

Creepy? - 16g
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/06/23/creepy

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gaulinmp
I can't read Gruber's posts anymore. The inability to respond to his specious
claims is infuriating. For example in this post, the policy does not
explicitly state the ability to opt out. Also he ignores the studies showing
that with large enough data sets, individuals can be identified by their
behavioral patterns, nullifying Apple's claim to the contrary. Gruber
constantly passes off pejorative arguments as cogent analysis, yet
unbelievably is still well respected in most circles. I weep for the loss of
independent reasoning.

~~~
pohl
Here we are in 2010, in a world replete with democratized media, where any
person with access to a computer — even without owning one — can sign up for a
free email address at any number of free providers, and then sign up for a
free blog service from an even more impressive array of providers, and speak
their mind and refer to other such pages using the magic of Uniform Resource
Locators. And, in this world, we have such an overgrown sense of entitlement
that we get upset when someone chooses to reserve their blog as their own and
doesn't allow us to take a piss in their pages.

Absolutely incredible that this is called an "inability to respond". Exactly
how low does the bar need to be set before one is willing to lift one's leg to
step over it?

Gruber links to people who have chosen to respond to him in their own blogs on
a regular basis, and this has allowed me to discover blogs I may never have
discovered before. It also drives traffic to them that they may never have
seen before. What's so wrong with him expecting you to engage him as a peer?

~~~
gloob
Hypothetical answer: I'm not a blogger, nor do I want to be one. Gruber is
free to do as he wants, of course - he is perfectly free to only respond to
emails encoded with EBCDIC, if he really feels like it - but that doesn't
somehow remove any legitimacy from complaints against him.

Secondly, I suspect the desire to comment on his blog arises more from a wish
to engage (read: inform) other readers, rather than Gruber himself.

~~~
tptacek
And your point is? _Nobody is entitled to comment on someone else's site._
"Lack of comments" is simply a bullshit criticism.

~~~
gloob
No-one is entitled to have a window manager on Linux either, but I'd probably
still be using a Mac if there weren't any. The OP of this thread is not, to my
understanding, making a moral claim about how Gruber should or shouldn't have
comments - he's saying that the inability to comment, combined with Gruber's
factual inaccuracies, frustrates him sufficiently that he no longer pays much
attention to the blog. Is he allowed to make that decision? Or is Gruber
entitled to his attention?

~~~
garret
_he no longer pays much attention to the blog_

He pays attention enough to start comment threads about it.

~~~
chc
That requires almost no attention at all. IIRC, that's a large part of the
reason why John doesn't want comments on his blog.

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aresant
Since the early days of iPhone you could collect near real-time location data
on individual users by having your app ping location once they give basic
location permission.

Seems like this privacy policy is a clarification on an existing process, and
maybe necessary since the advent of new background services make is easier to
collect in real time?

~~~
chc
That's precisely what Gruber is saying, and though I initially read that
portion of the TOS with the "creepy" interpretation where Apple will track you
constantly for some nefarious iAds-related purpose, I now think your reading
is probably right.

