Well, I’ve told you to take care when liberals and other shysters use the word “smart” to describe whatever it is they’re selling. “Smart” for them, bunky, not you. As in “Ooh, that smarts!”
(I am back from the bank–for now. Aunt Joan is dead, but the paperwork goes on forever. I wonder if I ought to take up hard liquor as a hobby.)
The latest is “smart clothes,” aka “Tommy Jeans Xplore” from Tommy Hilfiger, featuring “smart chip-embedded technology” that makes a sweatshirt sell for $90 to $99 (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44965150). People who wear this stuff are walking “brand ambassadors,” and thanks to the chip, the company will acquire “an unprecedented level of information on customers.” Yup, it’ll track you wherever you go.
And those who get the most wear out of the most items will win [trumpet fanfare!] Rewards from the Tommy Hilfiger Company!
But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet, O featherless bipeds! A new company’s in town, with newer and better smart clothes that are much smarter, and cost a lot more, than anything poor old Tommy Hilfiger ever dreamed of.
Smart Sweats by Mark O’ the Beast not only track your location, but also record your conversations, keep a record of anything you read or write, report on how you vote, and sign you up for Special Hospice Care if you don’t vote Democrat. A sweatshirt costs $666, but it’s worth every penny–would Satan lie to you?
Smart means it’s tracking you. GM’s On Star, which has been around for years is the first example which comes to mind. Smart products are a huge security risk and an invasion of privacy.
Privacy? What’s that? Do we still have privacy? And if we do, why are all these people trying to give it away with both hands?
If people only knew the tenth of it. Computers have destroyed privacy, or more to the point, unscrupulous and immoral people have used computers to destroy our privacy.
Your correction has hit the target.
It’s a crying’ shame. Computers are a wonderful tool. The personal computer was a great idea and made billions upon billions of dollars while it helped to increase the standard of living. What happened?
A while back, people realized that information about computer users was very valuable. A computer tracks all sorts of things. I would imagine that Amazon knows a lot about me, likewise for my Internet service provider, my hosting company, and the companies I pay for cloud services. Multiply this by literally billions of people earth-wide and you have a very lucrative group of industries.
So software companies decided to make money, not strictly from software, but also from data-mining their customers. In my opinion it is sick, twisted and amoral, but it happens all the time. It’s not just where you go on the net, but it can even go down to algorithms that analyze typing speed and other signals intelligence.
Signals Intelligence is an amazing thing. Without being able to break Japanese codes, SigInt gave the US the edge in the Battle of Midway, and turned the tide of the war in the Pacific. What they have today makes that look like small potatoes.
I recently took a fairly advanced course in some security topics. It was unsettling to learn some of the tools and techniques available to criminals. Use long passwords; 12 characters or more with upper and lower-case characters, numbers and punctuation marks. Don’t tell your password to anyone: ANYONE! Don’t use public access computers to access any online accounts. Wear a hat, sunglasses, a fake mustache and walk in a strange gait.
Ok, scratch that last one, but some humor was called for. 🙂
Then there was DNC genius John Podesta, whose password was “password”…
Unbelievably common. Many servers do not allow “trivial passwords” such as your username (or significant parts thereof), “123456”, “password” etc.
Reminds me of the author who included in his book clues where you could find money – he sold a lot of books.
SMH…