If you don't lock your door then you obviously don't care about your possessions, but it's still a crime for me to come in and take them. They broke the rules (intentionally or not) and now they're complying with the consequences. Move along, nothing to see.
That's your opinion. The law, on the other hand, clearly states that this kind of data can't be collected. Now I don't believe Google intentionally did anything wrong, and I do agree that if you want privacy you should secure your communications, but the law still has to be followed which means Google still have to give up the data. I honestly don't even see what the story is here - Google accidentally collects some pretty useless data, they do an internal audit ahead of an EU audit and notice this, they come out and admit it, the government says they have to hand over the data under data protection laws and that's what they do. I don't see anything hear to drive the conspiracy theorists on either side into a frenzy, but maybe I'm just not trying hard enough - I admit it is a nice, sunny friday afternoon so I'm finding it difficult to get angried up:)
Google is one of the big tech companies that will patent technologies to prevent patent trolls doing the same and using it to milk them in the future. It's not unreasonable that they'd patent everything connected with such a big undertaking to cover themselves, neither is it beyond the realms of belief that they'd re-use code from another project (Google have been known to release buggy code before). I'm sure they're smart enough that if they were actually doing something underhand, they'd have collected more data so it would have a bigger chance of turning up something useful, and they'd have hidden the fact that they'd collected it too (like they don't already know about data audits), even then, what possible use could they make of the data? They're Google, they can't just sell it on the black market, and if they tried to sell illegally obtained data through legitimate channels they'd know the huge risks involved. No, I'm with you, there are plenty of underhand shenanigans going on in big business, but I think this was a genuine error that they're trying to resolve as best they can.
What about 50% of the people in this thread seem to be missing is that there are two issues here. The first is the fact that they were collecting data to identify the location of public broadcast WiFi. That's the valuable data, and there's no legal issue with them collecting and keeping that data. The other issue is that their software, while collecting that data, also sniffed some packets being transmitted on unsecured connections. This is the "illegal" data, and it's practically useless to them. I can't imagine it's not the case that they re-used some code which collected this data erroneously, if they were collecting it for any other reason they would have collected much more of it, it's next to useless, in terms of the amount captured, for any kind of data mining purposes (not to mention they'd have to be incredibly lucky to have captured anything actually personally identifiable during this tiny burst of data).
I'm sure the whole "being forced to hand it over to the government" thing is being blown out of all proportion, too. More likely Google realised their mistake (or had it pointed out to them), offered to destroy the data to which the government informed them the standard procedure is that they have to hand the data over to ensure it is properly dealt with, then Google go off, check the legal position, come back and agree. But of course, such a reasonable state of affairs wouldn't sell clicks on news sites or provide fodder for conspiracy theorists...
There was some study recently that said, on average, gaming is healthier than watching TV because it requires more of your focus and input so it's not so easy to cram as many snacks into your gaping maw. I'm not sure they interviewed some of the gamers I've met when they did the study, but for the average person I guess it kind of makes sense, I occasionally find myself eating just because I'm vegging in front of the TV and it doesn't feel like I'm occupied enough, if I'm in the middle of a marathon gaming session I often find I've skipped meals without realising (I know neither is particularly healthy, but it does seem to anecdotally support the study).
I rarely spend a lot of time just watching TV, there are maybe two or three shows a week at any one time that I like to watch for the sake of it. The rest of the time I'll be doing something, working at the laptop or eating or whatever with the TV on, half watching it but as an incidental activity to whatever else I'm doing. Having said that, I'm not a massive TV fan, but it does seem it would be easier to rack up the hours and still have time for other activities, while gaming takes a lot more of your focus.
I guess to the average TV fan, a lot of gaming just looks like needlessly repetitive nonsense. Of course, to the average gamer, a lot of TV looks like needlessly repetitive nonsense.
But then you could say that about any other activity that takes up a lot of your time - some people might enjoy going to the pub, or playing football, or learning guitar, some might pick and choose a little of each, others like games. To a hardcore gamer, the amount of time a hardcore footballer or musician spends on their hobby probably looks significant (just imagine how much gaming you could get done!), the key thing really is to just do what you enjoy in your free time. Sleep is the real pain, if they could eliminate the need for that we'd effectively "live" for a third longer.
Yeah, when I was in the 24-29 age range (where most of these gamers seem to be) I could easily exist on 3 hours sleep per night, and wouldn't think too much of playing the odd 30 hour session of CS over a weekend. Actually if they spend 12 hours per day at the weekend, that's about 5 hours a day during the week. I'd say I still occasionally do this when I'm really into a game, but more often than not I lose interest too quickly, real life intrudes or I just don't have the stamina anymore.
I think for native English speakers, the vocabulary ranges from around 15k-25k, depending on the level of education and a number of soci-economic factors. According to Wikipedia (I know, I know), you're not far away on the actual usage, in informal (spoken) usage the 2,000 most common words account for 96% of the usage.
Mod insightful - I don't have anything at all against people communicating using such language if it makes the process easy/fun to do, but don't ever consider it a reliable replacement for learning real reading/writing skills.
On the subject of phones, I played around with Google Sky and it's just mind boggling to me that this device which, ten years ago, was able to send monochrome text messages of a maximum of 160 characters, make calls and play Snake, can now be used to plot the position of all the stars in the night sky. Or the daytime sky for that matter, or I can point it down at the ground and see the names and positions of stars just as someone on the opposite side of the world would see them. Technology which would have been ridiculously expensive ten years ago is now given away free with a mobile phone contract. Just because a bunch of people are jaded, and just because the money isn't there today, doesn't mean the scientists, politicians and astronauts of tomorrow aren't falling in love with the whole space thing right now, or that the technologies they'll need to get there aren't going to be massively cheaper by then. Meantime it's important that research continues - we we can either waste huge swathes of money killing each other or on a space folly then I'll go with space folly every day.
I would so watch Big Brother if it was set on Mars and the evicted member each week was just dumped out of the airlock. Untapped sponsorship opportunity?
It might be better to test the theory first with a mixed group (after all, the purpose of the test is to determine the outcome of various scenarios in a relatively controlled and controllable environment). At least that way if it does all go horribly wrong, they have a justification for the single gender study and can avoid the inevitable discrimination accusations.
Actually, depending on their relative orbits, the distance between Earth and Mars ranges from 55,000,000 km to about 400,000,000 km, so anything but absolute...
This seems a strange state of affairs - I'm sure these same delegates have a staff budget for experienced civil servants to read the detail of these things and fully brief them before they sign - why would they ever risk ridicule or public humiliation by signing and then having to withdraw, admitting they failed to read what they'd signed? The conspiracy theorist in me says maybe they were fully aware of the implications but weren't expecting the media attention/public backlash, and a bit of public humiliation is the lesser of two evils...
The difficulty is determining who is legitimately studying the topic, and who is using this as an excuse. There must be guidelines that legitimate researchers can follow (notifying the relevant authorities of the intent, purpose and scope of their research, or arranging for an approved overseer to be present during these research sessions, etc). Research does happen without these issues, we only hear of the issues when it's someone who has taken it upon themselves to "conduct research".
Slashdot Mirror
They're civil servants, we're civillians. Using those terms reminds me that, in theory at least, they're meant to work for us.
If you don't lock your door then you obviously don't care about your possessions, but it's still a crime for me to come in and take them. They broke the rules (intentionally or not) and now they're complying with the consequences. Move along, nothing to see.
That's your opinion. The law, on the other hand, clearly states that this kind of data can't be collected. Now I don't believe Google intentionally did anything wrong, and I do agree that if you want privacy you should secure your communications, but the law still has to be followed which means Google still have to give up the data. I honestly don't even see what the story is here - Google accidentally collects some pretty useless data, they do an internal audit ahead of an EU audit and notice this, they come out and admit it, the government says they have to hand over the data under data protection laws and that's what they do. I don't see anything hear to drive the conspiracy theorists on either side into a frenzy, but maybe I'm just not trying hard enough - I admit it is a nice, sunny friday afternoon so I'm finding it difficult to get angried up :)
Google is one of the big tech companies that will patent technologies to prevent patent trolls doing the same and using it to milk them in the future. It's not unreasonable that they'd patent everything connected with such a big undertaking to cover themselves, neither is it beyond the realms of belief that they'd re-use code from another project (Google have been known to release buggy code before). I'm sure they're smart enough that if they were actually doing something underhand, they'd have collected more data so it would have a bigger chance of turning up something useful, and they'd have hidden the fact that they'd collected it too (like they don't already know about data audits), even then, what possible use could they make of the data? They're Google, they can't just sell it on the black market, and if they tried to sell illegally obtained data through legitimate channels they'd know the huge risks involved. No, I'm with you, there are plenty of underhand shenanigans going on in big business, but I think this was a genuine error that they're trying to resolve as best they can.
What about 50% of the people in this thread seem to be missing is that there are two issues here. The first is the fact that they were collecting data to identify the location of public broadcast WiFi. That's the valuable data, and there's no legal issue with them collecting and keeping that data. The other issue is that their software, while collecting that data, also sniffed some packets being transmitted on unsecured connections. This is the "illegal" data, and it's practically useless to them. I can't imagine it's not the case that they re-used some code which collected this data erroneously, if they were collecting it for any other reason they would have collected much more of it, it's next to useless, in terms of the amount captured, for any kind of data mining purposes (not to mention they'd have to be incredibly lucky to have captured anything actually personally identifiable during this tiny burst of data).
I'm sure the whole "being forced to hand it over to the government" thing is being blown out of all proportion, too. More likely Google realised their mistake (or had it pointed out to them), offered to destroy the data to which the government informed them the standard procedure is that they have to hand the data over to ensure it is properly dealt with, then Google go off, check the legal position, come back and agree. But of course, such a reasonable state of affairs wouldn't sell clicks on news sites or provide fodder for conspiracy theorists...
The fact that they want to run a piece of software that plays the game for them gave that away?
There was some study recently that said, on average, gaming is healthier than watching TV because it requires more of your focus and input so it's not so easy to cram as many snacks into your gaping maw. I'm not sure they interviewed some of the gamers I've met when they did the study, but for the average person I guess it kind of makes sense, I occasionally find myself eating just because I'm vegging in front of the TV and it doesn't feel like I'm occupied enough, if I'm in the middle of a marathon gaming session I often find I've skipped meals without realising (I know neither is particularly healthy, but it does seem to anecdotally support the study).
I rarely spend a lot of time just watching TV, there are maybe two or three shows a week at any one time that I like to watch for the sake of it. The rest of the time I'll be doing something, working at the laptop or eating or whatever with the TV on, half watching it but as an incidental activity to whatever else I'm doing. Having said that, I'm not a massive TV fan, but it does seem it would be easier to rack up the hours and still have time for other activities, while gaming takes a lot more of your focus.
I guess to the average TV fan, a lot of gaming just looks like needlessly repetitive nonsense. Of course, to the average gamer, a lot of TV looks like needlessly repetitive nonsense.
But then you could say that about any other activity that takes up a lot of your time - some people might enjoy going to the pub, or playing football, or learning guitar, some might pick and choose a little of each, others like games. To a hardcore gamer, the amount of time a hardcore footballer or musician spends on their hobby probably looks significant (just imagine how much gaming you could get done!), the key thing really is to just do what you enjoy in your free time. Sleep is the real pain, if they could eliminate the need for that we'd effectively "live" for a third longer.
Its like tv time. 6 pm to 12 pm with dinner.
I hope you meant 6pm to 12am or that's one hell of a TV veg out session :)
Yeah, when I was in the 24-29 age range (where most of these gamers seem to be) I could easily exist on 3 hours sleep per night, and wouldn't think too much of playing the odd 30 hour session of CS over a weekend. Actually if they spend 12 hours per day at the weekend, that's about 5 hours a day during the week. I'd say I still occasionally do this when I'm really into a game, but more often than not I lose interest too quickly, real life intrudes or I just don't have the stamina anymore.
You don't have to work on it every day, but interesting words enrich your communication, and indeed, your life.
I agree, although I think "embiggen" is a much more cromulent word in this case than "enrich".
I think for native English speakers, the vocabulary ranges from around 15k-25k, depending on the level of education and a number of soci-economic factors. According to Wikipedia (I know, I know), you're not far away on the actual usage, in informal (spoken) usage the 2,000 most common words account for 96% of the usage.
Say that to the manager I knew who had to transcribe ideas from a brainstorming session onto a whiteboard. It was embarrassing to watch him struggle.
Ah, a real manager would have picked on a volunteer to do the writing. Always remember the weasel way.
Mod insightful - I don't have anything at all against people communicating using such language if it makes the process easy/fun to do, but don't ever consider it a reliable replacement for learning real reading/writing skills.
On the subject of phones, I played around with Google Sky and it's just mind boggling to me that this device which, ten years ago, was able to send monochrome text messages of a maximum of 160 characters, make calls and play Snake, can now be used to plot the position of all the stars in the night sky. Or the daytime sky for that matter, or I can point it down at the ground and see the names and positions of stars just as someone on the opposite side of the world would see them. Technology which would have been ridiculously expensive ten years ago is now given away free with a mobile phone contract. Just because a bunch of people are jaded, and just because the money isn't there today, doesn't mean the scientists, politicians and astronauts of tomorrow aren't falling in love with the whole space thing right now, or that the technologies they'll need to get there aren't going to be massively cheaper by then. Meantime it's important that research continues - we we can either waste huge swathes of money killing each other or on a space folly then I'll go with space folly every day.
It sounds like World Championship Big Brother.
I would so watch Big Brother if it was set on Mars and the evicted member each week was just dumped out of the airlock. Untapped sponsorship opportunity?
And what happens when the crazy guy drugs everyone else's food and they wake up handcuffed and at his mercy for a minimum of 8 months?
It might be better to test the theory first with a mixed group (after all, the purpose of the test is to determine the outcome of various scenarios in a relatively controlled and controllable environment). At least that way if it does all go horribly wrong, they have a justification for the single gender study and can avoid the inevitable discrimination accusations.
Actually, depending on their relative orbits, the distance between Earth and Mars ranges from 55,000,000 km to about 400,000,000 km, so anything but absolute...
If we could just throw the earth out of orbit and into the path of Mars, we could be there in as little as 4 months?
This seems a strange state of affairs - I'm sure these same delegates have a staff budget for experienced civil servants to read the detail of these things and fully brief them before they sign - why would they ever risk ridicule or public humiliation by signing and then having to withdraw, admitting they failed to read what they'd signed? The conspiracy theorist in me says maybe they were fully aware of the implications but weren't expecting the media attention/public backlash, and a bit of public humiliation is the lesser of two evils...
The difficulty is determining who is legitimately studying the topic, and who is using this as an excuse. There must be guidelines that legitimate researchers can follow (notifying the relevant authorities of the intent, purpose and scope of their research, or arranging for an approved overseer to be present during these research sessions, etc). Research does happen without these issues, we only hear of the issues when it's someone who has taken it upon themselves to "conduct research".
Because of the search logs or just because they... y'know... suck?
Disclaimer: I've never heard of them and no, I'm not Googling them :)