kiloaper

Amazing! (and works great in Firefox on Win7 as well)

Not 50 years from now. We're already there: CIA wants to spy on you through your appliances [1]

[1] https://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/cia-wants-spy-yo...

It's not "Ubuntu for phones", i.e. a replacement OS. It's "Ubuntu for Android", an addition to Android.[1] Canonical enables Android phone users to have the benefit of a full desktop, but also keep Android and its apps. If you ask me it's a smart move. [1] http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android

"Why is he so threatening?"

I used to think Stallman was an abrasive fanatic but now I think otherwise. The reason he makes me uncomfortable is because he highlights the compromises I have made. I think this is part of the reason why some people react so negatively and emotionally to him. He vocally refuses to use non-free software and this, in my humble opinion at least, makes him a constant reminder of how many of us sacrifice security and freedom (as he defines it) for usability and ease of use.

I wonder how many Google Glasses wearers will become Life Loggers? I meet them at conferences occasionally. Some people actively avoid them. There's something about standing face to face with someone taking a photo of you every X seconds that people find really unnerving. I certainly do. Real time video is worse and it's very different to CCTV.

How long before Google collects and mines all this video like they did with Google StreetView but in realtime? Combined with the huge advances in facial recognition the privacy implementations are frightening. It reminds me of the scifi film "The Entire History of You". [1]

In the future will people who want to opt out of face recognition and tracking have to wear identifiers*, e.g. QR codes, on their person when talking to Google Glasses users, much like Google's wifi policy? [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_%28TV_series%29#3...

[2] http://searchengineland.com/google-announces-nomap-wifi-opto...

Wasn't there some legal ruling about that? I found some discussions [1] about it. The section about CPU vendor string manipulation is very interesting.

[1] http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=49

This mirrors my experience. I was really surprised with my parents reaction to Ubuntu. They found Unity easier to understand than Windows. It has opened up a whole new world to them. Before they barely touched the PC, now they email relatives on a regular basis and have switched over the using government and banking services online. As an added bonus I now rarely get calls for unpaid tech support.

Speaking just as a normal user with no expertise in data privacy etc, the things which negatively affect my trust in a service are:

- lack of a visible monetisation plan. If I can't see how you'll make money I will assume that'll it be through selling all my data to advertisers.

- A copy/paste Privacy Policy

- Being based in the US (prejudiced maybe, but not without reason). As a European I don't want my data on US servers and subject to ever seemingly weakening data protection laws.

- Not knowing who is behind the company. If I can't see Linkedin profiles, blogs or similar for the founders I will assume it's shady and walk away.

- Responding to questions about privacy with vague meaningless canned statements that don't address the issue.

- Inability to see exactly what the company stores about me. E.g. I can't see what metrics Google has generated from my GMail account to use for targeted advertising

YaCy is a fanatic idea. I encourage people to watch the FSCONS video. Unfortunately YaCy will need a lot more momentum, developer interest and people using it to become useful imho.

I always use the FF site so I was completely unaware they have an extension for Opera and IE as well as FF and Chrome.

Same thing with Viber and other apps. Some of friends use their services and now they have my contact information and can build up a shadow profile on me. I consented to none of that. While they may deny that's their intent it doesn't change the fact they have all that data.

This seems similar to Ghostery [1] for Firefox. It currently blocks 852 3rd part elements (371 advertising and 207 analytics) and 434 specific cookies. It also allows you to delete flash and silverlight cookies on exit.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ghostery/

That's a bit of a false dichotomy isn't it? Just because he criticises this particular view doesn't mean he condones or defends the other side or their apparent 'truth stretching'. It's also derailing. 'We can't criticise this article unless we address X, Y and Z as well'.

>What you could do if you were Google and had their databases?

Try to predict election results and then try to influence them. Not exactly "Do no evil" I'll admit. Imagine what Google PR could do for politicians with access to what people are talking about, watching, browsing and chatting about in their social network. With their Ad technology they're already half way there.

>According to this article, only 32.2% of Irish citizens are college educated, compared with over 40%

That's not surprising given Ireland's demographics and history but a lot has changed over the years. If you look at 25-34yr olds, for example, Ireland is higher than the US at 43.9%. It's also had the highest level of graduates in Higher education per population in the European Union a few times in the last decade (2003 for example). Unfortunately a lot of graduates are now leaving the country, mostly for the US, Canada and Australia.

>the weather is truly depressing.

It's not that bad in my opinion. We have a mild climate. Looking on the bright side we don't get heavy snowfall or droughts or heat waves. Personally I like the lack of extremes.

At least more and more students are studying relevant subjects so the available pool of potential talent is increasing. [1] (For those not familiar with Ireland, the CAO is the Central Applications Office and handles undergraduate applications in third level education.)

[1] http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/26155-ireland...

How would this be done and is it practical? Deep packet inspection and a database of copyrighted material to compare against? Watermarks in copyrighted files?

>As further outlined in a Wall Street Journal story on the subject on Thursday, a search for “Lake Tahoe” will produce “key attributes” that Google knows about the lake, including its altitude, location, salt content and average temperature. The query “What are the 10 largest lakes in California?,” meanwhile, would yield an answer instead of just links to relevant sites.

Sounds like WolframAlpha.

It's the community that really makes Arch a great distro in my opinion. Because of them we have an excellent well-moderated forum with technically competent and helpful members, an outstanding wiki and a huge amount of software available in the AUR.

A lot depends on how you define 'control' in that context. People still have choices. No one is forced to use their services. I find Google's ambitions and scope amazing as well as a little frightening I'll admit. They now have a significant role in millions of peoples OS (Android, ChromeOS), their communications (GMail, Android), social circles (Google+), documents (Google Docs), browser they use (Chrome, Android, Google DNS), ads they see, applications/music/books they purchase (Play), videos they see (Youtube) and can now consolidate all they have gleamed about you into one solid product.

It's funny you point to GitHub considering git is GPLv2 licensed itself. I imagine many of the tools which make those projects possible are also GPL licensed.

At least in Europe it appears 868MHz is gaining ground and now 169MHz is being considered.

2.4GHz doesn't sound like a great frequency for smart grids if the nodes are spaced far apart.

Does any package manager do something like this? I can't think of any linux package managers that allows simultaneous installs or updates.

Win8 is frustrating and I personally don't like its interface but I disagree with calling it a "failure". I did literally drag and randomly click until things happened when I couldn't figure out what to do. However knowledge has to be conveyed somehow. No one can instantly know how to use a device unless told how to, whether by tutorial or by labeled buttons and you can't label gestures. Complex gestures and shortcuts are in no way obvious.

People have been putting together 'cheat sheets' like this one to overcome that problem: http://docs.com/IOLP [.docx]

Having some optional hint or tip mechanism built in for new users would be nice. Maybe not in the style of Clippy from Office but something that would point out all the nice little shortcuts.

>And it's frustrating.

Absolutely, on any system. I'll admit I swear every now and again when I get caught trying to run apt-get with synaptic open on another workspace.

>You will notice I said "it has to be better than 'better than Windows'", because "better than Windows" still means "learning something other than Windows".

I agree. I guess I'm guilty of accepting a limitation because it's commonplace. I assume overcoming that limitation on Ubuntu/any system using apt would be extremely technically challenging and given the few times it occurs it's not a priority.

I don't think any of your responses justify or explain the lack of documentation. MS is inviting developers to their new OS and Win8 now has a customer preview, with the developer one being out for a while. Pointing to a potential situation where MS might be criticised over hypothetical changes still doesn't negate the criticism of the very real problem of missing information right now. I find the idea that this can also be explained away by a desire to surprise/woo customers totally absurd given the release of installable Previews of the entire OS.

Switchable graphics do indeed suck. I returned a laptop because of it, despite being told specifically the model I ordered did not have Optimus hybrid graphics. But it's not unsolvable. It's problem with companies not supporting Linux. Nvidia just joined the Linux foundation and ways to accommodate switchable graphics are already being discussed. It rules out some of the newest hardware in the short term but I have no doubt it'll become a non-issue eventually.

>Linux won't be ready until you can download a file from the Internet, run it, and install it just with a couple clicks (and not "you need to set the 'exectuable' flag!" error).

The Software Center has long since solved that problem, as well things like apt links in pages and it's far better than what's available on Windows at the moment (download exe, allow exe to run, hopes it's not a virus/malware, manually update it often etc).

>Linux won't be ready until you never have to reconfigure the graphics driver from the command line upon boot.

For a lot of systems it's simply a matter of using the GUI in Ubuntu to check for and enable proprietary drivers. Again it's down to support from other companies and that appears to be growing.

>Linux won't be ready until you can run a system update and install a new program at the same time.

Installers can block each other on Windows as well. This point just seems like nit-picking.