Re: Module Proposal: Zeitgeist

[Seif Lotfy <seif lotfy com>]

On Sun, Apr 22, 2012 at 7:09 PM, Florian Max <florian muellner gmail com> wrote:
>> In the end your history is scattered all over the place :P
>>
>> The logs are there and there is not common way to manage them. Having
>> a central log like Zeitgeist will allow you to develop policies and
>> blacklist for logging. Having history at a central location and having
>> a central tool to disable logging completely or partially should be
>> considered as an improvement of the user security.
>
>
> The problem I see here is that it only improves the situation if it is truly
> universal - if a central privacy control offers an option to "remove my
> recent activity from the last 2 hours", it'd better clear my
> firefox/chromium cookies as well(*). Otherwise users will either have to
> know about implementation details, or will end up with a false sense of
> control.

First of all thank you for bringing us on topic again.

I agree with you. There is more to privacy than history. Cookies etc
are involve. I am just saying history is a part of it. We can start
from there. We all agree that design and implementation is iterative.

Chrome is not a core app. GNOME should focus on the core apps (as
stated by the designers) so a privacy manager should take only GNOME
apps into consideration per default.

> Also - if I want to hide my recent "activity" on
> http://www.furnitureporn.com/, should that really affect funnycat1.png in
> recent files or my chat history with @fiancé? I am not saying that a central
> tool is bad per se, just that a feature like that should be designed
> *before* pushing a technology that implies a certain design.
>

I totally 100% agree with you that from a UX perspective this needs
much more design. And I already said I am not interested anymore in
adding a new feature from a UX perspective.

But just as a side note. The technology is there. Which means one you
want to add a privacy thing it is there, and please believe me that
managing your history via Zeitgeist is much more powerful than you
give it credit. You can single out stuff and do whatever. It is
missing a good UI.

So I would still like to have my question answered. How is the policy
on using Zeitgeist for non-feature and non-UX related optimization and
maintenance distribution?

> Regards,
> Florian
>
> (*) Maybe Canonical's downstream panel does that, I don't know - they are in
> a much stronger position here than we are upstream

Cheers
Seif