Okay, I think we're mis communicating here, and I may be using the wrong terminology.
Let's put it in a different way.
The maximum allowed db levels are not to be exceeded (maximum volume if you want). According to my colleague - these values are fixed, they are not allowed to exceed these.
Actually, no. I must stress that the volume REALLY is the same.
The reason I know this so well, is because I am both a technician AND an animator, and my former colleagues at a tv station has told me this, because I actually wrongfully complained and accused them of "pumping up the volume" when the ads come up.
The answer I got from her - was, "that's what everyone believes", and she could most certainly understand it, and appreciate the irritating effect it has, but there is much more to it than that.
What they also do - is to take advantage of the lower volume content has (eg. a movie), and the ads are broadcast at the maximum allowable volume set by rules and regulations (yes - we have a law in our country about this, incredibly enough).
I wish I had a link for this to document it to you, but I really do believe my college when she claims this, she's a professional.
He's right you know, the volume IS the same....the trick they use however, is to speak at the maximum level before audio clipping occurs, and that's pretty darn loud.
Not only that, they also pump up the middle tones (The audible sound spectrum is ca. 100hz to 20 khz), and the frequencies at 500-3khz is where speech is located, you can make it sound like it's 10 times louder - and STILL keep the same volume.;)
everything that appeals to their basest drives, or reinforces past prejudices, with little to no application of logic or reason.
Sure, the internet is a "fast food / take-away" smorgasboard of "what would you like to believe today?".
But we can't expect the layman to understand everything it takes several years of medicin and a degree to even comprehend, but the human nature alone - sometimes provide all the starting points you need for further investigation.
Just the case from Denmark alone, proved that there really were something to it, not just FUD.
As it turns out, it wasn't the government that was to blame, but simple human judgment. So for what it's worth - this might have saved some lives.
I'm sure we haven't even seen the beginning of the end yet, as I'm equally sure there's lots of tinfoil-hat people out there as well;)
Without the "writers" reactions - we'd have a society that quietly accepts anything - but alas - we have a democracy, technically - this means we can think, investigate and opinionate on anything we want.
If you REALLY want the true stories, you'll have to dig into each writers "claims" - and google them, believe it or not - they're fairly easy to find - that is...if they're true. I see no reason why people would lie about it, maybe they're mis-informed, but lie? no.
But how do I back up such a horrifying claim? By analyzing the current state of affairs in our world today, and I can only draw conclusions from our countrys actions lately. A while ago, we had the news investigators claim that poor & unemployed people get showed back in the queue when it comes to medical attention, medicines and treatment. Incredibly enough - our government admitted that it was a problem, and further investigations showed that the doctors "general" reasons for doing so - wasn't motivated by the government - but by the fact that these people held a job, a position in the society - and thus were a better "investment" for the future.
Also - the doctors pointed out that "people with a position in society" were less likely to complain about mistreatments and other complaints, as the poor were more prone to lawsuits and false claims for monetary reasons, rather than real facts. This were all the rage on Danish TV a while ago.
1) Have a clean computer, by this - I mean a 100% random-data-erased harddisk & computer that is completely UNTOUCHED. 2) Download a LIVE CD (Linux) eg. ubuntu, QNX..etc.. from a DIFFERENT computer in eg. a netcafe. Burn it. 3) Purchase a small 40-50 cm satellite dish. 4) Purchase a USB WiFi dongle, preferably one where you can re-flash the MAC address. (If you don't know - google!) 5) Purchase some 1mm copper, a 10x10cm copper clad board, and get yourself a soldering iron bolt + some solder. 6) Follow the internet instructions on making a Double Bi Quad WiFi antenna. 7) Rig the antenna up on a camera-stand so you can aim & scan houses accurately. 8) Now you should be able to get 50-1000 WiFi connections i a heartbeat in a city, even pretty far away, depending on your "focussing" center. Some of them, are bound to be free from encryption. 9 Insert your live cd, let it do it's job. 10 You're not home free yet, you want to protect your "host" as well, so use a program to find free proxies (scan for proxies) 11 Hook your firefox up to a series of proxies, change regularly.
Enjoy the worlds most paranoid - but safe - surfing.
Too hardcore for ya? Here's the basics. Use a LIVE CD for safe surfing, make sure to overwrite the Linux Swap memory after each use (that's your swap partition), change your mac address regularly, and use proxies, you should be fairly safe - at least - they can't prove a damn thing.
Eg. when I turn on my 50" inch TV, that comes with pretty strong speakers, I have to turn it up quite a bit in order to hear anything "intelligible" at all, while on headphones, I hear absolutely everything.
I guess that was a part of the reason why I wore headphones all my life too. Nice observation!
many of my peers are listening to VERY loud music at the clubs, in their home, in their cars - with ridiculous oversized stereos etc. I'm pretty sure that the MP3 players alone won't make a difference at all.
I'm in my 40's now, and I've been listening to MP3 players (including the first Walkmans/MiniDisc Players) since the beginning of my childhood, more than others...because I wasn't allowed to play loud music, and I found a great personal "peace" in listening to these - as loud as I wanted - wherever I wanted, any time.
This never damaged my hearing in any way, I've had my hearing checked regularly, and guess what - despite always using headphones - yes - even today...to avoid problems with my neighbors - I still hear like a 20 year old. Responsive at 18 khz or better, while my peers - can't even detect a 15 khz tone, and they always play loud music on their speakers...which I don't even have.
If I'm busy working and trying to concentrate on something, music is both very soothing and "up-beat" to get me into "gear" for the work, as well as "block out" the outside distractions.
People are much less likely to disturb you, if you have headphones on.
Manufacturing a flat-screen, be it Plasma or LCD is so cheap - you probably wouldn't believe me if I told you. But picture this:
Rewind a few years, remember when you paid 1000-3000 dollars for your 28 inch Sony Vega television set?
Today, you can grab a tv - 50 inches, way better than any projection screen or projector ever could be, for less than 800 dollars! Back in the days, I couldn't even get a decent 26" incher for that price, why is even that possible today? Simple...look at the materials.
Your tv - is essentially not much more than 2 glass plates with small cells with either gases or liquid crystals in them, and 2 plastic plates to cover it all, and then one graphics chip cpu-fpu-memory and all in one, plus a chip for digital tv-decoding and a tuner. These SMD components cost so little that you could buy a burger for what it actually cost to manufacture.
The temptation to earn HEAPS of money comes from your old "hard-dying-habits" of paying a fortune for a technology that was relatively expensive to manufacture, they where weighty, big glass screen using a lot of glass (Crt), old-school DIP/DIL discretes that takes up a lot of space.
Look at the inside of your latest flatscreen, there's a small mainboard that fills up 10 percent of the tv's size, and perhaps a PSU that fills up the next 10 percent, and the rest is a glass surface, that's it - really. These TVs could cost 100 bucks, but they won't - as long as YOU the consumer - are used to paying 1000's of dollars, it's a no-brainer that - THAT kind of money could just land in someones pocket anyway, because - you will pay anyway.
But lets not kid ourselves - we're buying screens cheaper than ever. I'm enjoying my 800 dollar 50" incher, and 200 dollar 24" inch 1920x1200 computer screen, wow...I remember paying 1000 bucks for a screen back in the days...22 inches and "only" 1280x1024 crt...and THAT was considered discount.
Yeah, I'm as curious as you on this area, hence why I call the "fad" card, as we've been filled with news on these stretchable, bendable chips for years, on science tv, documentaries, and whatever magazine you could read before Internet were for anyone.
There are (was / is) several ways to make chips flexible. The old 80's method was to keep the silicon chip itself ridgid while the the housing itself would be flexible - and the pcb itself of course, flexible resistors are a bit tricky since the resistance varies with the stretching - but this could be solved with wired resistors - flexing between the conductive/resisting wire itself, yet again - posing tear-wear issues.
Last year they came up with actual twistable sillicon chip - meaning that the actual IC-Core could be flexible as well:
If you look at the various OLED demos. of either e-paper or OLED displays that are flexible, they STILL pose the same tear and wear issues as silicon chips would have, they simply won't last (yet) - but strangely enough - this stuff pops up like it was fantastic news - every year, and unsurprisingly - very few actual products come out of it.
Granted, those are indeed flexible, god knows I've pulled a few lasers out of DVD-burners & Motors for robotics out of printers.
But it STILL isn't really a flexible PCB with Flexible Chips! It's more like a stiff flat-cable with components attached here and there.
I wasn't clear enough, my bad - so here:
A totally flexible PCB, with Flexible chips, so you can eg. wrap it around your wrist, again and again, without damaging it over time, this is very hard to manufacture, let alone a flexible OLED display.
Have you seen a e-ink screen lately that actually bends (not counting carefully watched prototypes)? I haven't.
Have you seen a hand held screen with flexible PCB and flexible screen, with flexible components, so you can bend it like a piece of transparent plastic paper? (The future predicted e-papers)... No? Me neither. This is what I meant, not flexible "pcb-cables" used in dvd-players, printers & whatnot.
Just because you can bend a PCB a few cm, doesn't mean that they're meant to be flexible.
When I refer to "flexible LCD & PCB" I'm talking about devices that are supposed to be bent in use, such as fold-out-displays or "wrap around electronics".
Mention ONE brand (with model number) where the PCB, or LCD panels actually where flexible (and no, I'm not mentioning the touchpad, dialpad or keyboard membranes!)
Google started out with honest, idealistic and good intent by a couple of smart innovative guys that wanted a better alternative to search engines, something that people wanted - uncensored access to information, regardless, boundless - and neutral.
This has in fact been part of Googles policy for a realy long time, but as with any big business that grows into a majority of power and influence, evil is bound to happen - no man are created equal, greed and power hunger is universal and history repeats itself.
Now - this may come off a bit cheesy, but let me explain where I'm coming from:
I, like many of you - grew up in the age of information technology, we started with electronics, had our own personal computers - when the computers indeed were personal, so we got a very good grasp of the concept and the possibilities.
Picture this:
1) You have everyone logged onto YOUR network, you have their IP, their OS, their Browsers, their surfing habits, and a database so powerful that it can connect all the dots of habits, locations, IPs, Names, name-searches (ego searches), friends searches, friends-network, friends job, salaries, habits and anything you want.
2) You have unrivaled access to their information, not even your own government know this much about you and what you like. Now - in the right hands (such as the original guys), this would probably not be an issue, but when you grow big - you get power - power changes everything.
3) Information like this is worth just about any price you would care to mention, why? Allow me to explain - imagine you were to hire someone for a very important job in your already growing company, you want someone competent - someone with a proven history of success in life, we've all "Googled" our candidates..don't kid yourself, you'd do it too! But we don't get the same information that Google has, and thank the digital-circuit in the sky for that, but they DO have this information - and YOU want it - BADLY.
Now...Google has a motto, Do no evil, but when power changes hands, the motto doesn't always follow. And besides, what's evil to YOU anyway? We all perceive "Evil" differently, also what is considered good. We have LAWS for this, Google - as with any other company in the world - has to abide by the law just as we do.
But do they, really? How do you know? Can you prove this? Let's take a look. Let's start with the very nature of a powerful search engine like Google. It picks up anything you let freely out there - gobbles it up like a hungry hamster, and spews it out for your searching pleasures.
They also employ a massive horde of people to "sift out" material that could potentially damage Googles reputation, or their clients. This is more important now that they're big - than before. This is pretty evident with eg. China - whom Google work together with - blocking content and filtering out content that the Chinese government doesn't want it's users to see, in other words - Censorship.
The Censorship is pretty evident in itself, if you're a PROXY user - then you already know this far too well, you can try searching something "on the edge" via eg. a German Google, (via a German Proxy), and then a Russian version, vs an English version...and yes...keep trying that, and you'll see how well Google filters content, yes - I am not kidding here, try it if you didn't already know it.
Google is excused here - it HAS to do this, otherwise it would not survive.
But here's where things get far more sinister:
The "Feds" & Governments all over the world - are very aware of the power Google contains, they don't really want to stop Google from having this power - as long as Google "play ball". Imagine this yourself, a country wants to have the upper hand, politicians wants the upper hand - otherwise they'll be unable to govern. Google can provide the country with ENDLESS and VAST information on:
- Peoples "bulk" feelings - How they're doing as candidates
Not really, they could be (as Anonymous Coward suggests) be using the Tor Network + an anonymous email address, and if this was done via an USB-memory stick booted from a NetCafe (internet cafe) somewhere, you'd have no way to retrace the sender - even worse - via an open WiFi connection.
The entire point of this - is to expose how dangerous and ridiculous the LAW is on this area, this is NOT protection, this is the future we don't want.
...Imagine someone hating someone else (yes - that happens)
that someone gets an idea based on White's misfortune:
1) Send some kiddie porn images (or just family pictures of naked kids) to someone you hate 2) Do it repeatedly a few times, just to make sure they land on his harddisk 3) Secretly tip the Feds that he downloads child porn or has an interest in naked kids
The feds seizes his harddisk, he says someone anonymous sent it to him, but it doesn't help him - because it could be a child porn ring - which he "perhaps" is a part of, and they found them deleted on his harddisk. He's basically screwed! You just killed a man.
...because no one in their right mind would travel 100's of miles to steal a 50" inch plasma tv that you can get for the price of a mediocre tv set just a few years ago anyway, there's more to it than that.
The thieves you'll most likely get (if any) is your locals. These have the time to check you out, to make sure you don't have guards - or security service...you can't find out that on facebook. And besides, they want much more from you than a mere plasma tv, if you have valuable silverware, artwork etc. now we're talking international thieves, thats something worth driving around after. The computer & your plasma & your playstation is only of interest to the local thieves.
There are also other key factors to if you get burglarized or not, for example - if you live in a tall building, on top...or besides a lot of neighbors - your average thief is NOT going to want to carry down 5-20 stairs past 10-20 neighbors your 50 inch huge weighty plasma tv, moving service 2'o clock in the night? Yeah right...
And for augmented reality, heh...if the burglars KNOW you have a LIVE WEBCAM - they'll be either using masks - or be sure to keep AWAY from your apartment - as there are plenty of other "non-surveillance" apartments around.
...your friends are gathered around the very same table, of which you effectively manage to clear within 15 minutes with your endless drivel about Drupal CMS which of course - you really can't for the life of you - understand why isn't the most interesting thing on this planet next to stretchpants!
and he saw himself on a 50 inch TV and thought - "too much detail", ban all 50" inch TV's, I got to look good on TV. (Spoken with Arnoldish accent of course);)
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, spot on, this is exactly she meant - The maximum level is the same, this cannot be exceeded.
Okay, I think we're mis communicating here, and I may be using the wrong terminology.
Let's put it in a different way.
The maximum allowed db levels are not to be exceeded (maximum volume if you want). According to my colleague - these values are fixed, they are not allowed to exceed these.
Actually, no. I must stress that the volume REALLY is the same.
The reason I know this so well, is because I am both a technician AND an animator, and my former colleagues at a tv station has told me this, because I actually wrongfully complained and accused them of "pumping up the volume" when the ads come up.
The answer I got from her - was, "that's what everyone believes", and she could most certainly understand it, and appreciate the irritating effect it has, but there is much more to it than that.
What they also do - is to take advantage of the lower volume content has (eg. a movie), and the ads are broadcast at the maximum allowable volume set by rules and regulations (yes - we have a law in our country about this, incredibly enough).
I wish I had a link for this to document it to you, but I really do believe my college when she claims this, she's a professional.
He's right you know, the volume IS the same. ...the trick they use however, is to speak at the maximum level before audio clipping occurs, and that's pretty darn loud.
Not only that, they also pump up the middle tones (The audible sound spectrum is ca. 100hz to 20 khz), and the frequencies at 500-3khz is where speech is located, you can make it sound like it's 10 times louder - and STILL keep the same volume. ;)
This is a well known "secret" in the business.
...know the software your enemy is using - then you can know your enemy.
everything that appeals to their basest drives, or reinforces past prejudices, with little to no application of logic or reason.
Sure, the internet is a "fast food / take-away" smorgasboard of "what would you like to believe today?".
But we can't expect the layman to understand everything it takes several years of medicin and a degree to even comprehend, but the human nature alone - sometimes provide all the starting points you need for further investigation.
Just the case from Denmark alone, proved that there really were something to it, not just FUD.
As it turns out, it wasn't the government that was to blame, but simple human judgment. So for what it's worth - this might have saved some lives.
I'm sure we haven't even seen the beginning of the end yet, as I'm equally sure there's lots of tinfoil-hat people out there as well ;)
Without the "writers" reactions - we'd have a society that quietly accepts anything - but alas - we have a democracy, technically - this means we can think, investigate and opinionate on anything we want.
If you REALLY want the true stories, you'll have to dig into each writers "claims" - and google them, believe it or not - they're fairly easy to find - that is...if they're true. I see no reason why people would lie about it, maybe they're mis-informed, but lie? no.
...yes.
But how do I back up such a horrifying claim? By analyzing the current state of affairs in our world today, and I can only draw conclusions from our countrys actions lately. A while ago, we had the news investigators claim that poor & unemployed people get showed back in the queue when it comes to medical attention, medicines and treatment. Incredibly enough - our government admitted that it was a problem, and further investigations showed that the doctors "general" reasons for doing so - wasn't motivated by the government - but by the fact that these people held a job, a position in the society - and thus were a better "investment" for the future.
Also - the doctors pointed out that "people with a position in society" were less likely to complain about mistreatments and other complaints, as the poor were more prone to lawsuits and false claims for monetary reasons, rather than real facts. This were all the rage on Danish TV a while ago.
1) Have a clean computer, by this - I mean a 100% random-data-erased harddisk & computer that is completely UNTOUCHED.
2) Download a LIVE CD (Linux) eg. ubuntu, QNX..etc.. from a DIFFERENT computer in eg. a netcafe. Burn it.
3) Purchase a small 40-50 cm satellite dish.
4) Purchase a USB WiFi dongle, preferably one where you can re-flash the MAC address. (If you don't know - google!)
5) Purchase some 1mm copper, a 10x10cm copper clad board, and get yourself a soldering iron bolt + some solder.
6) Follow the internet instructions on making a Double Bi Quad WiFi antenna.
7) Rig the antenna up on a camera-stand so you can aim & scan houses accurately.
8) Now you should be able to get 50-1000 WiFi connections i a heartbeat in a city, even pretty far away, depending on your "focussing" center.
Some of them, are bound to be free from encryption.
9 Insert your live cd, let it do it's job.
10 You're not home free yet, you want to protect your "host" as well, so use a program to find free proxies (scan for proxies)
11 Hook your firefox up to a series of proxies, change regularly.
Enjoy the worlds most paranoid - but safe - surfing.
Too hardcore for ya? Here's the basics.
Use a LIVE CD for safe surfing, make sure to overwrite the Linux Swap memory after each use (that's your swap partition), change your mac address regularly, and use proxies, you should be fairly safe - at least - they can't prove a damn thing.
How correct you are. I've noticed this too.
Eg. when I turn on my 50" inch TV, that comes with pretty strong speakers, I have to turn it up quite a bit in order to hear anything "intelligible" at all, while on headphones, I hear absolutely everything.
I guess that was a part of the reason why I wore headphones all my life too. Nice observation!
many of my peers are listening to VERY loud music at the clubs, in their home, in their cars - with ridiculous oversized stereos etc. I'm pretty sure that the MP3 players alone won't make a difference at all.
I'm in my 40's now, and I've been listening to MP3 players (including the first Walkmans/MiniDisc Players) since the beginning of my childhood, more than others...because I wasn't allowed to play loud music, and I found a great personal "peace" in listening to these - as loud as I wanted - wherever I wanted, any time.
This never damaged my hearing in any way, I've had my hearing checked regularly, and guess what - despite always using headphones - yes - even today...to avoid problems with my neighbors - I still hear like a 20 year old. Responsive at 18 khz or better, while my peers - can't even detect a 15 khz tone, and they always play loud music on their speakers...which I don't even have.
Go figure...
If I'm busy working and trying to concentrate on something, music is both very soothing and "up-beat" to get me into "gear" for the work, as well as "block out" the outside distractions.
People are much less likely to disturb you, if you have headphones on.
Manufacturing a flat-screen, be it Plasma or LCD is so cheap - you probably wouldn't believe me if I told you.
But picture this:
Rewind a few years, remember when you paid 1000-3000 dollars for your 28 inch Sony Vega television set?
Today, you can grab a tv - 50 inches, way better than any projection screen or projector ever could be, for less than 800 dollars!
Back in the days, I couldn't even get a decent 26" incher for that price, why is even that possible today? Simple...look at the materials.
Your tv - is essentially not much more than 2 glass plates with small cells with either gases or liquid crystals in them, and 2 plastic plates to cover it all,
and then one graphics chip cpu-fpu-memory and all in one, plus a chip for digital tv-decoding and a tuner. These SMD components cost so little
that you could buy a burger for what it actually cost to manufacture.
The temptation to earn HEAPS of money comes from your old "hard-dying-habits" of paying a fortune for a technology that was relatively
expensive to manufacture, they where weighty, big glass screen using a lot of glass (Crt), old-school DIP/DIL discretes that takes up a lot of space.
Look at the inside of your latest flatscreen, there's a small mainboard that fills up 10 percent of the tv's size, and perhaps a PSU that fills up the next 10 percent, and the
rest is a glass surface, that's it - really. These TVs could cost 100 bucks, but they won't - as long as YOU the consumer - are used to paying 1000's of dollars, it's a no-brainer that - THAT kind of money could just land in someones pocket anyway, because - you will pay anyway.
But lets not kid ourselves - we're buying screens cheaper than ever. I'm enjoying my 800 dollar 50" incher, and 200 dollar 24" inch 1920x1200 computer screen, wow...I remember paying 1000 bucks for a screen back in the days...22 inches and "only" 1280x1024 crt...and THAT was considered discount.
Yeah, I'm as curious as you on this area, hence why I call the "fad" card, as we've been filled with news on these stretchable, bendable chips for years, on science tv, documentaries, and whatever magazine you could read before Internet were for anyone.
There are (was / is) several ways to make chips flexible. The old 80's method was to keep the silicon chip itself ridgid while the the housing itself would be flexible - and the pcb itself of course, flexible resistors are a bit tricky since the resistance varies with the stretching - but this could be solved with wired resistors - flexing between the conductive/resisting wire itself, yet again - posing tear-wear issues.
Last year they came up with actual twistable sillicon chip - meaning that the actual IC-Core could be flexible as well:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/28/stretchy-silicon-circuits-wrap-around-complex-shapes-like-your/
If you look at the various OLED demos. of either e-paper or OLED displays that are flexible, they STILL pose the same tear and wear issues as silicon chips would have, they simply won't last (yet) - but strangely enough - this stuff pops up like it was fantastic news - every year, and unsurprisingly - very few actual products come out of it.
You tell me.
Granted, those are indeed flexible, god knows I've pulled a few lasers out of DVD-burners & Motors for robotics out of printers.
But it STILL isn't really a flexible PCB with Flexible Chips! It's more like a stiff flat-cable with components attached here and there.
I wasn't clear enough, my bad - so here:
A totally flexible PCB, with Flexible chips, so you can eg. wrap it around your wrist, again and again, without damaging it over time, this is very hard to manufacture, let alone a flexible OLED display.
Have you seen a e-ink screen lately that actually bends (not counting carefully watched prototypes)? I haven't.
Have you seen a hand held screen with flexible PCB and flexible screen, with flexible components, so you can bend it like a piece of transparent plastic paper? (The future predicted e-papers)... No? Me neither. This is what I meant, not flexible "pcb-cables" used in dvd-players, printers & whatnot.
Just because you can bend a PCB a few cm, doesn't mean that they're meant to be flexible.
When I refer to "flexible LCD & PCB" I'm talking about devices that are supposed to be bent in use, such as fold-out-displays or "wrap around electronics".
Alright.
Mention ONE brand (with model number) where the PCB, or LCD panels actually where flexible (and no, I'm not mentioning the touchpad, dialpad or keyboard membranes!)
Tell me that you haven't heard this before?
- Flexible displays
- Flexible PCB's
- Flexible Chips
Yes, they've been around since the 80's. But have they ever been used? No!
...skynet is here, and it's growing big.
Google started out with honest, idealistic and good intent by a couple of smart innovative guys that wanted a better alternative to search engines, something that people wanted - uncensored access to information, regardless, boundless - and neutral.
This has in fact been part of Googles policy for a realy long time, but as with any big business that grows into a majority of power and influence, evil is bound to happen - no man are created equal, greed and power hunger is universal and history repeats itself.
Now - this may come off a bit cheesy, but let me explain where I'm coming from:
I, like many of you - grew up in the age of information technology, we started with electronics, had our own personal computers - when the computers indeed were personal, so we got a very good grasp of the concept and the possibilities.
Picture this:
1) You have everyone logged onto YOUR network, you have their IP, their OS, their Browsers, their surfing habits, and a database so powerful that it can connect all the dots of habits, locations, IPs, Names, name-searches (ego searches), friends searches, friends-network, friends job, salaries, habits and anything you want.
2) You have unrivaled access to their information, not even your own government know this much about you and what you like.
Now - in the right hands (such as the original guys), this would probably not be an issue, but when you grow big - you get power - power changes everything.
3) Information like this is worth just about any price you would care to mention, why? Allow me to explain - imagine you were to hire someone for a very important job in your already growing company, you want someone competent - someone with a proven history of success in life, we've all "Googled" our candidates..don't kid yourself, you'd do it too! But we don't get the same information that Google has, and thank the digital-circuit in the sky for that, but they DO have this information - and YOU want it - BADLY.
Now...Google has a motto, Do no evil, but when power changes hands, the motto doesn't always follow. And besides, what's evil to YOU anyway? We all perceive "Evil" differently, also what is considered good. We have LAWS for this, Google - as with any other company in the world - has to abide by the law just as we do.
But do they, really? How do you know? Can you prove this? Let's take a look.
Let's start with the very nature of a powerful search engine like Google. It picks up anything you let freely out there - gobbles it up like a hungry hamster, and spews it out for your searching pleasures.
They also employ a massive horde of people to "sift out" material that could potentially damage Googles reputation, or their clients. This is more important now that they're big - than before. This is pretty evident with eg. China - whom Google work together with - blocking content and filtering out content that the Chinese government doesn't want it's users to see, in other words - Censorship.
The Censorship is pretty evident in itself, if you're a PROXY user - then you already know this far too well, you can try searching something "on the edge" via eg. a German Google, (via a German Proxy), and then a Russian version, vs an English version...and yes...keep trying that, and you'll see how well Google filters content, yes - I am not kidding here, try it if you didn't already know it.
Google is excused here - it HAS to do this, otherwise it would not survive.
But here's where things get far more sinister:
The "Feds" & Governments all over the world - are very aware of the power Google contains, they don't really want to stop Google from having this power - as long as Google "play ball". Imagine this yourself, a country wants to have the upper hand, politicians wants the upper hand - otherwise they'll be unable to govern. Google can provide the country with ENDLESS and VAST information on:
- Peoples "bulk" feelings
- How they're doing as candidates
Not really, they could be (as Anonymous Coward suggests) be using the Tor Network + an anonymous email address, and if this was done via an USB-memory stick booted from a NetCafe (internet cafe) somewhere, you'd have no way to retrace the sender - even worse - via an open WiFi connection.
The entire point of this - is to expose how dangerous and ridiculous the LAW is on this area, this is NOT protection, this is the future we don't want.
...Imagine someone hating someone else (yes - that happens)
that someone gets an idea based on White's misfortune:
1) Send some kiddie porn images (or just family pictures of naked kids) to someone you hate
2) Do it repeatedly a few times, just to make sure they land on his harddisk
3) Secretly tip the Feds that he downloads child porn or has an interest in naked kids
The feds seizes his harddisk, he says someone anonymous sent it to him, but it doesn't help him - because it could be a child porn ring - which he "perhaps" is a part of, and they found them deleted on his harddisk. He's basically screwed! You just killed a man.
...because no one in their right mind would travel 100's of miles to steal a 50" inch plasma tv that you can get for the price of a mediocre tv set just a few years ago anyway, there's more to it than that.
The thieves you'll most likely get (if any) is your locals. These have the time to check you out, to make sure you don't have guards - or security service...you can't find out that on facebook. And besides, they want much more from you than a mere plasma tv, if you have valuable silverware, artwork etc. now we're talking international thieves, thats something worth driving around after. The computer & your plasma & your playstation is only of interest to the local thieves.
There are also other key factors to if you get burglarized or not, for example - if you live in a tall building, on top...or besides a lot of neighbors - your average thief is NOT going to want to carry down 5-20 stairs past 10-20 neighbors your 50 inch huge weighty plasma tv, moving service 2'o clock in the night? Yeah right...
And for augmented reality, heh...if the burglars KNOW you have a LIVE WEBCAM - they'll be either using masks - or be sure to keep AWAY from your apartment - as there are plenty of other "non-surveillance" apartments around.
And once again, glory would be ours.
- You'd dust off your old US Robotics modems.
- People would set up BBS'es.
- We'd WiFi honeypot each other...
...your friends are gathered around the very same table, of which you effectively manage to clear within 15 minutes with your endless drivel about Drupal CMS which of course - you really can't for the life of you - understand why isn't the most interesting thing on this planet next to stretchpants!
...is BACK,
and he saw himself on a 50 inch TV and thought - "too much detail", ban all 50" inch TV's, I got to look good on TV. ;)
(Spoken with Arnoldish accent of course)