So, Google is integrating its websites more. As a result, some privacy settings will apply network-wide, and one site will be able to use data from another site. People are flipping out, naturally. People have been giving Google this data for ages. People have known that Google was watching them, and yet they chose to keep using Google and in fact use one account for many Google services.
Note that the new policy changes nothing about what Google already knew about you. It just changes what certain Google sites will use about you. As Marsha Blackburn and other members of Congress begin to look into it though, Google isn’t helping its case by pleading that it’s alright because certain users are excluded, which just furthers the premise that there’s something wrong with it.
But ultimately, you’re in control of what you do online. Personal responsibility: it’s not just for breakfast anymore.
I feel vindicated though in having about a dozen Google accounts for the limited times I had use for their services, usual in the course of helping somebody else. Different accounts for different uses and different sites. It was never hard. You just had to do it. Oh, and not use their email.
Once again, the real LightSquared issue isn’t even LightSquared. This is about the Obama administration. the actual decision is irrelevant at this point and Chuck Grassley will keep fighting for process transparency.
The SOPA battle didn’t end with defeating SOPA. We still need to solve the problem of foreign free riders. That’s why Steve Forbes joins those taking a look at the OPEN Act.
I’m just one guy, but it wasn’t hard for me to figure out why this Washington Post story is garbage. In the course of making the case against Net Neutrality, by pointing out that we need wireless providers to be able to innovate and expand, and get those innovations and expansions paid for, the WaPo claims that Apple’s Siri would overload wireless networks.
That never made sense, though, and of course it’s not true. Siri’s sending in a few seconds of audio, and getting back some text, then maybe doing a web search. That’s not going to kill a network. It’s not even video.
The problems are spectrum (we need more of it) and regulation (we need less of it). Get government out of the way, and we’ll allow incentives to build bigger, better networks. Unless the Roaming regulations which actually encouraged Sprint to reduce its network coverage, free riding on competitors’ networks, reducing total capacity and harming rural users.
So again, one of the better things we can do is whip the FCC into shape by restricting its freedom to do bad things. No more picking winners and losers.
California coughs up a million bucks after losing its video game censorship case. Watch people cheer, until they remember the ESA was pro-SOPA.
Twitter wants to censor EuroNazis and probably Chinese users. Blaming Twitter for this is dumb. But then again, Anonymous and other radicals pitching a fit about this don’t intend to actually stand up to Red China or the EuroSocialists who censor their people online. Blaming Americans is the easier route, so naturally they take it.
It’s easy to talk about turning over Facebook and others accounts after people die, but in the case of all free online accounts, how do you prove that the deceased actually “owned” that account? With most property there is a paper trail, a transaction, or something that ties the owner to the property. But free online accounts, who do they really “belong” to? And how do you prove it, without a paper trail?