John McAfee plans to destroy Google. Details? Ummm... Having tilted at the US presidency without success, John McAfee has picked his last next big windmill: Google. Speaking to totally independent Russian media outlet RT, the putative founder of antivirus as an industry and jungle adventurer named The Chocolate Factory as no less than a threat to human dignity and promised his …
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Lazy copy pasta is lazy.
Yes and no, it does bring together a nice collection of online information so I gave it an upvote for effort (I assume the commentard has done this without using Google, but even if not it would win a point for irony). I am 100% with McAfee that Google is evil, but I think his plans are ambitious, to put it mildly. That said, John's speciality is already on display here: his ability to get into the press :).
I like him.
He has sensible ideas, sometimes, and those are not far removed from my own.
But nope, John. Not going to use your sentinal box. I have a hard time installing any application these days without suspicion, not going to install a box called 'sentinal'.
There is no privacy on the web. We sold this with the dreams of free shit which then was lost to the net with the phrase 'lessons have been learned' which seems the reponse when 'safeguards have been put in place' doesn't work. We then sold the residual bits of privacy with the nightmares of child molesters and terrorists. It, privacy, doesn't exist. If you try to use it, you will end up on a list of 'interesting activities for future investigation'.
Actually, we are, and sadly, we prove it over and over again.
Anyway, he forgets the big issue he has when going up against Google, they got where they are by giving people good products in return for their private data.
McAffee is crap and expensive.
Good luck with Sentinel...
Actually, no we aren't. There's certainly a level at which the behaviour of masses can be picked apart, studied, learned, and reassembled as pure statistics, but I for one have no desire to be treated as if that would be all that I am, as if those numbers could ever hope to begin to touch the astonishing diversity of each of us on the individual level. I may be unique "just like everyone else", but that does not mean I wish to conform to anybody else, or be pressed into one of any number of standard moulds or "bins". None of which is to say I want to see Google burn (I don't), but still, the man has a surprisingly sane point this time - I'm curious what exactly does he have in mind against it all...
We are not numbers. I'm not a statistic
Yes you are. Get over it .
" but I for one have no desire to be treated as if that would be all that I am"
Well what do you want instead? Google calls you by your fist name if you log in . very nice. Given they have literally billions of customers - what more could you be?
Google tells me where stuff is - it does what i wanted it to . I dont give a shit if they note down "ooh thats the 300th search for 'mcafee' today" , and the 30th from region x
you'll have to excuse google if they dont want to get the to know the real you - they have a lot of people to see. And in the grand scheme of things , I'm nothing special. I'm a statistic .
“We are not numbers. I'm not a statistic, I'm not a collection of attitudes and desires, I'm a human being with my own dreams and hopes and problems, and by making me a number, you've removed my dignity”
Where am I?
In the global Village.
What do you want?
Information.
Whose side are you on?
That would be telling. We want information… information… information.
You won't get it.
By hack or by crack, we will.
Who are you?
The new Number Two.
Who is Number One?
You are Number Six.
I am not a number! I am a free man!
[laugh]
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Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?
In the Foundation series we had the concept of a *science* developed based on the actions of a society as an entity. Was Google imagined by A.C.C.?
Is J.M. going to build R. Daneel?
I already spend most workdays under the stairs. Are we all going to end up living underground?
Science fiction authors. Need more of them all the time.
so not that much then ?
Having used Google since day one (after Lycos and Altavista and Magellan) I've seen it slowly become less useful as the amount of noise on the internet has increased exponentially.
And that's *after* you ignore all the paid for and suggested results.
Keyword searching is fine for library catalogues, and narrow-spread sources, but it dies on it's arse when confronted with a sea of meaningless data that is the internet.
Google could hide it well, earlier on with page-ranking (which still helps to bring what you *are* looking for a bit closer to the top of the 10,000 results it's found). But again, the sheer amount of data is overwhelming it.
If Google wanted to make some serious money, they should provide a paid-for search which excludes "frivolous" results (mainly from social media) as a baseline.
Having seen IBMs "Watson" demoed (at Hursley), I'd say that's the future of search.
Its the rise of Search Engine Optimization as a credible discipline -- its actually a arms race between Google and people who will literally do anything to get ranked on the first page of a Google search.
I wouldn't mind using a gazette service, something that has curated content. I wouldn't use it all the time but its handy if I actually want to find something specific. (Currently the best search for products seems to be Amazon.)
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