Chip's Technical Blog

I have been a long-time fan of Google, and I generally find their products convenient, high-quality, useful, and innovative. Unfortunately, with all that useful product has come an ever-decreasing amount of privacy. It is now possible to do much of your daily computing work with entirely Google products — email, web search, documents, maps, chat, voice & video chat, youtube videos, picasa images, and now even DNS. Beyond all of this content which users freely give to Google, their analytics allow them to track you even further as you venture into non-Google sites, since these sites often use Google to provide ads to their sites, which allows Google to see what other sites you visit.

Recently, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, responded to questions in a televised interview which suggested a lack of concern for the preservation of privacy (some posts about it link to the video of the interview mozilla ceo’s blog urging switch to bing notes from the electronic fontier foundation summary of various posters). I am a little torn about how to react to this. On the one hand, I admit that the statement is factual — Schmidt is telling people that Google and other companies store this information, it is all information made available to Google, and Google is legally obligated in some cases to make this information available to authorities. On the other hand, I think it shows a complete disregard for the importance of user privacy, and the need for companies who are given such information to be good stewards of that information. Simply hiding behind the Patriot Act as a way to defend your practice of gathering, correlating, and then divulging information as desired may be legally sound, but does not reflect the attitude I wish the company gathering information to be taking.

Consider this: if you use Google DNS, yes, you may get some performance benefit over the DNS provider from your ISP. But, by telling your computer to use Google’s DNS servers, you will effectively be sharing the names of all websites you visit with Google. And don’t think for a minute that their automated mechanisms won’t correlate this with both the searches you are using to Google and the data of all Google accounts you maintain. (Note that a naive objection here is that you otherwise give this to your ISP. But your ISP already is transferring all of your network communications, so that information will be available to your ISP whether or not you send them your DNS queries).

From Schmidt’s point of view – you should already be aware of what information you are giving to Google, and the fact that Google may pass it along to others. But are you? Google could pick things out of emails you send or receive, match that up with the GPS data from your cell phone that you pass to Google so it can place you on the map, the searches you conduct on your phone, and the hostnames of sites that you visit, and build a very precise picture of what you’re doing. Granted, certain things in that profile might have been misinterpreted, and that profile could make it look like you’re doing something very embarrassing.

You see, it’s not the fact that Google has or is collecting this information per se that’s bothering me, but rather that when making this statement, Schmidt doesn’t say “Yes, all of this is true, BUT here are the steps Google is taking to safeguard users…” No, Google’s business is enhanced precisely because they can build these profiles of users.

Google’s long standing reputation of following their motto of don’t be evil is eroding. Thus far, I wouldn’t necessarily say they are being evil. But I no longer feel I can endorse them whole-heartedly as I used to. You should think seriously about what tools and products of Google’s you are using, and what kind of information you are giving them, and whether or not you really want a company who does not proclaim their desire to defend your privacy to have all that information about you. Does the cost outweigh the benefit of using their products?

Subtitle: protecting the language

So I am often bad with sayings and grammar; as a result, I am fascinated by the subject. There are a number of these which I have often misused, some of which include:

• I’ve used “here here” when I should have used “hear hear”. See this post for details.
• I’ve said “intensive purposes” when I should have said “intents and purposes”. I had even worked out a definition, including how they differed from “extensive purposes”.
• I’ve said “mute point” when it should be “moot point”. See here for details.
• I also mix up a variety of sayings, such as the nonsensical “double-bladed edge”.
• And the list goes on…

In addition to the language rules blog linked above, another great place to learn about such things is A Way With Words, broadcast on many local NPR stations.

Unfortunately, I see these mistakes as muddying up our language, so I would like to get better about it. But rather than
going out and searching down each of these cases to learn independently, I feel like there is a better solution. As a computer scientist, I recognize that we already have the perfect mechanism for this — the grammar checkers. Our word processing software already has a grammar checkers, and our web browsers have spell checking, so it may just be a matter of time. I think the grammar checker should be adapted to look for misuses of the language, and to suggest alternatives to writers. This suggestion should come complete with internet links to learn more about the cases found. So in the future, when I “tow the line”, it can let me know that I should instead “toe the line”. So short of listing all commonly mistaken sayings, how can we build software to do this? That is my question. But in the meanwhile, I would just settle for a [possibly community maintained] database of common mistakes it can check for.

So at the Journal and Courier online (thanks for the recent feature as blog of the week!), they run a daily story about “pending obituaries”. For examples, just do a quick search.

I, for one, find this practice very amusing. It is particularly amusing when it shows up in the optimized page for hand-held devices as “breaking news.” I mean, judging on the title alone, it seems like this should refer to people who are about to die, but who haven’t yet. Something like “John Doe, who was hit by a truck this morning, is in critical condition at the hospital. He is expected to pass within the hour.” Instead, it seems to be brief announcements of the completion of life, but without the full details. (These articles inevitably contain a sentence at the end referring the reader to the next day’s edition of the J&C.)

In the future, may I suggest (to no-one in particular, since I’m not making a point of sending this to the paper) that we find a more appropriate name for these articles? Though I have to say obituaries in progress or partial obituaries aren’t any better. Maybe we should change the word obituary, since it tends to suggest that it should have full details. Perhaps we could call them death notices instead? Then refer readers to the full obituary in the print edition. Or, maybe just leave it as it is. Maybe we need a sense of humor about the passing of our lives.

Tonight we were at the LeAnn Rimes concert, in which there was a posted no-cameras sign at the entrance gate. As you will see later when I post 2-3 of my own, you might expect that this rule is not well enforced.

So what’s the problem? Of course, the problem is that you can’t buy a cell-phone anymore without a camera, just about. Thus, unless you are going to either check every cell phone, or not allow them at all, you aren’t going to keep cameras out of the concert. (Of course, these cameras are also small, so unless you plan to use a metal detector, you probably won’t notice the cameras [cell phones] anyway.)

Thus, it follows that there were a LOT of people taking pictures at the concert with their cell phones. Throughout the concert they would walk in front of the first row (between it and the stage) and pause long enough to snap a picture. This of course was very annoying for those of us in the first few rows. There was also no attempt on the part of security to prevent or curb this activity. After all, what are you going to do, short of making people cross the venue at the back?

So accept as a given that people will have cell-phone cameras. It no longer makes any sense to prevent the use of the vast majority of consumer-grade cameras, which are only marginally better than the current generation of cell-phone cameras. And not surprisingly, there were people using those as well. Oh, and the bigger ones too—no, not so big that they were bigger than someone’s head, but still quite big. People were also not shy about it as you might expect, quickly snapping the photo and then hiding the camera so as to pretend they didn’t take a photo. No, they would walk right to the front with their quite-obvious-camera, and take a picture, complete with flash. Oh heck, why stop at just one. Get another one while we’re up here, in case the first doesn’t turn out.

The woman seated just in front of and to the side got a bunch of pictures — many quite good (I know, because it was impossible to avoid watching her LCD screen as she setup the shot, took it, and then checked its quality. It was, after all, being held over the level of all our heads while she did so to avoid anyone in the audience being part of the photo).

So, I think the time may have come to abandon the no-cameras rule, since it is so clearly not actually applied. Instead, we should be thinking of ways to make the cameras less obtrusive during the show. Perhaps have a place people can go to shoot their shots which is out of the way of the main audience. Perhaps have a song break where you tell everyone in the audience to get their photos out of the way now, and then ask them to put the cameras away and enjoy the concert. Coming from the artist themselves, seems more likely to be heeded anyway. Perhaps tell the audience they can take photos but to NOT use a flash. Some of them still will, but if you couple it with a reasonable explanation of why you shouldn’t use a flash, I think many people will respect it. Also, have a big sign posted indicating that shooting photos is acceptable for personal use, which still lets you crack down on those trying to make a buck off their concert shots, while allowing those people who you really can’t stop anyway shooting a photo to post to Facebook.

After all, those Facebook photos are probably doing more to promote and benefit than they are to harm.

[Review: it was a good show, and the third-row center seats were excellent.]