OK. I'm not a Maryland lawyer. I cannot and don't pretend to give legal advice.
Here's some thoughts. The Maryland statute Md. Code Ann., Cts. & Jud. Proc. 10-402 prohibits some forms of 'willful' recording. That might prohibit continuous recording, however that's not what Google/Amazon/Apple do - they record after hearing a wake word. If they mishear a wake word, is that still willful one party recording? Unless the state supreme court has ruled, I'd think there's ambiguity there.
From a quick Google search, Md. courts have held that there has to be a reasonable expectation of privacy. For example speaking loudly enough that others outside can hear might rescind that expectation. So if there's an Amazon Echo sitting on the coffee table, does the speaker still have a reasonable expectation of privacy?
Again, there are very few laws that are clear, given the facts must always be applied to the law and the facts can change subtly or dramatically between cases.
And once more, I'm not a lawyer in Maryland. These are just layperson thoughts with regard to that statute. If someone in Md. is concerned, they should consult a lawyer barred in the state.
I don't suspect a judge to be likely to have a different interpretation of a law written in such an obvious way.
You realize this is an international site? There's a multitude of applicable laws.
This is not a public space, thus there's an expectation of privacy.
Any case law to back up the notion that it's reasonable to have an expectation of privacy in someone else's house?
Expectation of privacy, at least in the US, usually refers to fourth amendment rights against police search. If you visit a friend and confess to a crime, do you think you have an expectation of privacy such that they cannot tell the police?
Another interesting factoid from the article. Hong Kong had 3,000 new electric car registrations in 2016. Tesla sold circa 3,500 cars in the first three months of 2017.
The headline that nobody in Hong Kong wants a Tesla anymore might be hard to justify when we look at the data.
Exactly what the article says - there were five times as many registrations in March (the month before the rule went into effect) as in February. Hardly surprising that, when they did a half year worth of business in a month, they now see a decline.
For some other manufacturers, a decline to zero might be more concerning. I expect in the current Tesla market with only luxury vehicles, the vast majority of customers don't need to wait one more paycheck to afford the purchase.
That seems ridiculous. It would be diametrically the opposite of the Whole Foods brand.
Mini bars in hotels have been able to check stock levels for many years. RFID tags, sensors in shelves and, perhaps cameras could all check stock status easily without intrusive robots wandering the aisles.
It's not like modern grocery stores don't already have stock information simply by deducting sales and wastage from the existing stock level, so even the above adds little value to the existing marketplace. Warehouse efficiency is one thing, but Amazon isn't going to transform the retail side by knowing someone took a bottle of olive oil from the shelf five minutes before a competitor would learn the same thing at the checkout.
None of that is happening tho. They scan your emails to serve you ads. That's it. It isn't to make your life easier.
Maybe you don't have an android phone, or don't use Google Now? This stuff happens every day on Android. My phone lets me know where I parked my car - from the phone sensors, knows where I usually drive to on a Wednesday after work, so tells me the estimated travel time without any other entries, and will pull flight reservations, hotel bookings, bills due, package tracking and more straight from my email. These have been features since 2012.
They never said they would no longer scan emails altogether.
I'd be pretty pissed if they did. It's nice to grab your phone and see that evening's flight details, or get a reminder that you have a bill due in three days, etc.
These are features that make my life easier and are only possible by having a computer scan my email.
1. There's no way that storing years worth of textbooks would offset the cost reduction from increasing the print run. Particularly for the 101 books that sell a large number of copies.
2. If you were storing the books, you could just as easily print and store them overseas to avoid that tax.
3. The very same books are typically much cheaper in overseas markets where education is less expensive. For some, publishers even go out their way to make the text order different to maintain this markup, see for example Campbell Biology in the UK (Global Edition) vs. the US book.
For subjects like calculus, publishers have come up with the "metric edition" because US and EU college students can't use unfamiliar units.
Whole Foods are also a national chain which might have been tempting. To get nationwide coverage in high income zip codes would otherwise have required multiple purchases.
That said, their stores are often pretty small compared to the bigger supermarkets which isn't great if you want to use them as local warehouses for Amazon Fresh, and they're also located in prime (read high-cost) locations, also unnecessary.
And since I was unclear, they won't get a full GET request, only the domain name you're requesting. That's all that's needed by the browser to establish encryption and everything else is exchanged thereafter.
This idea looks like something from a decade or more ago.
Are they patenting it so they can license it, or so they can prevent others from doing it by not licensing it?
That was my first thought - a defensive patent might make sense for Amazon here.
Still, I'd like to know how they propose to bypass SSL. Google uses it everywhere, as does Amazon, B&H, and many others.
All the retailer is going to see is a GET request for something from one of those sites, something which they could already quite easily block. What they can't do is see what page your're looking at.
And if they do, folk will just use their phone's data. Free in-store wi-fi as a plus when mobile data was expensive. As it slowly declines in price it becomes less relevant and so does a patent like this.
You don't own anything. If the government decides they want your house because it sits on land you can never own, they'll take it. If the government decides your car is unsafe, they take it.
THis comment appears scattered throughout this topic. Are you proposing something different? A return to the state of nature, where anyone else with a bigger club, or faster legs could take your stuff?
The only way to own something is if there's a community that respects your ownership. That requires some form of government which requires some sort of funding. The alternative, as Hobbes tells us, is nasty, brutish and short.
Often the stuff you want is not available with Prime, or it is but costs more than the version without so you are effectively paying for fast shipping on it anyway.
I view the extra cost as paying for Amazon's return policy. I know that anything that doesn't work can be returned quickly and without issue. I suppose for small $4 things it might be worth self insuring and taking the lower price, but generally I appreciate the convenience of both knowing when something will arrive and that if it's broken I'm not going to lose time dealing with it.
I doubt the mainstream market consumers would want to buy a Pixel phone when it only will be supported up to two years after it's initial launch. [deccanchronicle.com] Google is taking planned obsolescence to a new level! Buy a premium pixel phone on a two year payment plan and as soon as it is paid off it is obsolete and one will need to start looking to purchase a new one with little hope of reselling their current phone for any meaningful value.
That's a bit misleading when the page you linked to shows the phone is supported for three years. Admittedly, the OS is only guaranteed to be upgraded for two years, but there will be monthly security updates for three.
As an Android user and Nexus owner for many years, I do agree that the length of support is far behind that offered by Apple in the past (though the recent 64 bit decision reduces their support to four years).
Can i use it without any form of internet connection to Apple, and without it sending any data outside my local network?
Do you have a server farm that can do near instantaneous interpretation of natural language speech? That's really a prerequisite for any of these devices to work locally.
So, how did Harvard get into a Facebook private group? I do not use Facebook, but in my humble opinion, a private group means that unauthorized entities cannot access that group.I understand robots that scan words like "bomb" and maybe the NSA, but not real people with no affiliation to the group or the service or national security.
From the article:
Students had created the Facebook group as a spinoff from a 100-member group created for the Class of 2021. The Crimson says students were required to post provocative memes in the bigger group before being allowed into the smaller one, which was at one point called "Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens."
There was no need for access to the private group if the entry requirement was to post something like the memes described in the official Class of '21 facebook group set up by Harvard employees.
What a stupid strawman argument. As if looking to others' experiences somehow implies that anyone is suggesting copying because they're former colonial powers.
There are, and rightly so, huge concerns with any election that doesn't have verifiable paper ballots or receipts. That's reality the world over and has zilch to do with colonialism. It affects Italy as it does India and the American countries as it does those in Africa.
Bruce Schneier isn't a colonialism (at least not that I'm aware of), rather he's one of the most highly regarded experts on computer security. The points he raised in 2004 are every bit as valid today. Or, as he said elsewhere, "a secure Internet voting system is theoretically possible, but it would be the first secure networked application ever created in the history of computers."
Nonsense. Governments don't need to make things illegal to make them unpopular.
Governments have, for years, used tax to influence consumer decisions for the greater good. That's why we have specific taxes on cigarettes, because the pack price does not encompass the community cost.
This is also why Europeans see gas prices several times those in the US and their cars are much more efficient. Effectively they end up with a similar cost per mile, or at least one that isn't as massively different as the sticker price on gas would suggest. The countries then benefit by less need to import gas and lower emissions.
I would like to see a self-driving car parking itself along narrow country roads with soft berms, and not get stuck eventually.
The self driving car is probably much better than a human driver at carefully engaging the 'gas' allowing it to slowly drive away. Of course, there'd be little to no need for it to park on the grass. Unload the car then tell it to drive itself off to a better parking location.
Cruachan can run for over 20 hours at peak Dinorwig can run for 6 hours Ffestiniog can run for four hours
No one suggested they can meet the UK electric consumption alone, but the idea that any of these stations is only good for minutes of generation is demonstrably false.
Slashdot Mirror
OK. I'm not a Maryland lawyer. I cannot and don't pretend to give legal advice.
Here's some thoughts. The Maryland statute Md. Code Ann., Cts. & Jud. Proc. 10-402 prohibits some forms of 'willful' recording. That might prohibit continuous recording, however that's not what Google/Amazon/Apple do - they record after hearing a wake word. If they mishear a wake word, is that still willful one party recording? Unless the state supreme court has ruled, I'd think there's ambiguity there.
From a quick Google search, Md. courts have held that there has to be a reasonable expectation of privacy. For example speaking loudly enough that others outside can hear might rescind that expectation. So if there's an Amazon Echo sitting on the coffee table, does the speaker still have a reasonable expectation of privacy?
Again, there are very few laws that are clear, given the facts must always be applied to the law and the facts can change subtly or dramatically between cases.
And once more, I'm not a lawyer in Maryland. These are just layperson thoughts with regard to that statute. If someone in Md. is concerned, they should consult a lawyer barred in the state.
You realize this is an international site? There's a multitude of applicable laws.
Any case law to back up the notion that it's reasonable to have an expectation of privacy in someone else's house?
Expectation of privacy, at least in the US, usually refers to fourth amendment rights against police search. If you visit a friend and confess to a crime, do you think you have an expectation of privacy such that they cannot tell the police?
Did you force your guests to visit?
Let me guess. You're not a lawyer?
Another interesting factoid from the article. Hong Kong had 3,000 new electric car registrations in 2016. Tesla sold circa 3,500 cars in the first three months of 2017.
The headline that nobody in Hong Kong wants a Tesla anymore might be hard to justify when we look at the data.
Exactly what the article says - there were five times as many registrations in March (the month before the rule went into effect) as in February. Hardly surprising that, when they did a half year worth of business in a month, they now see a decline.
For some other manufacturers, a decline to zero might be more concerning. I expect in the current Tesla market with only luxury vehicles, the vast majority of customers don't need to wait one more paycheck to afford the purchase.
That seems ridiculous. It would be diametrically the opposite of the Whole Foods brand.
Mini bars in hotels have been able to check stock levels for many years. RFID tags, sensors in shelves and, perhaps cameras could all check stock status easily without intrusive robots wandering the aisles.
It's not like modern grocery stores don't already have stock information simply by deducting sales and wastage from the existing stock level, so even the above adds little value to the existing marketplace. Warehouse efficiency is one thing, but Amazon isn't going to transform the retail side by knowing someone took a bottle of olive oil from the shelf five minutes before a competitor would learn the same thing at the checkout.
If using an alternate email supplier and turning off location services is beyond you, you could just buy a dumb phone.
All the stuff I mentioned is opt-in.
Maybe you don't have an android phone, or don't use Google Now? This stuff happens every day on Android. My phone lets me know where I parked my car - from the phone sensors, knows where I usually drive to on a Wednesday after work, so tells me the estimated travel time without any other entries, and will pull flight reservations, hotel bookings, bills due, package tracking and more straight from my email. These have been features since 2012.
I'd be pretty pissed if they did. It's nice to grab your phone and see that evening's flight details, or get a reminder that you have a bill due in three days, etc.
These are features that make my life easier and are only possible by having a computer scan my email.
Isn't that 15GB across the Google ecosystem. So if you use Drive, or store full resolution photos, etc, then you could hit that pretty quickly.
1. There's no way that storing years worth of textbooks would offset the cost reduction from increasing the print run. Particularly for the 101 books that sell a large number of copies.
2. If you were storing the books, you could just as easily print and store them overseas to avoid that tax.
3. The very same books are typically much cheaper in overseas markets where education is less expensive. For some, publishers even go out their way to make the text order different to maintain this markup, see for example Campbell Biology in the UK (Global Edition) vs. the US book.
For subjects like calculus, publishers have come up with the "metric edition" because US and EU college students can't use unfamiliar units.
Whole Foods are also a national chain which might have been tempting. To get nationwide coverage in high income zip codes would otherwise have required multiple purchases.
That said, their stores are often pretty small compared to the bigger supermarkets which isn't great if you want to use them as local warehouses for Amazon Fresh, and they're also located in prime (read high-cost) locations, also unnecessary.
And since I was unclear, they won't get a full GET request, only the domain name you're requesting. That's all that's needed by the browser to establish encryption and everything else is exchanged thereafter.
This idea looks like something from a decade or more ago.
That was my first thought - a defensive patent might make sense for Amazon here.
Still, I'd like to know how they propose to bypass SSL. Google uses it everywhere, as does Amazon, B&H, and many others.
All the retailer is going to see is a GET request for something from one of those sites, something which they could already quite easily block. What they can't do is see what page your're looking at.
And if they do, folk will just use their phone's data. Free in-store wi-fi as a plus when mobile data was expensive. As it slowly declines in price it becomes less relevant and so does a patent like this.
THis comment appears scattered throughout this topic. Are you proposing something different? A return to the state of nature, where anyone else with a bigger club, or faster legs could take your stuff?
The only way to own something is if there's a community that respects your ownership. That requires some form of government which requires some sort of funding. The alternative, as Hobbes tells us, is nasty, brutish and short.
I view the extra cost as paying for Amazon's return policy. I know that anything that doesn't work can be returned quickly and without issue. I suppose for small $4 things it might be worth self insuring and taking the lower price, but generally I appreciate the convenience of both knowing when something will arrive and that if it's broken I'm not going to lose time dealing with it.
Perhaps they want server chips? They already use google designed security chips and ASICs.
That's a bit misleading when the page you linked to shows the phone is supported for three years. Admittedly, the OS is only guaranteed to be upgraded for two years, but there will be monthly security updates for three.
As an Android user and Nexus owner for many years, I do agree that the length of support is far behind that offered by Apple in the past (though the recent 64 bit decision reduces their support to four years).
Do you have a server farm that can do near instantaneous interpretation of natural language speech? That's really a prerequisite for any of these devices to work locally.
This is an approximate rendition of what it would be like.
From the article:
There was no need for access to the private group if the entry requirement was to post something like the memes described in the official Class of '21 facebook group set up by Harvard employees.
What a stupid strawman argument. As if looking to others' experiences somehow implies that anyone is suggesting copying because they're former colonial powers.
There are, and rightly so, huge concerns with any election that doesn't have verifiable paper ballots or receipts. That's reality the world over and has zilch to do with colonialism. It affects Italy as it does India and the American countries as it does those in Africa.
Bruce Schneier isn't a colonialism (at least not that I'm aware of), rather he's one of the most highly regarded experts on computer security. The points he raised in 2004 are every bit as valid today. Or, as he said elsewhere, "a secure Internet voting system is theoretically possible, but it would be the first secure networked application ever created in the history of computers."
Nonsense. Governments don't need to make things illegal to make them unpopular.
Governments have, for years, used tax to influence consumer decisions for the greater good. That's why we have specific taxes on cigarettes, because the pack price does not encompass the community cost.
This is also why Europeans see gas prices several times those in the US and their cars are much more efficient. Effectively they end up with a similar cost per mile, or at least one that isn't as massively different as the sticker price on gas would suggest. The countries then benefit by less need to import gas and lower emissions.
The self driving car is probably much better than a human driver at carefully engaging the 'gas' allowing it to slowly drive away. Of course, there'd be little to no need for it to park on the grass. Unload the car then tell it to drive itself off to a better parking location.
Even then, it was been a problem. Casio have offered competitively priced calculators for decades that are approved for all the major tests.
Teachers however know how to use a TI calculator and therefore won't allow or actively discourage the use of the cheaper alternative.
Cruachan can run for over 20 hours at peak
Dinorwig can run for 6 hours
Ffestiniog can run for four hours
No one suggested they can meet the UK electric consumption alone, but the idea that any of these stations is only good for minutes of generation is demonstrably false.