Sleep-walking to a Bloody Revolution

According to The Guardian, the EU is about to tighten legislation on user tracking to apply to other means than just cookies.

However, no-one reads those cookie popups or EULAs anyway and you can't do much on the net if you don't blindly accept them. And I mean "blindly" since even though you could read them (most of us don't), you can assume that most users don't have a combined law and computing degree sufficient to be able to understand the implications of them regardless.

I like to think that I understand the computing aspects of these things but I also know that new techniques are developed daily to try to leverage more revenue from the end-user and place more responsibility on them than I can keep up with (or have the mental capacity to understand).

The  likes of Google, Twitter and Facebook are continually trying to capture more data about us and do so through the development of what appears to be "free" services. These services may seem nice but; as always, there's no such thing as a free lunch. They're making a lot more out of the combined mass of data they're collecting on us than we get out of it - after all, they're not charities, they're commercial organisations.

They're not interested in developing this stuff for your benefit; I wouldn't expect them to, and whilst we seem to talk about how relaxed sheep people have become about privacy online, at the same time these organisations have become that much tighter in how they share the data they have on us - individually and in aggregate form (anonymised preferably).

They give you free email or chat services, you let them spy on you so they can feed you with the right ad at the right time in the right place to milk the maximum revenue they can out of you. The algorithms are tuned to this model and they're getting better. We'll soon be letting them install a camera in the bedroom for the benefit of a free daily cappuccino...

So those seeking to extend existing legislation to cover alternative means of tracking which simply relies on "valid consent from the user" are part of the problem. They provide a façade of transparency where there isn't any. They are the lawyers and computer experts who understand the scope of the possible and should be defining the law such as to make some of these techniques illegal without sufficient transparency in what data is captured, how it is used and who it will be shared with.

Ultimately, we need to be paid for the value of the data we provide to these organisations to offset what is becoming a serious discrepancy between the data-rich and the data-poor. The use of vast amounts of data by so few is increasing the imbalance between rich and poor and ultimately will be a disaster for the real economy. That intelligence organisations across the world want to make use of this data themselves and that market leaning governments are ideologically crippled to the point of inaction means we'll not do anything about this until it becomes a real problem - yet another bloody revolution is on the horizon. To address this the law needs to change and no popup is going to help.

Amazon v Amazon

I was reading up a while back about how Amazon (and others) do differential pricing depending on who you are (or who they think you are) including factors such as the type of computer you use. As a very quick test I decided to do two searches...

One (let's call it "open") from my own laptop via my default browser used for everyday activity, logged in to Amazon, full of tracking cookies and history etc....

The other ("closed") from a TOR'ified Linux VM running a clean browser, privoxy and appearing (for now) to be surfacing out of Liberia.

Both searches were for "macbook air" (not that I intend on buying one but they're common and relatively expensive).

Results were pretty much the same, but not quite and the example below shows a difference...

From "open":

 

From "closed":

£686 v £669...

So, if proof were needed.... you can't get Amazon Prime in Liberia! (at least not from amazon.co.uk)... Because that's really the only difference. You can still buy the device (new) for £669 on the "open" version, it's just not the "obvious" option.

However, the first item in the "closed" search did suggest purchase via Prime as it did on the "open" version...



So there is a difference, but how significant is debatable. It may be a classic diversionary sales tactic - the top item via Prime is more expensive than another via Prime lower in the list but this one (which they want you to buy) is still more expensive than you could have got it for... If they can make you buy that one because you think it's a bargain over the top item then it's a good sale!

Who knows... I'm likely reading too much into this after too many beers... In any case it's largely up to us to be conscious that such behaviour goes on and that we; as human beings, are susceptible to all sorts of strange and suspect sales tactics.

Go search elsewhere, multiple times, from other devices, in Liberia... then save the money instead.

Tyre Swing and Architectural Artefacts

Using the legendary tree swing cartoon analogy of the IT industry for my own utility...

How does this sort of thing pan out in a naive project environment? (they're not all like this).

1. Analyst sits down with client for a chat about what's needed.


2. A mental picture (right or wrong - let's assume right for now) is formed in his/her head.


3. A blueprint of how it will work is drawn up (only mentally since we reckon the problem is simple enough).


4. A few questions come up when considering this; how heavy the user? how high the tree branch? etc.


5. Solution proposal is verified with client - via a chat over a pint because it's all pretty obvious and he's a mate.


6. Worked out what items are needed (tree, rope, tyre).


7. Worked out how to build it (again, only mentally because it's pretty straight-forward)...


8. Identified where to source the items from - rope from DIY shop, tyre from scrapyard, tree in back-garden (even checked that there was one!).


9. Took client to scrapyard - picked a nice 50s white-walled tyre he liked... (nice team building day-trip out).


10. Built it! Yeay!

All done with no documentation because it's a trivial problem and hell, it worked so let's do it this way everytime... until you write the requirement down...

Requirement: "I want a swing for my 10 yr old child to play on."

Or as a user story: "As a child I want a swing in the garden so that I can play, see how high I can go, get dizzy and feel really funny!"

Or a set of 20 page use case documents (which is wrong in itself).. yawn!

At which point you'll go to Amazon and discover a host of inexpensive off-the-shelf options which are probably better-designed/safer/more-flexible etc. and unless you've a rope, tyre and tree lying around you're probably going to opt for the COTS option.

So it's worth writing it down, just to make sure it's understood, even if it seems obvious. Agile does not mean "no documentation", just "avoid the bloated detailed crap no-one reads and focus on the useful stuff".

Which for me starts with requirements! (functional requirements - a swing! non-functional requirements - for an average weight 10yr old child). It does not take a lot of effort...

But oh wait there's more!... some form of logical design (blueprints), a plan (sources, how to do it), infrastructure requirements (a tree), physical solution (which tree?).

And my favourite hobby-horse this month... traceability from the solution to the requirements to demonstrate why it's the way it is and to confirm it meets the clients needs and expectations. It can even be done in the pub with a whisky chaser!

None of this needs to be written down as reams of verbose documentation, none of this is counter to agile principles. A lot (if not all of it) can be done with a few lists, diagrams and matrices... no Word docs or Powerpoint decks in sight (unless that's the chosen crapware you use to draw diagrams) and you can save the tree if you choose not to print to paper... But all of it needs to be thought about - whether you write it down or not!

I'd still prefer it if you'd use UML though... ;)