581–590 of 596 posts
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Yes. It's as dumb as a 3310.
OK, thanks. My wife has just bought a cheap Nokia 103 (she's used Nokias for ages) and I was surprised that it had Bluetooth. It showed up on the laptop I was using at the time, but I couldn't find any way to connect to it. (They didn't pair.) I checked and it did have Bluetooth on the Nokia 103 menu.
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This should be an optional feature. Not a feature that's the default of most computers on the planet. It's fine that you wanted it, and it's fine that it's available. It's not cool that it's the default on anything.
As far as I can tell, it is an optional feature. It's the default option, but still an option. On top of that, a fair argument could be made that most people who don't care enough to change their privacy settings probably do prioritize convenience over maximal privacy, so this might even be a reasonable default.
> you get presented with a customize wizard. The first screen has a large chunk of text on it, a large and clearly visible button to proceed using the default settings, and a small hard to see text link that lets you choose your own setting values instead of the defaults.
> Everything about this screen is urging me to just accept the default configuration and get on with life.
Doesn't mean those people "don't care enough" about their privacy. Those people are my parents and my friends and I know that they do.
We know our computers, we can fight back, many people cannot. I believe that when a piece of software tries to provide "sensible defaults" for people that fear they might break stuff, or simply not understand the "advanced options", that those defaults should be SAFE and TRUSTWORTHY.
Windows 10 obviously breaks that trust, and the people who can't spend an hour digging through advanced options (for many reasons) are just pounded into submission against systems they feel slowly slip from their control.
In security, "trusted" has a very simple and straightforward definition:
Trusted (adj.) - Liable to create a security breach.
Whether you know who they are or not, it means that you trust them with your private data.
"Trusted" is never a good thing. With proper security and privacy logic in place you shouldn't need to "trust" anyone.
Indeed it means that I "trust" the NSA (and local Dutch agencies conscripted by them) with any data that I send or receive that is not strongly encrypted. I don't get a lot of choice in the matter, so I'm going to have to "trust" they won't screw me over with it, sell it to bad actors, keep it safe for as long as they keep it. No it's not a very smart idea to "trust" them, but I don't get a lot of say in the matter ...
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Some is fine, all is mentally deficient. Chrome OS is mentally deficient. In the current environment being okay with sharing every single detail of your computing with a big marketing company is not a smart thing to do.
It's a fine line for sure. I recently recommended ChromeOS for my mother. Her problem is that she runs programs that compromise her OS. The malware I've removed from my parent's computer is hugely invasive and it is usually tied to her account. Given the choice of Google having some of her privacy details or some unknown crackers, I'd much rather have her expose that information to some cooperation that has public sc…
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Excuse me if I just don't fully comprehend your argument, but isn't FOSS an orthogonal issue to this? After all, even if software is open source, that doesn't stop it from mining your data. You just know that they are doing so. I suppose you can remove that feature, but it seems you're also able to disable the features here as well. In any case, I'm all for FOSS but it doesn't seem to be a solution to this problem, w…
Yes, I agree that it's not really a problem for everyone. The issue isn't actually privacy. The issue is "find a reason to bash on MS for this month". Now, I think the incentive structures for FOSS projects are a little different such that the FOSS environment isn't going to converge on the idea of collecting such data. But clearly, throw any sort of system that wants to make money into the mix, coupled with the fact…
Making money from either advertising or additional services are definitely incentives.
The other one worth mentioning is that trying to make platforms popular with users drives integrating on-line services as well as using more information from the user to deliver advanced services. At the moment local applications are at a disadvantage compared to on-line ones because they don't have as much data to do clever things with: Gmail vs Thunderbird is a good example. General users want the convenience of services like digital assistants - and while some of it can be done with local processing, some cannot.