Exactly. Bad behavior should be punished. If companies could just release any junk they wanted and paper it over with a hit game, the online rights world would be a worse place even than it is now.
By using Valve's online sites and products, users agree
that Valve may collect aggregate information, individual
information, and personally identifiable information, as
defined below. Valve may share aggregate information and
individual information with other parties. Valve shall not
share personally identifiable information with other
parties, except as described in the policy below.
It doesn't seem like it's much different than Steam. Check out the System Information option from the Help drop-down menu, I don't think it gathers that information by guessing. Steam was also forced onto users with the release of a much-anticipated product -- in Valve's case it was Half Life 2.
> But there’s a significant difference. Valve’s policy is self-restricted to anything on your PC directly relating to its own products. EA’s is so broad that it gives the publisher permission to scan your entire hard drive, and report back absolutely anything you may have installed, and indeed when you may use it, and then pass that information on the third parties.
So currently Valve uses that clause mainly to scan for cheats and hacks; EA goes way beyond.
I have seen Steam pop up a dialog that says what they collected and asks if you would like to submit it or not. It does not seem like they submit the information without your explicit consent.
I have a Nook Color running CM7.
Here are some things I use that I hadn't seen much mention of yet:
* FBReader and PDF Viewer for ebooks.
- I haven't found the need to use anything more complicated than these. They both save my place in the file and pick up there again when I reopen it. They are also very reliable.
* SoundCloud for finding new music.
- This app could be more featureful but it gets the best parts of the site.
* Reactable and Caustic for trying to make music.
- These are both really amazing. Caustic is a more traditional interface (like Reason) but really well done. Reactable is a really fun toy that lets you manipulate sounds using an interface made for touch and experimentation.
"Using their vast pools of free labour, China's prisons produce everything from green tea to coal, paperclips to footballs, medical gloves to high-grade optical equipment."
"Prison Labor is also being exploited in China, according to executive director of the Laogai Research Foundation Harry Wu, who said prison laborers make garments, electronic components, coffee mugs and toys that end up in U.S. stores. “The Chinese government continues to use forced labor to make goods, condones sweatshop conditions in its factories, and refuses to allow workers to create independent unions-- is it really any wonder that low-quality, harmful toys are being exported to the US and into the hands of our children?” said Wu, who spent 19 years in a Chinese prison.
Wal-Mart was singled out for their role in allowing the exploitation of cheap Chinese labor. “Wal-Mart bears a lion’s share of responsibility for pushing the toy industry into a region where product safety and worker safety inspection is virtually nonexistent,” said Bama Athreya, executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum."
Wow. I wish I could use this on my netbook but it doesn't seem to be useful for much more than testing right now. Configuration and keyboard use is pretty limited.
A lot of people are already stating that most of the mess documented in this post is not necessarily the fault of Windows 7. The OEM is at fault for not installing current versions of Java and Flash. The OEM is at fault for installing Norton crapware instead of a decent antivirus. The software developers are at fault for producing a buggy game, etc. This is all true.
BUT a non-technical user will not know any of this. They will see all of this as the experience they had using Windows 7. If Microsoft cares about the experience users have on Windows 7 they must prevent OEM providers from shipping it in this condition.
What would be some ways of going about building an extremely small, inconspicuous, and reliable personal recording system?
I would think you could almost use a phone with some extra hardware if you could find some ways of offloading or reducing battery consumption. Then it's just a matter of streaming it to the cloud.
Android phones do too. At least if you are root. I don't know if there is an official app because I just wrote a script. Just use the standard Linux bluetooth utilities.
