Why Are Computer Hardware Vendors Such Snoopy Control-Freak Weirdos?

Wow. And people call ME a conspiracy nut.

Who needs conspiracies, when it's all being done right out in the open?

Bob Robertson, Prophet!

TC, please, I'm an anarcho-capitalist: Profit!

One of the big debates right now is how to track a person's mileage so they can add a mileage tax for driving. I guess the cell phone is it. Makes me glad I don't have one.

> How long until they start measuring anyone who's phone is moving along a highway at faster than the posted limit and start sending them a ticket?

The next step will be to mandate that the GPS and cell phone be built into the car. For "safety reasons" of course. And it will be illegal to turn them off.

Eventually they will decide to implant both those and a unique identifier chip (with your full medical history, etc.) directly into the body at birth. Again, it will be mandatory and will be illegal to remove or turn off. Comparisons to the Christian prophecy of "the mark of the beast", and the likely consequences thereof, are left as an exercise for the reader.

@jdixon: Sorry, I don't see it happening. You live in the United States as do I. This is still a Democracy and the American people just won't stand for it. No, not the GPS in the car That probably will happen. Violating our bodies, though, is beyond what the people here will accept.

Democracy? Won't stand for it? I'd say most Americans are boiled frogsby now, and still not objecting.

You know, I was thinking..don't say it..;-)

What if we could track each other on our cell phones? I know that Carla's position would not move out much but it would be cool to know of anyone I cared about was within the AZ state lines once in a while...;-)

User control would be awesome, Scott. But I'm afraid that's un-american.

Caitlyn, I think TC's response is fairly accurate. I don't like the fact, but I don't really see any massive opposition to the it outside the fundamentalist Christian churches, and possibly the Roman Catholic Church. And that's only because of the clear parallels to the above mentioned prophecy. Both of the major political parties would be firmly behind it, if the recent past is any indication. I'd love to be proven wrong.

Quoting:it would be cool to know of anyone I cared about was within the AZ state lines once in a while...;-)

It might be cool, but such an ability can all too easily be abused by governments, not to mention criminals and corporations. All you have to do is look at England to see how easy it is to abuse the ability to spy on people that modern technology gives us. And the rational is ALWAYS that is in our best interests.

@jdixon: There are plenty of privacy advocates on the left as well who would scream bloody murder. Without getting into politics let's just say the traditional left/right divide wouldn't apply in the case of this issue. You'd have a very interesting and probably unique coalition fighting this.

Quoting:What if we could track each other on our cell phones? I know that Carla's position would not move out much but it would be cool to know of anyone I cared about was within the AZ state lines once in a while...;-)

This service has already been available here (Norway) for a few years. It's mostly targeted at young people who want to keep track of each other. Of course you need to actively register for the service before anyone can track you.

> You'd have a very interesting and probably unique coalition fighting this.

Well, the recent health care backlash gives me cause some cause for hope, but I'm still not optimistic. However, this is one of only two issues I can think of likely to cause such a backlash against government power in the US, so I hope you're correct and I'm wrong.

> I'd say most Americans are boiled frogs by now...

No argument there.

> Violating our bodies, though, is beyond what the people here will accept.

Watch for mandated flu shots.

> You'd have a very interesting and probably unique coalition fighting this.

Yesterday, someone posted a comic about how Linux can scale to huge numbers of processors, but can't cleanly play a flash video. I had just finished watching a flash video of an Australian "leftist" saying some really nasty things about what's going on right now.

Which just demonstrates that the Nolan chart is much closer to reality than just "left, right".

Ah, here it is (the Linux comic) http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/supported_features.png

> It's mostly targeted at young people who want to keep track of each other.

I seem to have a vague memory of a commercial, where a parent is looking at their cellphone and getting a map to where their teenager is located. I agree it's an excellent service for those who want it, but I would not want it mandated. (but then, I don't want anything mandated, QED)

Bob, xkcd usually has title text in its strips, so if you link to the actual page that comic is on, you can read it... the purpose of that strip was less to do with Linux as a whole, but more a stab at the bad new Intel video drivers.

This is fun too. The title text is funnier than the actual strip. :) http://xkcd.com/272/

And here's the full page of the comic Bob linked to:

http://xkcd.com/619/

I just used the link that the other guy gave, I didn't see the whole strip.

Thanks for the link.

I don't see anything wrong with that comic. I'd have a lot more use for 4096 CPUs than full-screen Flash videos. Then I could use OpenMP rather than MPI, CUDA, or OpenCL.

What was wrong is that one of the astroturfers (well, he may not be, but his arguments against F/OSS (but not BSD) are right out of the MS astroturf handbook we know so well) used it as a perfect example of how Linux is useless for the desktop.

Ugh.

is probably the problem TomTom are trying solve with respect to a Linux Client for TomTom Home. How to make it possible to phone home while disabling any attempts by Free Software users to disable the phone home capabilities.