Hm, what happens if I put my Google Drive folder inside my SkyDrive folder inside my Dropbox folder on my Bitcasa volume…
— John Siracusa (@siracusa) April 25, 2012
Google Drive terms and conditions lets Google use your files even if you stop using Google’s services
From the terms and conditions:
The rights that you grant in this licence are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This licence continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing that you have added to Google Maps)
Zack Whittaker on ZDNet takes this paragraph to mean that Google may own your files. I don’t quite agree on that, but of course, terms of service documents can be as clear or vague as the reader makes it out to be. I think the key in the last sentence is the word stop. Does stop simply mean ceasing to login or does it mean after you delete the account? Even further, does it mean Google can use your files even after you delete them from Google Drive?
A statement from Google doesn’t exactly answer my questions.
Something’s wrong with SkyDrive for Mac
Homeland Security is testing pre-crime screening
Minority Report may have been based on fiction but the US Department of Homeland Security is working really hard to make it happen. They may not have Agatha and the twins but they have all kinds of individual profiling as well as detection systems to turn this into reality even at only 70% accuracy.
The U.S. Department of Homeland security is working on a project called FAST, the Future Attribute Screening Technology, which is some crazy straight-out-of-sci-fi pre-crime detection and prevention software which may come to an airport security screening checkpoint near you someday soon. Yet again the threat of terrorism is being used to justify the introduction of super-creepy invasions of privacy, and lead us one step closer to a turn-key totalitarian state.
This may sound alarmist, but in cases like this a little alarm is warranted. FAST will remotely monitor physiological and behavioral cues, like elevated heart rate, eye movement, body temperature, facial patterns, and body language, and analyze these cues algorithmically for statistical aberrance in an attempt to identify people with nefarious intentions
Utter disregard by the US Government on intellectual property rights on food items
Kobe beef in the US is apparently not Kobe beef. They’re all fake, so are several other foreign-originated food according to Larry Olmstead.
This is part of a pattern of deliberate actions going back well over a century on the part of the Federal government to actively ignore foreign trademarks and intellectual property claims in order to support domestic industries. It has very much been done on purpose, and continues to be done on purpose, at the expense of the American consumer (and foreign producers). It is also stunningly hypocritical, and flies directly in the face of the government’s deep pocketed attempts to combat piracy in the arenas of music, film, technology, and software
Utter disregard by the US Government on intellectual property rights on food items
Oh the irony:
Apple had to mow down an awful lot of trees in order to build its environmentally friendly 100-acre solar array, right across the street from its data center.
All things equal, prices rise fastest in the places where rich, talented people want to be.
AuliaSays 