On Apr 22, 11:55 am, j <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Nice idea. Maybe it's just me but the music of the video is a bit > creepy. :)
Yes, it's from a very political track by the group A Silver Mt. Zion :-) > What if I am an oppressive government's agent using Fluid Nexus to get > access to activist messages? Is that possible? You raise a good and very common objection. The simple response is this: all technologies can be re-appropriated by governments or other groups for their own purposes. Witness groups using e-mail and websites to spread hate messages and various nefarious calls to action. So this is not something that can necessarily be built into the technology in the first place to prevent this type of use. We can always create pre-determined groups that have limited membership, with the consequent decrease in efficacy of the network. (Note that this is not an argument for the neutrality of technology, but rather an acceptance that no matter what I, as the technology developer does with the technology, it can always be re-appropriated and re-purposed by others in ways I cannot predict. It's to acknowledge my lack of agency and control once I release something into the world.) So a more direct response would be this: yes, indeed, governments could use this technology in the same way. In a sense, though, all activist use of technology is an implicit cat-and-mouse game. As deficiencies are found within the current structure of the technology, developers can change it to better deal with current threats. And in a way what I'm doing here is related to two assumptions that could both be true in different parts of the world: 1) it will take time for a technology like this to catch on and for the government to find out about it; and 2) the government already has this technology and by developing it we are simply leveling the playing field. What I am more worried about is the broadcast of cell phone information even if the towers are "turned off". Because while a government might turn off mobile towers for the purpose of making calls, they could still use these towers for the purposes of triangulating position. This is a much more difficult issue to tackle. Tracking people and their location based on Bluetooth broadcasting is also possible and is an inevitable consequence of the technology. Whether this is a problem in practice remains to be seen, and is something that can only be considered with a keen questioning of the risks and benefits of use. nick > Good luck. > > On Apr 21, 6:45 am, zero <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > maybe as a sub-group of dataportability ? > > *just my two cents* > > > On Apr 21, 2:30 pm, "Muthu Ramadoss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Thanks for the details. Checked out your website, looks great. > > > > Mobile Social Networking is an exciting space to be on currently, and am > > > sure lot of folks working on it right now. > > > > May be we can start a group, and start collaborating on the ideas, > > > technologies etc., related to the mobile social networking space. > > > > Any thoughts? > > > > On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 5:10 PM, whitemice <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > >>Which platform is snowball server running?<< > > > > The original plan was to implement it in PHP, but because Android > > > > supports a lot of the Apache specification I found that if I used a > > > > Java host I could reuse a lot of the client code on the server (the > > > > benefits of peer-to-peer and all that). > > > > > Currently it is running as a JSP web service on a virtual Apache > > > > Tomcat server with a MySQL backend. Although each Cell-id-node- > > > > instance is atomic, so I can scale it up and make it distributed if > > > > necessary. The idea being that I can just add computing resources to > > > > it as needed. > > > > > >>Do you broadcast more than the location from the server? << > > > > The server turns each Cell tower into a Snowball node. This means it > > > > doesn't actually broadcast location information (not yet anyway), but > > > > instead allows Snowball Ads to be stored as if on the cell tower. > > > > > Say you write a multiplayer game, which is running on 10 handsets in > > > > your area. Snowball will detect and rank these handsets by closest > > > > first, but will not be able to tell you exactly where they are. > > > > > Detecting actual location is better handled by the application using > > > > GPS etc (i.e. with user approval), and is not suitable for all > > > > applications, e.g. dating. > > > > > >>What kind of end user applications are possible using snowball? Do you > > > > have any specific kind of end user applications that might be the > > > > killer app > > > > for snowball?<< > > > > Different people will find different applications useful at different > > > > times. I have listed the vague categories and use cases that can be > > > > easily implemented on top of Snowball here: > > > >http://blog.zedray.com/snowball/why-is-this-useful/ > > > > (Location-based<http://blog.zedray.com/snowball/why-is-this-useful/%28Location-based>services, > > > > Social networking, Gaming, News and > > > > information, Logistics) > > > > > But everyone I talk to about this tends to come up with new stuff by > > > > themselves. > > > > > >>Got confused by FluidNexus and Snowball. They have similar goals, but > > > > they are 2 completely different projects. Guess FluidNexus had the > > > > emergency > > > > use case and Snowball has the ice cream example. Cool, finally got > > > > clarified > > > > myself<< > > > > Excellent > > > > I can't wait to see this "mobeegal" LBS search engine that you've been > > > > working on. > > > > > Regards > > > > Mark > > > > -- > > > take care, > > > Muthu Ramadoss. > > > >http://mobeegal.in > > > find stuff closer. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Challenge" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-challenge?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
