Tag: technology

Talk about damning with faint praise…. Anyhow, being an Android user myself, I was concerned about reports that Google was doing the same thing as Apple in collecting location data on Android users. After looking into the matter, however, the behavior of the two companies appears to be rather different. The reason for my concern was that I had always kept the two options for location tracking, wireless and GPS, turned off, and it seemed astonishing that Google would be so stupid as to attempt to give its users a false sense of location security while secretly tracking them against their clear wishes as determined by their chosen settings. However, numerous people looking into the matter have determined that off really is off.

If you want to find out whether your Android phone is collecting location information tap Menu, Location & Security. You will see the screenshot shown above, which has two options for how your phone collects location information, either via wireless networks or by using GPS satellites. If you do not want your location information tracked, clear both check boxes.

Be aware that if you turn off location tracking, apps like Google Maps that show your location will not work. If you decide to turn location tracking back on, you will see the screen as shown below, telling you that you are allowing Google’s location service to collect anonymous location data, and that collection will occur even when no applications are running.

In other words, the real “problem” with Android is that people who have either never looked at their location settings or ignored at least one, and usually two, pop-up warning that their location will be tracked, don’t realize that they have opted in to location tracking. That’s not an actual problem; although it would be preferable if the default option was always set to off, the total cluelessness of many, if not most users, make it understandable why Google would have the default option set to on. The point is that it’s not nefarious and unlike Apple, Google has provided a way to completely turn off location tracking.

That being said, it is obnoxious that Google ties Android to a Gmail account and it would be vastly preferable if it did not do so. But it’s still to be preferred to the sheltered life in Apple’s technofascistic walled garden.

About the technofascists at Apple:

This is sort of a big deal. Apple is, without your consent or any warning labels, logging all of your iPhone’s location data and then transferring it over to your computer when you backup or sync your iPhone. The information is easily accessible — unencrypted and in a standard database format. (The option to encrypt is there, though I haven’t tested whether this option obscures your location data.)

Upshot? Any program you install or anyone you let on your computer could access this data, giving that program or that person full access to where you were and when you were there.

Check out the link. They have a map they were able to make of one of their employee’s locations. This is pretty egregious and is likely to have some unexpected ramifications. Just to give one example, given how popular iPhones are with women, it shouldn’t be hard to see that this “feature” is going to lead to more than a few divorces and breakups in the near future.

Needless to say, I was much amused by this patent application in light of all of the Macintossers initially dismissing the multibutton approach and declaring how stylistically horrific it is. Clearly it is much better to imitate the multibutton approach, only to do so in a manner that forces one operate by sight instead of by touch and places the virtual buttons directly under one’s palm, if for no other reason than Apple has blessed the approach.

Speaking of comparing the effectiveness of different interface approaches, we’re going to be releasing the performance results of various mice soon and it looks to be a bit of a scandal. We have compiled strong empirical evidence indicating that in between the switch from mechanical rollers to optical sensors and the advent of the the multibutton interface, there has been essentially no actual performance difference between so-called high performance gaming mice and cheap office mice. Here is a comparison of four mice, two of which have multibutton support and two of which do not. The difference in performance between the two multibutton mice is the result of their different approaches to the interface; there is a reason, after all, that clumsy people are described as being “all thumbs”. That comparison marks the fastest speeds recorded at 1920×1200 resolution, whereas the sustainable speeds that one can reasonably expect to maintain in consistent use are about 15% slower on both the conventional and multibutton interfaces.

Finally, on the practical application side, there is a new video focused on Mozilla Firefox and demonstrating how the default Firefox mode operates for those who might be interested.

My implacable hatred for Apple’s relentlessly fascistic vision of technology notwithstanding, I am a longtime admirer of Steve Jobs. I even regard him as somewhat of a role model since I am as confident in my own technological visions as he is in his. It is his unique talent for not only having a vision but also successfully communicating it that makes his recent departure so potentially ruinous to Apple:

Apple has not elaborated on the reasons for Steve Jobs’ medical leave, and it probably won’t unless/until it has to. As a result, those who care about the company and Steve can be forgiven for wondering how serious Steve’s condition is and for looking for clues about this in every communication.

In this vein, in our opinion, the wording of one sentence of Steve’s email to Apple staff is not encouraging: “I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can.”

In our opinion, those are not the words of someone taking a short leave who is confident he will be back at the company soon (or ever). Rather, in our opinion, they read like the tragic, heartfelt sentiments of someone who thinks he might never be coming back.

I wish Steve Jobs all the best and sincerely hope he makes a full recovery in order to come back and subject a new generation of Macintossers to imprisonment in his beautifully landscaped, walled-in, fascist, techno-utopian garden.

And empirical evidence is embraced in its stead.  Now, I have long contended that it is worthwhile to pay attention to those with whom one disagrees even if one is convinced that they are wrong. While I am most certainly not a fan of Malcolm Gladwell and have little regard for science fetishists, after reading What the Dog Saw and engaging in the recent series of discussions related to the limits of science, it occurred to me that even without taking MPAI into account, I was asking far too much of most people in thinking they would grasp the benefits of a radically different interface by simply presenting them with the specifications and features and expecting them to reach the appropriate conclusions.  Most people don’t want to have to think about something in order to figure it out, they want to be informed.  But how can you inform someone of the detailed specifics when you don’t even know what they are?  Most people find it far less meaningful to hear “X will be significantly better than Y because of Z”  than “X is 20, Y is 10.  So X is twice as much as Y.”  They don’t want to think about Z or to work out how much better X is than Y.  In fact, experience suggests that they often regard the first option as complete gibberish.

This should have been obvious to me from the beginning. Whenever people react to something that is perfectly logical by saying that it is crazy, this is little more than an indication that they really don’t understand either the logic or the conclusion. I suspect the modern fetish for unassailable empirical evidence is in part the result of a decline in the average individual’s ability to think in the abstract; I noticed that the early adopters of the interface with whom I have communicated have almost uniformly been highly intelligent. That might appear flattering, except it’s actually indicative of a problem because it means that the vast majority of potential users are not grasping the potential advantage to them.

Therefore, I concluded that empirical evidence was necessary.  I therefore went about designing a means of acquiring that evidence, which has worked out rather well indeed.  I now have a strange new respect for both Gladwell and blind, thoughtless faith in empirical evidence.

I’m not going to bombard the blog with videos, but since a number of you had some suggestions for improvement, here is a new one that shows off our favorite little device kicking it very old school style. I recorded the audio in Audacity rather than Camtasia and imported it this time… it worked better, I think, but I’m still having a few audio-editing issues. Anyhow, this is interesting because it shows how the keyboard can be entirely eliminated from a keyboard-only game.

By the way, does anyone know how the image that shows in the YouTube link can be selected or is it just random?

I have to say that Camtasia Studio has gone well beyond my expectations and even some of my hopes. I’m still learning my way around it, but this test of the picture-in-picture feature shows how versatile it is. The video embedded below is just a test of that feature, which I thought might be a useful way to show what the mouse is doing when the onscreen action is taking place. The result, crude as it is, turns out to be a remarkable and ironic testimony to the ergonomic advantage of the decidedly unergonomically-shaped device; even after having used it for months, I was surprised to see how it virtually eliminated wrist movement as well as the keyboard commands.

Anyhow, now that I know Camtasia works so well, I’m going to set about producing a series of higher-quality videos that will show how the mouse works with a wide range of various games and applications. But first, of course, I’ll wrap up that third inflation video for which Nate is so patiently waiting. I should be able to finish and upload it this weekend.