Yes, there IS an expectation of privacy. It is privacy through obscurity. When I am in a crowd of 100,000, I very reasonably expect to be LESS trackable than when I am sitting in my home alone. Pretty much every single person on the planet also has this expectation. They don't expect to have the person next to them not see them, but they do expect that anyone that knows them, or is investigating them will not see them.
The meme of "Your is public, so have no expectation of privacy" is entirely false, and repeating it doesn't make it true.
That's actually a pretty good solution. It still doesn't solve the problem of having dozens of passwords though. I know that I have at least a hundred different passwords. I used to use a "Doesn't matter", "low security", "high security", "REALLY high security" set so that I could remember my 4 passwords, and didn't have to worry that the video game forum I posted to one time a couple of years ago wasn't going to have an admin that was going to clean out my bank account.
The problem is that once enough sites and services had enforced enough different name requirements on me that I couldn't remember all of my passwords, I had no choice but to write them down. Since I sometimes need them when I am out and about, I had to keep them in a digital form. This seems like a bigger risk than my previous method.
When the customer explicit asks you to? Yes. There is a big difference between tracking a customers movements via GPS and looking up the deviceID and IP address accessed from when the customer specifically asks for it.
I don't think a decrease in desktops is having very much of an impact at all. It is the switch from CRT to LCD that is the one of the big energy savers. This happens whether you switch to a laptop, or just replace your monitor. CRT devices are so out of favor now that people have a hard time literally giving them away. Another big factor is that even just 5 years ago, the sleep function on computers was pretty unreliable. I know that I had a couple of computers that I just set to shut of the monitor because they wouldn't come out of sleep properly. This seems to have been fixed. So instead of a computer running at 120 or 180 watts 24/7, it is running at 50 watts for the couple of hours a day that people are using them, and then they drop down to under 2 watts for the rest of the time.
What kind of LED are you using to replace a standard 100 watt incandecent? I don't seem to find any that are an actual replacement. I am not a big fan of CFL bulb quality, but the cost/quality ratio has me using them for pretty much my entire home. I keep waiting for LED to become a replacement so that I can get to thinking of the CFLs as a transition technology.
I just wish that it was required to clearly mark on the packaging, how many lumens a light produced. Watts were fine when the the watt/lumen ratio was pretty much teh same for all light bulbs. After 40 years of using watts as a measurement of how much light is produced, it isn't a natural transition to using lumens. That being said, lumens is the correct way to rate the light produced by a bulb. Saying "Equivalent to X watt bulb" doesn't work, as it never is equivalent, and rating light by watts is only a "good enough" solution. If all of the incandescent bulbs had lumens in big bold letters, and I had to look closer to see the watts, It would quickly become natural to use lumens for light quantity.
There is a segment of people like that. There is also a segment of people that thing because a particular item works for them, that it meets the use case of everyone else. Just look through the slashdot posts that suggest 70 year old people ride bicycles in the snow to get to their dialysis treatments.
I tried to be an early adopter of CFL bulbs. I bough some when they were still over $10 each. I switched back to incandescent because they were slow to turn on. I didn't want to stand at the doorway of a dark room for 5 seconds before entering while I waited for the light to turn on and stop flickering. The color was bad, and it had a tendency to produce enough IR interference that it would stop remote controls from working, and would even sometimes change the channel on my TV.
Times have changed. The CFLs being sold now are WAY cheaper, and as far as I can tell, no longer produce IR interference. The people in the first group generally used to have the right answer for the wrong reason. Now, the people in the second group generally have the right answer for the wrong reason. The rest of us fit into a third group where we buy what best meets our cost/functionality sweet spot.
No, daylight isn't white. It is just what you are used to. I personally prefer the cooler colored lights. The warmer color from the incandescent bulbs make me feel like I need a brighter light to be comfortable. The suggestions of buying LEDs that let you adjust the colors are pretty ridiculous. The cost of LED lighting is already prohibitive for general use. The color changing LED lights are 2 to 3 times as much.
I am buying more efficient almost everything. My last two rounds of PC upgrades for the family cost less than just running the old equipment would have been. My new TV may take 5 years to pay itself off, but it's HUGE energy savings will certainly pay for the cost of replacement. Every time someone buys a CFL bulb instead of an incandescent one, they are buying energy efficiency, and that is happening at a steady pace.
Yes, times are tough. Yes, they are tougher for some than others, but luxury purchases have not disappears, and not all energy efficiency purchases are on luxury items.
I have a second refrigerator in my home. I hooked a meter up to it to see if it was worth running. It is an old refrigerator. Not ancient, but a good decade old. Buying a more power efficient computer saved me more electricity per month than getting rid of the extra refrigerator would have. Switching to CFL lights also made a much bigger impact that getting rid of the extra old refrigerator would have. I am glad that refrigerators are getting more efficient, but I don't think they are the energy hogs that most people think they are.
One of the BIG culprits that people don't think about is the cable/satellite boxes. I have gone all internet streaming at this point, but the satellite boxes I had a couple of years ago literally used twice the energy as my old second refrigerator.
I have done similar. 7 years ago, I was in a 1400sf house and was using 1700 to 1800 KWh/month. Now I am in a 2400sf house and I am only using 400 - 600 KWh/month. I have not reduced my quality of life at all. In fact, I have more equipment now than I did in the 1400sf house. Once you start looking at energy draw, and TCO of equipment, you start to see cheaper and more efficient ways to accomplish the same tasks.
How about if we replace it with a solar powered automated mower. You bury a small wire around the edge of your lawn, and then just leave the device in the lawn. Since it can run every day, and thus will just be trimming the very tops of the grass, it won't need to be as powerful as the mower you use once a month to cut down the grass that has gotten an inch or two too long. You stop pulling from the grid AND you do less work for a HIGHER quality yard.
I get your point though. Too many people will give you answers like the other person that responded to you. Answer that boil down to "Abandon modern technology!" They would have us living in caves if they could.
Most don't require a cursor hover, and for keyboard presses, I just press the keys on my phone's keyboard. Although a HUGE number of flash games don't require keyboard or hover.
Yes it is true. About 4 months after his 1st birthday, I set up using one of those kids fold up card tables as a desk. I spent 5 minutes showing him how the mouse and keyboard worked. I let him play for a couple of hours in gCompris. By that time he was reasonably comfortable with the controls, so I spent about another 5 minutes showing him how to properly turn the computer on and properly shut it down, and gave him free access to the PC. Within a couple of weeks, he had gone through the various menus and could identify all of the programs he was interested in by their icons or text labels. Although, at that point he wasn't reading the text labels so much as seeing them as pictures. He couldn't tell me what they said, but could tell me what they would load, even if they were rearranged.
A week after his 2nd birthday, I formatted his hard drive, handed him an Ubuntu 5.10 Disk, told him I had formatted his hard drive, and told him to reinstall the OS.
And, yes, It was hilarious to watch a 2 year old sitting in a diaper in front of a PC installing Linux. Interestingly enough, I tried the same thing with Windows XP, and he could not get through the install on his own.
I don't know about genius, but my kid was proficient on his PC at 1, installed Ubuntu on his own at 2 (No, he couldn't read, but then you don't need to be able to read to install Ubuntu), started reading just before 3, and by 3 1/2 was reading full books. At 3 he build his first electronics project unassisted. (A helicopter launcher that revved up a fan held in place by friction, and when the button was let go, would launch the fan blade into the air).
At 4 he did a do simple programming, and could build and walk you through basic circuits. Maybe he is a genius, or maybe you are vastly underestimating what small children are capable of.
He is definitely a happy kid that makes friends easily, and there are three things that are sure to get him giggling. Spongebob, Phinius and Ferb, and watching math equations on Kahn Acadamy. The reason so many genius kids are miserable is because their parents and other adults see a really smart kid and start to push. They push and push and tell them that no matter how good they do, they are not doing good enough. They do this until the kid is miserable and frequently cracks. It isn't the being really smart that makes them miserable. It is the way the adults (and some kids) treat them because they are smart. Really smart kids just need to have it explained to them that people who are not as smart feel uncomfortable about not being as smart. So, you keep it a family secret. When kids (or their parents) who are uncomfortable with you being smart are over to play, you leave the chess boards, word games, and other intellectual games in the closet, and use that time to go throw a ball, or dig a hole in the back yard.
Put in an SSD that is just big enough for the OS, and store all of the data a NAS like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822165122. It could have 0 moving part in the living room. Who cares if the drive in the laundry room makes noise or not.
The problem isn't in the building an engine range of difficulty, and it doesn't say or imply that the asker doesn't now how to build a system. Thus, even the changing a tire part of your argument isn't really valid.
What we have here is someone asking for specific part numbers. There is a HUGE number of different motherboards, and a whole lot of different processors out there. That isn't even starting into the number of video cards available. Going to spec sheets isn't helpful beyond a vague hand wavy level of info. Anyone experienced with building systems knows that you can't just go by the spec sheets. So, this person clearly described their use case, provided a real world example of a system that does not meet his needs, and asked a group with a tendency towards computers if any of them have built a system that would work in his use case. He was looking for specific model information. He also did not imply that when he got some recommendations, he wouldn't then review those models to one specific system.
There is nothing about asking for recommendations that would imply incompetence.
Exactly. "Use Tax" is a tariff. Tariffs on out of state goods are illegal in the U.S.. And even if they were not, interstate taxing WOULD be the responsibility of the federal government, as that would actually be a legitimate use of the Interstate Commerce Clause.
So, do you say the same about people who ran the Underground Railroad, or do you rationalize away how that is somehow different? If you think the law is just and that not paying sales tax on mail order is unethical, then say so in public. Don't try to pretend that people who decide not to throw themselves on their enemies spears are somehow unethical.
There is no way that they didn't notice the Wiimote. That's a little like saying you've never heard of McDonald's. Just 'assuming that the Wiimote was using different technology' seems pretty unlikely as well, since Thinkoptics obviously has some idea about how that type of device would be made, and thus have a pretty good clue that the device works similarly. The way the Wiimote works has also been pretty heavily analyzed and reported on.
You just keep digging your hole of ignorance deeper don't you. Your suggestion to buy a desktop is NOT a response to the fact that you think putting a laptop on a desk makes the computer a desktop, or putting a keyboard on a tablet makes a tablet a laptop. You are hoping to save face by changing the subject.
We have already established that you have know clue what you are talking about concerning tablets, and that you don't even know what one is, so explaining to you why your claim that no one would use a keyboard with one (even though many people already do) would seem to be a waste of time.
If there are already abandoned towns, then why would all of the people flock to this one? If the entire town is part of the project, and all private property, it will be easy to spot the squaters, and easy to remove them. Heck, they could just set up buses from this town to one of the many other 'ghost towns' you mention, and there would be no reason for the people to come back to this one.
Eminent domain is an ugly messy business. All it takes is one little old lady that doesn't want to move, and you have a media firestorm about how evil the big bad corporation is. Now, take into account the number of people that would see the need to buy EVERY house in the area as a jackpot where they could extort the corporation by being the last holdout, and you have a situation where it is likely dramatically cheaper for the corporation to just build from ground up, if they could successfully purchase all the houses at all.
What is going to be your take on it when you read the news reports of a city using Eminent Domain to kick people out of their homes so that a corporation can buy them an use them for testing?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, there IS an expectation of privacy. It is privacy through obscurity. When I am in a crowd of 100,000, I very reasonably expect to be LESS trackable than when I am sitting in my home alone. Pretty much every single person on the planet also has this expectation. They don't expect to have the person next to them not see them, but they do expect that anyone that knows them, or is investigating them will not see them.
The meme of "Your is public, so have no expectation of privacy" is entirely false, and repeating it doesn't make it true.
That's actually a pretty good solution. It still doesn't solve the problem of having dozens of passwords though. I know that I have at least a hundred different passwords. I used to use a "Doesn't matter", "low security", "high security", "REALLY high security" set so that I could remember my 4 passwords, and didn't have to worry that the video game forum I posted to one time a couple of years ago wasn't going to have an admin that was going to clean out my bank account.
The problem is that once enough sites and services had enforced enough different name requirements on me that I couldn't remember all of my passwords, I had no choice but to write them down. Since I sometimes need them when I am out and about, I had to keep them in a digital form. This seems like a bigger risk than my previous method.
When the customer explicit asks you to? Yes. There is a big difference between tracking a customers movements via GPS and looking up the deviceID and IP address accessed from when the customer specifically asks for it.
I don't think a decrease in desktops is having very much of an impact at all. It is the switch from CRT to LCD that is the one of the big energy savers. This happens whether you switch to a laptop, or just replace your monitor. CRT devices are so out of favor now that people have a hard time literally giving them away. Another big factor is that even just 5 years ago, the sleep function on computers was pretty unreliable. I know that I had a couple of computers that I just set to shut of the monitor because they wouldn't come out of sleep properly. This seems to have been fixed. So instead of a computer running at 120 or 180 watts 24/7, it is running at 50 watts for the couple of hours a day that people are using them, and then they drop down to under 2 watts for the rest of the time.
What kind of LED are you using to replace a standard 100 watt incandecent? I don't seem to find any that are an actual replacement. I am not a big fan of CFL bulb quality, but the cost/quality ratio has me using them for pretty much my entire home. I keep waiting for LED to become a replacement so that I can get to thinking of the CFLs as a transition technology.
I just wish that it was required to clearly mark on the packaging, how many lumens a light produced. Watts were fine when the the watt/lumen ratio was pretty much teh same for all light bulbs. After 40 years of using watts as a measurement of how much light is produced, it isn't a natural transition to using lumens. That being said, lumens is the correct way to rate the light produced by a bulb. Saying "Equivalent to X watt bulb" doesn't work, as it never is equivalent, and rating light by watts is only a "good enough" solution. If all of the incandescent bulbs had lumens in big bold letters, and I had to look closer to see the watts, It would quickly become natural to use lumens for light quantity.
There is a segment of people like that. There is also a segment of people that thing because a particular item works for them, that it meets the use case of everyone else. Just look through the slashdot posts that suggest 70 year old people ride bicycles in the snow to get to their dialysis treatments.
I tried to be an early adopter of CFL bulbs. I bough some when they were still over $10 each. I switched back to incandescent because they were slow to turn on. I didn't want to stand at the doorway of a dark room for 5 seconds before entering while I waited for the light to turn on and stop flickering. The color was bad, and it had a tendency to produce enough IR interference that it would stop remote controls from working, and would even sometimes change the channel on my TV.
Times have changed. The CFLs being sold now are WAY cheaper, and as far as I can tell, no longer produce IR interference. The people in the first group generally used to have the right answer for the wrong reason. Now, the people in the second group generally have the right answer for the wrong reason. The rest of us fit into a third group where we buy what best meets our cost/functionality sweet spot.
No, daylight isn't white. It is just what you are used to. I personally prefer the cooler colored lights. The warmer color from the incandescent bulbs make me feel like I need a brighter light to be comfortable. The suggestions of buying LEDs that let you adjust the colors are pretty ridiculous. The cost of LED lighting is already prohibitive for general use. The color changing LED lights are 2 to 3 times as much.
I am buying more efficient almost everything. My last two rounds of PC upgrades for the family cost less than just running the old equipment would have been. My new TV may take 5 years to pay itself off, but it's HUGE energy savings will certainly pay for the cost of replacement. Every time someone buys a CFL bulb instead of an incandescent one, they are buying energy efficiency, and that is happening at a steady pace.
Yes, times are tough. Yes, they are tougher for some than others, but luxury purchases have not disappears, and not all energy efficiency purchases are on luxury items.
I have a second refrigerator in my home. I hooked a meter up to it to see if it was worth running. It is an old refrigerator. Not ancient, but a good decade old. Buying a more power efficient computer saved me more electricity per month than getting rid of the extra refrigerator would have. Switching to CFL lights also made a much bigger impact that getting rid of the extra old refrigerator would have. I am glad that refrigerators are getting more efficient, but I don't think they are the energy hogs that most people think they are.
One of the BIG culprits that people don't think about is the cable/satellite boxes. I have gone all internet streaming at this point, but the satellite boxes I had a couple of years ago literally used twice the energy as my old second refrigerator.
I have done similar. 7 years ago, I was in a 1400sf house and was using 1700 to 1800 KWh/month. Now I am in a 2400sf house and I am only using 400 - 600 KWh/month. I have not reduced my quality of life at all. In fact, I have more equipment now than I did in the 1400sf house. Once you start looking at energy draw, and TCO of equipment, you start to see cheaper and more efficient ways to accomplish the same tasks.
How about if we replace it with a solar powered automated mower. You bury a small wire around the edge of your lawn, and then just leave the device in the lawn. Since it can run every day, and thus will just be trimming the very tops of the grass, it won't need to be as powerful as the mower you use once a month to cut down the grass that has gotten an inch or two too long. You stop pulling from the grid AND you do less work for a HIGHER quality yard.
I get your point though. Too many people will give you answers like the other person that responded to you. Answer that boil down to "Abandon modern technology!" They would have us living in caves if they could.
Most don't require a cursor hover, and for keyboard presses, I just press the keys on my phone's keyboard. Although a HUGE number of flash games don't require keyboard or hover.
Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos.
Yes it is true. About 4 months after his 1st birthday, I set up using one of those kids fold up card tables as a desk. I spent 5 minutes showing him how the mouse and keyboard worked. I let him play for a couple of hours in gCompris. By that time he was reasonably comfortable with the controls, so I spent about another 5 minutes showing him how to properly turn the computer on and properly shut it down, and gave him free access to the PC. Within a couple of weeks, he had gone through the various menus and could identify all of the programs he was interested in by their icons or text labels. Although, at that point he wasn't reading the text labels so much as seeing them as pictures. He couldn't tell me what they said, but could tell me what they would load, even if they were rearranged.
A week after his 2nd birthday, I formatted his hard drive, handed him an Ubuntu 5.10 Disk, told him I had formatted his hard drive, and told him to reinstall the OS.
And, yes, It was hilarious to watch a 2 year old sitting in a diaper in front of a PC installing Linux. Interestingly enough, I tried the same thing with Windows XP, and he could not get through the install on his own.
I don't know about genius, but my kid was proficient on his PC at 1, installed Ubuntu on his own at 2 (No, he couldn't read, but then you don't need to be able to read to install Ubuntu), started reading just before 3, and by 3 1/2 was reading full books. At 3 he build his first electronics project unassisted. (A helicopter launcher that revved up a fan held in place by friction, and when the button was let go, would launch the fan blade into the air).
At 4 he did a do simple programming, and could build and walk you through basic circuits. Maybe he is a genius, or maybe you are vastly underestimating what small children are capable of.
He is definitely a happy kid that makes friends easily, and there are three things that are sure to get him giggling. Spongebob, Phinius and Ferb, and watching math equations on Kahn Acadamy. The reason so many genius kids are miserable is because their parents and other adults see a really smart kid and start to push. They push and push and tell them that no matter how good they do, they are not doing good enough. They do this until the kid is miserable and frequently cracks. It isn't the being really smart that makes them miserable. It is the way the adults (and some kids) treat them because they are smart. Really smart kids just need to have it explained to them that people who are not as smart feel uncomfortable about not being as smart. So, you keep it a family secret. When kids (or their parents) who are uncomfortable with you being smart are over to play, you leave the chess boards, word games, and other intellectual games in the closet, and use that time to go throw a ball, or dig a hole in the back yard.
Put in an SSD that is just big enough for the OS, and store all of the data a NAS like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822165122. It could have 0 moving part in the living room. Who cares if the drive in the laundry room makes noise or not.
The problem isn't in the building an engine range of difficulty, and it doesn't say or imply that the asker doesn't now how to build a system. Thus, even the changing a tire part of your argument isn't really valid.
What we have here is someone asking for specific part numbers. There is a HUGE number of different motherboards, and a whole lot of different processors out there. That isn't even starting into the number of video cards available. Going to spec sheets isn't helpful beyond a vague hand wavy level of info. Anyone experienced with building systems knows that you can't just go by the spec sheets. So, this person clearly described their use case, provided a real world example of a system that does not meet his needs, and asked a group with a tendency towards computers if any of them have built a system that would work in his use case. He was looking for specific model information. He also did not imply that when he got some recommendations, he wouldn't then review those models to one specific system.
There is nothing about asking for recommendations that would imply incompetence.
The Corporation is a separate 'person', remember?
Exactly. "Use Tax" is a tariff. Tariffs on out of state goods are illegal in the U.S.. And even if they were not, interstate taxing WOULD be the responsibility of the federal government, as that would actually be a legitimate use of the Interstate Commerce Clause.
So, do you say the same about people who ran the Underground Railroad, or do you rationalize away how that is somehow different? If you think the law is just and that not paying sales tax on mail order is unethical, then say so in public. Don't try to pretend that people who decide not to throw themselves on their enemies spears are somehow unethical.
There is no way that they didn't notice the Wiimote. That's a little like saying you've never heard of McDonald's. Just 'assuming that the Wiimote was using different technology' seems pretty unlikely as well, since Thinkoptics obviously has some idea about how that type of device would be made, and thus have a pretty good clue that the device works similarly. The way the Wiimote works has also been pretty heavily analyzed and reported on.
You just keep digging your hole of ignorance deeper don't you. Your suggestion to buy a desktop is NOT a response to the fact that you think putting a laptop on a desk makes the computer a desktop, or putting a keyboard on a tablet makes a tablet a laptop. You are hoping to save face by changing the subject.
We have already established that you have know clue what you are talking about concerning tablets, and that you don't even know what one is, so explaining to you why your claim that no one would use a keyboard with one (even though many people already do) would seem to be a waste of time.
If there are already abandoned towns, then why would all of the people flock to this one? If the entire town is part of the project, and all private property, it will be easy to spot the squaters, and easy to remove them. Heck, they could just set up buses from this town to one of the many other 'ghost towns' you mention, and there would be no reason for the people to come back to this one.
Eminent domain is an ugly messy business. All it takes is one little old lady that doesn't want to move, and you have a media firestorm about how evil the big bad corporation is. Now, take into account the number of people that would see the need to buy EVERY house in the area as a jackpot where they could extort the corporation by being the last holdout, and you have a situation where it is likely dramatically cheaper for the corporation to just build from ground up, if they could successfully purchase all the houses at all.
What is going to be your take on it when you read the news reports of a city using Eminent Domain to kick people out of their homes so that a corporation can buy them an use them for testing?