Its not blind complacency I have. I really wish there were a way to share anonymised location data, anonymised email addresses and anonymised contact lists and with ALL these guys. I want the benefits but not the privacy implications as much as the next guy. I just happen to believe that Google still has its hippy "for the user" mentality at heart whereas Apple and Facebook are out to get what they can. Maybe I'm delusional? *shrug*
I work for myself but I do use Google Apps for Gmail. Just don't understand all the Google-bashing of late. People seem to forget all the services they get for free are paid for by ads which are only valuable because they are somehow targeted, be that by search terms, location, or whatnot... Google Search, Youtube, Android, Chrome, Picasa, Gmail,... Consider me confused...
And you believe them, why exactly? Because they say so?
I guess thats part of it but. But also because they haven't given me a good reason not to believe them unlike everyone else. Its a lesser of N evils thing in my mind and looking ANY tech company, I rate Google up there as the most trustworthy. Of course things could change but right now we have:
Apple records data without telling users they are doing it, what its for or what they collect. Change their policies every second week and they're too long for people to actually read them.
Facebook has a history of setting privacy too low by default and wants to make a walled garden.
Microsoft used to be evil towards other businesses but have a fairly good privacy track record AFAICR. They are slowly changing their business ways largely thanks to competitive pressure from from Google and Linux.
Sony sues people who try to unlock the machines they own, install root kits on music CDs and loses millions of private account details due to poor system design.
Google recorded unencrypted wifi traffic from streetview cars (apparently by accident and with no believable business case otherwise, its probably the truth).
Google provides free software, e-books, search engines, etc., as its bait. And based upon your slavish fanboi gushing, you've fallen for it hook, line, and sinker...
I'm not trying to be a "fanboi" and I'm still confused. You've listed what I gain but what exactly have I lost? My privacy? Don't I already lose that to Facebook and Apple? My point still stands.
you think they collect this data just to sit in some database? they sell it to third parties to sell you ads, metrics and other marketing purposes
Really? Please point me to one piece of solid evidence to that effect. If you can I'll run and delete my Google accounts right now. They sell ads so sure, they probably target ads with some model made from aggregate location data from lots of users but I have never found anything to suggest that they sell, or would ever sell this data to third parties. There is just too much for them to lose. They built their brand on the respect of the tech industry. Why would they ever throw that away? It would be stupid.
Google is also keeping all of the money for itself, and is not passing any of it on to the users who supplied the data. If your smartphone paid you cash for every day you allow them to track your data, people would not be objecting so loudly.
Also, that smart phone is likely loaded with crapware that is difficult or impossible to uninstall. The manufacturer/carrier is making money from that and you can bet your bottom dollar that the carriers are tracking you for network-planning and what-not but you'll never be able to opt-out of that.
The difference with all this stuff comes down to the way its implemented. *IF* its done in a way to secure your privacy (e.g. by purposely randomising your location within a certain distance and not storing any personally identifiable information) then it adds value to YOU. It can give you better results in searches and a better user experience. The problem is when companies start collecting it to their advantage without making it available to others. Apple seems to have secretive plans for their iPhone location data and Facebook have a history of not sharing. Out of the three, I'm glad my data is with Google. At least they tell me what they record and give me the option to delete it or opt out.
...and let me preempt the trolls. The street-view fiasco was soooo blown out of proportion. It makes perfect sense that if you are collecting wifi data that you just record what you hear and process it offline when the cars get back to the garage.
Its no surprise that if you know where someone is you can deliver more targeted results. Is this really news? Besides, Google has a good track record of protecting consumer privacy and making it clear what they collect. Apple collected all their data without telling users and Facebook has a track record of both violating privacy as default policy and refusing to share it with others.
That saying is quite fitting here across all parts of societ.y Japanese, in general, don't change format of anything. Once a business model works, they ride it out until they go bankrupt. Notable exceptions exist (Nintendo used to make playing cards but saw that market was dying.) but in the time I've been here I've seen the massive companies (unrelated to gaming) go bankrupt just because they were either arrogantly ignorant of the changing landscape or run with a culture of "don't rock the boat" which only makes change harder and harder the bigger they get.
Typical Microwave ovens operate at up to 1000W @ 2.4Ghz. Typical WiFi operates at 20mW @ 2.4Ghz. Yes, a Microwave oven is shielded in a metal box but 20mW is only 1/50,000th of the power of a microwave so even the slighest noisy leak from the microwave is going to look like some serious noise to the WiFi. At my parents place, the range of the WiFi drops in half whenever the Microwave is on.
Its not in Japan.
FeliCa is used in ICoCA, Suica and PiTaPa train passes in Japan and there's even a creditcard version (Edy) that lets you make cash payments at any convenience store in the country without so much as opening your wallet. Pin number entry is optional (if using a mobile phone). You can also tie it to point cards for various department stores and electronics retailers (BIC camera, Yotsubashi Camera).
Apple are in a good business position to push this to the rest of the world but its not a new tech and as far as I'm aware, the Sony system has yet to be cracked but its based on 3DES so strong but I wouldn't bet on it being that way in 10-20 years.
This has been in Japan for about 5 years
on
Watch TV On Your Satnav
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· Score: 2, Informative
The Japanese models turn the TV off altogether when the car starts moving but you can slip the dealer a bit of cash and he'll turn that "feature" off for you.
The human mind generalizes. It forms patterns from its inputs and thats all it does. We use patterns from our past to predict our future from anything from moving a leg forward to take a step (done it a million times before - it should work the same this time) to deciding on the motivation of another human being witnessed performing some action.
Aside from labeling mis-generalization as superstition (where superstition is really only one possible category of mis-generalization), what has this guy really done? Shown that a mis-generalizaion that is based on some observation might occasionally pay off when that observation does occasionally represent itself? Big Suprise!
If we use our brains a little, this is a bit of a sad excuse for an article is it not?
Why can we recover ancient texts written on papyrus these days? Because the strokes they used were big enough that even if the majority of a character was missing, we can use the remaining parts to speculate as to the original meaning.
25 years isn't such a problem but say you wanted to store the box for 250 years, then you really might have some issues...
The thing that scares me about digital storage these days is that redundancy is much lower as we cram more and more into tinier and tinier spaces. We offset the increased probability of errors with coding but IMHO that is a non-trivial operation from an archaeological perspective.
If you have only a small amount of data to store, is it possible to somehow print it in small, but recoverable dot patterns on long-life paper with long-life inks? I can't see scanner/camera technology disappearing anytime soon...
This isn't smart. It's not novel. Its hardly worth a talk at Defcon. The "rationale" seems to be almost an afterthought or perhaps a brainfart one might have while waiting at the MacDonalds drive through for a burger and a coke.
In 2001 I made a box with a friend consisting of a laptop with busted monitor, 200mW SENAO 802.11card, USB drive with data, GPS with custom power supply and a magnet mounted omnidirectional antenna. Total cost was about $200AUD (most in the WiFi Card). We put it in a delivery truck for a few weeks and let it triangulate and do basic probes on its own (subnet sniffing, wepcrack, DHCP attempts, default passwords). We could download he data by just driving next to the office. The box would identify the "home" station and automatically RSYNC the data to a server there. Lots of fun times with that rig! We got some security auditing contracts out of it to boot!
Anyway, enough blowing my own horn. For the sake of putting this dude in his place, I hope the contrast is clear. BTW, I didn't go to a prestigious University. I went to the University of Wollongong? Heard of it? Probably not. But I bet I know more about Wifi and hacking than this douche bag. Maybe the eggs on my face for not submitting it to Defcon? Or maybe he got bonus points because he's from MIT? (And who let that happen btw?? Wheres the _real_ researchers?)
In my hometown in Australia I broke in and found 2200 credit card numbers of my then ISP's customer database. I told them about it and they offered me a job as their System Administrator. I was 16 at the time and the Internet was new. I wouldn't dare try it now for fear of going to Jail - even if my intentions were not in anyway malicious. The law doesn't really understand the hacking culture. In this case I don't know if Mr A-Team was quite so innocent in his ambitions but I don't think its necessarily a bad thing to hire someone who knows a system so well they can get in the back door without you even noticing. I'm not saying I'm an awesome hacker or anything but in my case there were no more breaches after I started working there.
Xen isn't a silver bullet
on
Running Xen
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· Score: 2, Informative
I've deployed xen at work. It has its issues. A report on these would be much more useful to the slashdot crowd than a book full of information thats largely out of date the moment its published so here goes:
The two biggest issues that bit me:
1. I wanted to use external USB drives in a xen virtual machine. I can do PCI passthrough (exposing a whole PCI device) to a guest but only on linux. Solaris support doesn't exist yet and I think the FreeBSD support is still in the pipeline. Tough luck if you want to run, say, a kernel-based ZFS distro on a guest OS like I did. I ended up using a linux guest with para-virtualized PCI and zfs-fuse but I still have some memory leak issues that mean I have to restart the fuse daemon every so often - not ideal.
2. I wanted to virtualize an old windows PC used to run through web logfiles once a month. Xen can't virtualize DMA access so for hardware virtual machines like Windows XP, you end up with IO based disk access which uses MUCH more CPU than DMA access - especially for this sort of task.
I work for a company in Japan and information is one of our key assets. We have a fairly good relationship with google but what concerns quite a bit right now is the direct use (consolidation) of third party information that's slowly but surely encroaching on everysinglelittlepossiblemarket they can figure out how to intergrate into their enormous system. We are struggling now to post information on the web as all our information is short and digestable and likely to be swallowed up as a "useful features" on the side of one of these google maps searches. This isn't bad for people but, its gonna kill so many industries in the coming years. I just hope the "dont be evil" philosophy holds up 'cause I cant see this direction changing.
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't going to erode privacy much more than a phone in your pocket is.
Clearly Apple should sue the producers for intellectual property infringement.
Profiting from my information and selling my information are different things. I don't believe Google has ever sold user data to anyone.
Its not blind complacency I have. I really wish there were a way to share anonymised location data, anonymised email addresses and anonymised contact lists and with ALL these guys. I want the benefits but not the privacy implications as much as the next guy. I just happen to believe that Google still has its hippy "for the user" mentality at heart whereas Apple and Facebook are out to get what they can. Maybe I'm delusional? *shrug*
I work for myself but I do use Google Apps for Gmail. Just don't understand all the Google-bashing of late. People seem to forget all the services they get for free are paid for by ads which are only valuable because they are somehow targeted, be that by search terms, location, or whatnot... Google Search, Youtube, Android, Chrome, Picasa, Gmail, ... Consider me confused...
Tin foil hats all round!
And you believe them, why exactly? Because they say so?
I guess thats part of it but. But also because they haven't given me a good reason not to believe them unlike everyone else. Its a lesser of N evils thing in my mind and looking ANY tech company, I rate Google up there as the most trustworthy. Of course things could change but right now we have:
Google provides free software, e-books, search engines, etc., as its bait. And based upon your slavish fanboi gushing, you've fallen for it hook, line, and sinker...
I'm not trying to be a "fanboi" and I'm still confused. You've listed what I gain but what exactly have I lost? My privacy? Don't I already lose that to Facebook and Apple? My point still stands.
Yeah, true. :) I didn't say they were innocent, just that it was blown out of proportion.
you think they collect this data just to sit in some database? they sell it to third parties to sell you ads, metrics and other marketing purposes
Really? Please point me to one piece of solid evidence to that effect. If you can I'll run and delete my Google accounts right now. They sell ads so sure, they probably target ads with some model made from aggregate location data from lots of users but I have never found anything to suggest that they sell, or would ever sell this data to third parties. There is just too much for them to lose. They built their brand on the respect of the tech industry. Why would they ever throw that away? It would be stupid.
Google is also keeping all of the money for itself, and is not passing any of it on to the users who supplied the data. If your smartphone paid you cash for every day you allow them to track your data, people would not be objecting so loudly.
Also, that smart phone is likely loaded with crapware that is difficult or impossible to uninstall. The manufacturer/carrier is making money from that and you can bet your bottom dollar that the carriers are tracking you for network-planning and what-not but you'll never be able to opt-out of that. The difference with all this stuff comes down to the way its implemented. *IF* its done in a way to secure your privacy (e.g. by purposely randomising your location within a certain distance and not storing any personally identifiable information) then it adds value to YOU. It can give you better results in searches and a better user experience. The problem is when companies start collecting it to their advantage without making it available to others. Apple seems to have secretive plans for their iPhone location data and Facebook have a history of not sharing. Out of the three, I'm glad my data is with Google. At least they tell me what they record and give me the option to delete it or opt out.
...and let me preempt the trolls. The street-view fiasco was soooo blown out of proportion. It makes perfect sense that if you are collecting wifi data that you just record what you hear and process it offline when the cars get back to the garage.
Its no surprise that if you know where someone is you can deliver more targeted results. Is this really news? Besides, Google has a good track record of protecting consumer privacy and making it clear what they collect. Apple collected all their data without telling users and Facebook has a track record of both violating privacy as default policy and refusing to share it with others.
That saying is quite fitting here across all parts of societ.y Japanese, in general, don't change format of anything. Once a business model works, they ride it out until they go bankrupt. Notable exceptions exist (Nintendo used to make playing cards but saw that market was dying.) but in the time I've been here I've seen the massive companies (unrelated to gaming) go bankrupt just because they were either arrogantly ignorant of the changing landscape or run with a culture of "don't rock the boat" which only makes change harder and harder the bigger they get.
Typical Microwave ovens operate at up to 1000W @ 2.4Ghz. Typical WiFi operates at 20mW @ 2.4Ghz. Yes, a Microwave oven is shielded in a metal box but 20mW is only 1/50,000th of the power of a microwave so even the slighest noisy leak from the microwave is going to look like some serious noise to the WiFi. At my parents place, the range of the WiFi drops in half whenever the Microwave is on.
Its not in Japan. FeliCa is used in ICoCA, Suica and PiTaPa train passes in Japan and there's even a creditcard version (Edy) that lets you make cash payments at any convenience store in the country without so much as opening your wallet. Pin number entry is optional (if using a mobile phone). You can also tie it to point cards for various department stores and electronics retailers (BIC camera, Yotsubashi Camera). Apple are in a good business position to push this to the rest of the world but its not a new tech and as far as I'm aware, the Sony system has yet to be cracked but its based on 3DES so strong but I wouldn't bet on it being that way in 10-20 years.
The Japanese models turn the TV off altogether when the car starts moving but you can slip the dealer a bit of cash and he'll turn that "feature" off for you.
Aside from labeling mis-generalization as superstition (where superstition is really only one possible category of mis-generalization), what has this guy really done? Shown that a mis-generalizaion that is based on some observation might occasionally pay off when that observation does occasionally represent itself? Big Suprise!
If we use our brains a little, this is a bit of a sad excuse for an article is it not?
25 years isn't such a problem but say you wanted to store the box for 250 years, then you really might have some issues...
The thing that scares me about digital storage these days is that redundancy is much lower as we cram more and more into tinier and tinier spaces. We offset the increased probability of errors with coding but IMHO that is a non-trivial operation from an archaeological perspective.
If you have only a small amount of data to store, is it possible to somehow print it in small, but recoverable dot patterns on long-life paper with long-life inks? I can't see scanner/camera technology disappearing anytime soon...
This isn't smart. It's not novel. Its hardly worth a talk at Defcon. The "rationale" seems to be almost an afterthought or perhaps a brainfart one might have while waiting at the MacDonalds drive through for a burger and a coke.
In 2001 I made a box with a friend consisting of a laptop with busted monitor, 200mW SENAO 802.11card, USB drive with data, GPS with custom power supply and a magnet mounted omnidirectional antenna. Total cost was about $200AUD (most in the WiFi Card). We put it in a delivery truck for a few weeks and let it triangulate and do basic probes on its own (subnet sniffing, wepcrack, DHCP attempts, default passwords). We could download he data by just driving next to the office. The box would identify the "home" station and automatically RSYNC the data to a server there. Lots of fun times with that rig! We got some security auditing contracts out of it to boot!
Anyway, enough blowing my own horn. For the sake of putting this dude in his place, I hope the contrast is clear. BTW, I didn't go to a prestigious University. I went to the University of Wollongong? Heard of it? Probably not. But I bet I know more about Wifi and hacking than this douche bag. Maybe the eggs on my face for not submitting it to Defcon? Or maybe he got bonus points because he's from MIT? (And who let that happen btw?? Wheres the _real_ researchers?)
In my hometown in Australia I broke in and found 2200 credit card numbers of my then ISP's customer database. I told them about it and they offered me a job as their System Administrator. I was 16 at the time and the Internet was new. I wouldn't dare try it now for fear of going to Jail - even if my intentions were not in anyway malicious. The law doesn't really understand the hacking culture. In this case I don't know if Mr A-Team was quite so innocent in his ambitions but I don't think its necessarily a bad thing to hire someone who knows a system so well they can get in the back door without you even noticing. I'm not saying I'm an awesome hacker or anything but in my case there were no more breaches after I started working there.
The two biggest issues that bit me:
1. I wanted to use external USB drives in a xen virtual machine. I can do PCI passthrough (exposing a whole PCI device) to a guest but only on linux. Solaris support doesn't exist yet and I think the FreeBSD support is still in the pipeline. Tough luck if you want to run, say, a kernel-based ZFS distro on a guest OS like I did. I ended up using a linux guest with para-virtualized PCI and zfs-fuse but I still have some memory leak issues that mean I have to restart the fuse daemon every so often - not ideal.
2. I wanted to virtualize an old windows PC used to run through web logfiles once a month. Xen can't virtualize DMA access so for hardware virtual machines like Windows XP, you end up with IO based disk access which uses MUCH more CPU than DMA access - especially for this sort of task.
Hmmm. Filling it with liquiid sodium would make some fairly violent volcanoes if a leak ever arises!
I can't log in! If I type the wrong password it tells me. If I type the right one, it still says "log in" on the top bar. Firefox 3.0b5/Ubuntu
I work for a company in Japan and information is one of our key assets. We have a fairly good relationship with google but what concerns quite a bit right now is the direct use (consolidation) of third party information that's slowly but surely encroaching on every single little possible market they can figure out how to intergrate into their enormous system. We are struggling now to post information on the web as all our information is short and digestable and likely to be swallowed up as a "useful features" on the side of one of these google maps searches. This isn't bad for people but, its gonna kill so many industries in the coming years. I just hope the "dont be evil" philosophy holds up 'cause I cant see this direction changing.