I think the only music players that are currently closed are those made by Apple... the rest are pretty open, or at least use standard connectors and software.
Personally, I'd like to ban collective bargaining in jobs where people hold the public hostage like schools, public transportation, and police. Because of it in Ontario we have bus drivers who are paid more than nurses. We also have an abundance of teachers, but supply and demand can't work where a union says you can't pick the best of the bunch.
That's the key... knowing that you are trading some of your personal information for 'free' products. You do have control over what you share, they make it easy to share a lot because most of their products are very good. I give them a bit of extra leeway because their interests in a free internet align with mine, even though the reasons are probably different. If it wasn't for Google, I think Apple, Microsoft, the media cartels, phone companies and big ISPs would have made the internet look quite different by now. That's not a fact, just a theory based on the behaviour of these companies.
I don't consider the changes they made very significant, but I had actually always assumed that they aggregated results between their different products. I actually prefer to have a single privacy policy, but I do realize that the potential for abuse is greater with the aggregation. From what I've seen so far though, their is no abuse... they only do what they said they'd do with the data. Microsoft on the other hand is using extortion tactics to force companies to give them money for producing Linux devices, and makes it extremely difficult for me to buy a laptop without paying for Windows. I'm also very bitter with them over the OOXML travesty among other things. If you don't want Google to track your searches, don't log in for searches. I would like the option to choose whether or not I have search results targeted to my taste though... I would imagine running a search while not being logged in will also do that though.
Describing Google as Evil and Microsoft as the better alternative to that seems a little suspect to me. There seems to be a fairly widespread ant-Google campaign going on, and the prevalence of it versus anything they've actually done lately seems extremely out of balance... almost as if it were being promoted by their competition. FaceBook was caught funding it once.ii I would doubt they or others would drop their plans so quickly. I'm not saying people are annoyed by Google's behaviour, I just think there's a non-grassroots push behind the vast majority of it.
My apologies, I forgot about the "doesn't work in Poland" part. It does seem silly to force them to switch to a payment system that they can't use, but I still doubt it would be considered ant-competitive. It's basically telling developers from some countries that we don't want or need your software in our store. Common, and perhaps stupid, but not anti-competitive.
We all seem very determined to turn our countries into fascist states don't we? This sort of intrusion into people's private lives shouldn't be tolerated, but the public outcry is negligible.
A hands-down winner for "Most Annoying Protagonist in a Novel". I read them all and wish I had the hours of my life back. I read them because a friend raved about them, and was assuming they'd get better.
Wouldn't they be further ahead to just publish their data as simple web services as a starting point? I see that some already seem to be, but many are just CSV files, zip files, etc . You never know when new data is available, or there's corrections, etc. It's also a little surprising that the number of downloads for the first file I tried was zero.
That's an excellent update, but I think we should have all of the lawyers involved "put to sleep" just in case. Once they get a taste for this sort of thing it's hard to stop. The risk is just not worth it.
Slashdot Mirror
I called instead. It's takes about as much of your time and I would think is worth much more than an email in terms of 'voter value'.
They should think about how that strategy would have worked with buggy whip manufacturers.
RDF.
I though the problem was that the intelligence was captured and forced to live in a cage reading YouTube comments.
You're being completely ridiculous. You can't upgrade the hardware on a Mac Pro.
"Standard" as long as you pay royalties to Apple.
or ... 3) Once again, Sony is lying.
I think the only music players that are currently closed are those made by Apple ... the rest are pretty open, or at least use standard connectors and software.
Personally, I'd like to ban collective bargaining in jobs where people hold the public hostage like schools, public transportation, and police. Because of it in Ontario we have bus drivers who are paid more than nurses. We also have an abundance of teachers, but supply and demand can't work where a union says you can't pick the best of the bunch.
I think a voucher system would go a long way. Teachers unions hate it though.
Personally, I think parents and teachers unions are the biggest parts of the problems, or are certainly high on the list.
Here
True ... some will need to go into Law or Politics.
That's the key ... knowing that you are trading some of your personal information for 'free' products. You do have control over what you share, they make it easy to share a lot because most of their products are very good. I give them a bit of extra leeway because their interests in a free internet align with mine, even though the reasons are probably different. If it wasn't for Google, I think Apple, Microsoft, the media cartels, phone companies and big ISPs would have made the internet look quite different by now. That's not a fact, just a theory based on the behaviour of these companies.
I don't consider the changes they made very significant, but I had actually always assumed that they aggregated results between their different products. I actually prefer to have a single privacy policy, but I do realize that the potential for abuse is greater with the aggregation. From what I've seen so far though, their is no abuse ... they only do what they said they'd do with the data. Microsoft on the other hand is using extortion tactics to force companies to give them money for producing Linux devices, and makes it extremely difficult for me to buy a laptop without paying for Windows. I'm also very bitter with them over the OOXML travesty among other things. If you don't want Google to track your searches, don't log in for searches. I would like the option to choose whether or not I have search results targeted to my taste though ... I would imagine running a search while not being logged in will also do that though.
Describing Google as Evil and Microsoft as the better alternative to that seems a little suspect to me. There seems to be a fairly widespread ant-Google campaign going on, and the prevalence of it versus anything they've actually done lately seems extremely out of balance ... almost as if it were being promoted by their competition. FaceBook was caught funding it once .ii I would doubt they or others would drop their plans so quickly. I'm not saying people are annoyed by Google's behaviour, I just think there's a non-grassroots push behind the vast majority of it.
I actually just called mine and had a bit of a rant (at his assistant). If you have the time, it's probably worth more than an email.
My apologies, I forgot about the "doesn't work in Poland" part. It does seem silly to force them to switch to a payment system that they can't use, but I still doubt it would be considered ant-competitive. It's basically telling developers from some countries that we don't want or need your software in our store. Common, and perhaps stupid, but not anti-competitive.
And iTunes doesn't? Strange that they've gotten away with it for this long when Google allows alternative markets and Apple doesn't.
We all seem very determined to turn our countries into fascist states don't we? This sort of intrusion into people's private lives shouldn't be tolerated, but the public outcry is negligible.
A hands-down winner for "Most Annoying Protagonist in a Novel". I read them all and wish I had the hours of my life back. I read them because a friend raved about them, and was assuming they'd get better.
Pro tip: Don't watch the recent TV mini-series.
There are also actual implementations, like this one for Linux.
Wouldn't they be further ahead to just publish their data as simple web services as a starting point? I see that some already seem to be, but many are just CSV files, zip files, etc . You never know when new data is available, or there's corrections, etc. It's also a little surprising that the number of downloads for the first file I tried was zero.
That's an excellent update, but I think we should have all of the lawyers involved "put to sleep" just in case. Once they get a taste for this sort of thing it's hard to stop. The risk is just not worth it.