whackberry

Awesome! Wish I could upvote this twice.

That's not a problem with organ donation IMO, that is a problem with insurance companies.

> Living kidney donor here.

The "living" part is redundant.

Oh that sounds ok. Thanks for clarifying.

Interesting fact, TIL.

That't be nice, yes, thank you.

Just one question about this:

> If you installed the briarpatch extension, all of your bookmarks are now in sync.

If I had been using Chrome, all my bookmarks would have been uploaded automatically? Don't you think that's a bit intrusive? Trying to be constructive here, not criticizing your system at all.

> if you were driving around taking pictures of peoples homes some might call that creepy---but that's exactly what Google did to create Street View.

I do find street view creepy.

> We're sorry but the beta version of the briarpatch extension is only available for Google Chrome.

Looks like I won't be using it after all.

> It's one of the rare pieces of information that indicates altruism, along with charitable giving.

Depending on your region, being a registered organ donor in fact says a lot about your previous medical history. HIV status, etc...

Google and Facebook are the kings of plausible deniability.

Everything they do is meant to collect personal data, but they always have the perfect excuse for doing it.

> When did you stop beating your wife? How do we know for a fact?

I never was accused of that. Silly response. Google has been accused of several privacy violations.

Fair point, I stand corrected.

> Making it illegal isn't going to protect you.

Well if making things illegal doesn't protect us any more then we're in serious trouble here.

I am aware of the context.

To mark hotspots you don't need packet sniffing or data capture of any kind. Why is Google capturing packet payload during "wardriving"? Nobody does that. All you do is store the GPS location, plus basic AP identification, period.

> It's more like hearing a loud mouthed neighbor say to his wife "It's a secret! don't tell any one.. its very private too... we have won the jackpot"

Yeah, if it was only near your home. But if you went around driving and listening to hundreds of "loud neighbors" for a day that'd change from passive listening to being outright creepy.

Sure, but what is the parallel here?

The paparazzi make a living from those photos, so there is a reason for them to be out there doing that(not saying I agree, just saying there's a reason for it).

What is Google doing driving around collecting personal data for? Google is a search engine with several great products around it. WTF are they driving around collecting data for? See? It doesn't make any sense, this is plain creepy.

Exactly. We don't go into people's homes not because they have a fence and a shotgun but because we were not invited, that is the whole point.

Most of the arguments here circle around "ah you were a fool to let your data out, so Google was wise and snooped it". WTF kind argument is that? Since when is it ok for a corporation to hire "experts" who go around collecting private data? What is this data for? Why, in the first place, do they have a wifi expert driving around doing that?

> no law was broken.

We don't know that yet, do we?

> Personal information becomes public when it's not properly secured

Really? Do you have any idea how wrong that statement is?

So if a song is played in public, it becomes public?

> I don't, actually. There was no "hacking" or exploitation of any kind - any idiot with a wifi card can do the same thing.

What the hell? So if Pizza Hut were to start capturing radio waves you'd find that normal?

Why is it normal for Google to go around capturing customer data? That is my question. Even if my data is open to the public, absolutely not encrypted, why is it normal for a major corporation to go around capturing it. THAT is the question, not whether I had encryption or not!

IMO no corporation should be going around recording my data even if it was broadcast in plain sight.

So by your logic simply owning a Wi-Fi access-point at home and not adding strong cryptography is reason enough for a corporation to drive their car to your house and capture your data?

So to keep Google away from logging my network data I need a strong virtual fence now, otherwise they'll come spying on my traffic?

That is 100% wrong. Google shouldn't be snooping on my data at all, not even if my AP was within their corporate headquarters reach. That is simply not acceptable behavior from a major corporation.

> That's because the software Google used didn't actively browse the networks to look for documents

Do we know that for a fact? Sorry if well known, genuine question.

> But then again I'm sorry, I have never seen what the big deal was about this.

You don't see what the deal is with a major corporation doing wardriving and packet capturing?

> If you broadcast your crap around you can't blame people for receiving it.

By your logic then if someone gets robbed on the streets, then it's their fault for "walking around freely"?

> What is the point in publicly naming an the engineer in this case? How does this benefit the public good?

The public has the right to know. Otherwise, who decides what should be public or not, the ministry of big brother?

That's the Linus way. You never know when he's being sarcastic, but mostly he's being serious with a few sarcastic turns.

This is one of my heroes, he never has let me down in his opinions. No BS, straight talk, one of the very few relevant people still not sold out in this business.

Turning the desktop into a retarded terminal for some company's javascript apps is a bad idea, but some can't seem to grasp that.

Are you being sarcastic?

> Why are we happy? We are not. Terminal emulation needs to die

Yes, but the proposed replacement for UNIX consoles is a Google web browser that requires you log into Google in order to use it?? I don't think so....

> Dropbox had the same issue in 2011. Their TOS was very similar to Google Drive's,

Yes but Dropbox doesn't have the reach and amount of data gathering power Google has. Google is actively monitoring hundreds to thousands of personal data gathering systems, whereas Dropbox is only a cloud storage system. There IMO lies the difference.

> Complete FUD.

Care to provide backup to this claim? Privacy issues and property rights on Google services seem very real to me.