Then how about preloaded content... on the mobile?
In Japan I reckon you could make a bit of a killing by preloading the mobiles with "schoolgirl" content! Some text messages, photos, a bit of video, voice mail, and some music... pretend it was an actual schoolgirls mobile that hasn't been deleted and is being resold - executives are doing it already with sensitive corporate data their smartphones and laptops http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/_Undelet ed_smartphones_reveal_corporate_secrets/0,13006174 4,139268276,00.htm!
Baricom's post about webservice authentication is valid. Be that as it may, the current implementations are lacking, so you're generally still stuck with third-party apps sending your credentials around.
The same due dilligence is required for mobile apps as for desktop apps that act as service "proxies". One would assume the mobile apps in question just store your credentials locally on the device, and only send them to the online service for authentication when required (via http(s)... sometimes via webservice, sometimes with straight-up post and get requests). Also, back-to-base communication in such apps tends to be common... looking for new versions, etc... which looks like where your concerns may lie - what, if anything, is being sent back to this middle-man company? (I assume that's what we're talking about, and not a designed-for-mobile-website that works in a similar way.)
With desktop apps that do this sort of stuff, you tend to have the benefit of a reasonably large community that will pounce on any dodgy behaviour present in the apps. There are usually always savvy users using all sorts of utilities that can expose dodgy behaviour. You may not have this kind of luxury with mobile apps at the moment.
But common sense should help a lot. Asking really helps, too.
For commercial apps, I would just contact the company directly and ask what, if anything, gets sent back-to-base or if the app has any phone-home behaviour at all. If you don't trust the vendor all that much, but are unable to choose an alternative application for whatever reason, then you could always evaluate the app in an emulator on a desktop PC and check whether it's just contacting the service (eBay or whatever), or if it's also trying to contact the vendor.
Open source mobile apps make the source-code available as well (obviously... sorry for the redundancy). If you're not into trawling through the source (or if it's using a platform/framework/language/etc that you're not too familiar with) then it should be fairly easy to contact the development team directly and ask them the simple "does it phone-home?" question.
So, I'd ask first, and then verify the expected behaviour by running it in an emulator, and logging it's network requests. If there's a mobile firewall product (a ZoneAlarm equivalent... others will have their favourites) that can prompt on connection requests, that'd be neat - you could deny the unexpected ones.
I agrree. Steal is not appropriate. The bio corporations are just trying to charge the farmers for using their own traditional crops, not stealing their physical seeds so they are no longer available to them.
The whole labelling around this is dumb*. In the current scenario, I think it's logical the farmers be called the "bio-pirates", who are infringing on the (bogus) intellectual property rights of the corporations. This fits more with the standard understanding of the terms (and then we can get into real arguments about prior art, etc).
I think we should be supporting these "bio-pirate" farmers in their plight against the evil "bio-extortion" corporations - which I think is a much better label... or perhaps somthing that means "go out and sequence as much genetic stuff you can and then try to prevent others from using not just the sequence data but also the actual organism itself" or something. Even something simple like "bio-squatter" makes a bit more sense to me, as a non-biochemist/geneticist/etc. Anyway, the whole thing is sickening and stupid, and warrants international attention. I just wish they'd use better labels.
* Similar "bio-dynamic" and "organic" in relation to food... that used to shit me no-end, but I've come to accept it.
First off, take a read of the GP to get some context. All I'm saying is that there are people who believe Babel is about staying on the ground... I've met a few. My interpretation of Babel is not "we sould not go into space." But my interpretation is mine. I'm not going to burden others with it, there's no need. Your interpretation of the story is yours. The message you get from the story is yours. You may share it with many other, but there are others that see it differently.
Like I said, YM/IMV. Different people will interpret the story differently. There are even those who will consider it a parable, and those that will take it literally. We can see that the people built the tower to make themselves a name (it's written there in 11:4)... for their own glory and for the glory of God. But the only explanation some will see for Gods action/retaliation is 11:6. The only other thing that happens in that Chapter after the verses I quoted is a whole lot of generations begatting the next.
"The tower would have been totally acceptable, had it been built to the glory of God"... There's nothing in those verses that indicate that. Taking a wider view of Gods Word and putting the story in a proper context, one may conlcude as you have. Others might not, hence my disclaimer. (Others might conlcude that you need a plumber from Italy, a carpenter from Vietnam, and an electrician from Cuba if you want to build a two-story house!)
As I alluded to in my initial post, I'm not particularly familiar with the Bible... but I was under the impression Herod died just before Joseph, Mary and Jesus fled to Egypt (Matthew 2:13). Jesus, when he's much older, goes nuts in a temple built by Herod (the famous "My Fathers House" market incident) and correctly predicts its destruction because of its misplaced glory in man rahter than God (or something along those lines). But I'm unaware of the bit you talk about. But even then, I'm sure God lets us know why he struck Herod down.
Saying that humanity was confouded and scattered because they didn't build the Tower in Gods name or for His glory (which, granted, tends to be Gods general modis operandi) is still more tenuous stretch to an explanation than what's actually written right there in the verses... 11:6 Nothing will stop them achieving whatever they imagine, 11:7 I'd better go down there and confound them.
But... people will have their own interpretations. And some will be different. And some will be cooky. And sometimes cooky people get to be really powerful and do cooky things. Which was kind of the GPs point - I think. I dunno anymore:-)
Heh! I'd mod you funny if I could. Or perhaps even insightful... It might not say in the Bible that there's no life on other planets, but it does say that God doesn't want us to go into space (Genesis 11:1-9. It's the tower of Babel story, which is pretty popular - which is probably the only reason I know about it)... so that comment - about manned missions becomming "economically unfeasable" if certain people of a particular school of thought become powerful enough - is not too far off. I, however, don't think there's much risk of that.
(Interestingly enough, those same verses that talk about not going into space also say that the last thing God wants is for us to be coherent and speaking the same language, because if that were the case we could achieve anything we put our minds to. Perhaps the people who are currently trying to subvert science and confound peoples understanding by incorrectly using words like "theory", among other things, are just doing Gods work? - that'll probably get me troll mod, but I couldn't resist a dig at the connection.)
Anyway, for those too lazy to go off and look, here are a couple of the relevant verses from Genesis (YT/IMV - your translations/interpretation may vary)...
11:4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
11:5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
11:6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
11:7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
11:8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
Is the EULA still valid? I'm sure an argument could be made that you were only agreeing to the installation of what they said they were installing. If what was installed wasn't what was described, then the terms of the EULA and your agreement to them would be moot since you were, in effect, agreeing to something else. I haven't bought Sony-BMG music for the last couple of years, but if I had one of these CDs I'd be looking a bit closer at the EULA and persuing the refund, and perhaps costs, if the EULA was void due to their deception.
I almost agree with everything you just said... and OSX is running very well on my "old" blue iMac as well. My quote The OS should be "tinkerable", however, was in response to you saying that users should not have to tinker with the OS... I was simply pointing out that the requirement of the OS being tinkerable does not mean the users will have to tinker with the OS.
We also slightly disagree with regards to our definitions of tinkerable... using the terminal to install and run X apps, compile and use loads of open source utilities and application and to configure Apache among other things is very cool indeed. But is that actually tinkering with the OS? To some this may be, to others (elsewhere in this discussion as well) that's not tinkering with the OS, but things sitting on the OS... The ability to alter the source code of the OS and recompile, and then redistrubute those changes is what defines a tinkerable OS. OSX is configurable enough for me not to want to go recompiling Aqua and Finder... obviously not enough, however, for these crazy wind-up laptop guys, and some kid called K'Clt from West Africa.
The supposed recipients of these computers don't want something to tinker with...
Saying all users don't want to tinker is as dumb as saying that all users do want to tinker.
...a computer they can actually USE...
Being able to tinker with a device does not mean the device is not useful. If, using your example, a kid gets a cheap water pump and wants to modify it an any way - the addition of an internal purification filter (or whatever... I don't know enough about pumps to think of anything clever) for example - he will not be able to.
It's great to get something that just works and, if so motivated, be able to tinker with it to better address your personal needs. It may even increase its usefulness.
To use a computer tool, it should not be required to be able to "tinker" with it.
This is correct. But that's not what is being said. The OS should be "tinkerable"... that's not saying that tinkering is a requirement for using the computer, but a requirement for the OS. Whether the user tinkers or not is up to them.
Slashdot Mirror
Then how about preloaded content... on the mobile?
t ed_smartphones_reveal_corporate_secrets/0,13006174 4,139268276,00.htm!
In Japan I reckon you could make a bit of a killing by preloading the mobiles with "schoolgirl" content! Some text messages, photos, a bit of video, voice mail, and some music... pretend it was an actual schoolgirls mobile that hasn't been deleted and is being resold - executives are doing it already with sensitive corporate data their smartphones and laptops http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/_Undele
Baricom's post about webservice authentication is valid. Be that as it may, the current implementations are lacking, so you're generally still stuck with third-party apps sending your credentials around.
The same due dilligence is required for mobile apps as for desktop apps that act as service "proxies". One would assume the mobile apps in question just store your credentials locally on the device, and only send them to the online service for authentication when required (via http(s)... sometimes via webservice, sometimes with straight-up post and get requests). Also, back-to-base communication in such apps tends to be common... looking for new versions, etc... which looks like where your concerns may lie - what, if anything, is being sent back to this middle-man company? (I assume that's what we're talking about, and not a designed-for-mobile-website that works in a similar way.)
With desktop apps that do this sort of stuff, you tend to have the benefit of a reasonably large community that will pounce on any dodgy behaviour present in the apps. There are usually always savvy users using all sorts of utilities that can expose dodgy behaviour. You may not have this kind of luxury with mobile apps at the moment.
But common sense should help a lot. Asking really helps, too.
For commercial apps, I would just contact the company directly and ask what, if anything, gets sent back-to-base or if the app has any phone-home behaviour at all. If you don't trust the vendor all that much, but are unable to choose an alternative application for whatever reason, then you could always evaluate the app in an emulator on a desktop PC and check whether it's just contacting the service (eBay or whatever), or if it's also trying to contact the vendor.
Open source mobile apps make the source-code available as well (obviously... sorry for the redundancy). If you're not into trawling through the source (or if it's using a platform/framework/language/etc that you're not too familiar with) then it should be fairly easy to contact the development team directly and ask them the simple "does it phone-home?" question.
So, I'd ask first, and then verify the expected behaviour by running it in an emulator, and logging it's network requests. If there's a mobile firewall product (a ZoneAlarm equivalent... others will have their favourites) that can prompt on connection requests, that'd be neat - you could deny the unexpected ones.
I agrree. Steal is not appropriate. The bio corporations are just trying to charge the farmers for using their own traditional crops, not stealing their physical seeds so they are no longer available to them.
The whole labelling around this is dumb*. In the current scenario, I think it's logical the farmers be called the "bio-pirates", who are infringing on the (bogus) intellectual property rights of the corporations. This fits more with the standard understanding of the terms (and then we can get into real arguments about prior art, etc).
I think we should be supporting these "bio-pirate" farmers in their plight against the evil "bio-extortion" corporations - which I think is a much better label... or perhaps somthing that means "go out and sequence as much genetic stuff you can and then try to prevent others from using not just the sequence data but also the actual organism itself" or something. Even something simple like "bio-squatter" makes a bit more sense to me, as a non-biochemist/geneticist/etc. Anyway, the whole thing is sickening and stupid, and warrants international attention. I just wish they'd use better labels.
* Similar "bio-dynamic" and "organic" in relation to food... that used to shit me no-end, but I've come to accept it.
Sorry... correction
from: "for their own glory and for the glory of God"
to: "for their own glory and not for the glory of God"
Apologies
First off, take a read of the GP to get some context. All I'm saying is that there are people who believe Babel is about staying on the ground... I've met a few. My interpretation of Babel is not "we sould not go into space." But my interpretation is mine. I'm not going to burden others with it, there's no need. Your interpretation of the story is yours. The message you get from the story is yours. You may share it with many other, but there are others that see it differently.
:-)
Like I said, YM/IMV. Different people will interpret the story differently. There are even those who will consider it a parable, and those that will take it literally. We can see that the people built the tower to make themselves a name (it's written there in 11:4)... for their own glory and for the glory of God. But the only explanation some will see for Gods action/retaliation is 11:6. The only other thing that happens in that Chapter after the verses I quoted is a whole lot of generations begatting the next.
"The tower would have been totally acceptable, had it been built to the glory of God"... There's nothing in those verses that indicate that. Taking a wider view of Gods Word and putting the story in a proper context, one may conlcude as you have. Others might not, hence my disclaimer. (Others might conlcude that you need a plumber from Italy, a carpenter from Vietnam, and an electrician from Cuba if you want to build a two-story house!)
As I alluded to in my initial post, I'm not particularly familiar with the Bible... but I was under the impression Herod died just before Joseph, Mary and Jesus fled to Egypt (Matthew 2:13). Jesus, when he's much older, goes nuts in a temple built by Herod (the famous "My Fathers House" market incident) and correctly predicts its destruction because of its misplaced glory in man rahter than God (or something along those lines). But I'm unaware of the bit you talk about. But even then, I'm sure God lets us know why he struck Herod down.
Saying that humanity was confouded and scattered because they didn't build the Tower in Gods name or for His glory (which, granted, tends to be Gods general modis operandi) is still more tenuous stretch to an explanation than what's actually written right there in the verses... 11:6 Nothing will stop them achieving whatever they imagine, 11:7 I'd better go down there and confound them.
But... people will have their own interpretations. And some will be different. And some will be cooky. And sometimes cooky people get to be really powerful and do cooky things. Which was kind of the GPs point - I think. I dunno anymore
Heh! I'd mod you funny if I could. Or perhaps even insightful... It might not say in the Bible that there's no life on other planets, but it does say that God doesn't want us to go into space (Genesis 11:1-9. It's the tower of Babel story, which is pretty popular - which is probably the only reason I know about it)... so that comment - about manned missions becomming "economically unfeasable" if certain people of a particular school of thought become powerful enough - is not too far off. I, however, don't think there's much risk of that.
(Interestingly enough, those same verses that talk about not going into space also say that the last thing God wants is for us to be coherent and speaking the same language, because if that were the case we could achieve anything we put our minds to. Perhaps the people who are currently trying to subvert science and confound peoples understanding by incorrectly using words like "theory", among other things, are just doing Gods work? - that'll probably get me troll mod, but I couldn't resist a dig at the connection.)
Anyway, for those too lazy to go off and look, here are a couple of the relevant verses from Genesis (YT/IMV - your translations/interpretation may vary)...
11:4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
11:5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
11:6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
11:7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
11:8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
Is the EULA still valid? I'm sure an argument could be made that you were only agreeing to the installation of what they said they were installing. If what was installed wasn't what was described, then the terms of the EULA and your agreement to them would be moot since you were, in effect, agreeing to something else. I haven't bought Sony-BMG music for the last couple of years, but if I had one of these CDs I'd be looking a bit closer at the EULA and persuing the refund, and perhaps costs, if the EULA was void due to their deception.
I almost agree with everything you just said... and OSX is running very well on my "old" blue iMac as well. My quote The OS should be "tinkerable", however, was in response to you saying that users should not have to tinker with the OS... I was simply pointing out that the requirement of the OS being tinkerable does not mean the users will have to tinker with the OS.
We also slightly disagree with regards to our definitions of tinkerable... using the terminal to install and run X apps, compile and use loads of open source utilities and application and to configure Apache among other things is very cool indeed. But is that actually tinkering with the OS? To some this may be, to others (elsewhere in this discussion as well) that's not tinkering with the OS, but things sitting on the OS... The ability to alter the source code of the OS and recompile, and then redistrubute those changes is what defines a tinkerable OS. OSX is configurable enough for me not to want to go recompiling Aqua and Finder... obviously not enough, however, for these crazy wind-up laptop guys, and some kid called K'Clt from West Africa.
The supposed recipients of these computers don't want something to tinker with...
...a computer they can actually USE...
Saying all users don't want to tinker is as dumb as saying that all users do want to tinker.
Being able to tinker with a device does not mean the device is not useful. If, using your example, a kid gets a cheap water pump and wants to modify it an any way - the addition of an internal purification filter (or whatever... I don't know enough about pumps to think of anything clever) for example - he will not be able to.
It's great to get something that just works and, if so motivated, be able to tinker with it to better address your personal needs. It may even increase its usefulness.
To use a computer tool, it should not be required to be able to "tinker" with it.
This is correct. But that's not what is being said. The OS should be "tinkerable"... that's not saying that tinkering is a requirement for using the computer, but a requirement for the OS. Whether the user tinkers or not is up to them.