Bring things up to speed

talk
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I have not posted on this forum since 2007. At which time I was in the United States Air Force doing mostly IT and Networking stuff, along with other things. I want to mention the strange things that happened between then and now:

-Macromedia products were bought by Adobe apparently
-Steve Jobs died, pretty sad since I switched to Mac around 2005
-Global Recession (but you canā€™t spell recession without recess)

Also I donā€™t think many people will remember me on here, but I used to do a lot of flash media and graphics edits. IMO, for better or worse, the Internet has become really dumbed down since the days of the early 2000s. I guess a lot of reminiscing is being done here, but I never thought Iā€™d say I miss the days of geocities and tripod websites.

I went into audio production studies at this school called the Art Institutes in 2010, and left in 2012, with only 1 year left to graduate. Why did I leave? Conscience reasons, and if you search around you can learn about the lawsuits the school came under. I graduated from another college anyway, but the point of telling you is I have done some pretty cool stuff with sound design in my own time, even though I started from a place of web design.

Itā€™s weird how much the internet has changed since I came on these forums about a decade or so ago. It seems like it used to be more esoteric with the only ā€œsocial mediaā€ outlet being custom forums and websites like this one. Excuse my language, but itā€™s pretty much a cesspool of bullshit now. Iā€™m sick of the comparisons of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to these new guys who created google and facebook. Look that stuff is nice, but Gates and Jobs were pioneers of this computer age.

I actually am starting to hate the direction Apple is taking in general. While the iPod generally saved this companyā€™s revenue, it has gotten out of control. The main machines- laptops and desktops were supposed to be focus, with ipods and iphones being a supplement product. Now it seems like (and even the latest OS El Capitan was said to be built to look more like iOS) the whole company is built around a ā– ā– ā– ā–  phone. This is someone saying this who owns an iPhone 5C but I have not bought a new Mac computer since 2010. I donā€™t know how many times Iā€™ve made fun of the ā– ā– ā– ā–  watch as well. That is one hell of a useless product.

Well anyway Iā€™m not mad about anything, but I wonder if anyone else out there is feeling like the Internet and personal computer technology is being ā€œdumbed downā€ as I mentioned, and is why I have tried my best to not buy new products for some time now.

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Dumbed down, maybe so?

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As I look at those pictures on my phone, I canā€™t help but feel some sense of irony.

If you feel the Internet has been dumbed down, perhaps you arenā€™t looking in the right spots.

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Yeah it is a little ironic. To complain about something we using as weā€™re using it.

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Stuff that was hard back then is easier today. There is plenty of stuff that is hard today, and that stuff will be made easier in the future :stuck_out_tongue:

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Iā€™ve been a bit paranoid lately as well with this Apple case that just happened. I was just at the Apple store yesterday. I have an iPhone 5 and maybe Iā€™m paranoid or not, but am starting to think local law enforcement or other entities could be spying on my texts and calls. I do not why I started thinking this, but I am not the most safe now. Iā€™m not sure if I even believe the FBI found a way to hack into the phone without Appleā€™s help. I think they realized popular support was in favor of Apple, and that a legal case against them could not be won with the media following every bit of it.

I use a basic password but I feel like I should change my cell phone number, which I kind of hate to do bc most of my friends and all know my number now.

This might be a bit of a tangent now, but I wonder if anyone feels this way as well. I am not a big fan of Tim Cook, but I did like that he stood up to protect privacy rights.

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If I take my tinfoil hat on:

Most likely everything you do on your phone is more or less stored somewhere, accessible for parts of a state within any country and also shared between countries.

The simple philosophy behind all this is the well known and somewhat worn out statement -ā€œif you donā€™t do anything wrong, you have nothing to fearā€. The problem is whom decides what is right and wrong? Politicians? In conjunction with full control over private information, that is a fearsome thought. And a logical emotion I might add, because all of this is about power and control and we are not on a personal level with our leaders.

I think this is a quite an interesting problem and it is easy to see that there is some sort of future usage for a state knowing what their citizens do and think. Perhaps a Spyocracy? (democracy through knowing peoples thoughts?)

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I cant quite tell if you mean ā€œtake my tinfoil hat offā€ or ā€œput my tinfoil hat onā€ :confused:

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I take that as a compliment :slightly_smiling:

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Thatā€™s not entirely true. Iā€™m referring mainly to voice calls and text messages- basic phone functions that were available before smart phones. However, I would agree with you if youā€™re referring to cloud services.

Iā€™m pretty tight about my privacy. I rarely use location services, and I use Airplane mode when I go to sleep. First it was the things about applications sending random data, which is supposedly illegal now, and the NSA only does targeted surveillance now. So youā€™re angry birds games are no longer sending data in bulk to them.

I think this situation with Apple and the FBI ended without either side winning the moral victory, but thatā€™s fine. It basically keeps everything the same. I think there will be cases like this in the future, so I agree it will continue to be a problem every now and then.

I know what you mean, who is to say what is right or wrong? But for that matter most of us arenā€™t doing anything wrong on our phones. The problem I have is the principle. After all, the world as a whole is switching from landlines to cell phones. Landlines were shared by 4-6 people or so. So what is the point of everyone having a private cell phone line, if someone can potentially listen to your calls, read your texts, your app data, etc. From a principle of privacy rights, itā€™s just not right for anyone to be spying on your phone.

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To be honest I havent followed the Apple case, since I find it obvious to be a farse. There must be some very special case they argue about because record shows over and over again, companies do whatever governments tell them to do in this matter. In all important matters they have already agreed upon what to store and not.

Already stoneage electronic devices like xerox machines put secret codes in prints to reveal machine and owner. Even in modern colorprinters there is some code imprinted in every copy.

Turning your phone of and on in odd situations just alerts the search algorithms. Act normal. :slight_smile:

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I think in your last section you touch something interesting. Technology also brings options. Bitcoins, linux etcā€¦

What would a ā€œbitphoneā€ be? That is conceptually new to me?

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To be honest I havent followed the Apple case, since I find it obvious to be a farse. There must be some very special case they argue about because record shows over and over again, companies do whatever governments tell them to do in this matter.

Well thatā€™s not entirely true. I watched Bill Gatesā€™ interview with Charlie Rose, and he explained it pretty much how I understand it. A bank for example has access to all your transactions- deposits, withdrawals, etc. If someone commits a crime, government can contact a bank for such records, however they still need a search warrant. This is how the constitution works.

There are a lot of instances where corporations do not comply with governments. In fact, it is safe to say, most of the time they are not 100% compliment with the law. Plus as someone who has worked in government, I know that most of this government has contracts with Microsoft and uses such products. I do not find it that hard to believe that they had trouble breaking into an iPhone, considering the varying levels of incompetence in our governmentā€¦

There are actually plenty of ways to protect yourself. I also did a seven pass erase on my iMacā€™s hard drive recently, which makes it absolutely impossible to ever recover old files.

Iā€™m not at all familiar with the bitcoin system, but if you read the charts, it is not expected to survive. It peaked already and the statistics are something like every year from now, it will half the amount of new people who participate. Though as with anything electronic, using old fashioned currency that does not link to electronic records would keep someone away from these similar situations.

To touch on something else related to this, I do not particularly believe Edward Snowden was a hero either. I think it is ultimately just up to the individual person to understand the legalities and their own rights, as with most things.

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Haha, The interview with Bill Gates and Charlie Rose was interesting. I like Bill Gates.

I donā€™t understand Bills answer like you do. Bill says banks could hand over personal information to the government, but as I recall it, he never says anything about the need of a warrant? All he says is Apple would wait for the supreme court(?) ruling in this particular matter? Anyway, for the last decade, EU has handed over millions and millions of records of EU-citizen bank transactions to the US. So in respect to bank transactions, yes they do hand over personal information without warrants.

Bitcoin, bittorrent etc, they will all perish for something new. A bitphone would perhaps be a distributed identity in some way?

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If youā€™re referring to EU handing over information to the United States thatā€™s entirely irrelevant. They do not have the same consitutional laws as us. Iā€™m going to have to be the person to tell, go read your constiution, assuming you live in the US.

I have no interest in bitcoins, and I am done arguing this matter with someone who wants to fictionalize information in support of a police state. I was anyway hopping for responses from more than one person.

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Sure :slight_smile:
For the record, I do not support a police state. I have to respond to that. (Who does? That is an unnecessary accusation?)

Good luck!

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I do :cop: