Derek Powazek exposes the meaninglessness of the already overused tripe 'If you're not paying for the product, you are the product'. "But we should not assume that, just because we pay a company they'll treat us better, or that if we're not paying that the company is allowed to treat us like shit. Reality is just more complicated than that. What matters is how companies demonstrate their respect for their customers. We should hold their feet to the fire when they demonstrate a lack of respect. And we should all stop saying, 'if you're not paying for the product, you are the product', because it doesn't really mean anything, it excuses the behavior of bad companies, and it makes you sound kind of like a stoner looking at their hand for the first time." Nailed it.
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Member since:2011-01-28
ndrw,
"When we think about people being products we tend to label them 'slaves', at least in our subconsciousness. But that's not true either - there is no exploitation involved, and we choose if and who we give our data to. If anything, it is very much like dealing with agents on a job market, insurances etc."
I think it's important to distinguish between a free choice versus a coercive one. This is an extreme example for the sake of illustration:
One day a homeless man might walk up to you and ask for money with his cup, you have a free choice to give him money or not. Another day a robber walks up to you and asks for money with his knife, you have a coercive choice to give him money or not.
The free choice is independent of other factors: do you want to give him money or not? The coercive choice is a trade-off and often involves a penalty: if you don't give him money, he might cause bodily harm.
Obviously there are various degrees of coerciveness, with bodily harm being at one end, and denial of service being at the other. But ether way it represents a non-free choice.
Much to my dismay, the android APIs explicitly force users to make coercive privacy choices over free choices when installing applications. In order to run an app I have to "choose" to give it access to my email contacts even when I'd never really choose to do that freely. There's CyanogenMod and possibly other patches to fix this, but it does show google's preference for coercive user choices.
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.Ah, patents - the never-ending scourge of the technology industry. Whether wielded by companies who don't actually make any products, or large corporations who abuse them because they can't compete in the market place or because they're simply jerks, they do the industry a huge disservice and are simply plain dangerous. According to The Wall Street Journal (circumvention link), president Obama is about to take several executive actions to address patent trolls - which may seem like a good idea, but I am very worried that all this will do is strengthen the positions of notorious patent system abusers such as Apple and Microsoft.
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Member since:
2009-06-30
Calling someone a product feels wrong and unethical but it is just stating a fact - that businesses collect, use and trade information about us. Yes, the prices vary (in general case between zero and infinity) but that's what prices are in any market. What matters is the price at which bulk of transactions takes place.
Being a product doesn't also mean that businesses will treat us worse than customers. If a company has few products and a lot of customers the products automatically become more valuable.
When we think about people being products we tend to label them "slaves", at least in our subconsciousness. But that's not true either - there is no exploitation involved, and we choose if and who we give our data to. If anything, it is very much like dealing with agents on a job market, insurances etc.
So, yes, we are products anytime we give our data to others. Information is valuable, the company will use it, either internally or collaboratively with others. We don't know what will happen but the usual market rules apply ("you get what you pay for"). In particular, if the company's business model relies on charging money for accessing its resources, it may be less inclined to misuse information about us than a company which gets money mostly from other sources.