per hour.
I've never heard anybody describe wind-chill for anything less than well below freezing, so there isn't a whole lot of sweat to be subject to evaporative cooling, just having your body heat sucked out of you.
LOL ... depends on the humidity.
I was in a coastal area in late summer once ... the air temperature was enough to be chilly, but the soupy humidity meant I was sweating.
I didn't think that it was actually possible to be cold and sweating at the same time, but 90+% humidity and a temperature just below comfortable room temp showed me otherwise.
Now, I wasn't 'really' cold as you say ... but, nonetheless, it sucked.
So I find it interesting that in a story about the tracking of all of the children's data by "big data", the provided link has an embedded tracking feature:
You know what the "?hp=l7" is? The source of the link. Without it, the page still loads, which means it's purely a tracking token.
So either the poster was too lazy/unaware to remove it, or someone is participating in an affiliate program. Seriously, Slashdot should be stripping this crap out, and be aware enough to understand WTF it is. Your job is to post links, which means you should understand the mechanics of them.
And, more on topic, I'm glad to see parents finally realizing the implications of school boards handing over the private data of children to private companies in exchange for shiny baubles. The long-term privacy implications of that are absolutely terrifying, and the practice should be illegal.
Schools should not be providing this data to anybody, let alone for-profit entities.
And braking. And cornering.
Those are really important, and in my (limited) experience with hovercraft, some of their weak points.
That, and going up a hill or dealing with a side slope.
Unless they're using an entirely different technology, I just don't see a hovercraft being a viable replacement for a car.
Losing its steam, one might say. ;-)
No, while the individual greed and douchebaggery of corporations has more or less remained constant, with the advent of the interwebs it can be done much more efficiently, on a larger scale, and usually involving acquisitions, outsourcing, and H1B visas.
The overall effectiveness of being a greedy, incompetent bastard has been vastly improved in its output. CEOs now can direct the suck from a centralized location in real time while viewing dashboard metrics, thereby vastly improving productivity.
I'd give you a smiley face to say I'm joking, except I'm not entirely sure I am.
Or, if you had a clue, you'd realize those were presented as two separate things.
The punk rock kiddies are just recycling old ideas. The people who still think the 80s were awesome are recycling old bad ideas.
Or a cleverly disguised stupid human who is trying to mess up the test.
There's also been significant advances in incompetence, and corporate greed.
And those two are things you should be really worried about.
It's not the DMCA letters you need to worry about.
It's the copyright trolls and law enforcement people.
Because when you get served with a copyright infringement suit for downloading thousands of videos, or get hauled off to jail because your location was used for something illegal ... that's where the real problems begin.
Unless we're meant to believe that this will in no way trace back to the home-owner, and be a completely air-gapped and firewalled thing. And, I must say, I'm skeptical of that.
Because, really, as people have pointed out ... set up a honey pot, collect a few login credentials, and then you can go anywhere in the city and download anything with complete impunity, because it all traces back to some other sucker.
And law enforcement is going to need to come after someone.
That's the theory. I'll be curious to see it in practice.
Because I have far far less confidence in their ability to competently do this than you seem to.
Except, there is no 'free'. You have to be a Comcast subscriber to use this.
So, they're offering a 'free' service to people who are paying an additional fee on top of their existing service to access this 'free' service.
And they're using the gear in people's houses (and possibly some of their available bandwidth) to do it.
And, if their security is incompetently implemented (which it likely will be), who bears liability?
If the police show up with a warrant saying you downloaded movies, or kiddie porn, or participated in a terrorist chatroom -- you're pretty much screwed, and all because Comcast decided to re-sell what you've bought.
And, really, if all of these routers are going to become public hotspots (which apparently has a limited interpretation to be "for other Comcast subscribers"), why wouldn't I just use someone else's hotspot?
I suspect this will cause more problems than it fixes, except for Comcast who will make out like bandits. As you say, billing for overages should be pretty lucrative -- "sorry sir, it says here you've used a massive amount of bandwidth, so here's your bill, no, we can't prove you did it, but it was on your hotspot so good enough for us."
I fail to understand how these companies keep saying "ZOMG, teh bandwidth it too expensive to give you" and then combine it with "and we'll now try to get 50% more subscribers on our already overloaded network". At least, I fail to see how they can be honest about that instead of just saying "of course we're screwing you over and selling more than we have, and of course our monthly charges are wrong".
No, I'm saying that when a court orders you to retain evidence as part of a legal proceeding in order that they can determine guilt or innocence, and you destroy the evidence ... for the rest of us, that is a crime.
If their system is lawful, it should be possible to show evidence of that. If they knowingly destroy the evidence someone would use to determine that, they're either lying to us about how lawful it is, or deciding the law doesn't apply to them.
Well, since that's not what I said, I'm not worried about it.
The court already told them to retain the data. If they couldn't do that, the time to say that was when the order was given, and then they would have been required to show just cause.
Because, in the world in which the rest of us live, under things like SOX (and other evidentiary rules), destroying records which are being held for purposes of the court is a crime.
I'm saying the NSA et al are either knowingly violating the law, and would prefer not to tell us, or incapable of adhering to the law (either due to incompetence or unwillingness).
They keep saying they operate in accordance with the law. But on numerous occasions they've been caught lying to us. At which point taking them at face value is utterly a stupid idea.
What the NSA is saying is "leave us alone with your pesky laws, we're busy collecting all of your data".
To which I say ... "papers please, comrade", and point out that the oversight on these guys isn't nearly adequate to convince us they're not disregarding the law.
Maybe we need to more formalize the Turing test to give it specific rigor?
That or come up with a whole new test ... I don't know, maybe call it the Void Kampf test.
It's a Turing test if I know one of the candidates is, in fact, an AI. If you tell me it's a 13 year old, you're cheating.
Horseshit.
When that 'chance' and 'unfair advantage' comes about because they can afford to pay more into the political system to ensure that their 'chance' comes about, you should be bothered too.
So you're officially saying you've accepted a broken system, but you're so apathetic you don't care any more?
That, sir, is your problem not mine.
Now there's a renewable energy source.
I can see bars having a "pee here for the environment" campaign.
I'm not advocating it. I'm saying it's something which might happen.
And the more you skew your system to favor the outcomes bought and paid for by the wealthy, the more of an unjust system you have.
If you built your society around being inherently imbalanced, it usually doesn't work out well in the long run.
So, basically, your saying that they should just expect everybody to simply trust that what they're doing is entirely legal? Because the logistics of actually proving this is so difficult they can't do it?
I say horseshit to that.
We know the data they scrape is massive. What we don't know is that they're complying with the law in order to do it.
And I fail to see why the benefit of the doubt should be given in this case.
Sorry, but it's "trust, but verify", and if you can't verify, you can't bloody well trust. The whole point of these lawsuits is that they likely go beyond the scope of their legal mandate. Saying you couldn't possibly be bothered to hold onto the evidence the court has demanded is just too damned bad.
If you can't have your data available to demonstrate what you're doing it lawful, and you are going to delete it, then only reasonable conclusion is what you are doing cannot be proven lawful.
Therefore, the program is not lawful, and you need to stop.
Problem solved.
This amounts to "your honor, we collect so damned much information we couldn't possibly hold onto it long enough to be subject to legal oversight. Trust us."
What crap.
So, instead of the tyranny of the masses, you're advocating the tyranny of the wealthy?
Because that works out so much better.