Google is introducing software for cell phones that allows people, through a complicated system of rope and pulleys, to track each other.
“What Google Latitude does is allow you to share that location with friends and family members, and likewise be able to see friends and family members’ locations,” Steve Lee, product manager for Google Latitude, told CNET. “For example, a girlfriend could use it to see if her boyfriend has arrived at a restaurant and, if not, how far away he is.”
Google claims your privacy is protected because the service requires people to sign up for it. Right. If you are a man who would willingly sign up for a service that allows your girlfriend to follow your every movement, please go to the nearest woodchipper and surrender your testicles for mulch. They are no longer being used by you. And if you need this service to track your girlfriend because you’re insecure about her faithfulness, you deserve to see her little red GPS dot blink over the local biker bar at 2AM.
There’s a reason I use dogpile.com. Google is a totalitarian unAmerican left wing behemoth with delusions of Soviet grandeur. I hope it fails.
Ha. You are too precious.
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As much as I love google for what it contributes to my life, I admit I have a healthy fear of the amount of information they control. I don’t worry about Serge and Larry – nice chaps, it seems – but what if the government gains some kind of direct or indirect control over them?
It’s a big what-if, admittedly, but who could have seen the pseudo-nationalizations of the financial and automotive sectors ten years ago? Is it so beyond belief that something as currently unthinkable as the nationalization of google becomes a realistic possibility, ten years into this recession? If google comes under Washington’s control, the federal government will have a fully-functional Big Brother totalitarian infrastructure set up overnight. Much easier to do it that way than piece-meal.
This week’s Mencius Moldbug post got me thinking about this. He made a comment about how truth is safe for the moment, thanks to google scanning and making available non-progressive books from earlier, saner times (or at least insane in different ways) and I thought, how is google fallible? This was my answer.
Cheers
Zdeno
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“Ha. You are too precious.”
WTF?
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I would imagine that parents of teenagers are the prime market for Google Latitude.
Peter
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Google is slowly taking over the world.
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blahblahblahblahblah “unAmerican” blahblahblahblahblah
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
ps- whining about the president is also beta
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Not having a handle is skanky.
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blahblahblahblahblah “unAmerican” blahblahblahblahblah
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
ps- whining about the president is also beta
Whining about whiners isn’t?
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I always look forward to your posts popping up in Google Reader.
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I personally prefered the days of pay phones and pagers.
– MPM
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Say that ten times fast.
– MPM
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I miss my telegraph.
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I agree with PA, but add that not only is remaining Anonymous skanky – it’s also beta in that skanky, beta bim sorta way.
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Ha!! I have an iPhone so I am except from such spying!!
(note to self – delete loopt ASAP)
I miss corded home phones with tape answering machines (and the magic 8ball)
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“There’s a reason I use dogpile.com. Google is a totalitarian unAmerican left wing behemoth with delusions of Soviet grandeur. I hope it fails.”
dogpile uses google. so that wasn’t too bright now was it? no wonder people on this website have issues with women, there is just a general lack of common sense going on.
That second sentence I’d like to see some evidence for, as opposed to armchair speculation.
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Neko: Common sense=no reason to have issues with women, eh?
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dogpile searches google.
nice.
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wow. If someone doesn’t know what an RSS is, or what is an URL, it makes him a weirdo who have issues with women?
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i think roissy’s point is that google compiles info about users and no one knows what the hell they plan to use it for. if you use dogpile, even though it searches google too you’ve installed a middleman rather than searched directly, meaning google can’t add your searches to any other information it has about you.
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“That second sentence I’d like to see some evidence for, as opposed to armchair speculation.”
Here ya go:
http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html
Now go learn something and STFU…
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Love how Google uses the example of a woman tracking her man because it’s politically correct.
There would’ve been a huge outcry from femi-nazis if Google had used an example of a guy tracking his girlfriend.
I bet a bunch of Arab and African guys are going to sign up for the service to track their harem of wives.
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how about the wii? i’d like to see a single photo of someone looking alpha using a wii.
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Darren: learn some basic logic. That is not the implication. I’m saying that when I see people have a problem forming basic ideas and analyzing basic things, it comes as no surprise they have problems getting anywhere with women.
Anonymous: Roissy’s writing in this case, as in other cases, is a bit vague and ambiguous. But I don’t think you should do him the favor of backtracking for him. Nearly all the search engines (except for Scroogle) save your data, so you are always going to be in “danger” if that is what Roissy is really worrying about. But the fact remains he is using a website that is heavily dependent on google. So by using dogpile (which has to pay some dues to google to get the search results) he is indirectly supporting google. The startling thing is that I find it hard to believe he didn’t know this. If he bothered to use the website he would see that many of the top results returned for a search are from Google.
Piss up your A: I’m sorry, I’ve seen X-Files episodes that are more grounded than that cartoon conspiracy theory you cut-and-paste. Try again. Maybe use google this time, you might get better searches that way.
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… Google is a totalitarian unAmerican left wing behemoth with delusions of Soviet grandeur …
The gathering evidence bears you out. The truth is slow in coming out to daylight that rather than an indifferent robot delivering search results, Google, and its properties, especially YouTube, is run by a lot of people able to censor search results and user-posted material that is neither dangerous nor obscene, but they just don’t care for it, and they don’t want you to see it either. The most disturbing, of which I’m aware, was that of a nationally renowned columnist and political video blogger in the greater DC area whose YouTube account was flagged, and then effectively censored, requiring visitors to first log in then click a disclaimer. “Don’t Be Evil” indeed. You called it, Roissy, as usual.
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Anon, a couple of nights ago, an Arab ex boyfriend who wants to get back into my good graces, offered to buy me a new cell phone.
That is NOT funny.
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google history freaks me out too.
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“Piss up your A: I’m sorry, I’ve seen X-Files episodes that are more grounded than that cartoon conspiracy theory you cut-and-paste. Try again. Maybe use google this time, you might get better searches that way.”
Yeah, crazy stuff. So that link is all lies?
Nothing to see here, please disperse:
http://www2.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/comment/story.html?id=3f2efbef-2b74-47ee-896a-4beb4a7d00d3
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Piss – It’s not that it was lies, it’s that it didn’t point to any evil intent. All it did was categorize the various ways Google has power. It didn’t discuss ways in which they’ve abused that power, or how they would even benefit if they ever hypothetically did…
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It’s like Facebook, where beta males constantly update everything they are doing all day long, and then leave “wow, you look hot here” comments on the photos of their female “friends”. Facebook = Betabook. “What are you doing now?” Hello, I’m in front of a fucking computer using Facebook.
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Roissy’s writing in this case, as in other cases, is a bit vague and ambiguous. But I don’t think you should do him the favor of backtracking for him. Nearly all the search engines (except for Scroogle) save your data, so you are always going to be in “danger” if that is what Roissy is really worrying about.
yes but unlike google, the other search engines don’t have the same ability to put together as complete a profile. google, using their supercookie, can track your searches. then they can combine it with the spyware info they pull up on you from their google toolbar, which is spyware that tracks all types of computer usage, then combine that with info from your gmail if you have that, combine it with info you give on your blogspot blog, which is google owned, combine it with what they know of your search history, combine that with your youtube usage (they now own youtube i believe), info you put in your google autofill app, and any other google apps you voluntarily use. The more you opt-in for, the more comprehensive your profile becomes. Now Google allows you to opt-in to being physically tracked all day long. Use Google checkout and Google shopping and now your shopping can be monitored and recorded.
their identity profile can be much more comprehensive than any other search engine’s picture, and they have the resources to store it as long as they like, which is why their data mining is so much more dangerous than any other search engine’s data mining. now they of course have no reason to look into you, but by compiling all this stuff on you with no privacy agreement in place, how long before we start hearing of private eyes, potential employers, background check companies and political operatives if you are a potential major candidate all looking into these comprehensive Google profiles of people to dig up dirt?
so to answer your question, no all search engine data recording is not created equally.
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oh, and not to mention of course marketers. they would love to get their hands on these profiles in the future. it won’t be long before people start throwing major money at google for this goldmine of info about most of the country they will be sitting on. it’s not going to be easy to pass up all that potential cash they can get from selling info.
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And Microsoft, Apple and anything that represents a success in capitalism… wait a second, did you say ‘unAmerican’?
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The problem with Google is their corporate culture, which is the epitome of SWPL yuppie status whoring, and overt disdain for American traditions and populism.
Google never celebrates Veterans Day, Memorial Day, or any other American national holiday, but will celebrate (special home page decorated with stuff) Edvard Munch’s birthday, Arthur Conan Doyle’s, May Day, and a whole host of irrelevancies. Note, they can and do have separate home pages for each country, i.e. Google France, and Google UK.
So it’s not as if they would tick off Frenchmen by celebrating say, Memorial Day. They don’t because the SWPL that run Google HATE the military, Veterans, America, and it’s traditions.
Google does some good: they sponsor and fund a lot of open source projects that enable people to break the Microsoft and Apple duopoly on software, and both of these companies share in the anti-American, SWPL yuppie status striving (Microsoft is also now filled with mostly anti-American H1-B visa holders, with few American engineers, as the ability to use stock options to pay natives in something other than cash has disappeared under both a collapsing stock price and Sarbanes-Oxley).
That good however has to be balanced against the bad: a constant anti-American, SWPL culture that is aggressively promoted. Google’s YouTube hosts Jihad beheading videos, but will take down any anti-Jihad stuff as “hate speech” …
As far as Kutcher goes, he’s widely rumored to have lots of women on the side, and married Moore for two reasons: one, she’s a big-time producer who helped mentor him in his own producing career (Beauty and the Geek, most notably) which is where most of his ambitions lie, and two the emotional support/mommy stuff he craves.
He’s probably not a good guideline for male-female relationships, any more than say, Warren Beatty or Michael Douglas are.
My guess is if this recession lasts, and it probably will, we will see cultural shifts. Far less SWPL status mongering “Look at me, I have the latest Iphone” in the mate competition, more marriages early (as women flee to security) with power shifting to beta men. Given that a lot of jobs are going to be cut, including BigLaw positions, female-friendly advertising, marketing, and social work, as governments just go broke.
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why must they make it so much harder to cheat? sneaking around is half of the fun.
not to mention that the only thing better than pussy is new pussy.
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Try Scroogle. For even more privacy and convenience, you can even change the search box in Firefox to use Scroogle over SSL.
While you are at it, be sure to block any Google cookies and Javascripts.
If you really want to mess with them, there is a Firefox plugin called TrackMeNot that will send random search queries from your machine to MSN, Google, etc., to confuse them and make their tracking data quite useless.
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“any more than Michael Douglas” –whiskey
??
Michael Douglas is one of the few celebrities who impresses me. Nice wife he’s got.
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Roissy, it’s even worse than you imagine. I suggest Browzar and Ixquick, at the very least.
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DestroyToCreate makes a good point about TrackMeNot as well, though it does hog some bandwidth if you put it on a high setting.
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more marriages early (as women flee to security) with power shifting to beta men
Yes, women will lose their jobs and marry their loser unemployed beta men, right? Hell, what’s my incentive to support a woman who’s only using me for my money? I’d rather use my limited wages in this economy on myself or people who’d really love me. If I wanted to prop up somebody, I’d rather give the money to my nephew or niece.
social work
I will kneel down to Zod for my stimulus and hopes for funding for social work and transit jobs.
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I googled my own name after the election.
I was able to find out which candidates I gave money too (several), and that I’d donated to both parties, where I worked, and what I did.
Needless to say………………….I didn’t like this, and hope like hell my boss doesn’t see it. She’s a witch.
Personal information should be kept offline, and the sites youve looked at should be private. There are many people who might be in poor standing with their immediate boss if she found out and read this site, despite the fine content.
That hookers and liquor line made me belly-laugh.
I see Roissy as a Hugh Hefner type in old age, juggling three hot blondes and gaming the living shit out of them. 🙂
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whiskey
Yeah, this has been demonstrated over and over again. They’re aggressively pro-Islam and pro-Jihad and will remove seemingly anything that in any way portrays Islam or Muslims in a bad light.
z
As a matter of policy I don’t put my real name anywhere online, not ever (webstores etc. are the exception of course). The e-mail addresses I use are anonymous.
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Mason — I meant that Douglass scored a woman fully 25 years younger (at least) than himself. Impressive, but you have to be Michael Douglass to do it. He’s not representative of most men in terms of dating/marriage prowess. Most guy’s second wives do not look like Catherine Zeta Jones. And his ex-girlfriend Maureen Dowd wonders why he didn’t marry her instead of Jones. Seriously.
David A — I doubt most states will be able to afford social welfare programs. I doubt the Feds will be able to as well — you can already see Obama, at the height of his political capital, being pushed-back and his approval rating dropping like the bailout Part two, currently at a plurality of disapproval.
You might see rail transit programs done, if the Feds can pass programs that cut red-tape and allow construction immediately (like, within six months). You are probably more likely to see a push for defense spending, in that it employs lots of engineers, machinists, things like that, can be made to US source materials and labor, and so on.
The idea of large transfers of wealth to social programs that benefit well, basically anyone but White Men (per Robert Reich and Rangel) is a relic of good times. Affordable when the money is rolling in, not when times are tight. All those social workers, NGO types, etc. are going to be out on their ass, along with Advertising, Marketing, low-level lawyers, etc.
Guys who will be in demand are the Joe the Plumber types, self-employed professionals, and so on. That’s IF this is a lasting recession which the Democrats are doing their best to insure.
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whiskey:
You’ve obviously never lived in a place where the government was actually going broke. It may seem counterintuitive at first, but when the economy sinks deep and everyone is broke, both in the government and the private sector, you can expect only that the size of the government will *grow*.
When people experience declining living standards, worsening job prospects, and insecurity about the future, they will demand that the government “do something” to solve the problems — and politicians and bureaucrats will be only too happy to do so. Furthermore, when the prospects look bleak in the private sector, it will only divert the smartest and most capable people towards the security and increasing (at least relatively) opportunities in the government and para-government (NGOs, non-profits, powerful unions, law…) sector.
There is even a blatant historical precedent for this in the U.S. The Great Depression wasn’t exactly a time of shrinking government, was it?
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Vladimir — Much of the current social welfare system goes to connected cronies, and non-productive non-Whites.
In the Great Depression, this is what FDR actually DID:
1. Deport anyone who vaguely looked Mexican and could not produce a birth certificate.
2. Restrict NRA and WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps jobs and contracting to American born only and in practice White Men only.
3. Restrict Blacks, particularly Black Men, from participating in any programs, and crucially, unionizing.
It was extremely ugly (I’m not advocating it) … but it bought (at a price) social peace, no upheavals and demagogues from the right like in Germany or Japan or Italy.
We are now seeing echoes of that: strikers in the UK demanding British Only hiring in the oil fields. Strikers in France demanding French only for government spending. Riots in Greece, and elsewhere.
You are right about the process, but the end is a spoils system. Stuff going to Jessie Jackson’s pocket, or “No White Men allowed” ala Robert Reich, or Dog Parks, or Harleys for Shreveport, or Gender Studies, or stuff like that ($300 million for condoms) becomes hugely damaging — Obama dropped twenty points in approval ratings in two weeks, and the bailout went from approve to disapprove because of that stuff.
The more government in a crisis becomes stuff for non-Whites, connected elites, and women, the more White Men reject it AND government overall, go to tax avoidance “big time” and things collapse. The UK’s Soviet System was allowable as long as money from the South of England and the Oil Fields kept the good times rolling, now with lots of non-British Muslims on the dole, demanding a Muslim state, REAL unemployment, no other opportunities, and so on, the British National Party is gaining and there are wildcat strikes shaking Gordon Brown’s government.
Just like the fall of the USSR — Gorby with the collapse of oil prices could not pay the troops nor the secret police nor his client states. Boom.
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Obama dropped twenty points in approval ratings in two weeks, and the bailout went from approve to disapprove because of that stuff.
Do you have a source on that? Gallup’s rolling average hasn’t shown any movement south yet but it might in the coming days with Daschle, the “stimulus”, et. al.
Much like Ronald Reagan, Obama might be one of those presidents where the people disagree with his specific policies, but like him on a personal level.
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Whiskey,
Most of your points have some vague basis in reality, but they’re hopelessly exaggerated. For instance, Hispanics were something like 1% of the U.S. population in 1933, so they’re pretty much irrelevant for the point you wish to make. Others, however, are outright false, for example the claim about WPA and other New Deal benefits excluding blacks (see e.g. here for some details). I don’t know where you got the idea about Obama’s approval tanking in the last two weeks, which the above commenter has already corrected. You seem to be making these “facts” out of whole cloth as need arises.
In any case, unlike me, you’ve never actually lived in a country whose economy was going down the drain, Great Depression-style. Believe me, you have no idea what directions social trends tend to take in such situations. I can tell you that it’s nothing like your speculations, and it will most certainly *not* lead to cutbacks in government and its associated parasitic sector, nor to a renaissance of any traditional marriage and family customs. On the contrary. Paradoxically, bad times don’t even lead to a decrease in the need for status whoring, which might in fact well *increase*. With this in mind, your predictions of escalating ethnic strife are not only exaggerated extravagantly, but entirely beside the point.
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