Alex_V

amar99 said:

Be interesting to see how Apple responds if / when China ever moves against Taiwan. Can't imagine Apple's morality being strong enough to ban all sales in that cash cow (China), but we may soon find out!

That is a political matter, it is not a question for Apple alone, or any single company, to decide. It is a feature of global capitalism and trade that economies are interconnected. The principle is that by encouraging trade everyone will benefit and peace will prevail. That ideal is shattered when countries go to war, such as happened in the First and Second World Wars. When Russia goes rogue, it is for the rest of the world to decide the response. Once a war or other cataclysm happens, then normal rules are suspended — you can be sure that it is in the fine print of the trade agreements. It's for the politicians (acting in the interests of their peoples) to decide what to do.

22july2013 said:

waveparticle said:

I agree with you. A Chinese professor at MIT was prosecuted under Trump's China Initiative. US Judicial system exonerated him this year. 

Over 99% of the time the case was in federal court occurred under Biden's tenure, not Trump's. Biden didn't cancel the case. And you choose to attack Trump.

Do you have any idea, at all, of how the US justice system works?

gatorguy said:

Alex_V said:

In summary, (at the risk of stating the obvious): Google is an advertising company. Facebook is the same. 

At least in my case, and I suspect probably yours as well, the credit bureaus have a way more accurately depicted and "detailed profile of us the likes of which we've never seen before."
[snip]
I'm just not that afraid of anonymized ads. They aren't selling my data to others, unlike the data brokers. IMHO there are far worse players, and to Google's credit they are finally working towards less reliance on identifiable personal information, tho it took Apple's prodding to do so. 

Whether your personal experience is true or not, it is still hearsay. I was merely stating the obvious. Credit is a massive industry in the US. Credit bureaus record people’s financial history to score their individual credit risks. They sell that info to (mostly) financial institutions but also others.

Google and Facebook are advertising companies. They build a psychographic profile of us (values, interests, politics, lifestyle info) that is used in marketing segmentation. It may be anonymised, but Google is merely protecting its cash cow. Their clients want to know that Google will show their advertisements to the right eyeballs. And if Google did not aggregate and anonymise their data, other companies would take it. You wrote: “with Google I can delete most of it, control the collection of much of it.” NOTE the weasel words: ‘most’ and ‘much.’ Google gives me the appearance of control. Google will never abandon their gold mine of data that they have on me no matter what levers and controls they provide me with.

Here is another example: Facebook knows everything that you do on their site. They make money selling us (aggregated and anonymised for the same reason as Google) as targets to advertisers. Facebook built other tools -- messages, calls etc. to compel users to stay longer. Yet, they still bought WhatsApp (messages, calls). Why? Because they want our telephone numbers. With our telephone numbers they can add knowledge of our supermarket purchases, clubs, memberships… everything for which we provide a tel number. Now Facebook has data on our activities in the real world, in addition to what they know about us from their website. And they simply purchase data that is on the open market (or buy the data aggregating companies) on medical history, credit rating etc. I’m glad that you’re “not that afraid of anonymized ads.” I don’t trust these companies because they are not transparent, we don’t know their methods and data. And they continue to obscure and disguise their activities with their fake pronouncements on “privacy.”

In summary, (at the risk of stating the obvious): Google is an advertising company. They make money by building up a detailed profile of each us, the likes of which we’ve never seen before. Then they charge companies who want to market to us. So when Google does this, releases that, or buys them, it’s important to understand their core business. Everything that they do is in furtherance of that aim. Facebook is the same. 

I know that Apple has been doing education forever, but they are perfectly placed to disrupt many of the companies currently operating in the education space. Their hardware is perfect for the task — the competition simply can’t produce iPad quality at the same price. Apple’s technology is typically better, and their implementation leaves others in the dust. Take FaceTime, it’s much better than anything else I’ve used. Messages too. Notes is excellent, and the new collaborative whiteboard feature is compelling. Many Apple apps are used education: Podcasts, Pages, Keynote, Preview, iTunes U, Books, Remote Desktop etc.. Of course, Apple’s relative ease-of-use is perfect for that market. But, at the moment, these things are disparate and are missing education-specific functions, e.g. raising hands and breakout groups in chat; or tying Mail and Calendar together (like Outlook which I detest) into something for scheduling and sharing events. Apple could feasibly port or combine their products into an education platform with mail, messaging, video chat, tied together into a nice bundle that is managed by a simple database/ERP app. That would be a step up for most schools. 90% of the education systems and ERPs that I’ve had to use are pure dog poo, and don’t get me started on the video conference apps…