Source: Privacy International

Well doesn’t that just make ya’ proud though? Funny, taking a look outside just now I don’t see any police armed with assault rifles standing on every corner with shifty looks in their eyes. Don’t see any camera’s hanging off the trees either. I don’t have any chips hidden in my driver’s license so that my whereabouts is always known to the authorities (yet). My television doesn’t have two-way monitoring capabilities at all and I can even turn it off if I wish. We don’t even have a cable or satellite hookups and I certainly don’t own any sort of webcam (and never will by God!). I don’t work for the good of the “State”, I’m not followed around when I run my errands (that I know of) and I don’t have the authorities suddenly throwing me into a vehicle and interrogating me in some dark room with the light from a single lamp shining in my face because they saw me talking with an “undesirable”.

I can’t say that I like the looks of the map at all though. Especially in light of the fact that I ruined my health defending the US and the rest of the world for that matter from that very country that’s colored as black as we as we are!

Well, I tell you what. I have eyes that still see okay and a brain that still functions mostly or at least that’s what the the VA tells me so I am aware of all the surveillance camera’s that surround the outside of and plastered on the inside walls of just about every business, bank, school, State and federal building that I encounter in my travels these days. In fact I’ve grown quite used to watching my gorgeous self displayed on flat screen monitors every time I turn down another aisle in my local supermarket and all those funky purple and mirrored domes hanging from the ceiling like some sort of monstrous ceiling pimple with cameras pointed at me stuck inside of them. I also know very well that I can’t go anywhere in just about any good sized town and most certainly any city without knowing that somewhere on some building or utility pole a camera is feeding a signal to some monitor and/or video recorder inside some booth in some building where someone is taking notice of the color shirt I’m wearing or will at one time or another.

Does this report upset anyone? Does it make you want to look over your shoulder to see if the cat is staring at you or anybody else for that matter? Well, if it does then there’s only one thing to say and that’s we the people let it happen so don’t complain about it. Can’t blame the current President either since we put him there as well. The only ones who can control this problem is us. But do we really have to?

I have a gun at home, an old rifle. This rifle is aligned and bore sighted to two hundred yards at which point the bullet drops exactly one inch. I know how to use this rifle and I always hit what I aim at. So what keeps me from using this rifle for hunting down the troublemakers, drug dealers, child abusers or some asinine troublemaking neighbor myself? It’s called a strong sense of personal responsibility that’s what and that same type of thing applies to all of this surveillance and the other abilities the various authorities might have to pry into our lives just because they can. As far as I’m concerned, the “Black” rating for China for instance is simply not the same thing as the “Black” rating for the US, not in the least. If you don’t believe me, go live on Beijing for a year or so and let me know how you liked it when and if you come back.

It’s not the fact that we have the ability to do something, like nuke the entire globe when we had the chance, it’s the fact that we chose not to that really matters and the the same applies to this report and the USA’s current rating which really ain’t that much better than last year’s rating (the pink one–second from the bottom). As long as we use this for the protection of our people instead of for control, we’ll be alright. In the meantime, keeping a sharp eye on the authorities and their doings is always prudent.

8 THINGS I’M PASSIONATE ABOUT

1 – Honesty, common sense on how to use both at the same time.

2 – My home and privacy thereof.

3 – My most wonderful lady.

4 – Friendship

5 – Freedom and the right to shoot anyone who tries to take it away.

6 – Drunk/drugged out drivers who should be shot on sight but aren’t.

7 – Child abusers (both male and female) who should eviscerated on sight and then shot but aren’t.

8 – More.

8 THINGS I SAY OFTEN

1 – ##@@!!

2 – &^%$#$#$!!

3 – I can’t remember.

4 – I still can’t remember.

5 – Have you seen my glasses, keys, hearing aids, pills, wallet, etc, etc.

6 – What?

7 – What??

8 – It wasn’t me. It was the cats.

8 BOOKS I RECENTLY READ

1 – Sea Hunters II – Clive Cussler

2 – Desperation – Stephen King

3 – Fevre Dream – George R.R. Martin

4 – All Things Wise and Wonderful – James herriot

5 – I read too much.

6 – I can’t remember.

7 – I still can’t remember.

8 – ditto

8 THINGS TO DO BEFORE I DIE

1 – Grow old.

2 – Finish Breathing

3 – See to it that my honey finds her dream.

4 – Tie up those damned loose ends.

5 – Jump out of perfectly good airplane.

6 – Hang glide at least once

7 – Learn to tango–Okay, I’m only kidding.

8 – See the rest of my country before there’s nothing left to see.

8 SONGS I CAN LISTEN TO OVER AND OVER AGAIN

I was a sound engineer at one time and a good one at that. I have forgotten more music than I’ve ever learned which was more than I can remember. I was also a Cold War submariner. My hearing was damaged during that time in the service and the damage was self progressive. Now I’m legally deaf and no longer able to enjoy listening to music. For this reason, I abstain from answering this question.

8 THINGS THAT ATTRACT ME TO MY FRIENDS (some of these are Grandad’s answers. Some I would have put down myself and indicate so).

1 – Honesty (Yup)

2 – Humor (Yup)

3 – The ability to forget themselves (Yup again)

4 – Untidiness [tidy people scare me and minimalists freak me out altogether]. (Note: Unbelievable slobs are right out though.)

5 – The ability to laugh at themselves

6 – Posses the ability of holding a decent conversation for more than a few seconds without having a seizure.

7 – Hypocrisy not allowed unless they’re prepared to be called on it.

8 – Animal lovers (absolutely)

8 THINGS I LEARNED IN THE LAST YEAR

1. Things never, ever stay the same.

2. My lady contradicts the above statement bless her wonderful heart.

3. I’m really not indestructible.

4. That love means sticking together through the bad times.

5. The best used vehicle that you can buy in the USA is an old Jeep Cherokee.

6. That I can’t properly water the plants no matter how hard I try.

7. I really enjoyed the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogies (I always did like swashbucklers).

8. That I’m overjoyed at the fact this is the last question of this meme.

8 FOLKS WHO ARE GOING TO GET TAGGED WITH THIS MEME.

Well, I’ll tell you. I’m not going to tag anyone with this meme. I’m lousy at this part of it which is something else I learned in the last year so you can add that to the list too. Instead, I’ll be a complete fuddy-duddy and just invite anyone who happens to stop by and wants to give this a try to please do so and leave a link to your attempt in a comment. If I get enough, I’ll post a list just for the fun of it.

Disclaimer: The following is for information purposes only. I personally don’t have a problem with the fact that the new update notifications in WordPress 2.3 sends basic information about my blog’s setup and the blog’s (home) URL to the WordPress servers no more than I care that my Windows XP PRO and most of my programs call home to momma now and then. I’m constantly leaving my blog’s URL all over heck and breakfast with every comment I leave, my plugins are public knowledge, my SEO score is 97%, why the heck would I care if WordPress phones home every now and then?

Anyway, here’s the complaints…

Why send the blog’s (home) URL?

The new update notification feature sends certain expected information back to the WP servers like your plugin’s version numbers, WP version, etc, but it also sends your blog’s (home) URL along with it and that’s where some folks that were following and/or involved with the project were taking exception. As of now the WP servers don’t do a thing with your blog’s URL and by what I’ve read, this is just in preparation for some possible new features that may show up in future WP versions. If they end up not using it, the blog’s URL will be removed from the information package. The point of the whole matter is that some consider the URL to be personal information, is not needed in the info anyway and that it should not be sent to WordPress and it’s servers along with the rest of the plugin data in the first place. The biggest beef being that along with the basic and expected data that is required in any type of auto update notification process, the inclusion of the blog’s home URL might open a gateway for hackers. This is not proven of course, just opinion.

Do they need to let you know about this?

The second argument I found was that currently there is no obvious disclaimer that that this info is being sent to WordPress.org’s servers nor what info is included. Of course anyone with the least bit of tech background at all or even longtime experience with running their blog on a WordPress install is going to realize that an auto update function for anything requires information of your existing setup to be sent to the update servers otherwise it wouldn’t work. But do they need to provide an obvious disclaimer stating this? Well, probably. If it was Microsoft or Google rather than WordPress, the entire world would be up in arms now wouldn’t it?.

It’s on–period

The last complaint revolved around the fact that this update notification service is built into the core and you can’t turn it off via the admin and even others stated that it should be off as default with an “opt in”/”opt out” section in the admin so the user has a choice whether to have the auto update notifications and the information sent thereof turned on or off as they please.

Now if I remember correctly, there’s been a ton of posts over the past couple of months seen on various blogs from the pro’s to the personals that listed all the upcoming features of this new release including…this new plugin update notification feature. I don’t remember anyone complaining then.

And that’s it.

**********

Like I stated at the beginning of this post, this new auto update notification feature and how it works simply doesn’t concern me in fact, I’m glad to have it. Saves me about an hour or so each weekend hunting down any new updates for my installed plugins and I wouldn’t turn this new feature off even if they provided an easy way for me to do so. I do believe however, that they should have let people know up front of the fact this version sends certain information back to the WordPress servers for the new plugins update notification feature. It’s just good press if nothing else. Other than that–I’m not worried about it.

By the way, this blog is now running on the just newly released WP 2.3, my “plugins I use” page still lives at the top of my header image and you all know my blog’s URL. So this is a problem?

What do you think?

Update: As of this morning, the official announcement of WordPress 2.3 includes in it’s new features write up, an announcement of the new update notification functions and the information sent to the new api.wordpress.org service that bounces this info against the plugin database which then lets you know if there are any new versions available. I’ll tip my hat to the folks at WordPress for being up front about it. Now let’s see how many requests come in for an “opt out” feature added to the next release. 

Technorati tags: WordPress 2.3, WP 2.3, WP 2.3 privacy

Is anyone really concerned about your privacy being violated by using Google or do you believe that privacy begins at home and what kind of private information you actually store on your computer?

And protection such as firewalls and anti-virus programs? Or how about signing in to iGoogle before you use it? Is that riskier than using Google without signing in (meaning searches)?

What do you think? Let me know. Might make a good future post you never know.

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Technorati tags: Google, privacy, personal information

The fact that it hasn’t crashed in the last hour is the first plus.

I downloaded this particular version (.7) from Photobucket where I store my images to use with the Performancing blog editor extension for Firefox which is the one I use most of the time and since Flock is based on the Firefox browser and this version has been written to specifically work with PhotoBucket (and Flickr I believe) I just had to give it a try.

It took no time at all to set up my WordPress account Just Thinkin and my PhotoBucket account and when all was ready I dragged the IE-eating Firefox logo off my hard drive and plopped onto the editor, the photo uploader window came up and with a couple of mouse clicks from me, uploaded the photo to PhotoBucket and a few seconds later it appeared in the editor. The whole process took about 30 seconds which includes me hunting around my desktop for the little fox image.

Now I’ve actually only been playing around with Flock for the last 45 minutes so I have a lot to learn yet for instance: How to download my existing posts so I can bring them up for a possible edit or how to delete an existing post using Flock but all in good time.

Oh… and memory use is much improved also. The browser’s been up about one hour now and the editor for about 30 minutes and I’m pushing around 52 megs usage which is similar to what I see for Firefox 1.5.04 (I currently use Firefox 2 beta 1 as my main browser which uses even less memory in the long run).

So far I like what I see.

Whether I continue to use Flock or not remains to be seen. I have no problem admitting to the fact that I’m an older guy (gonna see fifty all too soon) and the virtual “social” scene is still a little stand offish to me plus the fact that they all seem to be 20 to 30 years younger than I am (Horrors!) and I especially need to know that I can control all these interacting accounts to my satisfaction.

Older computer techs like myself tend to be a bit more paranoid when it comes to privacy than the younger set who mostly grew up with computers and the even youger ones who (almost) are growing older with “social” type networks and such. People like me however, got our knocks during the “bad old days” of the PC (and later with a brand new thing called the “World Wide Web”) and we definately did not grow up with computers. In fact, I was 26 when the first PC from IBM hit the streets and it was another 8 years until I bought my first one (Windows 3.1 and DOS 6.0). 3 years later I hooked my first dial-up account (with a whoppin’ 9600 baud modem) and I have been off and running ever since.

It’s a lot of fun so far and it’s been quite a long time since the world of the PC and the Internet has offered up anything that peaked my interest and nowadays it’s a veritable playground and Flock is yet another part of it.

Hmmm, inline spell checking would be a nice touch but all in good time.

Wonder what the next ten years will bring?

technorati tags:Flock, Firefox, blog, posting, social

Blogged with Flock