Yeah, I figured it was a joke, too. Then again, there are some thoroughly unhinged posters on /. who might actually agree with this...

Sorry, but the post I replied to was about Android's poor permission model. You're right that this particular nasty would still bite a lot of people in the ass -- due to their own carelessness -- even with a less crappy permission system. That much is not disputed, there is no easy fix for stupid.

The argument of GGP, as I read it at least, is basically saying that even bona fide devs and clever users are stuck with this all-or-nothing approach to granting privileges.

A million times this. Android's permission model is deeply flawed. You have to either accept or deny *all* that an app requests in its manifest, or you can't install.

So as a developer, sure you could add a setting to your app's config pages to, say, turn of location services -- but the app still has that privilege. nothing for it but uninstalling.

Fuck soft -- you've got to wonder if it's even an actual science. Seriously, by the success rate of their predictions and models I would rate them just below voodoo, wicca, astrology, and so on.

Can't tell if you're being serious, but in case you are: No, the problem here is overreach and feature creep. They are applying their rules for dealing with terrists (essentially none) to the population in general and foreign heads of state in particular.

I don't expect that ignoring the whole thing is a strategy which is likely to limit their ambitions, at all.

Well no, I mentioned your ACness mostly for lack of a handle by which to refer to you. No offense. And rest assured I wouldn't have serviced a random nonymous request either, as it is unreasonably demanding. This is /. ffs, and I am supposed to be working :-)

But what the hell, let's get this over with: push notifications. Used to be part of the core services, new version is in play services. That is pretty much all I need to understand to have made the statement above while knowing what I am talking about. If you consider this adequate or not is not really an issue for me; I just posted about something that bothers me, take it or leave it as you see fit.

And I would like world peace and justice for all. But seriously,
do you make a habit of jumping through hoops for random ACs on the Interwebs? Because I don't. Look it up if you want to find out, or put in the legwork and provide some argument to refute mine.

So no, sorry, I am not going to enumerate, much less prove that I have understood it (how would that even work, were you expecting a lecture?)

And yes, I do develop androids apps professionally -- though looking to jump ship, for reasons that won't interest you. There may be non-nefarious reasons, as another AC (I guess) mentioned above, for moving stuff into GPS, but I am not sure why that would necessarily have to be closed source.

For that to work, though, there will have to be at least one party who makes it an issue to curb this nonsense. I for one am not holding my breath.

The open nature is also being drastically eroded by moving more and more stuff into the Google Play Services. So while the platform is still technically open source, all the interesting things are moved into a separate, closed, layer.

Slowly but surely, android is closing up.

What moderators make of my post says nothing about my typing it with or without conviction. If I am not convinced of something I won't qualify a statement with "I am pretty much convinced". Disagree with me all you like but credit me that much, all right?

And the US government is not known for misinformation or manipulation? If you think that then, respectfully, you have not been paying attention or else you have an unusually strong cognitive dissonance filter on.

I agree the material would have been stronger unedited and without commentary. That said, the fact remains that these assholes, from a safe distance in their Apache, shot a bunch of kids to shreds and attacked people who came to the scene to help. That much is not controversial. And the remarks they made to one another afterward are nothing short of disgusting.

I am familiar with the saying about sausages and making laws. Maybe I'm the odd one out in that regard, but I prefer to know what goes inside a sausage -- and if I don't like what I find I'll stop eating them. Easy fix. Same goes for lawmaking. Besides, the analogy doesn't apply here, the leaks were about international diplomacy, not lawmaking. It included some pretty lowbrow gossip, and I remain unconvinced that such banter is somehow an essential part of the game.

Look, I am pretty much convinced that Assange is a douche hors categorie. However, that observation changes precisely nothing regarding the info released via WL, such as the epic douchebaggery on the part of, say, the US diplomatic corps and military. It's not like they cancel out or something.

It seems to me that this debacle says more about the practice of having any and all government function handed off to private contractors, much more than it says anything meaningful about Obamacare per se. This story doesn't add anything to that debate.

Which is why, in addition and in isolation, I run an unpatched Windows XP box on which, every now and then, I emulate an average person and use IE6 to download, uh, nature documentaries from sites so dodgy I have to click past a gazillion warnings even on that leaky browser!

I'm not so sure about that. I am afraid this is one of those deals where the compromise (require the user be presented with an opt-out) turns out to be worse than either of the proposed "pure" alternatives (do not regulate tracking at all, vs disallow all tracking, period).

Because what happens is a site says: either allow my cookies or I will not, or not fully, serve you. And because the average user is basically an idiot -- as is true for any large group of people, and in many instances of course it includes myself -- they go for it.

Tracking not reduced for all a but a tiny minority of paranoids and actual baddies, and the ad companies can now say they do it with user's consent.

This PREF cookie is an especially nasty piece of work, seeing how it rides on the very Safe Browsing system that Google "generously" facilitates to protect against online malware. Check the link in TFS.

Exactly. "It's hard to avoid" says Chris Hoofnagle. Right. It would kill Google's business model, sure, but it isn't technically more difficult to not track everyone everywhere everywhen.