I started my reading today with ZDNET’s 2019 Turkeys. This is an annual effort to highlight the failures and disappointments in the technology industry. I must admit that I was unaware of some of the things they highlighted and, honestly, quite disappointed in ZDNET for some of the others they had an issue with, then there were the obvious entries that I think they had every right to show disappointment in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the Turkeys this year revolves around Google purchasing Nest and some related home security and convenience product lines. At the heart of the issue are two problems, Google has taken these products from open architecture (a field of technology and protocol sharing so others could develop products to work with Nest and associated security products) to a closed architecture where only Google will develop and sell compatible products and services. The second problem is that Google has not addressed privacy issues for those using this and other families of their products and has a habit of using the “presumed private” data in some very not private ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n Another Turkey suggested by ZDNET is Google and its lack of appropriate\n behavior with large blocks of personal medical records that they gained\n access to by virtue of that data being managed by them in the cloud. \nIt remains to be seen if legal action will be taken by patients, \norganizations or even local or national government agencies; but, \ninitially, it appears as if that might be appropriate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple \nof Turkeys were handed out for a lack of acceptance of the USB-C \nstandard which ZDNET had hoped several brands would embrace this year \nwith their new products. Because the connector is more damage resistant\n and easier to correctly plugin combined with enhanced power capacity \nand data rates, it was hoped that it would be widely used on new \ndevices; however, Apple and Samsung appear to have not been ready for \nthat change. Maybe ZDNET does not fully understand the marketing \nstrategies (planned obsolescence and designed in fragility to guarantee \nmore sales?) of these phone manufacturers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Highlighted in several\n of the Turkeys this year was the disparity between the presumed privacy\n of cloud storage and the actual level of protection for private \nmaterial stored in the cloud. Specific issues appear to be access \nallowed to law enforcement (without need for a court order or warrant), \nuse of data by the cloud manager for marketing, research, and guidance \nsold to businesses including insurance firms. It appears that this may \nhave been done within the letter of the privacy statements attached to \nthe sign-up process for obtaining the cloud storage and other services; \nbut, for the consumer, those statements are meaningless without \nconsiderable legal assistance and a full understanding of the \npossibilities for use and misuse of the stored information. In short, \nthe above-average consumer is unable to grant informed consent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I started my reading today with ZDNET’s 2019 Turkeys. This is an annual effort to highlight the failures and disappointments in the technology industry. I must admit that I was unaware of some of the things they highlighted and, honestly, quite disappointed in ZDNET for some of the others they had an issue with, then … Continue reading “Turkey? or not Turkey?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22,20,9,21],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cloud","tag-new-products","tag-privacy","tag-usb-c"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/benediktson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/benediktson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/benediktson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/benediktson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/benediktson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/benediktson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171,"href":"http:\/\/benediktson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions\/171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/benediktson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/benediktson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/benediktson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}