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We have become Big Brother


Fidcal

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Just think "smart phone" (aka most phones sold already). There the user is not allowed to install a different OS (thanx to secured bootloaders), can only install approved apps (Android is slightly more open in that it permits unauthorized market sources) and the manufacturer can remove unwanted apps without your consent (and you cannot do anything about this, with the exception that maybe (I am unsure) android lets you still install the app from a third-party marketplace - if you can find it there).

 

Some of which you mentioned is partly mended by buying a smartphone with an alternative OS, like Bada from Samsung. To my knowledge, Bada has no remote access for the OS vendor. I'm currently using a Samsung Jét and plan on buying a Samsung Wave 3 for exactly these reasons: I'm just not comfortable with the thought that Apple, Microsoft and Google have full access to my phone and can locate me anytime and anywhere.

 

 

Of course, everyone has to make this decision for him-/herself, but whenever I get the chance I make the effort of pointing out the downside to those "cool" flashy Android/i-devices. Many people have never heard of the remote access capabilities, and it might change their buying decision if they know. So it's up to us "technical people" to propagate this knowledge.

 

 

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

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Some of which you mentioned is partly mended by buying a smartphone with an alternative OS, like Bada from Samsung. To my knowledge, Bada has no remote access for the OS vendor. I'm currently using a Samsung Jét and plan on buying a Samsung Wave 3 for exactly these reasons: I'm just not comfortable with the thought that Apple, Microsoft and Google have full access to my phone and can locate me anytime and anywhere.

 

 

Of course, everyone has to make this decision for him-/herself, but whenever I get the chance I make the effort of pointing out the downside to those "cool" flashy Android/i-devices. Many people have never heard of the remote access capabilities, and it might change their buying decision if they know. So it's up to us "technical people" to propagate this knowledge.

 

I consider myself a "technical person" and never heard of that before, either. Plus, it's too late, but thanx for the heads up! :)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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News of the World is just the start. I wonder how many disgruntled and/or greedy phone company employees have access to marketable celebrity locations?

 

Politicians are generally scared of commerce and slow to act anyway. It seems we are locked in a global economic process where every country is forced to compete or fall further and further behind. I can't think of a solution except world government and that has its own worries.

 

~~~~~~~~~~

BTW, yesterday I noticed my broadband uploads stats were very high relative to the downloads. For normal web browsing I'd have thought uploads would be less than 1/1000th the downloads but they seemed to be about 1/10th. I only noticed because I was checking the end of month and I was only web browsing for an hour or so and I know I didn't upload anything. I didn't even send an email or post on a forum during that time. So the only uploads would 'normally' be things like requests for web pages. So I can only guess its scripts reading cookie data and sending off info.

 

I think I've mentioned before where on some sites, Opera's status bar hangs even after downloading a web page and it looks like endless requests to other urls. I wonder how much of my bandwidth is being 'stolen'. I get charged if my monthly goes over 5GB. Trouble is that even with Opera, toggling off javascript is tedious when so many web pages don't work fully or at all without it enabled.

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"I get charged if my monthly goes over 5GB."

 

Whoa jeez.

 

I thought I was badly off with FIFTY GB a month.

"No proposition Euclid wrote,

No formulae the text-books know,

Will turn the bullet from your coat,

Or ward the tulwar's downward blow

Strike hard who cares—shoot straight who can—

The odds are on the cheaper man."

 

From 'Arithmetic on the Frontier' by Rudyard Kipling

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I'm out of cable range is why. :(

 

Just stumbled across something about flash cookies. Apparently these store and retrieve info completely separately from web browsers. Unlike web browsers this information is kept very quiet. The settings manager is obscure and confusing. I have no idea of the implications.

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10186408-46.html

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For instance there is no way to sync your phone contacts/messages to something, unless you have an MS exchange sever

Fear not, there is an app out not on the android market place called Android sync, it allows you to sync your contact and calender with outlokk on yer pc. But there is a a small but bypaasable caviat

 

  • Thus far (this is what I have found) you have to setup a calender in the first instance with yer google account, but then all you need to do is turn background sync of so your phone never talked to the google account.
  • Then the calnder file is setup andf you can use android sync
  • Then if you temporaily root your phone using either UniversalAndroot or m4root, then install and use root uninstaller app to remove the google calender sync app and while your at it remove the google contact sync app aswell.
  • Then reboot the phone and the temp unroot is removed.

As you can now very easily and safely flash most android handsets with modded versions of the original rom and customized roms there is no reason now to have to endure the shite that some carriers (Orange, we know who u r) put on thier handsets. But then if you go for a branded handset like a Samsung or HTC they will be mostly free from all the crap as carrier isnt allowed to fuck about because Samsung/Htc wont allow them!

 

Im hoping at some point soon, there wont be a need to go through all of the above, Android sync will just create the calender on the phone etc. At that Point I will force remove ALL the google SHITE (well maybe not maps...) from the handset and be the better for it. Most market apps can be got off the market place now.

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BTW, yesterday I noticed my broadband uploads stats were very high relative to the downloads. For normal web browsing I'd have thought uploads would be less than 1/1000th the downloads but they seemed to be about 1/10th. I only noticed because I was checking the end of month and I was only web browsing for an hour or so and I know I didn't upload anything. I didn't even send an email or post on a forum during that time. So the only uploads would 'normally' be things like requests for web pages. So I can only guess its scripts reading cookie data and sending off info.

 

I think I've mentioned before where on some sites, Opera's status bar hangs even after downloading a web page and it looks like endless requests to other urls. I wonder how much of my bandwidth is being 'stolen'. I get charged if my monthly goes over 5GB. Trouble is that even with Opera, toggling off javascript is tedious when so many web pages don't work fully or at all without it enabled.

 

First, TCP also sends an ACK (acknoledge) packet for every packet it receives on the transmission, and even this packet is empty, it is still considered "upload data". I forgot how big these are, but you can easily have on the order of 1/100 .. 1/10 of traffic being these alone, depending on how much data you transmit (larger downloads send bigger packets, so the acknoledge packets are very small compared to them, webbrowsing with loads of small requests have acknoledge packets compared that are rather big).

 

Second: You want to use firefox with noscript, and adblock plus. The second lets you filter out all the advertising stuff (which eats A LOT of traffic) and the first allows you to selectively block JS - allow the main site, but block anyone else.

 

Edit: You also want to use a firefox addon named BetterPrivacy, it watches out for flash cookies, and can automatically delete them (but has a whitelist, if you ever need to keep one, like storage for an online game or whatever).

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Fear not, there is an app out not on the android market place called Android sync, it allows you to sync your contact and calender with outlokk on yer pc. But there is a a small but bypaasable caviat

 

  • Thus far (this is what I have found) you have to setup a calender in the first instance with yer google account, but then all you need to do is turn background sync of so your phone never talked to the google account.
  • Then the calnder file is setup andf you can use android sync
  • Then if you temporaily root your phone using either UniversalAndroot or m4root, then install and use root uninstaller app to remove the google calender sync app and while your at it remove the google contact sync app aswell.
  • Then reboot the phone and the temp unroot is removed.

As you can now very easily and safely flash most android handsets with modded versions of the original rom and customized roms there is no reason now to have to endure the shite that some carriers (Orange, we know who u r) put on thier handsets. But then if you go for a branded handset like a Samsung or HTC they will be mostly free from all the crap as carrier isnt allowed to fuck about because Samsung/Htc wont allow them!

 

Im hoping at some point soon, there wont be a need to go through all of the above, Android sync will just create the calender on the phone etc. At that Point I will force remove ALL the google SHITE (well maybe not maps...) from the handset and be the better for it. Most market apps can be got off the market place now.

 

Hm, while this sounds like a plan; I do NOT like to setup a google account and/or root my phone. Oh boy, this is just so annoying. I have a phone with a few gigabytes of storage, and 20 pre-defined contacts, but I am not able to add a single contact - unless I setup an account with google :(

 

Edit: I do not have Windows, nor Outlook. And I do not actually want to sync my contacts - I just want to add a new contact on my phone, so I can use it there. :) (The funny thing is, email and SMS are fully working, I can email/text people, answer them, receive email/sms - I just cannot store their email/number on the contact list...)

 

Anyway, one good news is that it is possible to install apps without a google account. There are several options, although I cannot find the link I just had 5 minutes ago. Anyway, this one is most interesting: http://f-droid.org/

 

After you download the .apk to your phone (http://f-droid.org/FDroid.apk), it ask you to install it, give permissions. Than use it like an app-store. All the applications are free, and the most useful ones (barcode scanner, openstreetmap map, navigation, tracker, k9 email, openpgp encryption) are all there.

 

So now my phone is useful - if I just could add a contact to the phone contacts :(

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Second: You want to use firefox with noscript, and adblock plus. The second lets you filter out all the advertising stuff (which eats A LOT of traffic) and the first allows you to selectively block JS - allow the main site, but block anyone else.

Opera can toggle script and has adblock but I've not yet used the latter for two reasons.

 

1. is I have the plug in on request set. This effectively means I don't see a lot of flash adverts they show as the play symbol. I only have to click it if I do want to see it. (although mostly that's clicking blind so very rare.) Whether the content still downloads I don't know.

 

2. The other is I got the impression with adblock I need to set it for every individual advert because it says you point at the adverts you don't want to see and RMB to adblock. I agree it is more likely it disables all adverts of a certain type (but then how can it tell the difference between genuine stuff.) Anyway, as said, I've not tried it yet but maybe I should.

 

Edit: You also want to use a firefox addon named BetterPrivacy, it watches out for flash cookies, and can automatically delete them (but has a whitelist, if you ever need to keep one, like storage for an online game or whatever).

I like the sound of this but naturally, most of us are reluctant to change from our favourite browser of many years for one feature when I know Opera has many features that others don't. I might do a search to see if Opera has something like this - or wait till they do. Yesterday I used adobe's web based control panel to change setting but frankly I don't know what the repercussions are of the some of the things I've disabled. I have no doubt they have deliberately worded it to make so. It is also so tiny it was unreadable for me so I had to go to 1024 x 768 desktop to use it. User-unfriendly. I put adobe only second to M$oft for FU-customer but give us your money.

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I'm not certain exactly what Ghostery is doing but one thing is it lists all trackers in a time-out pop up in the top right hand corner. Often this 3, 4, or 6 different processes tracking me on one web page. Here is one that lists THIRTEEN!!!... 13 different processes all tracking me on one web page. No wonder many pages seem to hang for up to a minute after they have downloaded.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/8804246/Submariners-sacked-at-sea-despite-MoD-promise.html

 

[EDIT] It might be FIFTEEN! Hard to count with the time out.. All this crap is stealing my bandwidth. And it's all legal. The British government have made it legal for anyone to track you without permission so long as 'somewhere' you can 'opt out' What this means is:

 

The onus is on YOU...

 


  •  
  • YOU have to use specialist software like Ghostery to even know this is happening.
  • YOU have to then track down their options page which naturally they make difficult to find and use.
  • YOU have to have a permanent cookie to include the opt-out. Otherwise if you delete the cookie it opts in by default.

Theoretically there could be thousands of these because I see no reason why each one could not set up multiple separate working names so you have to opt out of every one making it near impossible, certainly impractical. I don't mean thousands on each web page but it would mean the same tracker would appear in different guises. So, say the market can only stand 15 such services but each one has a 1000 aliases. We already see this with spam websites. You search to buy a certain item and google returns scores of results but most of them are the same company each with a different domain and slightly different look but crowding out the legitimate choices.

 

I don't see how this can be claimed to be anonymous. They use your IP address to identify you. That IS your ID. On the net, that is who you are. It's rather like saying they don't ID you but have your street address so who could possibly know who are at 4 Privet Drive Little Whinging?

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same as before, just ad a test number to yours contacts and then remove the contacts sync apk and bobs yer uncle!

 

That does not work! When I add a new contact, it simply does not enter the list! No matter wether I do this via the email app (select an email, press Menu, select "Add to contacts", and it says "Has been added". It just has not been added...) or via the contact menu itself (select "add new contact", fill in details, press "Save", and it is gone).

 

I think this is a bug in the Samsung Galaxy S and it's workings when you do not have a google account defined. Because you can import contacts, export contacts, even delete or edit them, you just cannot add them (for whatever reasons!)

 

 

However, I just found out how to still add contacts:

 

* make sure the phone is not connected via USB to a computer (if it is, simple deactivate the USB storage)

* make sure you have an external SD card in the phone

* export your contacts to the SD card (Contacts, Menu, Import/Export, choose "external SD card")

 

Then connect your phone to the computer, you will find a file named "00001.vcf" in the root of the external SD card.

 

It is in the VCard format: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/VCard

 

You can edit this file, and add contacts there :) (You may even use an external software to do so).

Note that you should delete contacts already in the file, or they will appear twice in your phone. Also, it seems not possible to set groups (this info is not exported, and probably not imported, either) but you can still do this once the contact is in your phone.

 

* After you have added all contacts you want, disconnect the phone from USB.

* Go to contacts, choose import/export, and "Import from SD card".

 

Et voila, your new contacts are in the list! You can now edit them to your liking.

 

I don't think it works without an SD card, tho, because although the phone as 1.8 Gbyte INTERNAL and 5.6 Gbyte USB storage, it is only possible to export contacts to: SIM card, telephone, SD card. And only on the latter you can access them (e.g. even when connecting the phone to the USB, the phone USB storage does not have a .vcf file on it, only the SD card has one.

 

So, there you go. I probably should start my own blog about these experiences....

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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  • 1 month later...
  • 5 weeks later...

Cory Doctorow: The War on General Purpose Computing

 

 

Show this to anyone who cares about their future as a "free citizen" in a post-internet world...

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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There was an interesting copyright case reported today (on appropriations used in collage works; the judge's decision was rather restrictive against it, but the backlash has been pretty big. But it's on appeal so we haven't heard the final word on it.). It touches on Springs question about how much latitude we have for appropriating other works (like textures) into Dark Mod, but also on how detatched parts of copyright law are getting from digital reality, where the results of the case just don't credibly apply very well. There's little chance it's going to make much dent on what's happening in cyberspace.

 

Here's the article: http://www.nytimes.c...ropriation.html

 

I think this quote captures how most of us think in this world, at least our prejudice about how things should work:

 

“For the generation that I spend my days with, there’s not even any ideological baggage that comes along with appropriation anymore,” said Stephen Frailey, an artist whose work has used appropriation and who runs the undergraduate photography program at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. “They feel that once an image goes into a shared digital space, it’s just there for them to change, to elaborate on, to add to, to improve, to do whatever they want with it. They don’t see this as a subversive act. They see the Internet as a collaborative community and everything on it as raw material.”

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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  • 1 month later...

Just watched a video I recorded in January Richard Wilson on Hold in which he did he piece on internet cookie tracking. He ended by saying that new legislation (UK or Euro?) due this spring will make it necessary for web services to obtain 'informed consent' before they can store these cookies. I've not been able to find any info by googling. Anyone know anything about this?

 

I think I've previously posted in this thread about these new cookie types that store data about your web browsing, interests, and purchases. They are not stored on your computer they are stored on some faceless web service elsewhere. It is done secretly without your knowledge. Current law allows default opt-in with an option to opt-out. Unfortunately these new trackers are secret so you can't opt-out because you don't even know it is happening, nor whose doing it. If you can find out then they make it difficult to navigate to and opt-out plus you are forced to have a cookie to say you have opted-out. In addition there are many of these tracker companies so you need to opt-out of each one. It's likely these would increase too and split into sub-companies so you would need to track down and opt-out of thousands of them.

 

I'm hoping this new legislation will force these spies to get opt-in consent up-front. If anyone knows where I might find any info on this new law I'd be grateful if you'd let me because I've not yet found anything.

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Well, I've done some more googling and found some older references I ignored before - about legislation for last spring so maybe this TV program was made a year ago and only just been shown? Maybe it was a repeat? If so, then it's of no help as we're still being tracked.

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US law clears the way for flying surveillance cameras:

 

http://www.nytimes.c...red-to-fly.html

 

Interestingly though, the cameras are for private use (largely commercial) and it was the gov't, well the courts, that was putting limits on them on privacy grounds. But it's open season for them now. It's either one step closer to your favorite scifi police-state distopia or to the cool sight of hundreds of flying cameras careening through our cities, leaving no corner unrecorded, depending on your perspective.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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... scifi police-state distopia or to the cool sight of hundreds of flying cameras careening through our cities, leaving no corner unrecorded, depending on your perspective.

 

Wow what game was just like this? .... Hmmm.... Half Life 2!

Soon we'll have underground rebels too fleeing from [rebel] checkpoint to checkpoint dodging the police state as a whole...

 

Oh I hope we can build a portal into Xen too, that would make it all much better. :)

 

[Also, I'm not serious. I am appalled by this...]

Edited by GameDevGoro
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