Posts by JohnFen 5648 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Feb 2015
""We're actively looking at ways to preserve jobs where it makes business sense to do so," he said in the memo, which was published with the SEC.
[...]
"While we work through this period, I would like each of you give us the time we require to do a thorough job. We hired you because we need you – the work you do matters to Cloudera today.""
My suggestion to Cloudera employees: give them time only for as long as it makes business sense for you to do so.
"Eventually Democrats will find a silent way around the 4th and 5th amendments. "
I was with you until this. By singling out Democrats, you apparently believe that this wouldn't happen with the Republicans. I don't think that's correct, though -- this sort of urge is nonpartisan.
"If you are really, really worried don't shop, or leave your house much, or go to any public events"
Honestly I've been partway there for a while now. When I shop, I already "go dark" electronically by putting my phone into airplane mode so I can evade in-store WiFi and Bluetooth trackers, and I have reduced my forays into public spaces and attendance at events where there are likely to be surveillance cameras.
I'm not becoming a complete hermit, but when surveillance cameras are around, going out in public or going to events have an increased "cost" in the cost/benefit evaluation.
"There is overwhelming evidence that for instance casinos have successfully used such systems for many years."
Casinos are a bad example, because the serious problem with face recognition is more tolerable there. The essential problem is this: if you want a high level of success in spotting people you are actively looking for, you're also going to get a high rate of false positives.
In a setting like a casino, that's not a huge issue. In a public setting (particularly if it involves law enforcement), it's an enormous issue.
"No one is fixing a phone if one of the chips goes bad, because even if they can figure out which chip went bad no one is soldering that finely by hand unless their day job is as a brain surgeon."
This is simply incorrect. Soldering those SMDs is not that difficult. I do it by hand regularly, and in many parts of the world there are street vendors who make those sorts of repairs right there while you watch.
"Can you find another phone OEM that does a better job?"
Yes, there are quite a lot of them. Making a phone that is easy to disassemble is far superior to Apple's recycling method. In the first place, it makes the phones more repairable, which makes it possible for them to be refurbished and reused -- and that is always better than recycling. In the second place, it makes it possible for pretty much anyone to recycle phones, which means that (for example) my local electronics reuse/recycling center could do the job. That is far superior to having to return it to Apple because it makes recycling easier and more accessible, and removes the need to transport the things to some remote recycling facility.
Apple's approach is better than nothing at all, but that's about all that can be said for it.
"I think the new paradigm will dumb personal devices connecting to remote cloud."
Which is hilarious, because that's the OLD paradigm that personal computers freed us all from. How soon people forget why fleeing the client/server paradigm was considered to be such an awesome thing.
"One solution could be to have a single network, and competing services over it - but usually companies don't like this solution unless forced to, and yet, who builds the network?"
This is the only way forward that I've heard about that seems to even have a chance of working. Treat the internet as critical infrastructure that is built, owned and operated by the public, and use of those pipes is leased to, on a nonexclusive basis, to ISPs.
A bit like we do roads.
The real solution, which I think almost everyone agrees with, is a real competitive marketplace. Something like net neutrality is required because in the US there is no real competitive marketplace (and telecoms fight tooth and nail against having internet service classified as a communications service, even though all common and technical sense indicates that's exactly what it is).
The question is, how do we get from where we are to that? The essential reason that we don't have it now is because the telecoms (and their proxy, the FCC) absolutely don't want it to happen.
I wish I had an answer. All I know is that net neutrality looks to be a reasonable stopgap solution until/unless this whole problem can get fixed for real.
"And they're not thick. So what's going on?"
I wonder the same thing, but I'm not so sure about the "not thick" part. We are all idiots, after all. Not all the time in all circumstances, but given the right circumstances...
I don't personally know a single person who uses these things, though, and I've often wondered how I'd react if one of my friends or family did? I'd certainly ask how it is they're OK with it, and would probably stop going to their house.
"Google, Amazon, et. al. don't care about your personal conversations. They don't want a recording of what you say or do in the privacy of your own home."
Of course they do. The marketing value of doing that would be incredible. Seriously, spend some time reading websites aimed at marketers: a shockingly large percentage of what you read are about how important it is to learn everything possible about people's private lives so that information can be used to manipulate them.
"The bandwidth and storage requirements are too high"
Perhaps, maybe, right now. But is so, the odds are overwhelming that this will become economical in the near future.
"Microsoft got in touch to insist it is committed to privacy and transparency"
Microsoft is full of shit.
"Marisa Rogers, Privacy Officer at the software giant, told us: "We are working to address this naming issue in a future update.""
In other words, they're going to ignore the actual issue.
"I do not care that it is the fastest. I do not care if it is the safest. If I cannot understand how to use it, then nothing else matters."
I don't find Edge confusing, just very unpleasant and hard to use (I feel similarly about Chrome, but to a lesser degree). But otherwise I agree -- if a browser is unpleasant or hard to use, then its speed or security isn't important because I won't be using it anyway.
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