Of course I do not recommend WE do this, as Aliens may not be friendly.
But yet you suggest other civilizations might realize this is a great way to let others know, but be too dumb to realize the dangers?
The amount of sulfur needed prevents sustainability of such a project over the time span needed for detection by any other intelligent life forms. How often do WE do spectral analysis on any given random star?
Stellar engineering!?! Any civilization capable of that would be capable of finding another planet. And propulsion signatures, Really? What exactly would that look like?
The whole thing reads like someone watches too much TV.
Gases in the atmosphere are about the only thing that can be remotely sensed. But I'm sure someone could imagine a non-intelligent life form that could emit chlorofluorocarbons or just about anything else anyone would care to associate with civilization on earth.
And Dyson Spheres. Yeah, that might work. Any civilization that could pull that off would already be HERE, probably farming US.
You might have far more luck detecting a civilization at about the same stage as our own, by the debris field of dead satellites orbiting various planets and moons. But that requires getting closer than we have the technology to do.
But the article begins with the big hand-wave:
Currently – apart from a radio, or other wavelength, transmission carrying artificial and presumably intelligent content – it’s thought that indicators of the presence of an alien civilization might include...
It seems to me that radio transmissions and artificial light sources would be likely used by most civilizations at one time in their development, simple because radio and light occur naturally from many sources, and "discovery" is easy. Either or both is likely be used, even if only briefly in any civilization of planet dwelling creatures.
I don't think its fruitful to set about detecting Dyson Spheres when the radio would have reached us long before their sun dimmed.
It'd be really nice if my electronics could recognize that I'm going off to Florida again, and prepare all the WPA keys, clocks, and weather applets to reflect my new location for the week.
Any weather app I've used does this automatically. Because it knows where I am. If you haven't noticed this, its probably because you haven't set that permission in your phone, or you have made a poor choice of which widgets and apps to run on your phone.
Now if you are asking for omniscience, and your phone is expected to know In Advance where you are going, that is totally another thing. Be careful what you wish for.
First, its backed up onto your computer when itunes does a phone backup. Second, some claim it is sent to mobile me if you have an account and set it up for backup of your iphone.
But the fact that its there on your phone at all allows a traffic stop phone search to track your every movement for months in the past.
You are exactly Correct. This article specifies what Andorid keeps and why these are kept.
Last 50 cell towers, and last 200 wifi routers seen (not necessarily connected to). It does not keep a running computation of your exact position, and it truncates what it does keep. And it does not transfer this data to google in any identifiable way. (Google does crowd source traffic data from cell phones using Google Maps)
In a big city/urban area, you might truncate you cell towers seen list in a couple hours, as you commute past dozens of towers each day.
Of course once you fire up search (either on Android or IOS) you are transmitting that info to the search engine, (google or bing) if you enable local searching capability.
Not true. You can get response data if you spoof an IP address and provide source routing information in the packet, assuming that the routers between you and the destination don't block the source-routed traffic.
Source routing might be usable for packets you originate, and for brain dead things like a ping. But they won't help you fetch anything from a web server which is not under your control. The web server feels no compulsion to follow your source route.
Say I spoof your IP address and (somehow) manage to start a wget of a boatload of porn. It starts heading toward your IP, but since you have no application waiting to receive this, the packets are not ACKed, and the transmission stops.
Across the web, Spoofing IPs can at best be used for Denial Of Service attacks. Behind your own router, you can do more, but spoofs don't transit routers in any useful way other than DOS.
You can not spoof an ip address (and download any porn) beyond your own router. You may be able to send packets out, but you won't get any porn back. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address_spoofing
They didn't "take the time" to collect any private data. It was a setup error. They never intended to collect that even from unencrypted wifi routers.
All they wanted was beacon data which has ssid and routers mac address, they didn't care about IP address (andp beacons don't contain an IP address).
This allows them to use AGPS to provide rough location for mobile devices. That is all they intended to collect.
This subject has been thrashed to death. There is no point in discussing this further.
You've made up your find that you are not going to believe anything they say, and nothing anyone else can say will change your mind. If google appointed you to watch over the destruction of this data and the burning of the tapes and gave you the ability to waterboard any employee you still wouldn't believe them when they told you they purged it.
So why bring it up again? Nothing on the face of the earth would satisfy you on this issue other than a firing squad for every google employee world wide.
Are you too fucking stupid to find the Privacy Control panel on Apple's site?
Oh, wait, there is none. Apple correctly believes you are too fucking stupid to manage your own privacy, and your just fucking stupid enough to let them manage it all for you.
The point is, that setting does not prevent the iPhone from continuing to build the tracking database which it never over-writes or deletes.
You would expect a phone to keep track of its current position, and maybe the last wifi beacon it saw. This makes geolocation faster. But a years worth (or more) of historical tracking is pointless.
It is also right there on the iPhone. Settings-->General-->Location Services. You can turn them off or on globally and control which apps can use it if you choose to turn them on.
Except it doesn't work for the tracking database under discussion.
It still tracks you in the on-phone database. It tracks you using tower triangulation even if you turn the iPhone GPS off. And it keeps at least a years worth of info.
I didn't say Google wasn't transmitting your location back to Google. I said they weren't doing it secretly.
You can make a setting right there on you Android phone to turn off location information.
There is NO EQUIVALENT in the iPhone.
Come on! Stop with this argument that just because others are doing it Openly and Above board, its ok for Apple to do it on the sneak. Would you accept that same argument from you child?
Google did not ask for my permission before they employed people to drive down street next to my house and collect private and personal information transmitted on my wifi network.
If you are too fucking stupid to secure your wifi network and are broadcasting your crap PUBLICLY then you have lost all expectations of privacy.
Besides, Google fessed up, (before anyone else knew about it), made no use of that data.
Did Apple do any of that?
Nice fanboy defense of Apple, trying to deflect the problem. Did they pay you for that?
Sure Samsung makes parts for iPhones, but they make pennies on this compared to what they make on a Galaxy handset.
This is not true. Samsung's Semiconductor business accounts for a large and rapidly growing portion of their revenue. Their Galaxy handset is a drop in the bucket compared to what they make on components.
Again, apples to oranges.
Lets compare Samsung's revenue/profits from sales of components to APPLE to their revenue from Smartphones.
Most of what Samsung sells to apple is memory. There really isn't that much samsung content in an iPhone. You can't equate that to Samsung's entire semiconductor business. Samsung can easily offset earnings on components sold to Apple with earnings on Handsets. Easily.
You claim to own Apple stock, and have no intention of selling it any time soon. Why not?
Because Apple is still profitable, and the stock http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AAPL&t=5y&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=>price is still rising. See that hole back there in 07? That's where I bought. It can bobble up and down daily and still not hurt me.
You seem to be of the opinion that just because Apple will not be in first place in handset sales that the company isn't a good investment. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Apple has made a career out of being in second or third or fourth place. They thrive on it.
They will sell every tablet and every iphone they make. They won't be the sales leader. They don't have to be. They are profitable.
At least Apple buries the fact somewhere in some deep EULA (I guess). Google didn't ask anyone when it collected WIFI data, nor does it ask for permission when people use google's search engine (or 90% of the other sites on internet that have google analytics)
Well Hello there, Mr Double Standards Guy, Nice for you to drop by.....
Apple buries the fact >> Google Didn't ask permission? How are those even CLOSE to the same thing?
Let me fix it for you: Apple Didn't Ask Permission. Google tells you right up Front.
Go to Google.com. Right there, mid screen is a Privacy link. Click it and read. I'm astounded you've never seen this page before. Flabbergasted actually.
And why is it suddenly about Google? Apple is the one leaving years worth of tracking data on the phones and transmitting it secretly to headquarters with no way for you to opt out.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course I do not recommend WE do this, as Aliens may not be friendly.
But yet you suggest other civilizations might realize this is a great way to let others know, but be too dumb to realize the dangers?
The amount of sulfur needed prevents sustainability of such a project over the time span needed for detection by any other intelligent life forms. How often do WE do spectral analysis on any given random star?
Who says life has to be based on our chemistry?
They may poop diamonds for all we know. Remember the Horta.
Dammit Jim, I'm a Doctor, not a stone mason!
Look for randomness.
I would guess if you find a source (other than Earthly) of randomness, at any energy level, it's probably produced by something intelligent.
It kinda pisses me off that every time I read or see something about SETI it's about looking for patterns. They should be looking for randomness.
Seriously? How much of that do we emit, other than your post...
Stellar engineering!?! Any civilization capable of that would be capable of finding another planet.
And propulsion signatures, Really? What exactly would that look like?
The whole thing reads like someone watches too much TV.
Gases in the atmosphere are about the only thing that can be remotely sensed. But I'm sure someone could imagine a non-intelligent life form that could emit chlorofluorocarbons or just about anything else anyone would care to associate with civilization on earth.
And Dyson Spheres. Yeah, that might work. Any civilization that could pull that off would already be HERE, probably farming US.
You might have far more luck detecting a civilization at about the same stage as our own, by the debris field of dead satellites orbiting various planets and moons. But that requires getting closer than we have the technology to do.
But the article begins with the big hand-wave:
Currently – apart from a radio, or other wavelength, transmission carrying artificial and presumably intelligent content – it’s thought that indicators of the presence of an alien civilization might include...
It seems to me that radio transmissions and artificial light sources would be likely used by most civilizations at one time in their development, simple because radio and light occur naturally from many sources, and "discovery" is easy. Either or both is likely be used, even if only briefly in any civilization of planet dwelling creatures.
I don't think its fruitful to set about detecting Dyson Spheres when the radio would have reached us long before their sun dimmed.
It'd be really nice if my electronics could recognize that I'm going off to Florida again, and prepare all the WPA keys, clocks, and weather applets to reflect my new location for the week.
Any weather app I've used does this automatically. Because it knows where I am. If you haven't noticed this, its probably because you haven't set that permission in your phone, or you have made a poor choice of which widgets and apps to run on your phone.
Now if you are asking for omniscience, and your phone is expected to know In Advance where you are going, that is totally another thing. Be careful what you wish for.
You don't know that.
First, its backed up onto your computer when itunes does a phone backup.
Second, some claim it is sent to mobile me if you have an account and set it up for backup of your iphone.
But the fact that its there on your phone at all allows a traffic stop phone search to track your every movement for months in the past.
You are exactly Correct.
This article specifies what Andorid keeps and why these are kept.
Last 50 cell towers, and last 200 wifi routers seen (not necessarily connected to). It does not keep a running computation of your exact position, and it truncates what it does keep. And it does not transfer this data to google in any identifiable way. (Google does crowd source traffic data from cell phones using Google Maps)
In a big city/urban area, you might truncate you cell towers seen list in a couple hours, as you commute past dozens of towers each day.
Of course once you fire up search (either on Android or IOS) you are transmitting that info to the search engine, (google or bing) if you enable local searching capability.
Not true. You can get response data if you spoof an IP address and provide source routing information in the packet, assuming that the routers between you and the destination don't block the source-routed traffic.
Source routing might be usable for packets you originate, and for brain dead things like a ping.
But they won't help you fetch anything from a web server which is not under your control. The web server feels no compulsion to follow your source route.
But I wonder if it wasn't too concentrated to make it a world class device, even if it did get built out to the full compliment.
Can't you do just as much with fewer dishes by organizing them into a very long baseline array?
You won't, but someone will.
No that won't happen either.
Say I spoof your IP address and (somehow) manage to start a wget of a boatload of porn. It starts heading toward your IP, but since you have no application waiting to receive this, the packets are not ACKed, and the transmission stops.
Across the web, Spoofing IPs can at best be used for Denial Of Service attacks.
Behind your own router, you can do more, but spoofs don't transit routers in any useful way other than DOS.
You can not spoof an ip address (and download any porn) beyond your own router. You may be able to send packets out, but you won't get any porn back. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address_spoofing
They didn't "take the time" to collect any private data. It was a setup error. They never intended to collect that even from unencrypted wifi routers.
All they wanted was beacon data which has ssid and routers mac address, they didn't care about IP address (andp beacons don't contain an IP address).
This allows them to use AGPS to provide rough location for mobile devices. That is all they intended to collect.
This subject has been thrashed to death. There is no point in discussing this further.
You've made up your find that you are not going to believe anything they say, and nothing anyone else can say will change your mind. If google appointed you to watch over the destruction of this data and the burning of the tapes and gave you the ability to waterboard any employee you still wouldn't believe them when they told you they purged it.
So why bring it up again? Nothing on the face of the earth would satisfy you on this issue other than a firing squad for every google employee world wide.
Are you too fucking stupid to find the Privacy Control panel on Apple's site?
Oh, wait, there is none.
Apple correctly believes you are too fucking stupid to manage your own privacy, and your just fucking stupid enough to let them manage it all for you.
I assume that you have never owned an iPhone.
You assume wrongly.
The point is, that setting does not prevent the iPhone from continuing to build the tracking database which it never over-writes or deletes.
You would expect a phone to keep track of its current position, and maybe the last wifi beacon it saw. This makes geolocation faster.
But a years worth (or more) of historical tracking is pointless.
It is also right there on the iPhone. Settings-->General-->Location Services. You can turn them off or on globally and control which apps can use it if you choose to turn them on.
Except it doesn't work for the tracking database under discussion.
It still tracks you in the on-phone database. It tracks you using tower triangulation even if you turn the iPhone GPS off.
And it keeps at least a years worth of info.
And its stored in an insecure method.
Ok, I see it now. You make a blatantly false statement, I prove you wrong with one picture, and you launch an insult rant.
And despite what you may think, there is no 'off' button on the Android either.
http://cdn1.staztic.com/screenshots/gps-settings-60-2.jpg
Its right there on your phone. Duh!
http://cdn1.staztic.com/screenshots/gps-settings-60-2.jpg
I didn't say Google wasn't transmitting your location back to Google. I said they weren't doing it secretly.
You can make a setting right there on you Android phone to turn off location information.
There is NO EQUIVALENT in the iPhone.
Come on! Stop with this argument that just because others are doing it Openly and Above board, its ok for Apple to do it on the sneak.
Would you accept that same argument from you child?
Google did not ask for my permission before they employed people to drive down street next to my house and collect private and personal information transmitted on my wifi network.
If you are too fucking stupid to secure your wifi network and are broadcasting your crap PUBLICLY then you have lost all expectations of privacy.
Besides, Google fessed up, (before anyone else knew about it), made no use of that data.
Did Apple do any of that?
Nice fanboy defense of Apple, trying to deflect the problem. Did they pay you for that?
Sure Samsung makes parts for iPhones, but they make pennies on this compared to what they make on a Galaxy handset.
This is not true. Samsung's Semiconductor business accounts for a large and rapidly growing portion of their revenue. Their Galaxy handset is a drop in the bucket compared to what they make on components.
Again, apples to oranges.
Lets compare Samsung's revenue/profits from sales of components to APPLE to their revenue from Smartphones.
Most of what Samsung sells to apple is memory. There really isn't that much samsung content in an iPhone. You can't equate that to Samsung's entire semiconductor business. Samsung can easily offset earnings on components sold to Apple with earnings on Handsets. Easily.
Come On! lets stick to fair comparisons.
You claim to own Apple stock, and have no intention of selling it any time soon. Why not?
Because Apple is still profitable, and the stock http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AAPL&t=5y&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=>price is still rising. See that hole back there in 07? That's where I bought. It can bobble up and down daily and still not hurt me.
Lots of analysts think this is the Time to Buy Apple.
You seem to be of the opinion that just because Apple will not be in first place in handset sales that the company isn't a good investment. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Apple has made a career out of being in second or third or fourth place. They thrive on it.
They will sell every tablet and every iphone they make. They won't be the sales leader. They don't have to be. They are profitable.
TFA says they haven't said whether the data is sent up to Apple, but that Apple says if the want to it's "within their right to do so".
Yeah, no thanks.
How could it possibly be useful to them if it WASN'T sent? You know its been sent. Probably the instant you logged into iTunes on the phone.
The difference is Google is up front about it and allows you to control what data you let them keep. https://www.google.com/dashboard/?hl=en
Does Apple? Where are the settings that control this info on Apple's site?
At least Apple buries the fact somewhere in some deep EULA (I guess). Google didn't ask anyone when it collected WIFI data, nor does it ask for permission when people use google's search engine (or 90% of the other sites on internet that have google analytics)
Well Hello there, Mr Double Standards Guy, Nice for you to drop by.....
Apple buries the fact >> Google Didn't ask permission? How are those even CLOSE to the same thing?
Let me fix it for you:
Apple Didn't Ask Permission. Google tells you right up Front.
Go to Google.com. Right there, mid screen is a Privacy link.
Click it and read. I'm astounded you've never seen this page before. Flabbergasted actually.
And were you TOTALLY UNAWARE that Google gives you all the tools you need to CONTROL what info they keep about you? I'm astounded.
And why is it suddenly about Google? Apple is the one leaving years worth of tracking data on the phones
and transmitting it secretly to headquarters with no way for you to opt out.