Most people consider what they said in a private conversation to be transient. If you are going to record what they are saying (which could be cut/edited/taken out of context easily), then it is common decency to notify the other party first before you do so.
By your logic, recording any sound waves in public should also be ok.
So you are fine someone stays outside (in the street) a restaurant you frequents, and put a set of parabolic dishes and records the conversation of every table inside? How about driving a van with a set of dishes with automatic homing on any conversations received? Along with a camera that also "passively" receiving the photons that bounced off people's face from that conversation also?
After all, he didn't send any sound waves to you, nor crack any codes you were using in your conversation. And the frequencies used by human voice are also open for public use.
I mean, somebody who switched off SSID broadcasting took an explicit step to make his AP unavailable for others, and google shouldn't go and "hack" this.
"Hack" is exactly the right word because if a common joe sixpack got caught doing this, he would be called a "hacker" breaking into computer systems. Much like cases where the "hacked" system's "security" only consist using a tax id in the url to supposedly only allow the user see his own data.
But we all know that corporations are first class citizens in the US, so most/.ers here are already so comfortable with corporations having better treatment than a normal person, and so many have rushed into Google's defense already. Fortunately, the EU don't treat corporations as a special class above normal citizen, and they actually care about data privacy.
Do you also talk in secret codes in public? Or did you never talk about anything private in public restaurants? Do you also sound proof your house so you are sure any sound/noise from inside your house will never leak out to the street?
So you are ok if someone use a parabolic dish to record your conversations with your friend in bar or restaurant? After all, you are sending out unencrypted sound waves out to the public, if you are stupid enough to talk about anything private, that's your own fault, right?
Don't any of you have any idea of what "privacy" and "decency" means? Recording local and transient private data without permission from the owner, most people would consider that serious breach of trust, much like secretly taping conversations when you are in a bar with a group of friends. It is bad enough if one among the friends did it, it is even worst if some unrelated 3rd party is doing it.
If a bar owner was caught recording conversations on his patrons to "better serve" his customers, most/.ers here would be screaming blood murder. But when it comes to Google, they can do no wrong and all common sense got thrown out of the window.
... if it means I will see fewer 12 yrs old in multiplayer games. And I am serious.
As it is, even when playing mature rated games, there are still far too many immature kids in the game, either griefing outright, or in other ways to spoil the fun for everyone, and in general unable to behave with minimal civility that most adult typically show, even when online.
Although the design of PSN and the games already shielded it somewhat (eg lack of global chat, only voice chat within squad with mute function, so we don't have to see/hear the incessant crap talk), in game griefing/annoying behaviour is still somewhat unavoidable (eg camping in own team's base and destroying vehicles as they spawn, or destroying vehicles because another teammate will reach it first).
If the premium for pay network has fewer kids there, and the price is modest, I will sign up in a snap. Better service for more money (ie not for better hardware spec or higher machine power, but just better usage experience), I know this is difficult concept for some people here, but lots of normal people think it could be worth it.
Normally, when a person wants to delete some data when said data is connected to a suspected case of violation of the law, it is called "destroying evidence".
E.g. You are accused of corporate espionage and police suspect your USB drive contains stolen company trade secrets. Is it ok for you to offer to wipe the USB drive but refuse to hand the drive over to police? No way.
But now when it comes to Google, destroying evidence is now regarded by some/.ers as "protecting our privacy"?! Even when those evidence is exactly for proving how Google violated EU privacy laws?!?! *head explodes*
Destroying the data when said data is connected to a suspected violation of the law? We usually can that "destroying evidence" when a normal person tries to do that.
If you caught me sneaking out of your home with some of your stuff, will you just ask me to hand your stuff back and let me go? No way! You call the police and they will investigate my home to see if I have other stolen goods hidden, AND they will prosecute me according to the law.
Google got caught violating EU Laws, the correct response is for EU authorities to investigate the evidence to see the scope of crime, and follow through the legal process.
Deleting the data collected is basically destroying evidence here.
Exactly. People who think Google could have done this "accidentally" must not have ever done any project involving storing data.
The data Google collected must have gone through tens of Google employee, you know, the Google that is famous for its very high bar on hiring only those highly skilled, motivated, engaged, creative employees, AND the company's main expertise is data minning.
Is it likely that all of them didn't notice the extra bulk of data coming in? Heck, some of them might even have been using thier famous 20% time analyzing this data for we know!
but an unencrypted network is an invitation for anyone to sniff your traffic passively.
So you are OK if, in a restaurant, other patrons eavesdrop and record your conversations with your SO/close friend? It is ok to do so in a public restaurant, right?
Would you also be OK for your neighbor to eavesdrop and record the noises coming out from your house, e.g. you arguing with your SO, or whatever noise coming out of the master bedroom at night? Even though they may need a sensitive microphone or a big parabolic dish to do so, from across the street to your house?
After all, not talking in codes or installing noise absorbing wall in your house is an invitation for anyone to passively listen to your conversations, right? What do you expect if you are broadcasting your sound waves on the air in the clear out into public space? Right?
So I assume you would be OK if Google told you their street view cars also contained sensitive microphones, which just happened to record some dirty jokes you told your friend on the street? And now everyone can get on the street view, see your (blurred) image and click "hear recordings" to hear your dirty joke too, you would be OK with that too? After all, whatever you did in public should be ok to be publicized, right?
Seriously, if you don't think there is something wrong with collecting local and transient data and putting them into a big permanent database correlating with other data, by a private corporation that is best known to profit from large scale datamining, you just haven't thought deeply about the issue.
I read TFA, but it is very light on details. Did Google said they are going to DELETE those data now? I couldn't quite find that in TFA, it only quoted Google will "learn all the lessons we can from our mistake".
Did they consider their "mistake" being collecting the data in the first place, or does "mistake" mean the PR nightmare after they were found out doing that? Learning their lesson could either mean stop collecting so much data, or it could mean not letting other people find out how much they are collecting the next time.
Why not provide manual overrides for things like door locks and windows.
Simple - cost and liability.
I doubt a mechanical override for the window can be as simple/lightweight as the CD pinhole. An additional manual overrides (i.e. == mechanical) means
1. more parts (== more cost) 2. a heavier car (== use more gas) 3. more chance of failure (== more liability) 4. more control mechanism (e.g. child locking for the windows for the mechanical switch also!), ==> even more parts and more failure modes (== even more liability) 5. door lock override = 1 more pathway for car thief to open the door.
How many people will be willing to pay more for a car with less mileage, more problems, and easier to steal just because they worry the control system will fail?
And if you don't trust the control system to control your doors, why would you trust it to control your engine?
We all know that once someone has physical access to your system it's theirs. But can they do this via OnStar or other remote access systems?
How hard would it be to stick and hide a remote controlled smartphone/PDA/custom receiver under the car that connects to the port on the car? Instant remote control to everything that can be controlled from the port.
What ran through my mind is what if I have to format my PS3, or a firmware update requires "servicing" (see former), etc. What happens then? What about going over to a friends house to play? Etc.
Formatting your PS3? My guess is nothing will be lost. I think all your trophies/unlocks/etc are all stored on some server (not sure if Sony's or EA's), that's why during the 1/3/2010 date bug period, everybody that tried to connect to PSN said they lost their trophies, etc.
You can just re-download all your PSN purchases anytime you want, so you are free to delete them on your PS3 HD, or when you replace the HD (though it would be simpler to first backup then restore to the new HD instead).
As for playing at your friend's house, I guess if you create another login in the PS3 and link to your PSN account, you will probably get back all unlocks/etc, this you can try any time you want.
Same here with my Wii, however, what I ended up was not buying a single Wii games (except those I got initially with the Wii).
OTOH, with my PS3, which can play games from both US and Japan, the money I spent on PS3 games are already more than both the price of my PS3 and my Wii hardware combined. I foresee I will keep spending on PS3 games until the next gen consoles come out.
While I am not happy to see anyone working in conditions like this, but unfortunately, the fact is these factory conditions is really an improvement over the alternatives for many of them, else they would have left long ago. Their alternative might be simple poverty, farming back home in the biggest drought in many years. China has a population of over a billion and many of them are still very very poor.
Also, keep in mind we are not talking about prison factory here, we are talking about a working population that has over 2 decades of experience in going out to cities of their choice to find work in factories. These workers have families and friends, and you bet they kept in contact with cellphones and exchange notes. If there is any better place to go, they would at most stay for the rest of year, return home for Chinese New Year (very important for them) and go elsewhere next year.
In fact, this year, just after Chinese New Year, there has been a shortage of factory workers in Southern China precisely because the workers are no longer that poor, and the 2nd generation workers are no longer as eager to work in factories any more, plus they earn more working in service industry (waitress, sales, etc, but may be open to young females only). So not that many returned to factories after new year causing the shortage.
Its been in the dev agreement from day one that apps like this are forbidden. Maybe if he'd have actually read the agreement, he would know that.
You assumed his real intention is to put an app in the App Store. However, he might have know this will happen and decided that having a rejected app that happened to contain his cartoon would give him more free publicity than having an app accepted.
If he really wanted to have an app approved, how much easier it is to have the app fetch cartoon from his website, and only put "objectionable" cartoons after the app is approved?
Indeed - I just love that "Apple approves an application, when we thought they might not" is front page news. People are that thankful.
Rather, it is like "Duh. Apple actually approved the application, we were so damn sure they would NOT that we had already flamed them earlier, so we better put out another front page story to salvage some credibility!"
Is Apple actually calling iTunes for Windows for a sub-standard app? That perhaps should be banned from the platform? Apple themselves are using non-native API intermediate layers such as CoreFoundation and CoreGraphics in their implementation of iTunes for Windows.
Yes, iTunes for Windows is a sub-standard app... for the Windows platform.
Compared to other Windows apps (which are already not great feats of engineering), the iTunes app really sucks in many areas - slow startup, unresponsive UI whenever it is busy, non-standard UI elements, etc.
Jobs understand very well these downsides are exactly what you get for putting an intermediate layer to help support multi-platforms - the apps will suck except possibly for the primary platform (if any) of the intermediate layer. And Apple doesn't want such apps on the iPhone, they would rather have the app not available than have a sucky one. You know, some might consider this quality control.
As for banning, well, the platform is Windows, perhaps you should ask Microsoft if they care about sucky apps on their platform?
Depends on how the app is "sub-standard". If it violates guidelines/rules, then fine. But what about apps that don't fully use iPhone's features because it is catering for the lowest common denominator across multiple platforms?
I wish I could mod Jobs' comment insightful.
'We've been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.'
That is exactly what will happen. Many/.er are happy to rant about Java's "write once run anywhere" as bunk. Using an intermediate layer to provide the same app on both iPhone and Android will ultimately make it a bad app on both platforms.
We have seen sucky ports of programs before, Jobs probably don't want those on the iPhone.
It is perfectly reasonable to want fewer high-quality apps on the platform, rather than wishing for more crap apps. This just aligns with the usual Apple approach.
What in the hell is wrong with this world when people get death threats over an issue like this?
What's wrong is that some people are too entrenched in thinking they are right.
When you are absolutely, 100%, certain that you are right, and you think someone is doing harm to children. Well, since you are absolutely right, then of course that guy is really doing harm to children.
Well then, if someone is going to harm children, and will not stop when you tell them do, sending out death threats is not such a big deal, since you are "saving the children" right?
In my opinion, the greatest evil can only be done by those who completely has no concept of right or wrong, OR those who 100% convinced they are doing such greater good than any small evil done in the process could be justified.
Slashdot Mirror
No, that's called "decency".
Most people consider what they said in a private conversation to be transient. If you are going to record what they are saying (which could be cut/edited/taken out of context easily), then it is common decency to notify the other party first before you do so.
By your logic, recording any sound waves in public should also be ok.
So you are fine someone stays outside (in the street) a restaurant you frequents, and put a set of parabolic dishes and records the conversation of every table inside? How about driving a van with a set of dishes with automatic homing on any conversations received? Along with a camera that also "passively" receiving the photons that bounced off people's face from that conversation also?
After all, he didn't send any sound waves to you, nor crack any codes you were using in your conversation. And the frequencies used by human voice are also open for public use.
That's must be ok too, right?
I mean, somebody who switched off SSID broadcasting took an explicit step to make his AP unavailable for others, and google shouldn't go and "hack" this.
"Hack" is exactly the right word because if a common joe sixpack got caught doing this, he would be called a "hacker" breaking into computer systems. Much like cases where the "hacked" system's "security" only consist using a tax id in the url to supposedly only allow the user see his own data.
But we all know that corporations are first class citizens in the US, so most /.ers here are already so comfortable with corporations having better treatment than a normal person, and so many have rushed into Google's defense already. Fortunately, the EU don't treat corporations as a special class above normal citizen, and they actually care about data privacy.
Do you also talk in secret codes in public? Or did you never talk about anything private in public restaurants? Do you also sound proof your house so you are sure any sound/noise from inside your house will never leak out to the street?
So you are ok if someone use a parabolic dish to record your conversations with your friend in bar or restaurant? After all, you are sending out unencrypted sound waves out to the public, if you are stupid enough to talk about anything private, that's your own fault, right?
Don't any of you have any idea of what "privacy" and "decency" means? Recording local and transient private data without permission from the owner, most people would consider that serious breach of trust, much like secretly taping conversations when you are in a bar with a group of friends. It is bad enough if one among the friends did it, it is even worst if some unrelated 3rd party is doing it.
If a bar owner was caught recording conversations on his patrons to "better serve" his customers, most /.ers here would be screaming blood murder. But when it comes to Google, they can do no wrong and all common sense got thrown out of the window.
... if it means I will see fewer 12 yrs old in multiplayer games. And I am serious.
As it is, even when playing mature rated games, there are still far too many immature kids in the game, either griefing outright, or in other ways to spoil the fun for everyone, and in general unable to behave with minimal civility that most adult typically show, even when online.
Although the design of PSN and the games already shielded it somewhat (eg lack of global chat, only voice chat within squad with mute function, so we don't have to see/hear the incessant crap talk), in game griefing/annoying behaviour is still somewhat unavoidable (eg camping in own team's base and destroying vehicles as they spawn, or destroying vehicles because another teammate will reach it first).
If the premium for pay network has fewer kids there, and the price is modest, I will sign up in a snap. Better service for more money (ie not for better hardware spec or higher machine power, but just better usage experience), I know this is difficult concept for some people here, but lots of normal people think it could be worth it.
Normally, when a person wants to delete some data when said data is connected to a suspected case of violation of the law, it is called "destroying evidence".
E.g. You are accused of corporate espionage and police suspect your USB drive contains stolen company trade secrets. Is it ok for you to offer to wipe the USB drive but refuse to hand the drive over to police? No way.
But now when it comes to Google, destroying evidence is now regarded by some /.ers as "protecting our privacy"?! Even when those evidence is exactly for proving how Google violated EU privacy laws?!?! *head explodes*
Destroying the data when said data is connected to a suspected violation of the law? We usually can that "destroying evidence" when a normal person tries to do that.
If you caught me sneaking out of your home with some of your stuff, will you just ask me to hand your stuff back and let me go? No way! You call the police and they will investigate my home to see if I have other stolen goods hidden, AND they will prosecute me according to the law.
Google got caught violating EU Laws, the correct response is for EU authorities to investigate the evidence to see the scope of crime, and follow through the legal process.
Deleting the data collected is basically destroying evidence here.
Exactly. People who think Google could have done this "accidentally" must not have ever done any project involving storing data.
The data Google collected must have gone through tens of Google employee, you know, the Google that is famous for its very high bar on hiring only those highly skilled, motivated, engaged, creative employees, AND the company's main expertise is data minning.
Is it likely that all of them didn't notice the extra bulk of data coming in? Heck, some of them might even have been using thier famous 20% time analyzing this data for we know!
So, your district got suck/lazy police, so other people are not allowed to have a police force that actually take the effort to fight crime?
You do realize that dealing in stolen property is a crime, right?
but an unencrypted network is an invitation for anyone to sniff your traffic passively.
So you are OK if, in a restaurant, other patrons eavesdrop and record your conversations with your SO/close friend? It is ok to do so in a public restaurant, right?
Would you also be OK for your neighbor to eavesdrop and record the noises coming out from your house, e.g. you arguing with your SO, or whatever noise coming out of the master bedroom at night? Even though they may need a sensitive microphone or a big parabolic dish to do so, from across the street to your house?
After all, not talking in codes or installing noise absorbing wall in your house is an invitation for anyone to passively listen to your conversations, right? What do you expect if you are broadcasting your sound waves on the air in the clear out into public space? Right?
So I assume you would be OK if Google told you their street view cars also contained sensitive microphones, which just happened to record some dirty jokes you told your friend on the street? And now everyone can get on the street view, see your (blurred) image and click "hear recordings" to hear your dirty joke too, you would be OK with that too? After all, whatever you did in public should be ok to be publicized, right?
Seriously, if you don't think there is something wrong with collecting local and transient data and putting them into a big permanent database correlating with other data, by a private corporation that is best known to profit from large scale datamining, you just haven't thought deeply about the issue.
Wish I had mod points to mod you up.
I read TFA, but it is very light on details. Did Google said they are going to DELETE those data now? I couldn't quite find that in TFA, it only quoted Google will "learn all the lessons we can from our mistake".
Did they consider their "mistake" being collecting the data in the first place, or does "mistake" mean the PR nightmare after they were found out doing that? Learning their lesson could either mean stop collecting so much data, or it could mean not letting other people find out how much they are collecting the next time.
Why not provide manual overrides for things like door locks and windows.
Simple - cost and liability.
I doubt a mechanical override for the window can be as simple/lightweight as the CD pinhole. An additional manual overrides (i.e. == mechanical) means
1. more parts (== more cost)
2. a heavier car (== use more gas)
3. more chance of failure (== more liability)
4. more control mechanism (e.g. child locking for the windows for the mechanical switch also!), ==> even more parts and more failure modes (== even more liability)
5. door lock override = 1 more pathway for car thief to open the door.
How many people will be willing to pay more for a car with less mileage, more problems, and easier to steal just because they worry the control system will fail?
And if you don't trust the control system to control your doors, why would you trust it to control your engine?
Computer or no computer, if I climbed under your car in the parking lot, I could cut the brake lines.
But can you make it so that the brake lines is cut sometime later *WHEN* you want it to?
Stick a phone/PDA/etc into the port, and you can cut the brake lines when you see the target car just as it approaches a red light or intersection.
This is /.! Can't you guys imagine the possible ways to exploit a digital interface vs a mechanical one?
We all know that once someone has physical access to your system it's theirs. But can they do this via OnStar or other remote access systems?
How hard would it be to stick and hide a remote controlled smartphone/PDA/custom receiver under the car that connects to the port on the car? Instant remote control to everything that can be controlled from the port.
What ran through my mind is what if I have to format my PS3, or a firmware update requires "servicing" (see former), etc. What happens then? What about going over to a friends house to play? Etc.
Formatting your PS3? My guess is nothing will be lost. I think all your trophies/unlocks/etc are all stored on some server (not sure if Sony's or EA's), that's why during the 1/3/2010 date bug period, everybody that tried to connect to PSN said they lost their trophies, etc.
You can just re-download all your PSN purchases anytime you want, so you are free to delete them on your PS3 HD, or when you replace the HD (though it would be simpler to first backup then restore to the new HD instead).
As for playing at your friend's house, I guess if you create another login in the PS3 and link to your PSN account, you will probably get back all unlocks/etc, this you can try any time you want.
Same here with my Wii, however, what I ended up was not buying a single Wii games (except those I got initially with the Wii).
OTOH, with my PS3, which can play games from both US and Japan, the money I spent on PS3 games are already more than both the price of my PS3 and my Wii hardware combined. I foresee I will keep spending on PS3 games until the next gen consoles come out.
While I am not happy to see anyone working in conditions like this, but unfortunately, the fact is these factory conditions is really an improvement over the alternatives for many of them, else they would have left long ago. Their alternative might be simple poverty, farming back home in the biggest drought in many years. China has a population of over a billion and many of them are still very very poor.
Also, keep in mind we are not talking about prison factory here, we are talking about a working population that has over 2 decades of experience in going out to cities of their choice to find work in factories. These workers have families and friends, and you bet they kept in contact with cellphones and exchange notes. If there is any better place to go, they would at most stay for the rest of year, return home for Chinese New Year (very important for them) and go elsewhere next year.
In fact, this year, just after Chinese New Year, there has been a shortage of factory workers in Southern China precisely because the workers are no longer that poor, and the 2nd generation workers are no longer as eager to work in factories any more, plus they earn more working in service industry (waitress, sales, etc, but may be open to young females only). So not that many returned to factories after new year causing the shortage.
Its been in the dev agreement from day one that apps like this are forbidden. Maybe if he'd have actually read the agreement, he would know that.
You assumed his real intention is to put an app in the App Store. However, he might have know this will happen and decided that having a rejected app that happened to contain his cartoon would give him more free publicity than having an app accepted.
If he really wanted to have an app approved, how much easier it is to have the app fetch cartoon from his website, and only put "objectionable" cartoons after the app is approved?
Military flexes muscle, says they will respond with force, what's new?
Don't you know that when you add "cyber" or "on the Internet" to existing ideas, it automatically becomes novel and non-obvious?
Indeed - I just love that "Apple approves an application, when we thought they might not" is front page news. People are that thankful.
Rather, it is like "Duh. Apple actually approved the application, we were so damn sure they would NOT that we had already flamed them earlier, so we better put out another front page story to salvage some credibility!"
Is Apple actually calling iTunes for Windows for a sub-standard app? That perhaps should be banned from the platform? Apple themselves are using non-native API intermediate layers such as CoreFoundation and CoreGraphics in their implementation of iTunes for Windows.
Yes, iTunes for Windows is a sub-standard app... for the Windows platform.
Compared to other Windows apps (which are already not great feats of engineering), the iTunes app really sucks in many areas - slow startup, unresponsive UI whenever it is busy, non-standard UI elements, etc.
Jobs understand very well these downsides are exactly what you get for putting an intermediate layer to help support multi-platforms - the apps will suck except possibly for the primary platform (if any) of the intermediate layer. And Apple doesn't want such apps on the iPhone, they would rather have the app not available than have a sucky one. You know, some might consider this quality control.
As for banning, well, the platform is Windows, perhaps you should ask Microsoft if they care about sucky apps on their platform?
Depends on how the app is "sub-standard". If it violates guidelines/rules, then fine. But what about apps that don't fully use iPhone's features because it is catering for the lowest common denominator across multiple platforms?
I wish I could mod Jobs' comment insightful.
'We've been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.'
That is exactly what will happen. Many /.er are happy to rant about Java's "write once run anywhere" as bunk. Using an intermediate layer to provide the same app on both iPhone and Android will ultimately make it a bad app on both platforms.
We have seen sucky ports of programs before, Jobs probably don't want those on the iPhone.
It is perfectly reasonable to want fewer high-quality apps on the platform, rather than wishing for more crap apps. This just aligns with the usual Apple approach.
What in the hell is wrong with this world when people get death threats over an issue like this?
What's wrong is that some people are too entrenched in thinking they are right.
When you are absolutely, 100%, certain that you are right, and you think someone is doing harm to children. Well, since you are absolutely right, then of course that guy is really doing harm to children.
Well then, if someone is going to harm children, and will not stop when you tell them do, sending out death threats is not such a big deal, since you are "saving the children" right?
In my opinion, the greatest evil can only be done by those who completely has no concept of right or wrong, OR those who 100% convinced they are doing such greater good than any small evil done in the process could be justified.