Geek Bits – Page 17 – The Wacky World of Chris Knight

2008/07/312008/08/01

Party – This Saturday on Sergey Brin’s Front Lawn!

Google says “complete privacy does not exist” – Internet – iTnews Australia

By Iain Thomson

31 July 2008 07:57AM

In a submission to court Google is arguing that in the modern world there can be no expectation of privacy.

Google is being sued by a Pennsylvania couple after their home appeared on Google’s Street View pages. The couple’s house is on a private road clearly marked as private property.

“Today’s satellite image technology means that even in today’s desert, complete privacy does not exist,” says Google’s submission.

“In any event, the Plaintiffs live far away from the desert and are far from hermits.”

The couple are suing Google for US$25,000 in damages, saying that the value of their property has been damaged and say they have suffered “mental stress”.

This is not the first time Google’s Street View has got the company in to trouble. The EU is arguing that people’s faces should be blurred out of images displayed.

The Street View program aims to photograph every street in the world and place the photographs online. A team of specially converted cars with cameras mounted on the roof are in constant action around the world.

Google is taking a page out of George W Bush’s playbook by claiming that people shouldn’t expect privacy on their own property, and that we should just ‘trust’ Google to ‘do no evil’.

I say we run with their idea that privacy does not exist! Let’s throw a party on the front lawn of the Google founders! I am sure that they will agree that anything good for Google is good for us! This week Sergey’s place, next week at Larry’s. Who is game? Can someone create a meet-up, or a tribe, and post the info here as a comment?

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-Chris

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2008/07/31

Gravatar – Fun while it lasts

I recently upgraded to WordPress 2.6, and I was playing with new themes today. One of the things I noticed in the currently active theme is avatar icons next to comment postings. Thinking that was fairly nifty, I went to the WordPress admin panel to set up my icon. No dice; there is no way to set it from there. OK, right-click on the avatar image and check out the URL. The URL points to a site I had never heard of: http://www.gravatar.com/

The premise is nifty. Globally consistent avatar images anytime you post to a Gravatar enabled blog. The gravatar enabled blog generates an image src tag that uses a MD5 hash of the email address you supplied for the account or comment, so that it references your Gravatar image without exposing your email address.

Alas, unless they ‘go evil’ and start replacing people’s avatars with advertising icons, I’m just not sure they’ll be able to make enough money to keep afloat. Surely they are using the images served to track people’s web-related activities; but is that knowledge really worth serious cash?

-Chris

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2008/07/152008/07/22

Customer Service, the ‘Sprint Way’

About two months ago Sprint announced a change to their ‘unlimited’ EVDO wireless broadband service. ‘Unlimited’ now means less than 5GB per month, or they they reserve the right to cap you, charge you more, or suspend your account. You know, typical Sprint ‘service’.

I read about the plan change on a friend’s blog, but I was having a hard time confirming it. I called Sprint, and the helpful monkey swore up and down that there were no changes being made to my account; and that Sprint did not make material changes to existing contracts anyways. Despite these assurances, I found a couple of geek news sites that supported my friend’s post, so I wrote Sprint customer service. I was informed that they had sent me a statement with the changes in the terms. I never received my 05/23 statement, the one that had the notification of plan change. Mel didn’t get her statement with the notification either, so she asked them to send her a reprint. I do not consider a 2″x2″ block of text that says your terms are changing and to contact customer service for details to be adequate notice. I think that was a pretty big ‘screw you’ for such a small block of text.

Today I called, with a week to spare, to cancel my account. The first monkey asked me why I was canceling my account. I explained that on 5/23 Sprint had sent me notification that they were changing the terms of service on my ‘unlimited’ broadband account, and that since it was no longer unlimited I was going to take my business elsewhere. He then had the audacity to try to convince me that my plan was still unlimited, as long as I did not hit the limit. I have to admit, if I threw out all logic and facts, his argument might have made sense. Being that he was full of shit, I told him that my mind was made up and that I wanted to cancel my account. At which point he transferred me.

The next person I talked to started off fairly reasonable. I explained my situation, and that I was canceling my account because I did not agree with Sprint’s change to my service plan. She confirmed in my account notes that I could cancel without penalty, and she told me she would cancel my account. Then she went off the deep end. She said that since I had a network modem, what she could do for me was trade it in for a cell phone. I asked “Why on Earth would I want to do that?” She said it was so I could keep my sprint account active. Apparently Sprint’s customer service division is located in Oz, or some other place where the grass is blue and the skies are green. I had to explain that since I only had the EVDO modem for data, not for voice, I really had no use for a Sprint cell phone, and that I just wanted to terminate my account. Supposedly this is done, and I will get a final statement that does not include a termination fee. I’m not holding my breath, as have little faith that Sprint will do this right.

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