A new online privacy model.

I was reading through an old Slashdot post of mine and it got me thinking.
Privacy in the online world is a tricky thing. Many companies exist to sell your online information. Facebook and Google being the two headline companies. But it got to me about how it is now almost mpossible to do anything online without losing your privacy. One reaction might just be to give up on those who do that. You get plenty of people who refuse to use facebook or google or whatever because of privacy concerns.

But y also can't use price comparison websites,(they sell your information as part of their service) Most large company's websites (amazon, screwfix, M&S, Tesco - sorry for the UK slant there). Basically anything you do at all on the web gives away your privacy.



That said, you can't go outside because people will take photos of you and with face recognition software that will soon be available you'll be tracked by these. By the way I'm saying soon as any point within your lifetime because once online photos stay online forever, so if the technology is developed by anyone in the next 10-20 years then you need to be concerned.
Face it, technology has meant the end of privacy as we have expected it in the past. Kind of like it has meant the end of the copyright/distribution as RIAA has known it. How we deal with this is the next question, but hiding under a rock is a very luddite reaction.

I'm not saying we should all give out credit card details out to anyone, and post photos of what I got up to with the wife last night on LinkedIn, but the world has changed and hiding from it won't help. We need a new model of privacy.

So what do I suggest? Well the first thing is we have to carry on with Zones of Trust. Google quite literally knows everything that I get up to. It has all my photos, all my calendar entries and all my personal documents and plans. While this is convenient it is also not really sensible. Even my fiancée does not have quite that level of access to my information. Likewise I have to remember that anything I do in a public place will become public record for eternity. Also realise that soon enough everything I have ever done in a public place will be similarly searchable and available.
Here's the turnaround though, it will be similarly available for everyone else too. Thinking of taking a new job well not only does your boss google stalk you, but you can do the same to him and all the other interview candidates. I can easily imagine my nephews growing up in a world where that information is commonplace and accepted. Likewise your browsing habits, all your browsing habits will be available. I imagine it will start off by someone launching a service where you can add to your facebook profile your browsing history. People already like websites or +1 them to show off stuff they find, so why not show everything? Someone will do it and some kids will start using it amongst their friends and it will spread.
All of this I see as a good thing but I don't think the older generation will get it, but I am starting to see people ever more so now having no expectation of privacy and this ending in a more open and honest society.

Mad Salt Lake Idea

I think this idea must be mad, because no-one seems to have done it yet; however I don't understand what the problem would be, so I explain it here to be deconstructed.

There exist in the world a large number of salt flats that are to my knowledge to all intents and purposes barren wastelands with no useful purpose to the ecology or humans. I propose to change that.
There is no shortage on this planet of seawater so we pump the seawater back to these salt flats and create new salt lakes. This would give nice shallow water, unfortunately it'd almost certainly be too salty for anything but the most hardy algae to live in. So what would creating a new dead sea give us.

• Increase precipitation
• Cooling effects of bodies of water on surrounding area
  
• You could use it as cooling water runoff area for power plants.
• Salt production

Not major benefits it might seem except that people are suggesting building boats spraying sea water to create more clouds to combat global warming. Also there's always talk about the lack of fresh water, so here's a way to increase it.

The only problems I can see with this would be the energy cost of pumping the water (which might effectively be free if the power plant cooling is available) and the potential corruption of the water table. If that was a problem though then presumably every time it rained on one of these locations you'd get irreversible salt water corruption of the water table.

Housing Shortage

Why is there one?

Lack of land to build on is the reason often given. Builders who get permission to build a new housing estate then build as many as they can as close as they can for minimum cost vs return. And max return is I believe proportional to the number of rooms a house can claim to have.

Ok that explains why they don't build houses with the very useful/essential item of a cellar, even though it would be worth its weight in gold for most people and add minimum cost to the price of the house (at least I believe this is try, perhaps this is a case of citation needed).

So why not build about 2 stores, one fo the first things a lot of people do when getting a house is to turn the loft into an attic room, so there is clearly desire for it. My guess comes down to planning regulations again. That said the new development near us some houses do have 4 floors, but they are mainly flats so...

All this bugs me, because underground is so well insulated that is effectively perfectly insulated - hell if you dug deep enough you'd have as much free heat as you could ever want ;-) So there should be every reason to dig out at least one layer of cellar if not several. As for building higher, well gardens are that small these days, and many are paved/decked over so the reasons for keeping them in sunlight fall down.

So I would say that if the government wants to improve the housing sitation, get them to build cellars and encourage them to build taller houses.

Who throws a shoe?

I've been thinking about the current news story of the shoe thrower; particularly the allegations that he was beaten after he was detained.

Now, two options are possible, either he was beaten up after he was detained, or he wasn't.

If he wasn't, and the injuries are from while he was being detained then, then do I think he was justified in the event. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and call it a protest. Not really, no, I don't think it is valid to use physical violence to make a political statement; it happens a lot, but seeking to hurt others in order to further political aims has got to be a big bad, and the cries of 'he did it first and worse' might be valid, but the use of retaliatory action should always be condemned; after all, an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. I think if the middle east in general could learn that lesson then things would be much better.
Now let's assume that he was beaten up after being detained. Words fail me trying to say how wrong this is if it were true, this is Guantanamo Bay level of wrong if it is true. Now this man's protest that I think is a bad thing has exposed a larger wrong. It's not quite the level of Jaywalking to bring the attention of Concentration camps to the public eye, but it is certainly I believe a lesser wrong to highlight a greater wrong.
You know I can't help thinking that did the shoe thrower himself put Bush at risk? Not really no, I'm fairly sure that a shoe even to the head isn't life threatening; whereas Bush ordered the bombing of this Journalist's city. Looking at the big picture Bush put this Journalist's life in much greater danger than the Journalist did Bush's.

Maybe it's me, I expect very high standards from law enforcement agencies, well I expect them to follow the law if you can call that a high standard.

So let's assume an almost worst case scenario that he was beaten after being detained and that this is exposed in light of investigations. Do I think the thrower did the right thing. Absolutely not, even if it did expose a greater wrong he didn't know that at the time. Fundamentally in the ideal case a society in all forms must be able to cope with unstable elements and survive without breaking its own principles; if you're going to break the principles at least admit that you are universally breaking this and state that you aim to break them before you break them - i.e. make it official public policy that terrorist suspects even in lack of any reliable evidence will be officially tortured for information on the country's home soil. If you see that any element of this is wrong and therefore want to not do that, then you have to give up on the whole thing.
Or at least that's how I believe things should work, as it stands it looks like I'll carry on being the good little automoton.