You need to re-read the book. As for largish, the thing was a drug dispenser (among many other things.) It's inherent in the model. If your phone ever gets there, it's going to get larger, too.
Frederik Pohl describes a sceptre[sic]-like dumb portable terminal.
No. He describes a device that has sensors to monitor and record you, drug dispensers, voice input, voice output, person-to-person comms, product and service ordering, and more. Hardly a "dumb terminal." Scepter-like, yes. But:
What we have today includes remote intelligence / data (think "the cloud" and pretty much any remote service), local computing power, voice input and output, a few sensors, and a form factor that's not hugely different, considering it doesn't (yet) dispense drugs and need somewhere to store them.
They did not even come close to imagining our phones!
Yeah, they did. Read "The Age of the Pussyfoot" by Frederik Pohl, first published (serial form) in 1966 and then re-released in book form in 1969. Not only did he come very close to imagining what we have now, he imagined things we don't yet have, but probably will eventually.
There's a lot of great SF out there; I'd be really careful about presuming someone didn't think of our current tech in one form or another, cosmetic differences aside.
I have a payphone - it's mounted on my office wall. I don't have the keys for it, and it's not connected, but to me, it's a fine nexus of pleasant memories. Most pertinently, I remember hanging out in a phone booth in rural Pennsylvania (just north of Marshall's creek on then-route 209, now "Milford Road" since the bungled Tock's Island Dam project federal land takings) with my girlfriend as a teenager, while we waited for the rain to ease up or stop. I've been fond of phone booths, and their pay phones, ever since.
So when a friend, who works for the local telco/ISP, mentioned they were about to destroy a whole bunch of them, I asked for one, and surprisingly enough, they willingly handed one over.
And there it hangs, just dripping nostalgia.
Every once in a while, I get the urge to dig in with power tools and soldering iron and turn it into a working phone, but then I realize I don't actually want anyone to call me on a landline, ever, and the the urge subsides.:)
You're confusing "smart appliance" with "manufacturer's internet/cloud-connected appliance."
The problem isn't that the device is smart. Smart in this context just means it knows what it's doing, or what is going on around it, or what it's supposed to do.
The problem is that the devices as typically implemented today are taking your data outside your LAN to the manufacturer and any other entity the manufacturer shares it with, while at the same time exposing a considerably wider attack surface to the black hats.
Every device you listed there could benefit you via local integration with home control software.
Every device you listed there has zero good reason to go outside your LAN - you could be contacting a safe server on your LAN from the WAN to see what they're up to, should you want/need to do that, rather than channeling everything through the manufacturer's servers (which also brings a near-certainty of lost support at some random time based on their finances and product cycles.) Or you could keep all interaction with them within the LAN, which is the minimum attack surface choice, and, I would suggest, the sane choice.
The constitution is basically a "mission statement" like "don't be evil"
The constitution is literally the highest law in the land. It is the document that authorizes, and limits, our government.
No question that our current (and recent) batches of evildoers are treating the document as advisory, but that's because they are criminals – not because it actually is advisory.
In other words neither Google nor the ACLU have the standing to challenge the search warrant before it is executed
Google should have standing, because complying with the warrant would make them accessories to a crime.
At the very least, they can not comply, which (might) get them charged with something, and at which point they can take it upstream.
Of course, SCOTUS is utterly corrupt WRT actually obeying the constitution, so that might not work, but as for Google having standing, it's entirely within reach.
I'm not - which is why I leave location services off on my phone, as would any non-stupid criminal.
Location services create a circumstance where (presumably) the phone does not give location data to apps running on it.
Turning them off does not prevent you from being tracked, either in realtime or after the fact. The cellphone is constantly talking to the towers, and the towers, taken several at a time, constantly locate you fairly precisely - they actually have to in order to hand you off from tower to tower.
Aside from that, if the phone knew were you were at any point, the motion sensors can keep track of you for quite a while under a very wide range of circumstances even if no communications are presently available to it. It can also acquire information from your surroundings that can locate you WRT any particular time.
You may even be complicit in this - taking a photo, making an audio recording, etc. It depends on what's running on the phone at the time. Which is something you aren't in full control of unless you wrote your phone's OS and all its applications and drivers. Which is... unlikely.
If you really don't want to be tracked through the phone's capabilities, in realtime or after the fact, you have very few options: Don't use a phone, let the battery die, take the battery out, or don't carry the phone.
Why would you want it to use power while in a Faraday cage?
1) A smartphone is a general purpose computer. At this point, it might be a multicore, >1 GHz computer with lots of memory and storage.
2) There are many things you can do with a general purpose computer that isn't connected to the network. Especially one that is replete with useful sensors like cameras, motion, iris, fingerprint, microphone and so forth, as well as audio and visual output and handy data input mechanisms such as keyboards and touch-sensitivity.
It wouldn't ever get a call.
And you think this is a problem? lol...
This stuff isn't rocket science.
If I were you, I'd worry about clearing some lower bars before I went there.:)
Voluntarily giving Amazon access to more data to store on the sounds in your room.
Yep. Not even slightly worried about it.
The government would be the one I was worried about, if I was worried about anything - because they have, and will improperly use, immense amounts of power.
Amazon has no power at all other than to offer me stuff, or get others to offer me stuff, which I can always take or leave. And that particular power has been a considerable boon to my life.
How long before the brand new, latest thing, how shiny and nice is this, ALWAYS LISTENING mode comes out?
Oh, probably not that long. Hopefully in robot form. I'll take the French Maid model, thanks.
I hope that every second of audio goes through the NSA too.
It probably does, although it's an open question as to if they can decipher it or not.
To somebody who highly values beauty/coolness, it's "important" to them.
...and...
only saying it's a key factor to many consumers.
Again, I don't disagree. However, I maintain that these do not in any way constitute good reasons to degrade a phone design. This is a device that your life could depend upon. That, from time to time, lives do depend upon. Because of this, I am convinced they should be rugged, reliable, and repairable, rather than be subject to overweening design constraints that reduce some combination of those characteristics.
With cellphones today, even board repair is difficult
That's a consequence of toxic marketing driving intentionally poor design: too-thin phones, too-fragile connectors, non-replaceable batteries, screens without a reasonable bezel around them, etc.
There's no good reason at all a phone can't be designed to be easy to maintain, repair, use and carry.
Slashdot Mirror
You need to re-read the book. As for largish, the thing was a drug dispenser (among many other things.) It's inherent in the model. If your phone ever gets there, it's going to get larger, too.
Hence the title of my post. :)
No. He describes a device that has sensors to monitor and record you, drug dispensers, voice input, voice output, person-to-person comms, product and service ordering, and more. Hardly a "dumb terminal." Scepter-like, yes. But:
What we have today includes remote intelligence / data (think "the cloud" and pretty much any remote service), local computing power, voice input and output, a few sensors, and a form factor that's not hugely different, considering it doesn't (yet) dispense drugs and need somewhere to store them.
Yeah, they did. Read "The Age of the Pussyfoot" by Frederik Pohl, first published (serial form) in 1966 and then re-released in book form in 1969. Not only did he come very close to imagining what we have now, he imagined things we don't yet have, but probably will eventually.
There's a lot of great SF out there; I'd be really careful about presuming someone didn't think of our current tech in one form or another, cosmetic differences aside.
Nice tip, thank you. :)
I have a payphone - it's mounted on my office wall. I don't have the keys for it, and it's not connected, but to me, it's a fine nexus of pleasant memories. Most pertinently, I remember hanging out in a phone booth in rural Pennsylvania (just north of Marshall's creek on then-route 209, now "Milford Road" since the bungled Tock's Island Dam project federal land takings) with my girlfriend as a teenager, while we waited for the rain to ease up or stop. I've been fond of phone booths, and their pay phones, ever since.
So when a friend, who works for the local telco/ISP, mentioned they were about to destroy a whole bunch of them, I asked for one, and surprisingly enough, they willingly handed one over.
And there it hangs, just dripping nostalgia.
Every once in a while, I get the urge to dig in with power tools and soldering iron and turn it into a working phone, but then I realize I don't actually want anyone to call me on a landline, ever, and the the urge subsides. :)
You're confusing "smart appliance" with "manufacturer's internet/cloud-connected appliance."
The problem isn't that the device is smart. Smart in this context just means it knows what it's doing, or what is going on around it, or what it's supposed to do.
The problem is that the devices as typically implemented today are taking your data outside your LAN to the manufacturer and any other entity the manufacturer shares it with, while at the same time exposing a considerably wider attack surface to the black hats.
Every device you listed there could benefit you via local integration with home control software.
Every device you listed there has zero good reason to go outside your LAN - you could be contacting a safe server on your LAN from the WAN to see what they're up to, should you want/need to do that, rather than channeling everything through the manufacturer's servers (which also brings a near-certainty of lost support at some random time based on their finances and product cycles.) Or you could keep all interaction with them within the LAN, which is the minimum attack surface choice, and, I would suggest, the sane choice.
The constitution is literally the highest law in the land. It is the document that authorizes, and limits, our government.
No question that our current (and recent) batches of evildoers are treating the document as advisory, but that's because they are criminals – not because it actually is advisory.
Yes, regarding the law. The highest law in the land. The US constitution.
Google should have standing, because complying with the warrant would make them accessories to a crime.
At the very least, they can not comply, which (might) get them charged with something, and at which point they can take it upstream.
Of course, SCOTUS is utterly corrupt WRT actually obeying the constitution, so that might not work, but as for Google having standing, it's entirely within reach.
Location services create a circumstance where (presumably) the phone does not give location data to apps running on it.
Turning them off does not prevent you from being tracked, either in realtime or after the fact. The cellphone is constantly talking to the towers, and the towers, taken several at a time, constantly locate you fairly precisely - they actually have to in order to hand you off from tower to tower.
Aside from that, if the phone knew were you were at any point, the motion sensors can keep track of you for quite a while under a very wide range of circumstances even if no communications are presently available to it. It can also acquire information from your surroundings that can locate you WRT any particular time.
You may even be complicit in this - taking a photo, making an audio recording, etc. It depends on what's running on the phone at the time. Which is something you aren't in full control of unless you wrote your phone's OS and all its applications and drivers. Which is... unlikely.
If you really don't want to be tracked through the phone's capabilities, in realtime or after the fact, you have very few options: Don't use a phone, let the battery die, take the battery out, or don't carry the phone.
++insightful
It's not that they are right-wing. It's that they are criminal.
1) A smartphone is a general purpose computer. At this point, it might be a multicore, >1 GHz computer with lots of memory and storage.
2) There are many things you can do with a general purpose computer that isn't connected to the network. Especially one that is replete with useful sensors like cameras, motion, iris, fingerprint, microphone and so forth, as well as audio and visual output and handy data input mechanisms such as keyboards and touch-sensitivity.
And you think this is a problem? lol...
If I were you, I'd worry about clearing some lower bars before I went there. :)
Yep. Not even slightly worried about it.
The government would be the one I was worried about, if I was worried about anything - because they have, and will improperly use, immense amounts of power.
Amazon has no power at all other than to offer me stuff, or get others to offer me stuff, which I can always take or leave. And that particular power has been a considerable boon to my life.
Oh, probably not that long. Hopefully in robot form. I'll take the French Maid model, thanks.
It probably does, although it's an open question as to if they can decipher it or not.
I get my mythology from the Boomer Bible, you insensitive clod.
It works.
You can now (finally) engage in a much more normal interaction. For instance:
Alexa, what time is it?
::it's four fifty three PM
::You're welcome
...it's surprising how much of a difference this makes in the character of the interaction. Much better.
thank you
Well, no wonder it didn't work. A 666 smart card has to be implanted in the forehead, not the hand.
I thought everyone knew that.
They fit the same as anything else. Unless you're using a proportional font.
Emulated hardware is better anyway. Here you go.
You're welcome.
I just read the slashdot UID and let fly.
Again, I don't disagree. However, I maintain that these do not in any way constitute good reasons to degrade a phone design. This is a device that your life could depend upon. That, from time to time, lives do depend upon. Because of this, I am convinced they should be rugged, reliable, and repairable, rather than be subject to overweening design constraints that reduce some combination of those characteristics.
Everyone's got an opinion. That one's mine. :)
Yes, there's a reason. But I said a good reason, which there isn't.
Hyperbole much, there, Mr/Ms AC?
Thanks for the laugh. :)
That's a consequence of toxic marketing driving intentionally poor design: too-thin phones, too-fragile connectors, non-replaceable batteries, screens without a reasonable bezel around them, etc.
There's no good reason at all a phone can't be designed to be easy to maintain, repair, use and carry.
"inhabitants" is not synonymous with "size of the market."