To suggest there is a 'fair right' to data behind encryption for goverment use, to my mind, somewhat misses the point of encryption and privacy in general. This is the point I believe we should be arguing.
Your representaiton of the article as a 'declaration against encryption' somewhat undermines this argument, and polarises it into an 'us vs them' debate.
For accuracy, this document is titled:
"Draft Council Declaration on Encryption
- Security through encryption and security despite encryption"
Its pretty handwavy, overly general, and seems to call for some sort of 'back door' from the tech companies. Missing the point really, anybody wishing to use strong encryption for criminal purpoes can do so so with very few resources, and quite independently.
If 14 year olds know more about the security vulnerabilities of our most highly adopted computer systems than the professionals which use and safeguard/build them, then it would say more about those professionals than the teens (a fact that I am highly sceptical of).
Or could it be a self reported survey says more about the perception of 'cool' subversive behaviours amongst that group than it's prevalence? I'd buy the latter over the former. You only have to wander around a university campus nowadays to understand the the days of overindulgence in drink/drugs are over -- and that being a self-identified entrepreneur or hacker is de rigeur.
What WB discusses is a common misconception. Just because it doesn't appear to work for yourself, doesn't mean that targeting is not worthwhile. It's not really designed for an improved user experience, but to provide an advantage to those running the ad campaigns.
The crucial thing that people forget, is that that targeting only has to be a little bit better than random to be worth doing (from the ad operations perspective). Given a large number of ads shown every day, with nominal cost, we've only got to push a fraction of those toward users with a slightly better propensity to interact to increase the interaction rate, and get paid more from the advertiser (presuming a model where the advertiser pays us based upon interactions that we generate).
One of the reasons that it is profitable is that the amount we might get paid for an interaction could 50p, £1 or even £10 depending upon the client and media. The cost of showing that ad is a few pence per thousand! So, we can get it wrong many many times, and still show a statistically significant improvement in interaction rates and make a huge dent in profitability for ourselves.
> Given a large number of ads shown every day, with nominal cost,...
And here we descend into spammer-logic. It took a decade or more, but spam filters are good enough now that spam is almost a non-issue; the flip-side is that email, which was designed to be reliable above all else, is now flaky because some legitimate mail can't find its way through the maze of filters, many operating according to machine learning that defies introspection. Ad blockers will eventually be that good, will break web pages in equally unpredictable ways, and the "Open Web" will be a worse place for it.
Spammer logic is basically human nature. You can't kill it with morality because a few self-interested actors are enough to spoil the soup. It's an inescapable arms race.
I would add that Spammer logic is the nature of life itself. I think it was Neal Stephenson who commented that plants "Spam nature their environment with pollen." Same goes for sea turtle eggs, tadpoles, and sperm.
Yet it would still be better to show useful ads. To try and predict what you would buy next, instead of showing more of what you've just bought. Its astonishing how 'little bit better than random' they are.
It really worries me that the leader of our nation does not appear to have all the information required in order to make a decision on a topic as important as this. I would have thought that a domain expert within government would have be consulted before Cameron goes off half cocked in debates and discussions.
With technology a key and growing industry within the UK, shouldn't we expect our leaders to at least attempt to understand the issues around governance?
What past experience would have given you the idea that a UK prime minister would let domain expects stop them from coming up with stupid proposals?
(I was about to single out Cameron, but while I detest him, and while he seem to have a particular blind spot for technology, the problem is by no means unique to the Tories; e.g. consider when David Nutt was asked to go because his evidence-based advice on drugs didn't agree with the Labour governments policy)
I concur -- travelling in Boston can be frustrating for those who are inexperienced. They use 'inbound' and 'outbound', but without knowledge of the centre point for that line this information is useless!
It was written in 2012 and is a fairly well known and accessible text! Pedro is an excellent speaker, if you ever get chance to hear him I highly recommend it.
Isn't part of the problem that we place this artificial wall between academia and industry? I often found myself confused in this respect. I attained my PhD a number of years ago, and found this an invaluable experience, which has no doubt helped me to excel in industry, however I still meet people (developers and senior level executives especially) who think academia is about locking yourself in a room and writing stuff without building anything useful. Ironically, these are the same people who build products and code without surveying the field, understanding what is already out there and building on top of existing solutions. Their naivity and ignorance is such that they believe they are building something truly unique, and will get it right first time, every time.
It seems to me that we should stop standing on each side of the fence and looking down on each other, and start working together. We might actually achieve something great it if we do that.
Regards the OP, if it was the right time for him/her to leave, that's great. Nobody should continue on a path that they do not find fulfilling. It says nothing about academia, or industry though. It only reveals the feelings of the author.
The true travesty here, is that he/she will find it extremely difficult to pick up that work again and find a place in a university if they change their mind in the future. Our system in the UK is broken, since you only get a single shot at academia -- unless of course you are independently wealthy.
Perhaps this is the cause of the divide. You are either in, or you are out -- and once you make your choice there is no going back.
