Social / community features in Logos 5 and beyond

Logos Bible Software was created in the days of packaged software sold on physical media, before consumers had heard of the Internet. (It was 1991!)

Logos got its first Internet-enabled features in 1995, and over the years Logos has grown to be more and more connected to the Internet. Still, Logos 5 will run without an Internet connection, and users can (and do) have completely offline use of it. But most users are connected to the Internet most/all of the time, and we're designing future features in Logos to take advantage of this.

When you use a product that's delivered via a web site, there are certain assumptions you can safely make about what's being stored on the web servers: everything.

Every click, page view, search, IP address, time of visit, and bit of information typed into the site is stored. At a minimum, the standard "web log" functionality of the web server (standard since the first days of the web) is recording most of this info for every page view, and, since the entire site/application is on a remote server, all the information you type / enter is stored there, too.

Much of this info is recorded many times, at many places. Your web provider probably records and stores this info for months/years (so law enforcement can request it if desired) and the site may feed Google Analytics or another tool a copy of the data in order to get convenient reports/analysis.

People are rarely surprised by this. But it seems people are sometimes surprised, and even upset, to find out that desktop applications are now recording and reporting similar information.

Most desktop applications are, or shortly will be, completely integrated with web services. Even if an application does no explicit data sharing with a web service, simply checking RSS feeds, looking for updates / news / etc. generates web server logs that can be analyzed.

And most applications are explicitly interacting with web services, in order to deliver cloud-connected features, support synchronization between desktop and mobile devices, backup user data, access databases too large to store locally, etc.

Logos Bible Software has been interacting with web services for years. Early on it was simply retrieving news feeds and update notices, but starting with Logos 4 the application became highly integrated with web services.

We no longer think of Logos Bible Software as a stand-alone desktop software package. We think of it as a connected family of desktop and mobile software applications and online web services that help people study the Bible, alone or in community with others.

As a concession to "the missionary with the solar-powered laptop and no Internet connection", and to people who still want an isolated stand-alone software package, you can run the software with Internet access turned off. (It's becoming more and more difficult to maintain this functionality, but we'll try to keep it as long as we can.)

But our plan is to increase our use of the Internet to provide better functionality and new features, and we believe this will deliver real value to our users.

Things we do "online" and why:

Logos collects stats on the use of the software. At various times we've collected all kinds of different stats; at the moment Logos 5 collects less information than earlier versions, but we expect to hook up more reporting in the future.

These stats have led to actual improvements in our business and software. For example:

We tracked what percentage of users were on what operating system. This helped us know when we could drop support for old versions of Windows or Mac OS X, affecting few users and allowing us to allocate resources to new work instead of old OS support.

We tracked what percentage of users running the software each day had upgraded to a new version. It's useful to know when 80% of daily users are running Logos 5 -- we can stop promoting the upgrade so heavily. :-) If we weren't tracking the version used each day we'd only know the percentage of Logos 4 purchasers who had purchased Logos 5, and that might include purchasers who no longer use the software, distorting the data.

We tracked search queries. This is such a massive amount of info that the last time we decided to do some serious analysis on search queries we limited it to a single month. We sorted queries by frequency and looked to see how many used boolean operators, could not be parsed by the query engine, etc. We even just browsed them. (The document was a list of queries with counts -- no user identities.) From looking at a large aggregation of search queries we learned that boolean operators aren't used much, and were more likely to mess up a query than be used correctly. This led to the use of all-caps AND and OR as operators, reducing the chance that users would unintentionally include an "and" or "or" that messed up a query that was a phrase. We also saw people were searching for the names of holidays, like "Mothers' Day", which fed into our decision to develop the Preaching Themes database, which is used to tag resources -- and includes Mothers' Day and other holidays as themes.

We tracked which dialog boxes were used. This led to our decision to avoid dialog boxes in Logos 4.

We tracked which books were opened. This led to removing some books from collections, or keeping books in collections that we might otherwise have removed. It also helped us understand how important "smart" defaults were, in light of how strong an association there is between a book being the first reported in a tool and the one more opened.

These stats, when aggregated, offer value to Logos and help us make a better product. Many of them also feed back into features that benefit users:

We can offer "Sort by Recent" in mobile apps because the software stored what you opened when. We can offer the "auto-bookmarks" in the scroll bar of a resource, for quick jumping to a previously visited location. We can open a book on your mobile device to the place you were reading on another device because we sync your last read location. Soon we can indicate when you've read a book completely, eliminating the need to manually add a "read" tag in the library, as some users now do.

Moving forward, we plan to offer "crowd sourced" data that benefits all our users. (You will be able to turn off, or ignore, this crowd-sourced data if you don't want to use it.)

We modeled our star rating for resources on other widely used systems, like Netflix and Amazon.com and hundreds of other sites: you can apply your own star rating to any resource, which overrides any other rating. But if you don't rate something, by default you see the "community" rating. (And you can see both by hovering over the stars.)

Community tags supplement your own tags, and are intended to harness the "community" wisdom about a particular resource, helping you find things more easily and better understand your library.

(Both of these features were fully designed for Logos 4, but didn't make the development cutoff. When we finally shipped them in Logos 5 -- using the specs written for Logos 4 -- many users had already adopted their own meaning/conventions for tags and star ratings, and found the community data a distraction. We will be implementing a way to turn them off if you don't want to see this community info.)

These community features presently treat the entire user base as one community, but the intention has always been to introduce a "users like you" component to the algorithms, much like the way Netflix tries to tell you what their algorithm thinks YOU would rate the movie, not what everyone rated it.

Our hope is that we get enough data -- using voluntarily provided info like "denomination", and sales data like "what books you specifically purchased" -- that we could give you a star rating from "users like you", and weight the community tags in the same way. So a commentary set labeled 5 stars and tagged "reliable" by users of one denomination, say, would be reported that way to others of that denomination who bought similar resources, but might be rated "3 stars" and tagged "conservative" to users of another denomination who had purchased different resources. (The rating would probably differ, but you'd probably see all the tags -- they'd just be different sizes for different users.)

(This kind of recommendation system requires a lot of data in order to work, but with over 1 million users of our platform, we believe we can collect enough data to make it work in the future. And this is something we want to do in response to actual user requests: new customers often ask "what books should I buy?" or "can you recommend a commentary I can trust?" Or, "can you label the commentaries as conservative/liberal, or this-label/that-label?" We can't really do that in a way that's right for everyone, but we might be able to let "everyone" tell us enough that we can tell you what "people like you" think about this or that book. I'm sure this doesn't appeal to our 'power users', but I know it's highly requested by many new users. They want your opinion, power user!)

Popular highlights is another long-planned feature that aggregates many users' data (in this case, extracting the highlighted range, but not the text of notes or even the label of the highlighting style) to report which ranges of books were highlighted by many people. (The 'many' is dynamic -- in some resources it's 5+ users -- the minimum -- and in others there are so many highlights that a range isn't considered popular until 20, 50 or more users have independently highlighted it.)

Aggregated demographic data will be extracted and likely shared with some publishers and authors. I'm not sure how useful this actually is -- will knowing that a book is popular with people who use the Greek NT, or even with people who have identified with a particular denomination, be useful to an author or publisher? Will someone go run an ad in the denomination magazine as a result? I don't know, but I do know that authors and publishers love this kind of info. "Lutheran women read my book on Wednesdays on Android phones, but they all give up after chapter 6. What does it mean?!" :-)

We hope to extract other useful stats from the intersection of feature use reporting and user data. I can imagine doing an analysis to see what words in the Greek NT are most often right-clicked and looked up, or have a Bible Word Study run on them. (And/or which words were the headwords for user-edited Bible Word Study Guides.) From this we might be able to get a list of "words of significant interest", in which we could invest more editorial resources and/or new features. The "Interesting Words" section of the Passage Guide, presently built by statistical analysis of the text, could be informed by statistical analysis of user interaction, too.

In the same way (I'm making stuff up now) we might want to run an analysis of which verses in the Bible have the most user-written note text attached. This might tell us the passages we should be giving the most attention to in future updates of the Faithlife Study Bible, or the Evangelical Exegetical Commentary.

Admittedly, these features would require "looking at synced user data" -- but I hope you can see how "the looking" is done by algorithms and doesn't represent a privacy invasion. In fact, this type of analysis is only useful when it's on "too much data." We need the forest, not a tree, to see the patterns that help us design features and content.

Other ways we'll be introducing "community":

We're lighting up collaborative documents at http://documents.logos.com. This will eventually be enabled for almost every document type.

The "personal" use case is your being able to publish (read-only) or collaborate (shared editing and ownership) documents with any group you'd like. A pastor / professor / teacher could publish notes on a book of the Bible. Students could collaborate on a note document on a textbook. A scholar could collaborate on a highlighting project with a research assistant.

We hope to enable some forms of "community" data editing -- and even remote editorial work for compensation. For example, Logos 5 has some data sets that were created by tagging the biblical text -- we even used our own highlighting tool for some of the work. With collaborative documents, users could choose to join a tagging project on a text that Logos might not otherwise get to. Imagine if referent analysis, speaker labels, word senses, and clause searching were available for the Apostolic Fathers, Josephus, Philo, and all of the Perseus Project. These collaborative/social documents could help us distribute the workload over many contributors, track who made what contribution, and even pay for contributions in Logos credit.

This could allow students to "work for books" (a request we get surprisingly often) and help us offer richer data sets that we might otherwise not soon afford or have time to create.

We plan to make it easier to recommend resources and even to share quotations from resources. You can already tweet or share quotes from books, but in future releases you'll have the option to share a quotation from the book publicly, and resources will have online pages where you can see the publicly shared quotations before buying the resource.

See https://faithlife.com/markbarnes/resources as an example; it is a summary of Mark Barnes' reviews. The disabled tab for "Recommendations" is where I will be able to see all the books Mark has recommended (either publicly, or to a specific group that he and I are co-members of -- so he could recommend a particular book just to his church, or a class). On the "Quotes" tab I would see any quotes from the book that Mark had intentionally shared -- and, if I own the book, I'll be able to jump directly to that location in the book.

(Mark, I hope you don't mind me using you as an example -- you've written a lot of reviews. Thanks!)

We take user privacy very seriously; we offer a number of settings, you have the option to run completely offline, and we follow best practices like not storing your password at all. (That's why our CS reps can't tell or email your password, only reset it -- we literally don't have access to it.)

At the same time, though, we are committed to being a web-based, data-driven platform. We are no longer designing a stand-alone, isolated desktop application. Some planned features will require access to databases too large to deliver to user devices; you'll need web access to use them. We will be listening to our users, responding to their feedback and concerns, but like other web-based platforms, we will not necessarily be offering control over every individual setting. Some things come along with being web-based.

For example, you can choose to keep all your digital photos on your own machine disconnected from the Internet, or you can choose to upload them to Flickr. And at Flickr you may even have some settings about what info is shared with what users, or what permissions your photos are shown with. But Flickr will analyze all the uploaded photos to build a report of what cameras / phones are being used: http://www.flickr.com/cameras/ You can't say "yes, I want my photos stored on your server, but no, don't count them in your stats."

We are very careful and respectful of individual privacy, and we'll be offering some controls/options, but we aren't, for example, going to support "sync my data but don't count me towards the number of Mac OS X users."

The coarse grained control is turning off "Use Internet" in the Program Settings. The more fine-grained controls are still being decided on, and will reflect your input.

I hope this overview is helpful, and that you can appreciate the value that these social / community features add to the Logos platform, and hopefully to your study and investment as well.

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Comments

Philana Crouch

I am really excited about the ability to share quotes from resources. One thing I find a bit frustrating with Faithlife is that I will share quotes from the Bible and it defaults to the ESV even it I am using a different translation. It would be great to have it respect my translation choice.

I like the social features, the idea of being able to callaborate on documents. I could have used this type of thing is school.

Ronald Quick

As a concession to "the missionary with the solar-powered laptop and no Internet connection", and to people who still want an isolated stand-alone software package, you can run the software with Internet access turned off. (It's becoming more and more difficult to maintain this functionality, but we'll try to keep it as long as we can.)

Bob,

PLEASE continue to allow Logos to function without being connected to the Internet. I don't mind being connected for updates, resource purchases, syncing, etc., but there are many times that I am not connected to the Internet. I don't want to HAVE to be online for Logos to function. This is really an important issue for me.

Thanks,

Ron

Dave Hooton

We modeled our star rating for resources ... But if you don't rate something, by default you see the "community" rating. ...

Community tags supplement your own tags, and are intended to harness the "community" wisdom about a particular resource...

(Both of these features were fully designed for Logos 4, but didn't make the development cutoff. When we finally shipped them in Logos 5 -- using the specs written for Logos 4 -- many users had already adopted their own meaning/conventions for tags and star ratings, and found the community data a distraction. We will be implementing a way to turn them off if you don't want to see this community info.)

On a quick read of your post this was what I was really looking for. Thank you.

But I would also ask you include a simple way to turn off Popular Highlights, Popular Tags which are equally distracting, and also include Community Notes together with any other shared/mined data you may be planning to introduce (simple does not mean hunting for a resource to disable the information).

David Ames

Thanks for the update and comments – they let us get a hint of where you’re going

“”We tracked which books were opened””

Did you track which books were hit in the search – often the search summary gives all the data we need for the answer we are looking for? [So they might have been used without being opened]

“”We will be implementing a way to turn them off if you don't want to see this community info.””

Thanks

“”"users like you"””

Good luck – I am one of a kind – I went from Platinum 4 to Platinum 5 and added Capstone. And when I do a major research I want to know what everybody says and every side of the topic.

"denomination"

There are times when I don’t want “users like” me – I want to know what members of some other “denomination” recommend. Will changing our “denomination” setting change what we see? [Or will what we see be determined by our past “”history””]

“”Popular highlights “” need a global off switch – I am not sure I want someone else to show me where the important parts are.

Rene Atchley

In many ways I can appreciate the desire and usefulness of gaining huge amounts of research data for various purposes such as marketing, product development, and stream lining support services. Yet when I first saw this feature, in Logos 3 I think, it really turned me off of the product to such an extent as to seriously seek out other products...mostly a waste of time however. Since you have opened the door to this discussion I would simply ask why should I tell you (or your company) anything about the use of this or any other software on my computer? For that matter why should I trust to only stop at peaking under the hood for Logos products either in a specific or general way? Recently I did a bit of research for a national TV rating's company that paid me $5.00 for only a week's worth of journaling in regards to my viewing habits. I see no such offer of compensation from Logos for years worth of data...not even a discount.

Milford Charles Murray

I hope this overview is helpful, and that you can appreciate the value that these social / community features add to the Logos platform, and hopefully to your study and investment as well.

Peace, Bob! Yes! Very helpful indeed! Very much appreciated. Some of these concepts and "directions" are truly monumental. You've done well with this overview. Basically this individual (me! *smile* ) concurs and trusts you and your people (colleagues? collaborators? team-mates? staff?)

I must say, Bob! You have assembled and co-ordinated such a wonderful and amazing group of men and women who are part of the Logos Mission! Well-done! Vaya Con Dios! and ... Always Joy in the Lord!

Jon

We hope to enable some forms of "community" data editing -- and even remote editorial work for compensation. For example, Logos 5 has some data sets that were created by tagging the biblical text -- we even used our own highlighting tool for some of the work. With collaborative documents, users could choose to join a tagging project on a text that Logos might not otherwise get to. Imagine if referent analysis, speaker labels, word senses, and clause searching were available for the Apostolic Fathers, Josephus, Philo, and all of the Perseus Project. These collaborative/social documents could help us distribute the workload over many contributors, track who made what contribution, and even pay for contributions in Logos credit.

[Y]

MJ. Smith

I see no such offer of compensation from Logos for years worth of data...not even a discount.

Microsoft never pays me for crash reports ... but I don't mind helping them identify the crashes so that I get fewer of them. In that past few years, I've finally lost the ability to crash MSWord at will.

Thomas Jackson

Bob,

I pray that the 'Social / community features in Logos 5 and beyond' will be fully Implemented in a different version of Logos. I've invested about $5,000 dollars in Logos and do not support nor want this 'Social / community' direction. If, however, the new design will be implemented in Logos 5, I need to re-think not only the $1,200 dollars pre-pub orders I'm waiting for, but also any future orders.

Thomas

Graham Criddle

Hi Thomas

and do not support nor want this 'Social / community' direction

For clarity would you be able to advise on whether the collection of your data or the display of aggregation of other people's data is the issue for you - or, indeed, something else?

Is it a philosophical or practical in nature?

Hope you can advise on this - it's just not clear to me from your post as to what your concerns really are - and hence how Logos could address them.

Thanks, Graham

Mark Barnes

Thanks for the full post, Bob (and for the unexpected mention!). I think only two things are required for meet the vast majority of users' concerns:

Making sure that having "Send Feedback" set to "None" means that no tracking in done within the desktop app (no search results collected, no highlighting aggregated, and so on). IMO this setting should also mean that a user with this setting should not have their synced documents included in any analysis.
Allow users to turn of the receiving (or at least the displaying) of community data, without turning off the syncing of their own data. This includes Faithlife Community notes, community ratings/tags, popular highlighting, etc.

I confess I see no need of either of those things myself (the former because I trust you and want Logos to improve, the latter because I can switch them off individually or ignore them), but I think I understand why others might want them.

NetworkGeek

It sounds like a great vision, thanks for sharing it Bob. I am on board 100%. I was not a huge fan of Faithlife, community features etc. in the beginning, but I am being won over - I can see the vision of how these types of things will enhance my own study.

NetworkGeek

I see no such offer of compensation from Logos for years worth of data...not even a discount.

I hope you don't use ANY search engine on the Internet - they grab a lot more data about what you are doing than Logos does! Or I hope you don't use any Microsoft products....or Adobe....or browser...or any of a number of other "non community" products. People think only Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and the like are grabbing data, but that's grossly inaccurate. Oh and don't forget your TV viewing preferences, unless you only do over the air (and they collect data too, just not as much), DirecTV, Comcast, and all the other satellite/cable providers are collecting huge amounts of preference/usage data.

The only way to avoid this, as Bob says, is turn off the Internet. It's a connected world now.

Thomas Jackson

Graham,

It seems to me that the direction Logos is headed is greatly influenced by the philosophical posts on this forum (not the 'bug' fixes). While I respect the opions of others, I prefer that my version of Logos be independent of their input. Again, I do respect you and a few others who post on this forum, but I would like to keep my version of Logos independent of forum posters philosophical inputs.

Thomas

Graham Criddle

Graham,

It seems to me that the direction Logos is headed is greatly influenced by the philosophical posts on this forum (not the 'bug' fixes). While I respect the opions of others, I prefer that my version of Logos be independent of their input. Again, I do respect you and a few others who post on this forum, but I would like to keep my version of Logos independent of forum posters philosophical inputs.

Thomas

Thanks Thomas

That's helpful.

Appreciated, Graham

tom

The coarse grained control is turning off "Use Internet" in the Program Settings. The more fine-grained controls are still being decided on, and will reflect your input.

Bob, this is something that I and others have been asking for some time, and I want to say thanks.

I doubt that you remember this, but I am in communication with my representatives and senators concerning consumer's privacy. And this is what I have been saying that consumers need to have.

Now, it is not likely that you are thinking of fine-grained controls the same way that I am thinking of fine-grained controls. I believe controls should be very very very very very fine. For an example, I believe that I should have a flag for each note to indicate if it should be synced to your server or not. The same is true when it comes to our prayer requests and everything else.

I also believe that I should be able to exempt my information from being used in your decision process. I believe my privacy is more important than your bottom line, and any mining my data is an invasion of my privacy without my approval.

Again, I wanted to say thanks for providing more security controls in the future.

John Duffy

Hi Bob,

Thanks for such detail and clarity on the topic.

Some things come along with being web-based.

I appreciate this, and I have no problem in Logos not only knowing what my purchases are (as is normal for any vendor), but I also don't mind feedback of a fair degree of usage of the program that helps Logos develop and more appropriately meet and exceed user expectations/needs.

One of my concerns is that if Logos was a new program just introduced onto the market, it would be expected (if not unthinkable not to) that the developer would provide the explicit option for the user to choose whether or not to participate in data collection or feedback (for statistical analysis, or other purposes e.g. to generate community data). As noted on the forum elsewhere, there is some wording in the 'Online Backup' section of the EULA which loosely covers statistical analysis, and states that user's data will not be shared without their permission. But it is not explicit or clear enough, especially with respect to using users' data for other purposes such as to generate community data (although admittedly 'popular highlights' is a pretty tame use of such data). But the main thing is that users don't have an option whether to participate or not in their data or statisics being used by Logos. At present, the only workaround is to turn off internet usage, which is not very practical in general. In principle, I'm not against using users' data for generating statistics or even community
data at times (e.g. popular highlights), but I would simply like the choice as to
whether to do so, or not.

We are very careful and respectful of
individual privacy, and we'll be offering some controls/options

But I'm pleased to read this, and look forward to seeing what the options/controls will be.

Personally, I don't mind the vast majority of usage statistics (e.g. what books I open, what I right-click on etc) being gathered, and would allow such if I had the option. But I am concerned at having no option with what I consider to be personal 'value added' data that is over and above my statistically-interesting usage of the application. At a minumum, this includes all 'Documents' (Prayer lists, Notes, Clippings, etc) which contain some very confidential information that I would not like to be viewed or used for any purposes. But it also includes other data such as Guides which can contain notes, or possibly even text that is marked up as significant (highlighting).

While the EULA tells us "Do not store highly confidential information in the software", many users would consider that their Prayer Lists, or Notes for research purposes, come under this description. There seems therefore to be an inherent conflict between what the program allows us to do, and what it tells us we should not do in order to maintain confidentiality. I don't mind syncing for online backup purposes (although I can
imagine those in persecuted countries being concerned about digital eavesdropping, unless it is
encrypted while being transferred), but I consider not having a choice on the use of such data to be a
different thing entirely. I hope I don't sound alarmist on this, since I'm not suggesting that Logos has used, or would use, such data in ways that would cause significant concern for users. I just think that it would be good to have options on confidentiality, and clarity on such matters.

The coarse grained control is turning off "Use Internet" in the Program Settings. The more fine-grained controls are still being decided on, and will reflect your input.

I've posted here because you're looking for input. Here are some options I would be happy with. While one option is a global 'Send Feedback' option of On or Off, which would disable sync etc, but still allow resource downloads and updates, multiple options could be offered such as;

Allow feedback on 'basic program usage' (e.g. what resources are used, what is right-clicked etc.
Allow sync of 'user generated data' (Documents, Guides, etc.) for backup purposes only. (While this would normally be enabled/disabled per user account accross all devices, it might be helpful at times to have it as an option on a per device basis, e.g. when many users of the family iPad could see confidential Prayer Lists, a user might like sync enabled on their PC but disabled on their iPad. But that is a very, very, minor issue in comparison to having the option to sync or not at all. I mention it to see what others think on this.)
Allow analysis and anonymised use of the contents of 'user generated data' e.g. to generate community data (such as popular highlights.

The display of community data doesn't concern me too much, as it is not a privacy issue, but it would be handy to have a global option as to whether to display that or not.

I look forward to seeing what the options/controls will be. Thanks for expanding the conversation and looking for input on the topic.

Samuel

Bob,

Thank you so much for sharing this information. I'd like to politely add my input to what some others have posted.

1. Please give us a way to opt-out of all community features in the product. I can see that some might enjoy those features and understand them, but there are many of us who do not need/want this kind of functionality in the website. There should be a way for us to sync our documents to use them on mobile devices without having to use other community features.

2. Please give us a way to opt-out of data collection. I understand the positive side of it for the company and the benefits you gain from it. I also know a lot of us are uncomfortable with intentional, intricate data collection as we use Logos. Yes, I know that Google and many others attempt to be even more invasive. Still, we should have a way to opt out. Right now every company is trying to track everything I do and it's uncomfortable. I don't want my every step observed in Logos though I have no ill will against the company.

3. I'm not entirely clear why you anticipate it being nearly impossible to use Logos in the future without the internet. I can completely understand if you meant that some features would require the internet, but I do not see why the application should require the internet. For example, iTunes was one of the first desktop applications to be deeply connected to the internet, but it lets me disable music recommendations and use my local music all day long without any internet connection. I can choose to use the internet based features or just use my local library. I would hope Logos would remain the same way, not just for the "missionary without internet" but for many of us who many not want be wired every second of our lives. This is already a frustration in the iOS app where certain things won't work unless I have an internet connection. Please don't cripple Logos in the same way.

Thanks for your openness about the direction of Logos.

Jon

One of my concerns is that if Logos was a new program just introduced onto the market, it would be expected (if not unthinkable not to) that the developer would provide the explicit option for the user to choose whether or not to participate in data collection or feedback (for statistical analysis, or other purposes e.g. to generate community data).

Really? In my experience most programs do this kind of thing without ever telling you, these days its hard to open a corporate email without them collecting the info of when and where and what you click.

If anyone feels very strongly about this kind of thing, protect yourself at the level of your computer with a decent outgoing firewall. On mac, Little Snitch is excellent and easy to use, giving you fine-grained control over what programs can connect to the internet for, I'm sure someone could recommend an equivalent for PC.

Here's an example of my settings for L5, as you can see, I'm not too fussed about what Logos does with my info or anonymised data:

You're in control of what programs can do on your computer — in many cases you may lose functionality if you block the connections, but that's your prerogative...

For everyone else, thanks for contributing to my reading experience just by the simple act of highlighting your books! I've been loving the community highlights as I've been reading a couple of books; the net effect of many users insight in picking out the key insight on a page, or something that has been particularly well articulated is excellent! Thankyou [:D]

DMB

Yep ... that's what I did last night ... denied internet access to all the Logos4 and Logos5 entries (of course keeping that good boy Libronix). Then pulled my credit card. My account will likely die and so eventually Logos but life is good and I intend to keep it that way.

Terry Poperszky

Thanks for the full post, Bob (and for the unexpected mention!). I think only two things are required for meet the vast majority of users' concerns:

Making sure that having "Send Feedback" set to "None" means that no tracking in done within the desktop app (no search results collected, no highlighting aggregated, and so on). IMO this setting should also mean that a user with this setting should not have their synced documents included in any analysis.

Allow users to turn of the receiving (or at least the displaying) of community data, without turning off the syncing of their own data. This includes Faithlife Community notes, community ratings/tags, popular highlighting, etc.

I confess I see no need of either of those things myself (the former because I trust you and want Logos to improve, the latter because I can switch them off individually or ignore them), but I think I understand why others might want them.

I agree fully with Mark on these points including his last. I have no problem with Logos collecting this type of data, but I do understand those who would and was extremely turned off by the solution "turn off using the internet".

David Taylor, Jr.

Thanks for the full post, Bob (and for the unexpected mention!). I think only two things are required for meet the vast majority of users' concerns:

Making sure that having "Send Feedback" set to "None" means that no tracking in done within the desktop app (no search results collected, no highlighting aggregated, and so on). IMO this setting should also mean that a user with this setting should not have their synced documents included in any analysis.

Allow users to turn of the receiving (or at least the displaying) of community data, without turning off the syncing of their own data. This includes Faithlife Community notes, community ratings/tags, popular highlighting, etc.

I confess I see no need of either of those things myself (the former because I trust you and want Logos to improve, the latter because I can switch them off individually or ignore them), but I think I understand why others might want them.

I agree fully with Mark on these points including his last. I have no problem with Logos collecting this type of data, but I do understand those who would and was extremely turned off by the solution "turn off using the internet".

I agree this would be a fair resolution. And once again, I myself do not care about my data being analyzed.

Frank Sauer

I for one hope that as suggested by Mark that send feedback or equivalent to off really means off. While I understand and respect your vision Bob,the major issue here is that many long term users have invested thousands in resources and due to the deprecation of older engines that did not have these concerns, it seems Logos is forcing users to agree to your data mining desires or lose use. Even if we turn internet off, what happens when we connect to run updates? Doesn't it still sync and data mine? So for someone who truly wants no part of this, they really do lose functionally many features and updates and if you force internet connection in the future all the more.

Many users invested for the purpose of studying the Word of God, not to be a part of a data mining community resource software package. As for measuring things like operating systems can't that be measured via updates? For a better understanding of which resources people like and don't, popular highlights and usage stats a sufficient data sample could be generated from those who are into the community aspect without forcing everyone to take part in the data collection.

For the record there are some comparisons that can be made with Google and search engines, etc, however we have not bought a product from them. Customers have PAID for their products and should not be forced into data collection in regard to Logos Bible Software. From today and going forward at no time should your customers be held hostage in regard to full functionality, if they desire to not take part. So a simple opt out from data collection check box would eliminate the whole debate and make all customers those for and those against satisfied.

Alexander

I'm really wondering if this is not a generational issue. I'm conservative when it comes to my information being shared or published and yet I do not have any issue at all with Logos using my data within the cloud. I understand both sides of the argument very well, I'm just wondering if this is more of a perception issue than an understanding of how this type of data is shared/used.

Rene Atchley

I see no such offer of compensation from Logos for years worth of data...not even a discount.

Microsoft never pays me for crash reports ... but I don't mind helping them identify the crashes so that I get fewer of them. In that past few years, I've finally lost the ability to crash MSWord at will.

Since I use WordPerfect crashing Word isn't a problem for me.

Unix

I see, well I would like to be in-between the denominations Anabaptists and RCC, and be able to say also that I'm critical.

Our hope is that we get enough data -- using voluntarily provided info like "denomination", and sales data like "what books you specifically purchased" -- that we could give you a star rating from "users like you", and weight the community tags in the same way. So a commentary set labeled 5 stars and tagged "reliable" by users of one denomination, say, would be reported that way to others of that denomination who bought similar resources, but might be rated "3 stars" and tagged "conservative" to users of another denomination who had purchased different resources. (The rating would probably differ, but you'd probably see all the tags -- they'd just be different sizes for different users.)

When it comes to citing books, You can see from: http://community.logos.com/forums/p/18568/424963.aspx#424963 that I would really like the Jerusalem Bible from the second half of the '60ies, the 2004 3rd edition British English Good News Translation and the Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatum versionem. 5th Ed. Other than that I'm pretty content with what Bibles are offered in Logos - it's just that I would rather see that some English Bible would be dropped from the base-packages, for example either The Message (Complete OT/NT), The New Century Version or the Holman Christian Standard Bible (Holman CSB).

I'm looking forward to the new specialized base-packages that are perhaps comming at some point (like You said in http://community.logos.com/forums/p/60280/430475.aspx#430475). I wonder if You could make one for Anabaptists, and/or one with especially much critical scholarship?

Rene Atchley

I see no such offer of compensation from Logos for years worth of data...not even a discount.

I hope you don't use ANY search engine on the Internet - they grab a lot more data about what you are doing than Logos does! Or I hope you don't use any Microsoft products....or Adobe....or browser...or any of a number of other "non community" products. People think only Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and the like are grabbing data, but that's grossly inaccurate. Oh and don't forget your TV viewing preferences, unless you only do over the air (and they collect data too, just not as much), DirecTV, Comcast, and all the other satellite/cable providers are collecting huge amounts of preference/usage data.

The only way to avoid this, as Bob says, is turn off the Internet. It's a connected world now.

Honestly to argue that because everyone else does it justifies Logos doing it (especially as a "christian" company) seems rather a weak argument to me. The discussion that Mr. Pritchard has opened is not about all the tangential debates regarding every drop of personal information being taken from me on a daily basis. It is about a product that appears increasingly to be heavy handed in its demands that I conform to Mr. Pritchard's vision of proper computer use at increasing high prices with a product that data mines every stroke (apparently) that is done in the program. While it is admirable that there is a turn off switch (if that is what it is) in the product can we be assure that a) it works and b) it wont be eliminated in a future release and c) that I can trust a large corporation to properly handle private use of their product. Surely what the books that are bought through Logos would never get back to denominational leaders so that a concern about "un-godly" thoughts might be sneaking into their pastors...that would never happen... you know just trust Logos and their corporate partners.

Milford Charles Murray

You're in control of what programs can do on your computer — in many cases you may lose functionality if you block the connections, but that's your prerogative...

For everyone else, thanks for contributing to my reading experience just by the simple act of highlighting your books! I've been loving the community highlights as I've been reading a couple of books; the net effect of many users insight in picking out the key insight on a page, or something that has been particularly well articulated is excellent! Thankyou

Peace, Jon! What a very pleasant post! Indeed! It is I who should thank you! *smile* Of course I agree with you! [:D]

EmileB

Jon,

I checked out the site for the software you recommended. Looks promising. To be honest, though, I'm like most here probably in that I'm not tremendously computer savy in this area... and I need to be. The screen shot is helpful... but how difficult is this for a knucklehead user like myself? I start seeing port numbers and such and my eyes start to glaze over. I'm afraid of blocking something that must not be blocked, and allowing something that really SHOULD be blocked. Any comments re: how easy it may be to learn this software?

Bob Pritchett

Thank you for all the thoughtful feedback. Some further thoughts:

We don't plan to take away the ability to read books offline without the Internet, and we haven't disabled Logos 3 or 4 or your ability to use older versions of the software. Some future new features, though, will need the web -- the data will be there, and won't fit locally.

If you have information / data / comments that would cause enormous damage if disclosed, or risk your freedom in an oppressive country, do not put it on a computer. I don't mean don't put it in Logos, I mean don't put it in digital form, on any device, anywhere. There's no adequate digital protection, and you should plan for everything you type to be disclosed. Someday people will, if only for idle entertainment purposes, write software that you can plug a thrown-away laptop or hard drive into and upload it all to a massive search engine in the cloud. This isn't a "Logos-specific" issue. This is common sense. And your biggest risk isn't even our server being hacked -- it's a trojan, a virus, a key-logger, losing your smart phone, walking away from your logged-in computer someone else has physical access to, etc.

The "I have confidential stuff in my notes" theme is a red herring. If it's that secret, you shouldn't type it into your computer -- in any application. Just ask the now-former director of the CIA -- someone who ought to know how to keep a secret. You don't know enough / can't do enough to keep a digital secret.

Again, I'm not saying this as an excuse for why you shouldn't care about Logos' cloud-based backup, statistical data mining, etc. This is just general good advice.

With that said, we are listening and will improve our controls here. But I do think we're making a mountain out of a mole hill; if you use a credit card, shop in a store with surveillance cameras, have a driver's license and car with a license plate, have a bank account, use the Internet, or visit any licensed healthcare professional, you are being tracked far more, about far more personal things than anything Logos is doing. This isn't an excuse that we shouldn't care about your concerns -- we should -- but I feel like threats to stop doing business with us over this are a little unreasonable. We're at least talking to you about it! Your grocery store didn't ask you before data mining transactions (even cash transactions!) to learn that people who buy peanut butter also buy jelly and bread, and you probably didn't care.

In other words, unless you used a multi-tier anonymizing VPN system to post your objections here, (or, better yet, walked up to me on the street wearing dark glasses and a hat without carrying a cell phone and whispered them in my ear), you've got bigger privacy issues to worry about than Logos... :-)

One more future feature that touches on this:

We hope to offer some "all you can eat" pricing models in the future. Much like Netflix, where for $9 you can watch an unlimited number of videos each month from a large pool of content, we'd like to offer a subset of our books in an "all you can read" subscription. To pay royalties to the copyright holders, though, we need to know how much each resource is used. (Copyright holders want to know that if their content is the most used, they get the most royalties. Books in the pool that don't get read in a month don't get royalties that month.) We need some stats collection in order to deliver this feature, and you couldn't participate in this without your stats being recorded.

P.S. Please don't walk up and whisper at me on the street. It would freak me out... :-)

Jon

how difficult is this for a knucklehead user like myself?

Hi Emile, it is not as complicated as it looks from that screenshot which is the main configuration window. In practice, how it works is that when a program on your computer tries to make a connection to the internet it pops up an alert like this:

It sounds like it would be very useful in your context, with your security concerns. At first when you install it you'll get lots of alerts popping up as you use all your normal programs and discover that they frequently connect online for all sorts of reasons. After that initial stage (of setting Forever Allow or Deny — it takes this input and generates the rules you see on the screen shot in my previous post) it will only popup for something that's new and doesn't match any existing rules. If something pops up thats unexpected it could well be some kind of malware/trojan/logger and you can block it from phoning home.

Edit: Bob, your example of normal shops data mining reminded me of this article (better not go to a department store if you're worried about privacy)

:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/

Patrick S.

Dear Bob

Thank you again for stepping in and providing more feedback and comments on this topic. I do have some comments:

When you use a product that's delivered via a web site, there are certain assumptions you can safely make about what's being stored on the web servers: everything.

Every click, page view, search, IP address, time of visit, and bit of information typed into the site is stored. At a minimum, the standard "web log" functionality of the web server (standard since the first days of the web) is recording most of this info for every page view

There really needs to be made clear the distinction between information such as logs which are recorded on web servers as a result of people browsing a website anonymously where there is usually, and rightly, no Personally Identifying Information (PII) being (able to be) stored; and information as to what users do on their own computers which, obviously, will include Personally Identifying Information.

Logos has, if not the right, then the ability, as the server system belongs to them, to collect information about how I interact with Logos' web servers via a web browser. It does not — automatically — have the right to reach into my computer and collect private and personally identifying information of any manner.

and, since the entire site/application is on a remote server, all the information you type / enter is stored there, too.

I'm sorry, but that simply is not factually correct. Who in your organisation is telling you that? Logos 5 is not a web application — as in a HTML web browser based application, it is not a 'Software as a service (SaaS) application — it is a local desktop (runs on user's computer) application — which is web enabled. There is a very big, and significant, difference.

What… are you saying that the entire Logos 5 application runs on your servers and every keystroke I enter is recorded on your servers? Not correct. Logos may be trapping and recording everything I do and sending it to Logos servers (and this is something I want clarified by Logos) but it is not doing it via a SaaS design, it is (is it?) doing it via saving everything locally and 'phoning home'.

But it seems people are sometimes surprised, and even upset, to find out that desktop applications are now recording and reporting similar information.

You simply cannot equate anonymous web browsing with private use of a computer, it surprises and alarms me that you make statements like that. Again...

Logos has, if not the right, then the ability as the server system belongs to them, to collect information about how I interact with Logos' web servers. It does not — automatically — have the right to reach into my computer and collect private and personally identifying information of any manner.

I am going to give you a fictional example (obviously this does not refer to you in reality):

Let's say that someone, from your home Internet IP address, browses an online sex store and orders a sex toy. Obviously the web server is going to record in its logs the fact that a computer — at your Internet IP address — has accessed the server. The person browsing can't do anything about that, anyway the information has no PII information stored in it. That is very different from the purchased sex toy having some recording device surreptitiously embedded in it which records all information about — how it is used, and how often, and when (to improve the product naturally) and which then uploads that information back to the manufacturer along with using WiFi location sensing to do geolocation to cross-reference it back to a purchaser. Is that OK? The company simply wants to improve their product, they have a right to so don't they?

I believe we would all obviously say no — and I use this (shocking to Christians) example to deliberately shock us all out of complacency on the whole question of privacy. Also BTW, the person browsing the sex store from your Internet IP address… it was the next door neighbour who had hacked into your WiFi.

As a concession to "the missionary with the solar-powered laptop and no Internet connection", and to people who still want an isolated stand-alone software package, you can run the software with Internet access turned off. (It's becoming more and more difficult to maintain this functionality, but we'll try to keep it as long as we can.)

Why? Once someone has downloaded (or used a DVD) and installed Logos 5 and is using it, why must it phone home? What functionality is limited — apart from community features — in their use of the product if the application does not have a constantly open Internet link to Logos' servers? Logos 5 is not an… online gaming program… which must have a constantly connected Internet connection to function. It is a Bible study program (with great features - no one is saying otherwise) for, primarily, personal Bible study. Put another way, if a person's Internet connection went down they could still use Logos 5 for the purpose for which it is marketed, sold and purchased — that is Bible study. However if the software constantly crashes then it is not fulfilling the purpose for which it is marketed, sold and purchased.

Also, again, there needs to be made the distinction between the application doing (beneficial to the user) things like:

a) checking for new software/resources on startup; saving documents and layouts

versus

b) constantly uploading (in real time?) everything the user is doing, extending now beyond statistical use, to specific informational use.

Option a) simply requires occasional Internet connections between the application and Logos servers.

On the point of the Logos software gathering information and Internet use can I please have clarification between these two settings:

1) Send Feedback — and within feedback the differences between All; Anonymous & None

2) Use Internet — especially what does "various features" mean?

It seems to me that you are inextricably linking the two options — can't, aren't they already, mutually exclusive? I would see the information gathering part being in 'feedback' and the user benefit functions being in 'Use Internet'.

Also, with respect to where information is anonymised, if it is, is it anonymised on the Logos user's machine or once it gets to Logos' servers?

What impact does all this Internet connectivity to Logos' servers have to the users' Logos application? I ask this because in the process of helping fellow Logos users on the forum and looking at log files I see a number of connection issues to Logos servers (not clear if it is on the users' side or Logos side) resulting sometimes even in the application crashing — which is obviously not desirable or welcome.

I sort of get the feeling that you are saying, to paraphrase, "well we are already gathering, and using, heaps of private and personal information on you already — you'll just have to live with it." Actually we don't.

Logos really needs to declare where it stands with respect to user privacy issues:

— on the side of entities like Google / Facebook / online advertisers whose stated aim is to gather as much Personally Identifying Information on people as possible, often illegally, or

— on the side of entities who have a basic principle & position of respecting people's privacy and using those principles as a 'guiding light' when deciding how to interact with and use customers' personal information.

Also Logos needs to be very careful with its' privacy position with regards European users. The European Union is not as lax as the US with respect to various aspects of computers, the Internet and privacy — as companies like Google and Facebook have found out to their financial discomfort.

and we follow best practices like not storing your password at all. (That's why our CS reps can't tell or email your password, only reset it -- we literally don't have access to it.)

Logos has to store something on passwords, otherwise users could not log in. What I believe you mean is, following common computing practices, you don't store the actual password string but a hash of the password — just to be precise.

Donnie Hale

Again, I do respect you and a few others who post on this forum, but I would like to keep my version of Logos independent of forum posters philosophical inputs.

Isn't this *your* philosophical input? Logos is not going to create a version of the software for each relatively unique philosophical preference. Bob has clearly articulated his philosophical premises for upcoming versions of Logos - nearly ubiquitous connectedness with very few and coarse-grained exceptions.

Donnie

David Taylor, Jr.

Thank you for all the thoughtful feedback. Some further thoughts:

We don't plan to take away the ability to read books offline without the Internet, and we haven't disabled Logos 3 or 4 or your ability to use older versions of the software. Some future new features, though, will need the web -- the data will be there, and won't fit locally.

If you have information / data / comments that would cause enormous damage if disclosed, or risk your freedom in an oppressive country, do not put it on a computer. I don't mean don't put it in Logos, I mean don't put it in digital form, on any device, anywhere. There's no adequate digital protection, and you should plan for everything you type to be disclosed. Someday people will, if only for idle entertainment purposes, write software that you can plug a thrown-away laptop or hard drive into and upload it all to a massive search engine in the cloud. This isn't a "Logos-specific" issue. This is common sense. And your biggest risk isn't even our server being hacked -- it's a trojan, a virus, a key-logger, losing your smart phone, walking away from your logged-in computer someone else has physical access to, etc.

The "I have confidential stuff in my notes" theme is a red herring. If it's that secret, you shouldn't type it into your computer -- in any application. Just ask the now-former director of the CIA -- someone who ought to know how to keep a secret. You don't know enough / can't do enough to keep a digital secret.

Again, I'm not saying this as an excuse for why you shouldn't care about Logos' cloud-based backup, statistical data mining, etc. This is just general good advice.

With that said, we are listening and will improve our controls here. But I do think we're making a mountain out of a mole hill; if you use a credit card, shop in a store with surveillance cameras, have a driver's license and car with a license plate, have a bank account, use the Internet, or visit any licensed healthcare professional, you are being tracked far more, about far more personal things than anything Logos is doing. This isn't an excuse that we shouldn't care about your concerns -- we should -- but I feel like threats to stop doing business with us over this are a little unreasonable. We're at least talking to you about it! Your grocery store didn't ask you before data mining transactions (even cash transactions!) to learn that people who buy peanut butter also buy jelly and bread, and you probably didn't care.

In other words, unless you used a multi-tier anonymizing VPN system to post your objections here, (or, better yet, walked up to me on the street wearing dark glasses and a hat without carrying a cell phone and whispered them in my ear), you've got bigger privacy issues to worry about than Logos... :-)

One more future feature that touches on this:

We hope to offer some "all you can eat" pricing models in the future. Much like Netflix, where for $9 you can watch an unlimited number of videos each month from a large pool of content, we'd like to offer a subset of our books in an "all you can read" subscription. To pay royalties to the copyright holders, though, we need to know how much each resource is used. (Copyright holders want to know that if their content is the most used, they get the most royalties. Books in the pool that don't get read in a month don't get royalties that month.) We need some stats collection in order to deliver this feature, and you couldn't participate in this without your stats being recorded.

P.S. Please don't walk up and whisper at me on the street. It would freak me out... :-)

[Y] well put!

Donnie Hale

There really needs to be made clear the distinction between information such as logs which are recorded on web servers as a result of people browsing a website anonymously where there is usually, and rightly, no Personally Identifying Information (PII) being (able to be) stored; and information as to what users do on their own computers which, obviously, will include Personally Identifying Information.

Your premise isn't completely accurate. Depending on the authentication scheme and the configured log record format for the web site in question, an authenticated user's ID is typically logged in a normal web access log.

Donnie

Patrick S.

There really needs to be made clear the distinction between information such as logs which are recorded on web servers as a result of people browsing a website anonymously where there is usually, and rightly, no Personally Identifying Information (PII) being (able to be) stored; and information as to what users do on their own computers which, obviously, will include Personally Identifying Information.

Your premise isn't completely accurate. Depending on the authentication scheme and the configured log record format for the web site in question, an authenticated user's ID is typically logged in a normal web access log.

Donnie

Yes, perhaps if a person is logged into a server, but that is, for the purposes of this discussion, a side point.

Donovan R. Palmer

As a concession to "the missionary with the solar-powered laptop and no Internet connection", and to people who still want an isolated stand-alone software package, you can run the software with Internet access turned off. (It's becoming more and more difficult to maintain this functionality, but we'll try to keep it as long as we can.)

I wished this was more than just a 'concession'. I wished it was part of the vision of Logos.

For some of those who are taking the Gospel out, they're probably about 10 years behind the rest of the world internet connectivity wise. The people who go to places like this accept it as part of the job. It's what they sign up for and in general they don't expect the world to cater to them. They know they often straddle two worlds in many areas... one of them being technology. They know the developed world can't wait up for them and would not expect a company like Logos to hurt its ability to innovate and to bless the church at large. However, it would be nice if it would be than a concession. It would be nice if it was a vision to do what it can without hurting its business model to support those in these sorts of situations.

When big resource updates in the early days of Logos 4 were being rolled out on things like the interlinears, it killed us. The problem was that the software worked just fine, but if you needed to buy a small resource of 20mb, you could not do so until you downloaded all the updates. It was physically impossible to leave your computer hooked up for enough weeks and months to get them all. Myself and a few others pleaded for regular DVD media updates. After time we got updates, but the weeks it took after they were released to get out here was an eternity when all we needed was a 20mb book. Am I complaining? No, it is a cost that comes with the job.

In the plus column, even in Africa we have seen significant changes in the last five years with internet connectivity. Huge changes. This will continue to happen and some of this is becoming less and less of an issue. Still problematic, still expensive, still lots of places you can't get connectivity, but to be able to get the latest resources for a project is so worth it. So I would not want to go back. (Even while typing this post, my internet connection has completely failed. I'll have to copy and save my message offline for posting later) I am finding that I run Logos 5 more and more offline because I think it gets a bit stroppy when it has a number of failed attempts to sync with our poor internet.

On that note, the only thing I would plea is that as long as Logos sees the possibility to continue to extend this concession to the missionary with the solar panel, that it pays close attention to the crash logs they submit from these scenarios to test Logos concepts and software code. If you run a private beta, ask a few to participate. What works well in the lab and in the US, is totally different here. I would argue if your code will hold up here, it will hold up anywhere...

One thing for the record though... we don't use solar panels. We use mice powered generators and we're still using Intel 8088 turbo processors with MSDOS 5.0. We just got a 2400 baud modem and are loving the new speeds over the old 300 we just retired!

Seriously, God bless you guys and all that you are doing for the church. You are popularizing Bible software and this can only be a good thing for all. We certainly have some cool tools for Bible study and I am deep gratitude for the ability to carry a reference library with me. It is one of the most precious things I own.

Thomas Jackson

Bob,

It seems that I did not make myself clear as to my objection to the ‘Social / community’ direction Logos is planning. My objection has nothing to do with privacy concerns. I did not purchase Logos for social / community use. I will not debate my position because I used my own resources when I purchased this product. If Logos plans to offer the ‘Social / community’ features in a Logos 6 or higher version, I have no objections to the new direction. I will, however, reconsider future purchases until I can get a clearer understanding as to how the new direction will be implemented.

Thomas

DMB

'the missionary with the solar-powered laptop and no Internet connection' is just one of Bob's playful exagerations. But his business model will be interesting.

We live in a fairly upscale community and most of my 'rich-friends' are backing off their monthly costs ... TV, phone, internet. Not sure why since the cost isn't that big a deal. We already moved to pre-paid phones, and now are dumping our WIFI supplier. The only impediment was Logos and Bob's helped out with that with his missive yesterday.

I'm no prophetess (we're from Ephesus, not Corinth of course), but looks to me big whopper downloads constantly isn't going to last for long. What with transmission companies raising their prices as quickly as possible.

Randy W. Sims

Please clarify.

Am I at anytime in the future going to lose the ability to run passage guides, exegetical guides, etc. when off line? Is the desktop application going to become another version of the (nearly useless when offline) mobile app?

I hope I don't sound rude or ungrateful, but If that's the case, then it's not the product I thought I was buying and I need to reconsider my purchases. I have no problem with future features using/requiring the internet-it is an excellent tool-use it! I have no problem with monitoring my usage-I'll plug in a web cam if you like! (However, I do think it extremely inconsiderate to force it on others who view it differently). But I would be extremely disappointed to see functionality that I currently have go away when unable to connect to the internet. That's not the product I wanted.

Would you please clarify this issue?

Paul Golder

There is also the consideration of the
needs of the minority. If statistics are gathered to see what is done
most in Logos, then by effect what is done least is considered of
less importance in development (regardless of how important it is to
some users).

We have already seen this with the
total abandonment of Windows XP platform development.

John Duffy

Your grocery store didn't ask you before data mining transactions (even cash transactions!) to learn that people who buy peanut butter also buy jelly and bread, and you probably didn't care.

The analogy isn't correct. The difference is that data acquisition on our purchases is normal, but that while the vendor/manufacturer have the right to monitor sales in their own store, they don't have the right to see what we do with our purchases after we have bought them e.g. what we eat our jelly with at home. Even though for digital downloads/sales, the fact that the sales and usage are done on the same computer, tehre should still be a distinction between the two. Logos has the right to sales/support stats, but for what started out in life as a desktop application, anything more than that really should have our permission, which can only be granted when there is an option to not give it, not the option it seems that we have at present which is 'like it or lump it' (I don't know if that expression is well known across the pond, but I assume you know what I mean - either live with it or stop using Logos software).

And over and above program usage stats, privacy of user data (Documents etc) should be assumed without question, unless permission is granted otherwise. This is what the EULA states, but the aggregation of popular highlights, community ratings/tags, shows that this is not being adhered to, as far as I see it. While this is not a big issue as it stands, it could be a concerning trend beginning.

The "I have confidential stuff in my notes" theme is a red herring. If it's that secret, you shouldn't type it into your computer -- in any application.

Bob, with respect, in my view the argument that nothing can be confidentially stored on a computer is a serious overreaction, and does not correlate well with the reality that much is stored confidentially on computers worldwide. It appears like a poor excuse for not giving us privacy controls. No IT system or developer that I know of takes the view that because of data breaches being a possibility/reality, that it is pointless to take steps to try to maintain data security - the opposite is the case, they try harder to do so. Instead of such a response, I would have expected to hear that
because of such data integrity concerns, Logos is taking extra steps to
increase the privacy/confidentiality of users' data etc. But what I see is the opposite where user data is being shared as community data, even though it is the fairly innocuous aggregation of anonymised highlighting and ratings/tags at the minute.

The "eat all you can" pricing model seems really interesting - I love the sound of it. Yet, I hope you're not arguing that because of a future feature that we might want, that we're not going to be offered usage or data privacy/confidentiality because future features may depend on the collection of data to make them work. If it were a choice between features and privacy, give me privacy any day.

There are number of distinct things relating to this thread: (i) program usage stats feedback, (ii) confidentiality/privacy of user data in Documents etc, (iii) syncing or backup of user data, (iv) download and display of community data (v) ability to keep internet usage to download resources without having sync/updates etc require lots of bandwidth first, (vi) the need for feedback to allow some new features to function, and probably more. I wouldn't like the argument to be flattened to a few (minor?) issues e.g. (i) or (vi), and the baby to be thrown out with the bathwater regarding other issues.

But while I have strongly held views on these topics, don't let that give the impression that I'm very critical of Logos generally. It's fantastic software, and a real blessing to me in ministry, for which I'm truly grateful for all the work that has been put into it... [:)]

James Hudson

At the same time, though, we are committed to being a web-based, data-driven platform. We are no longer designing a stand-alone, isolated desktop application. Some planned features will require access to databases too large to deliver to user devices; you'll need web access to use them. We will be listening to our users, responding to their feedback and concerns, but like other web-based platforms, we will not necessarily be offering control over every individual setting. Some things come along with being web-based.

I understand that some planned functionality may need to access servers. But why should this be two-way traffic (other than the request / response which off course you would log as per any server).

But what I do locally, what I highlight, what notes I write, what books I'm reading locally - that's what the "Send Feedback" set to none should block if it is something I am concerned about.

For the record, I'm not particularly into the community aspects and would prefer R&D spent on more useful stuff for real bible stuidy (like improvement of notes engine).

In fact the whole Web community stuff (facebook "likes", twitter feeds etc - so prized recently by Logos) surely is playing to the wrong demographic for Logos users (unless there are loads of female teenage pastors! [;)])

Andy

Am I at anytime in the future going to lose the ability to run passage guides, exegetical guides, etc. when off line? Is the desktop application going to become another version of the (nearly useless when offline) mobile app?

Hi Randy,

Reading Bob's post here and comments elsewhere, there is no suggestion that this will be the case.

I have seen no suggestion that Logos will reduce or remove existing functionality of L3, L4 or L5 as a result of this announcement (beyond the present limitations of running offline). Rather, Bob suggests that running in offline mode or opting out (whatever that may look like) may compromise the functionality of new, yet to be introduced features. Bob, in his subsequent post, specifically makes reference to an 'all you can read' subscription model (yet to be introduced) which will require online 'opt in'.

In summary, be reassured that there is no suggestion that you will lose the functionality of passage guides and exegetical guides when off line.

EmileB

Also, with respect to where information is anonymised, if it is, is it anonymised on the Logos user's machine or once it gets to Logos' servers?

Also Logos needs to be very careful with its' privacy position with regards European users. The European Union is not as lax as the US with respect to various aspects of computers, the Internet and privacy — as companies like Google and Facebook have found out to their financial discomfort.

Yes, both of these are questions/concerns in my context. I'm not losing sleep over it, but that would be helpful to know. And as Bob says, the greater danger is probably from a Trojan horse or key logger lurking on one's machine than anything having to do with Logos' servers. But is the transmission to Logos from my machine encrypted (sorry if that is a dumb question)? ANd if so, how could are the encryption protocols? They are very good at breaking those things here. Every server is owned by the government... and using email is even dicey at times. Sometimes, I estimate about half gets to me, and half of what gets sent out actually gets through. The KGB forgets to send the other half... ;-) It varies based on how closely they are monitoring on a given day.

Andy

I hope this overview is helpful, and that you can appreciate the value that these social / community features add to the Logos platform, and hopefully to your study and investment as well.

Thank you for sharing the direction of travel regarding social/community features.

I personally find much of what you have announced exciting and I can really see a value in greater opportunities for online sharing and collaboration. I am particularly excited with regards to the prospect of the 'all you can read' subscription model.

I also appreciate the value of aggregated data to the continuing success of Logos the business and the development of Logos software.

I personally have no concerns with regards to privacy or confidentiality. I do not keep any information in Logos which I would consider to be highly sensitive or confidential. Having said this, Emile and Donovan have eloquently shared some of the serious concerns and obstacles facing missionaries (with regards to security and accessibility). I am confident that you will continue to listen to and consider their concerns and needs.

And I agree with Mark that an easily executed opt out should be made available to those who do not wish to participate.

EmileB

As a concession to "the missionary with the solar-powered laptop and no Internet connection", and to people who still want an isolated stand-alone software package, you can run the software with Internet access turned off. (It's becoming more and more difficult to maintain this functionality, but we'll try to keep it as long as we can.)

I wished this was more than just a 'concession'. I wished it was part of the vision of Logos.

For some of those who are taking the Gospel out, they're probably about 10 years behind the rest of the world internet connectivity wise. The people who go to places like this accept it as part of the job. It's what they sign up for and in general they don't expect the world to cater to them. They know they often straddle two worlds in many areas... one of them being technology. They know the developed world can't wait up for them and would not expect a company like Logos to hurt its ability to innovate and to bless the church at large. However, it would be nice if it would be than a concession. It would be nice if it was a vision to do what it can without hurting its business model to support those in these sorts of situations.

[Y] [Y] [Y]

When big resource updates in the early days of Logos 4 were being rolled out on things like the interlinears, it killed us. The problem was that the software worked just fine, but if you needed to buy a small resource of 20mb, you could not do so until you downloaded all the updates. It was physically impossible to leave your computer hooked up for enough weeks and months to get them all.

Boy, Donovan! Can I relate! haha!

(Even while typing this post, my internet connection has completely failed. I'll have to copy and save my message offline for posting later) I am finding that I run Logos 5 more and more offline because I think it gets a bit stroppy when it has a number of failed attempts to sync with our poor internet.

Heehee... It took me about a half an hour or so to post my original post in this thread (not counting writing time... and then it came out garbled... took another 15-20 minutes or so just to get it to respond so that I could edit it so that it was readable again...

One thing for the record though... we don't use solar panels. We use mice powered generators and we're still using Intel 8088 turbo processors with MSDOS 5.0. We just got a 2400 baud modem and are loving the new speeds over the old 300 we just retired!

WOW! REALLY?!?! You've got MODEMS??? In my village, I have to connect to the closest tower with a pair of dixie cups and a really, really long string!

I agree about the solar panels... none here either... it's cloudy all the time. We burn peat bricks to fire up our machines.... [;)] [;)] [;)]

Some days I really can't believe I'm in Europe.....

Bob Pritchett

There really needs to be made clear the distinction between information such as logs which are recorded on web servers as a result of people browsing a website anonymously where there is usually, and rightly, no Personally Identifying Information (PII) being (able to be) stored;

Not true. The IP address is personally identifying information, and many other things can be used to identify you. In many law enforcement cases even people piggy-backing on neighbors' IP addresses have been identified. Cross-indexing IPs from logged-in sites to non-logged in sites, use of embedded iFrames for logged in sites like Facebook, etc. open your identity up to nearly every major site. In the Petraeus scandal the woman used wifi in hotels to stay anonymous -- till the FBI cross-checked hotel guest lists against the dates of server log entries.

Who in your organisation is telling you that? Logos 5 is not a web application — as in a HTML web browser based application, it is not a 'Software as a service (SaaS) application

I think you confused statements I was still making about web sites with statements I was making about Logos. You are correct, we're not a web application -- yet. But all applications are going that way.

(Don't anyone freak out! We are moving with the tide, not ahead of it. I know, as much discussed, that many people have poor Internet / no Internet, etc. We aren't planning to abandon reality -- but the reality is changing and we'll be going along. In 1991, when we started, none of our users had broadband Internet. Someday everybody will, even in Africa....)

You simply cannot equate anonymous web browsing with private use of a computer, it surprises and alarms me that you make statements like that. Again...

Logos has, if not the right, then the ability as the server system belongs to them, to collect information about how I interact with Logos' web servers. It does not — automatically — have the right to reach into my computer and collect private and personally identifying information of any manner.

Well, when you use a web-connected, web-integrated app, some of these things start to change and the definitions get fuzzy. The web browser app is "an app on your private computer", but everything you do it in is reported to a server. Your Tivo / cable DVR device is a piece of hardware in your home that reports back your television browsing; Tivo famously could report what moments of a football game caused the most people to hit the "rewind/rewatch" button.

Just because your fridge doesn't tell Whirlpool your eating habits doesn't mean it's not going to. It's going to. :-)

When you install the LinkedIn app on your iPhone I'm pretty sure it records the same info about whose profiles you viewed that LinkedIn's web server would record if you visited with a browser.

Being an app isn't some sacred status. I agree our app shouldn't scan your hard drive for your financial records and email them to us. But I don't agree that reporting what you do in our app is the same kind of offense, particularly since our EULA explicitly states that it will do so.

(Again, I'm just working through the arguments, not saying we'll be ignoring your points! We are listening!)

Bob Pritchett

If Logos plans to offer the ‘Social / community’ features in a Logos 6 or higher version, I have no objections to the new direction. I will, however, reconsider future purchases until I can get a clearer understanding as to how the new direction will be implemented.

I think I've outlined everything we have in mind at the moment; if you have remaining questions let me know and I'll try to answer them specifically. We'll also be letting you turn off seeing other people's community input/data, likely in v. 5.0b.

Bob Pritchett

looks to me big whopper downloads constantly isn't going to last for long. What with transmission companies raising their prices as quickly as possible.

I don't know the details of where you live, but I'm going to predict that the cost of Internet bandwidth is going to drop, not increase. There may be fluctuations, and local differences, but I'm pretty sure Internet access is going to stick around and become easier and cheaper. (The first increase will be as we all drop our land line phones, cable television, etc. and the carriers try to recoup that revenue via Internet charges, since all that traffic will move to Internet. But then prices will enter a permanent free fall, like long-distance telephone rates.)

And, of course, if I'm wrong, it'll be fine -- we'll change our strategy and code to the new reality.

Bob Pritchett

The analogy isn't correct. The difference is that data acquisition on our purchases is normal, but that while the vendor/manufacturer have the right to monitor sales in their own store, they don't have the right to see what we do with our purchases after we have bought them e.g. what we eat our jelly with at home. Even though for digital downloads/sales, the fact that the sales and usage are done on the same computer, tehre should still be a distinction between the two. Logos has the right to sales/support stats, but for what started out in life as a desktop application, anything more than that really should have our permission, which can only be granted when there is an option to not give it, not the option it seems that we have at present which is 'like it or lump it' (I don't know if that expression is well known across the pond, but I assume you know what I mean - either live with it or stop using Logos software).

Yes, we like it or lump it in America, too. :-)

I think the analogy is correct. You're just more mentally adjusted to sales tracking, and less so to tracking "once you've taken it home." But like the Tivo example in my earlier reply, this kind of tracking is already standard. Medical devices phone home to manufacturers and doctors. Blu-ray players communicate with servers that can tell you watched the movie. Cell phones have GPS and are effectively tracked all the time, as cell towers log movement in/out of their range.

And Logos does, effectively, have your permission -- exactly what we're doing is in the EULA, which you agree to when using the software.

(Again, to be sure, I'm not saying 'like it or lump it' -- I'm pursuing the theoretical points to their conclusions... we are still listening!)

Yes, this line of reasoning says "you agree or don't use our software", but I think your argument is equally subjective in "where it draws the line.' You're saying "okay to track my purchase" (which you're not told about, but assume) but "not okay to track my use" (which you are told about). It's fine for you to feel that way -- and we need to hear and respect the collective user feedback on that -- but it's equally arbirtrary.

Bob, with respect, in my view the argument that nothing can be confidentially stored on a computer is a serious overreaction, and does not correlate well with the reality that much is stored confidentially on computers worldwide.

Respectfully, I think you're wrong. You really can't store anything confidentially. The reality is that not banks, not corporations, not people, and not the U.S. federal government (wikileaks!) have succeeded in keeping things confidential online. And, horrifyingly, there's even been a lot of targeting of innocents -- people of no position or fame who wouldn't consider themselves interesting or worthy as targets. (http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2010/06/24/peeping-tom-arrested-for-webcam-blackmail-attack-spree/)

This has nothing to do with the Logos discussion -- we are trying to improve security/privacy, etc. -- but I just didn't want to leave un-rebutted your suggestion that confidentiality exists online. It's too dangerous a misperception.

Harry Hahne

Please give us a way to opt-out of all community features in the product.

[Y] I agree. I don't want to have to do this individually for every resource.

I'm not entirely clear why you anticipate it being nearly impossible to use Logos in the future without the internet.

I would be very concerned if Logos went this way. There are many situations in my life where I either don't have Internet access or it is slow/unreliable. I definitely still need to use all of the search capabilities of Logos in such situations. It is bad enough that the mobile app is so restricted without Internet access. But I definitely need the full power of Logos desktop when I am in situations where I cannot count on the Internet. Not everyone has reliable high speed data access all of the time.

Fr. Charles R. Matheny

Dear Bob: Thank you so very much for providing more information and, real life examples of how the data mining works, examples of whats done with the info etc.

I did not realize the sensitivity of this subject when I asked for more examples, it is indeed a complex subject. Again, thank you for being so informative.

-------------------------------------

Opinions.

I do realize that much of my life is data mined each day. The way I drive, where I drive, how I drive during different times of the day is another good example. I have known for a long time that there is no such thing as "Private" computer usage if said computer is connected to the internet. To use the internet requires computers talking to one another, so there you go, right from the start, information IS exchanged and, that very first, very simple exchange, has a lot of information in it.

We are "Data Mined" in everything we do, from walking the streets, to driving, to purchasing, to working, medical, eating, sleeping, gas, water, electrical, garbage, television, clothing trends, literally everything and, alas, it did not start with the Internet.

A census is data mining, going to Church,( from the beginning, had data mining), building a bridge requires data mining etc, etc.

We all data mine throughout our day if we think about it. Going to lunch with friends, someone is going to ask : " How many people will we need tables for", thus we just asked for data so we could make a decision.

Data mining is nothing new, been done in sales long before we had computers, before they were thought of .

Yet it is a concern now because we can , and do, save such an incredible amount of our personal lives on the little powerful devices.

I think many people have a hard time thinking about "data" in so many different ways and, tend to think : If they have my data, they have everything, all my data.

I think it's hard for people to think of any data coming "off" their computer as "non-personal" data.

Personally, I do not care if Logos gets all my keystrokes, preferences, books most often used, those used occasionally, those never used, what highlights are used, what searches are performed, what visual filters stay constant, which are not used, what layouts I use, create, never use, so forth and so.

Does not bother me a bit because , as I understand it, Logos is not concerned about MY usage, but instead , Logos is concerned with how LOGOS is being used. Therefore, (as far as data is concerned) it's not "me" the mining is about, but how the program is being used by xyz number of "users". If I understand correctly, its about "usage" .

Thus "who" the data is coming from means nothing to Logos Data mining, "what" is being done with Logos Software is the part that is important. "What is being done, and, What is not being done" as far as usage of the product is the "data" Logos needs in order to make a better product and, that does affect, "me".

Therefore, I do not mind the data mining as long as:

It is not clogging my internet connection.

The Data mining is limited to my "usage" of said product.

Logos cannot be used ( no one can guarantee this ) as an entry point to hack my computer.

The data is not referenced to my account and sold to others that will e-mail/call me to sell other products.

Looking at the responses though, indicates to me that there needs to be a setting for " Updates and Upgrades only" while internet is connected.

As to the cloud: I can certainly see a lot of opportunities here. A cloud based library that could be accessed by membership ( like a net flicks ) could allow us access to many resources we would not nessesarily want to own, but just need to look at when doing research. This would be a wonderful option I would think , especially if one could "rent" access by the year, or the month, or week etc.

Imagine the whole of Logos resources is a searchable data base that we could access, when needed, but not taking up space when not needed. Imagine being able to "check out" a resource or set of resources that would "drop in" to our software and tool system to be fully used while we needed it, then being able to "check it back in" when we were done with it. This would be perfect for things like the Perseus collection as well as many, many other books and collections.

Don't need or want to spend money and use up space on your computer for the Dead Sea Scrolls , some 17th century commentaries, 18th century lexicons , but then need them for a particular study/project- just check in to the Logos online library, check out what you need, it fully functions within our software. When done, just "check it back in" .

At any rate, I agree that things are going to be more and more cloud based in the future.

Again, people need options.

I appreciate Bob's open and honest information and that they are "Listening" to try and find ways to meet everyones needs and sensitivities.

Blessings all and, sorry this was soooo long.

Fr. Charles R. Matheny

Dear Harry: If I may be so bold: I agree with your reaction as far as things stand right now, However, I "think" Bob is speaking of the future and of getting there " a bit at a time ". ( Not to put words in his mouth).

Here's the thing: We don't even think about electricity anymore, unless it's off- does not work.

We don't talk about it ( other than cost -smile ) at the water cooler, we don't e-mail about, we don't write letters about it, we simply do not even think about it unless there is suddenly an absence of it.

We come home at night, open the door, reach for the switch and expect the lights to come on. We don't reach for the switch hoping it will come on, we just do it, it's automatic.

We are conditioned to it being there, it's just part of life. We don't think about breathing, until some affects our breathing that changes it, same with electricity.

The internet is a baby compared to electricity and, like electricity of old, it is growing up.

It is an "immature" product/service and will not reach maturity until it gets to the point we no longer "think about it" unless something changes/fail's.

There is a day coming when everything will be so connected that the "Cloud" will simply be like electricity, or running water.

We won't be thinking about "is it on my computer or in the cloud" , we will not think about logging in and finding information, we will just ask for the information ( keyboard, finger swipe, speak - whatever) and it will be there, we will be startled when it's not.

Our refrigerator will defrost our food during the day so it's ready to be cooked, simply because we set up a menu, our oven will be pre-heated when we get home, Tv will come on when we walk in room with our shows already cued, lighting will automatically change color according to who is using the room, temps will adjust, water temps in shower will adjust for person and time of year ext, etc, etc and we won't even think about the internet, yet, thats where all things things will interface, talk to each other, about our whole day/week/month.

Logos and every other company making software will have to adjust and keep up with these changes and how the internet/cloud and people are interfacing.

Like you, I am often where I do not have a connection and need everything local to my device, yet, it will not be very many years before this is not the case. IMHO.

Blessings.

Lynden O. Williams

Personally, I do not care if Logos gets all my keystrokes, preferences, books most often used, those used occasionally, those never used, what highlights are used, what searches are performed, what visual filters stay constant, which are not used, what layouts I use, create, never use, so forth and so.

Does not bother me a bit because , as I understand it, Logos is not concerned about MY usage, but instead , Logos is concerned with how LOGOS is being used. Therefore, (as far as data is concerned) it's not "me" the mining is about, but how the program is being used by xyz number of "users". If I understand correctly, its about "usage" .

Thus "who" the data is coming from means nothing to Logos Data mining, "what" is being done with Logos Software is the part that is important. "What is being done, and, What is not being done" as far as usage of the product is the "data" Logos needs in order to make a better product and, that does affect, "me".

You summarized my thoughts. I have my feedback set to anonymous.

toughski

I think most posters on this thread are talking about philosophical or "in principle" objections, while Bob is talking about reality and specific uses of data-mining or tracking of Logos application' use. I used to be in the first camp, but when I looked at what Bob was saying, I have no objection to them improving the software for the million+ users they have:

These stats have led to actual improvements in our business and software

the software did improve, did it not?

We tracked what percentage of users were on what operating system. This helped us know when we could drop support for old versions of Windows or Mac OS X, affecting few users and allowing us to allocate resources to new work instead of old OS support.

There is absolutely no skin off my nose for LOGOS to know that I run Windows 7. I am glad that they drop support of legacy OS in order to innovate AND to make the software run better.

We tracked what percentage of users running
the software each day had upgraded to a new version. It's useful to know
when 80% of daily users are running Logos 5 -- we can stop promoting
the upgrade so heavily. :-)

I am so glad they are doing it! It was such a pain to upgrade, or buy a resource they were "heavily" (HUGE UNDERSTATEMENT) promoting and continue to be nagged about it for weeks to come. Well done.

We tracked search queries. This is such a massive amount of info that the last time we decided to do some serious analysis on search queries we limited it to a single month. We sorted queries by frequency and looked to see how many used boolean operators, could not be parsed by the query engine, etc. We even just browsed them. (The document was a list of queries with counts -- no user identities.) From looking at a large aggregation of search queries we learned that boolean operators aren't used much, and were more likely to mess up a query than be used correctly. This led to the use of all-caps AND and OR as operators, reducing the chance that users would unintentionally include an "and" or "or" that messed up a query that was a phrase. We also saw people were searching for the names of holidays, like "Mothers' Day", which fed into our decision to develop the Preaching Themes database, which is used to tag resources -- and includes Mothers' Day and other holidays as themes.

what exactly are you opposed to from the privacy standpoint in the SPECIFIC tracking examples referenced by Bob? As a missionary, how am I in danger if LOGOS data-mines my usage in this way? I agree with Bob - most of the arguments on this thread are philosophical, not practical.

Graham Owen

I think most posters on this thread are talking about philosophical or "in principle" objections, while Bob is talking about reality and specific uses of data-mining or tracking of Logos application' use.

Not sure I can speak for all of the other pastors here but my issue is not with the collection or analysis of the data but with the way that it is displayed in the program. Whilst I can see how some users will benefit from knowing who is interested in what and in how other users rate resources these features simply don't help me. I still maintain that we need to keep the two issues separate, collection and analysis versus display options

Patrick S.

Bob thank you for all your replies and efforts, I am impressed that you and the Logos team 'suffer all the little ones (Logos users) to come to you'.

You know I could get on my (techo) soapbox and write a long post countering you on various technical & privacy points — but I don't want to. Like the empty quotes above, after a while it becomes hollow words.

I would rather, given that we are talking about a Christian company, providing Christian content to Christian consumers, remind all of us what it is we are dealing with here. We're not talking about Google/Tivo/Facebook/Amazon/a Samsung fridge, or any other entity under the power of the ruler of this age, we're talking about the words of our God.

What is the purpose of Logos Bible Software and how should Logos be acting and what should be guiding them? Should Logos (I am sure they're not) be like Amazon remotely deleting a user books they had paid full price for (when did books move from being owned to not really owned?). Or like copyright holders of movies who 'licence', not sell, movies but who, when movies come out on new platforms (DVD to Blu-Ray), will charge you full price to 'own' the movie all over again on the new platform. Or like Google or Facebook snooping on you to get as much juicy information on you as possible to make you a more valuable commodity to them to sell to advertisers. These ones love to rule it over us, but I hope that Logos tries to follow the spirit of Matthew 20:25-28.

What is the purpose Logos Bible Software? Is it not to help Christians understand God's word and to help equip them, and, as God leads, to help spread His word? Our discussion should be focused on how to achieve that goal.

I have a niece who works for United Bible Societies, below is a picture (not of my niece [:)] I might feel old sometimes but I'm not that old [;)]) of Hanna, here is the story of how she got her first Bible in her own language...

http://translationstories.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/hannahs-hope/

my niece was there to see it.

I don't believe there is anything more to say...

John Duffy

Bob thank you for all your replies and efforts, I am impressed that you and the Logos team 'suffer all the little ones (Logos users) to come to you'.

You know I could get on my (techo) soapbox and write a long post countering you on various technical & privacy points — but I don't want to. Like the empty quotes above, after a while it becomes hollow words.

I would rather, given that we are talking about a Christian company, providing Christian content to Christian consumers, remind all of us what it is we are dealing with here. We're not talking about Google/Tivo/Facebook/Amazon/a Samsung fridge, or any other entity under the power of the ruler of this age, we're talking about the words of our God.

What is the purpose of Logos Bible Software and how should Logos be acting and what should be guiding them? Should Logos (I am sure they're not) be like Amazon remotely deleting a user books they had paid full price for (when did books move from being owned to not really owned?). Or like copyright holders of movies who 'licence', not sell, movies but who, when movies come out on new platforms (DVD to Blu-Ray), will charge you full price to 'own' the movie all over again on the new platform. Or like Google or Facebook snooping on you to get as much juicy information on you as possible to make you a more valuable commodity to them to sell to advertisers. These ones love to rule it over us, but I hope that Logos tries to follow the spirit of Matthew 20:25-28.

What is the purpose Logos Bible Software? Is it not to help Christians understand God's word and to help equip them, and, as God leads, to help spread His word? Our discussion should be focused on how to achieve that goal.

I have a niece who works for United Bible Societies, below is a picture (not of my niece I might feel old sometimes but I'm not that old ) of Hanna, here is the story of how she got her first Bible in her own language...

http://translationstories.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/hannahs-hope/

my niece was there to see it.

I don't believe there is anything more to say...

[Y]

Samuel

I think most posters on this thread are talking about philosophical or "in principle" objections, while Bob is talking about reality and specific uses of data-mining or tracking of Logos application' use.

There is anything wrong with philosophical or objections on principle. The large scale data mining currently being done has never before been done in history so we do not even know the full repercussions of it yet. It's not unreasonable to not want to be endlessly tracked. Desktop applications that track every keystroke is not the "new normal" - at least not yet and hopefully never. There's not a single desktop program on my computer that I expect to be logging everything I do without a way to disable it. We used to call things like that malware [:D] and I'll remove any apps that behave that way and find alternatives.

There are some things, such as buying resources, where "tracking" would be expected because I'm willingly giving Logos information. When I buy a book at a bookstore, the bookstore knows what book was purchased and has to buy a new one. That's expected. A book that phones home and tells the publisher how long it took me to read it, what shelf I put it on,and what chapters I skipped is an invasion of privacy. If customer wants their live profiled, that's their opinion but there will be many of us who do not want to be.

I understand Logos sees benefit from feedback, but feedback should remain optional. That's not unreasonable. yes, it's in principle, but it's also in fact. Some of us don't want our entire lives tracked. Yes, we have to make tradeoffs with what websites we visit and how we visit them, but that doesn't mean we should have to submit to tracking to use an application. I personally would just replace an application with another or do without it at that point.

DMB

Well, I've no longer got a dog in this hunt. After reading Bob's thread (this one) the other night, I thought the whole thing is positively creepy. I can't image pulling a book out of my library knowing the creepy ones are watching ... I guess recording which page I turn to, etc. I do have privacy concerns but they mainly relate to our friend who must concern himself with other intrusions of the 'kgb' type .... plain old everyday courtesy.

But I was impressed with the above plea to separate the collection issue from the display issue. Luckily the displayers (who meet on the 3rd day of the week at 10am) probably have an inside track from the collectors (who are positively weird, can't agree on even meeting and truth be told are paranoid).

Christianity is so funny. You'd think they perceive themselves as a common group with differing needs. One need not intensionally denying the other.

Fr. Charles R. Matheny

Dear all: To my understanding the problem here is that we are "personalizing this thing".

Logos is not snooping on you, the person. As far as the data itself is concerned, when they compile it, you, the person, are a non-entity.

It how the Program and its features are being used. Your personal information is not part of it, your name and info are not part of it. The computer compiling and sorting the info does not know you exist.

Example: My car has to be put in the shop, they hook it up to the diagnostic computer which interfaces with the cars computer.

The mechanic and see's all the data of how the car is running, a diagnostic report is produced that shows all the information about the components of the car and, how the car was being driven when it failed: Throttle position , accelerating or coasting, or de-accelerating/braking, cornering or straight etc, etc.

The download also goes to the manufacturer which has all of the cars "usage data" about how this car is being used/driven and how it is responding.

Thus the car maker's engineers have data in order to better make cars that match the driving habits of the average driver so as to improve the cars and gas milage reliability etc, etc.

It is a wrong idea that all of this is something new and never been done before.

It's been done though-out the history of humanity in ways appropriate to the technology of the time.

In the 70's people were paid to sit in restaurants and compile date as to how people reacted to the lay-outs of eating establishments : what tables were picked most often, how people reacted to displays, how long they stayed after eating, what is ordered most often, which way people most often faced, do they like windows or more private settings etc, etc.

Restaurant owners wanted/ want to know how many times they can 'roll" a table during peak times eta. These data sets allow them to know what they can and should be doing as far as volume.

Restaurants are designed according to these "data" and it changes as we have sociological changes within our society.

Cameras is stores are not simply for security, many are used to collect data, how people respond to to displays, how much time do they take to read a product advertisement if it is made a certain way, what traffic flow patterns do stores have if laid out in certain ways.

Everything , just about everywhere is data mined in order to maximize usability, promote sales, safety etc. etc, etc.

In every Church, staff has meeting where you talk about how people respond to this situation, these type hymns, songs, what people need to hear, what affects their lives, what the problems of society are and how we minister to that, what the needs of the children's ministry are etc, etc . We do this to meet the needs of people. In this, we are taking "data" from what is going on, we are reading people and their responses to what we are doing, we are "Data Miners".

The greatest computer ever created is the human mind and it "Data mines" all days long, some of this data going into the "fight or flight" sections of the human mind, thus, some situations automatically cause us to be on "alert" and out body instantly dumps adrenaline into our system because of the data "match" between the recorded data in our mind and the data we just saw/experienced.

We "data mined" when learning to ride a bike, drive a car, etc, etc.

We watch someone else do something and we record how they do it, we are data mining them, we are recoding data about what was done, how it was done, the best ways to do it, how to do it better.

Each time we purchase something, no matter if with cash or credit, that purchase is part of a data set.

I love to garden, farm, grow things. Every time I see a farm, garden, farmer, gardener, I start data mining. If I am talking to another gardener, I am "data mining" that person for information-data.

Yes, things can go too far, yes we can be vulnerable.

But we also have to understand that we are data miners and everyone else mines data and this is part and parcel of being Human Beings.

Human beings are the only species on the planet that can compile "data" ( experiences, knowledge etc.) and had it on generationally- nothing else on this planet does this-nothing.

We all started data mining before we were born, and after birth, none of us asked our parents, brothers and sisters, family friend, is we could record what they do, the sounds they make, the movements they make, the emotional activity they produced, yet we did indeed record all of those things and formed them into "data sets" within our minds.

All "data mining" is, by companies is, is the efforts by them of doing with computers what the human mind has always been doing and is doing right now, thats where the ideas and examples actually come from.

Yes, data can be used wrongly, yes we need options, yes there needs to be protections, yes there needs to be privacy.

However, privacy is not what people often think it is.

There is no thing as "complete privacy" unless one totally isolates oneself from the rest of humanity and even then, one's thoughts and actions are known by God- no matter what one believes.

As for "being of one mind" as Christians: This does not mean what many think it does, but that is not for discussion here, what is up for discussion is the FACT that people cannot be of "one mind" without "data mining" each other, in other words, there has to be the sharing of ideas, thoughts, beliefs, experiences and the coming to a general consensus.

Thus Bob sets up a post about the subject and interacts with the people he serves, his customers, and the response/s are what he comes to understand of the customers wants and needs.

These responses , we have all made are,,,, "data sets" .

He is not going to go to his code writers and say: well Fr. Charles wants this, and so and so wants that.

No, he is going to quickly see that xyz % of the people want fine controls, abc percent would be happy with global controls, efg% do not mind the data mining etc,etc.

We all just participated in creating a "data set" ( small set ) that helps Logos make decisions .

Our very lives are constantly creating data sets that are used in real time, space and history.

Yet, for the most part, this data is used impersonally , its the usage, not the person that is the most useful data in these cases, then things are made better for the community, which is "people".

All sociology is about "what people do, what they may do, how they did it, dis it in the past, etc". All business, to serve human beings, is based on these "data sets" , weather in the past, or in todays technology.

This is nothing new, for there is nothing new under the sun. We can just do more of it, more accurately and much faster and on wider scales with more detail, but it is nothing new.

Just think about it.

Its not the data mining that bothers me, what I concern myself with is : Who is doing it, why they are doing it, what they are doing with the data.

Blessings all.

Patrick S.

Logos collects stats on the use of the software. At various times we've collected all kinds of different stats; at the moment Logos 5 collects less information than earlier versions, but we expect to hook up more reporting in the future.

[...]

We tracked search queries. [...]

We tracked which dialog boxes were used. [...]

We tracked which books were opened. [...]

These stats, when aggregated, offer value to Logos and help us make a better product. Many of them also feed back into features that benefit users:

One of the potential issues/pitfalls I see with 'data mining' is what I would call 'pushing down to the lowest common denominator' or the race to mediocracy . I'm sure most of us would be familiar with one of the most abused statistical constructs — the old bell curve. It is unfortunately axiomatic that given a large enough population sampling, if one plots a curve of anything, one will end up with one of these.

Like any tool this can be used, or misused, or even abused.

Here's my point:

If there is a complex (but powerful) feature or function in a software package like Logos which data mining shows is used infrequently and/or ineffectively should the software company cut it out? After all, data mining clearly shows that it is not being used very much, and most of those people who do use it don't use it well/properly — it's right up there on the far side of the bell curve.

So should we follow one train of logic, go for the 95% and chop it off, or, should we aim higher and apply more resources to that top 3-5%, for example with more information and training. The concern I have is that if the top 3-5% is chopped off what will eventually happen is that the bell curve will just regain its shape and move to the left — the race to mediocracy.

I have recently become interested in the 'Syntax Search' feature in Logos which I saw initially in the Logos 'Learn to Use Greek and Hebrew' video training. I don't see much mentioned about it in the usual places (forum etc.). I have the MP Seminars' 'Logos Bible Software Training Manual', a paid training documentation. Syntax Search gets a one line mention on page 2 of Volume 1 — that's it. I see from querying the forums that it is tricky to learn and master — fair to say it's a top 3-5% user feature. Data mining says it is not used much — shall we chop it off? Dave Hooten might have something to say about that! And, of course, the product will be the poorer.

I believe you will see my point — slavishly and unthinkingly following where data mining leads may end up undermining the edifice.

David Mitchell

Logos collects stats on the use of the software. At various times we've collected all kinds of different stats; at the moment Logos 5 collects less information than earlier versions, but we expect to hook up more reporting in the future.

[...]

We tracked search queries. [...]

We tracked which dialog boxes were used. [...]

We tracked which books were opened. [...]

These stats, when aggregated, offer value to Logos and help us make a better product. Many of them also feed back into features that benefit users:

One of the potential issues/pitfalls I see with 'data mining' is what I would call 'pushing down to the lowest common denominator' or the race to mediocracy . I'm sure most of us would be familiar with one of the most abused statistical constructs — the old bell curve. It is unfortunately axiomatic that given a large enough population sampling, if one plots a curve of anything, one will end up with one of these.

Like any tool this can be used, or misused, or even abused.

Here's my point:

If there is a complex (but powerful) feature or function in a software package like Logos which data mining shows is used infrequently and/or ineffectively should the software company cut it out? After all, data mining clearly shows that it is not being used very much, and those people who do use it don't use it well/properly — it's right up there on the far side of the bell curve.

So should we follow one train of logic, go for the 95% and chop it off, or, should we aim higher and apply more resources to that top 3-5%, for example with more information and training. The concern I have is that if the top 3-5% is chopped off what will eventually happen is that the bell curve will just regain its shape and move to the left — the race to mediocracy.

I have recently become interested in the 'Syntax Search' feature in Logos which I saw mentioned in the Logos 'Learn to Use Greek and Hebrew' video training. I don't see much mentioned about it. I have the MP Seminars' 'Logos Bible Software Training Manual', a paid training documentation. Syntax Search gets a one line mention on page 2 of Volume 1 — that's it. I see from querying the forums that it is tricky to learn and master — fair to say it's a top 3-5% user feature. Data mining says it is not used much — shall we chop it off? Dave Hooten might have something to say about that! And, of course, the product will be the poorer.

I believe you will see my point — slavishly and unthinkingly following where data mining leads may end up undermining the edifice.

These are not unreasonable concerns, and those concerns are why we use statistical data to inform our decisions, rather than using the data as the sole basis of our decisions.

To continue using the example of Syntax Search, it's true that not many people use it. However, this information, by itself, tells us little. It might mean that it's an unpopular feature that should be cut, or it could mean that we haven't yet made it easy enough to use. In the case of Syntax Search, we've chosen to add value to the data set it queries by inventing new features on top of it, like Grammatical Relationships in Bible Word Study and the new Clause Search in Logos 5. These make it easier to derive value from that data, and in some cases, they provide the spark necessary to motivate a person to learn how to use the more advanced Syntax Search feature.

Patrick S.

In the case of Syntax Search, we've chosen to add value to the data set it queries by inventing new features on top of it, like Grammatical Relationships in Bible Word Study and the new Clause Search in Logos 5. These make it easier to derive value from that data, and in some cases, they provide the spark necessary to motivate a person to learn how to use the more advanced Syntax Search feature.

Good on ya mate! (translation from Australian = 'that's great, good to see, thanks Dave!')

[H]

p.s. do you know/have any good resources for learning how to use it effectively?

David Ames

So should we follow one train of logic, go for the 95% and chop it off, or, should we aim higher and apply more resources to that top 3-5%, for example with more information and training. The concern I have is that if the top 3-5% is chopped off what will eventually happen is that the bell curve will just regain its shape and move to the left — the race to mediocracy.

I have recently become interested in the 'Syntax Search' feature in Logos which I saw initially in the Logos 'Learn to Use Greek and Hebrew' video training. I don't see much mentioned about it in the usual places (forum etc.). I have the MP Seminars' 'Logos Bible Software Training Manual', a paid training documentation. Syntax Search gets a one line mention on page 2 of Volume 1 — that's it. I see from querying the forums that it is tricky to learn and master — fair to say it's a top 3-5% user feature. Data mining says it is not used much — shall we chop it off? Dave Hooten might have something to say about that! And, of course, the product will be the poorer.

I believe you will see my point — slavishly and unthinkingly following where data mining leads may end up undermining the edifice.

Oh, by the way: that item that is only used by 0.1% of the users - that item that we are going to chop off

It just might only be used by the TOP 0.1% of Logos Buyers [you know: those ones with over 12,000 resources and bid on every pre-pub]

[That is the very people that are paying all the bills - Don't have the numbers for Logos sales but the top 5% of tax payers pay 50% of all taxes]

So maybe Logos does need to keep user information in the Data Mining database [and Yes, I am playing both sides of the street]

Mark O'Hearn

Appreciate the comment alabama24.

What motivated my post was Bob's original comment, "Moving forward, we plan to offer "crowd sourced" data that benefits all our users. (You will be able to turn off, or ignore, this crowd-sourced data if you don't want to use it.)"

As one customer, and apparently I'm not alone, just not interested in yet another social experience. If we step back and consider the generations perhaps being represented in this discussion, not surprising you have the older folks (myself included) who prefer to work in relative isolation, whereas the younger folks prefer to work in a team environment. The younger generation (and the next one) has given "birth" to the Facebook and Twitter age. I sense these realities are behind the desire for increased collaboration, and I don't deny this trend will continue, nor that there is benefit depending on theological compatibility.

All that some users are suggesting is they are not interested. That's all. Sure there's emotion, silly, and immature comments as one person observed, but in the end some folks simply don't want to see Logos headed in that direction. Selfish lot we are really. Of course, in the end we understand that is not our decision to make.

As for highlighting, I personally do not highlight in my paper-based books and Bibles. Never have. Never highlighted in my text books either, so it is not a religious thing. This habit has continued with my digital library as well. I find it distracting, though I certainly concede there is an obvious benefit to the practice. Instead, when studying a passage I will print that out, and manually mark it up and highlight key points. I find this most engaging and helpful for me. Notwithstanding, I would encourage Logos to keep popular highlighting, as I can see some benefit to me when consulting lengthy articles in say the Anchor dictionary or in laborious comments in certain technical commentaries. But most of the time, like my Kindle that offers this same service (that I can also turn on/off), it will remain off for me.

Alabama24, just uneasy about where Logos may wish to take my "personal" Bible study. I do appreciate and see some value in the collaborative endeavors like - Faithlife, community ratings, highlights, notes, but as a member of Generation X all these things really do not appeal to me. Add to the mix that I am an introvert; well we have a real social mess on our hands. Gee, lots of young folks at Logos. Wonder how many old, grumpy folks use Logos? Perhaps there needs to be some consideration to the generational differences. Yet, young believers are the future of the church for sure. In my defense I do have a Facebook account now, though I cannot understand for the life of me why so many people think I am interested in hourly updates on their mundane lives?

Sorry for the long post.

Best regards

JT (alabama24)

Thanks for your comments Mark. [:)] If you every pass through Lynchburg, VA, I'll buy you a cup o coffee. [C]

(‾◡◝)

IRONY:

The company whose philosophy was always thought to be "Don't Be Evil" turns out to be the quintessential data miner (in order to make a buck), and yet, people readily accept it and continue to happily use their services.

On the other hand, a company devoted to serving the Church with the finest Bible study software is constantly accused of the most evil of intentions whether they be financial, data mining/monitoring/ or whatever, and yet, they continually demonstrate their integrity through such things as high levels of corporate transparency, unexpected rebates/credits to Users, discounts/sales/giveaways, being genuinely desirous to receive User feedback and suggestions, public apologies, bending over backwards to "make it right" with offended Users, a completely open communication policy with anyone in the company, &etc.

___________________

While I don't want Community information pushed at me (I could care less what the "Community" thinks - if we always followed what the "Community" thought, we would all have been Arians for the last two millenia - sound theology and good exegesis does not rest on groupthink or polls), it doesn't bother me if Logos wants to monitor my anonymous usage of their product in order to refine the software. If datamining of my personal usage should suddenly become a vehicle for sales and marketing, however, then I object. But I see no indication of that happening and I have no reason to doubt the integrity of Bob Pritchett.

Dave Hooton

To continue using the example of Syntax Search, it's true that not many people use it. However, this information, by itself, tells us little. It might mean that it's an unpopular feature that should be cut, or it could mean that we haven't yet made it easy enough to use. In the case of Syntax Search, we've chosen to add value to the data set it queries by inventing new features on top of it, like Grammatical Relationships in Bible Word Study and the new Clause Search in Logos 5. These make it easier to derive value from that data, and in some cases, they provide the spark necessary to motivate a person to learn how to use the more advanced Syntax Search feature.

That may explain why Graphical Query got the chop!

Paul Johnson

Hi Bob,

To go back to the bottom line of your opening post...

I hope this overview is helpful, and that you can appreciate the value that these social / community features add to the Logos platform, and hopefully to your study and investment as well.

In the end it is a question of value, and as you can tell from this thread, not everyone values the same things. That's why, from a consumer's point of view, it is great to have choice. Some of us see very little value in the social / community features. We would very much like to opt out (or, better, not opt in).

You are not alone, though, in trying to push the social / community thing in software. For example, Apple recently released iTunes 11, which expands some of its iCloud features, including marking the spot you left off in your last movie and syncing that to all your devices so you can start watching on your iPad right where you left off on your iMac. In the iTunes Store, they advertise, "Good recommendations are easy to come by, thanks to In the Store picks. Just select an album, artist, or genre you like, and iTunes will suggest similar music you might never have found on your own." Much of this is similar to what you have said you are or are wanting to do with Logos--Apple's doing it with music; Logos is doing it with books.

But there is one BIG difference--Apple doesn't force me to participate. In the preference settings there are a number of user-controlled options like, "Share details about your library with Apple".

On my computer, that box is not checked.

Not everyone perceives value the same. Please give us choice.

Thank you.

Paul

Fr. Charles R. Matheny

I have to say : I find this thread one of the most fascinating examples of Christian community thought I have ever read.

In it I find:

The difficulty of defining "privacy".

This whole , very strong idea of "private" studies of scriptures written primarily for communities and for communities to respond too.

The idea of not caring what others in the Christian Community thinks, believes, needs.

The last one is extremely interesting as well as disturbing . Every Pastor/teacher should be concerned about all these areas. Shepherds need to know sheep well enough to know their needs: when they need water, food and when they are ill, it is through knowing sheep and their needs that they can be led properly, tended too properly, led away from what is evil and to/towards good health.

( Granted being able to turn these things on and off is needed).

Yet, I still find these comments very odd.Don't care or want to know what others are thinking? Then why do you own Biblical software which has a plethora of others thoughts, writings intwined within it and that presents these thoughts at a single click.

Everything in the software is just that, pure and simple. Every lexicon is another persons thoughts, research, work on particular words, every commentary is chock full of the sociological trends/thinking patterns of the time from which it comes.

Logos is trying to give you more of that which you are already buying, and trying to give Pastors a better idea of the Christian theological and sociological directions.( which might actually help us provide better correctives within a devolving society).

I really do find this a most interesting conversation, a very revealing "snippet " of Christian thinking in America and how we embrace life, the gospel etc.

One one hand we have the Life of Christ and the apostles who laid themselves open and bare for all, forever and spoke of everyone having the same hearts and minds, of trying to live life with an attitude to where the needs of others were of more value to us than our own.

On the other, here we are, saying we do not care what others think/believe, wanting to protect our "privacy", wanting our biblical studies of community documents to be "private".

This is very interesting.

I love M.J.Smith thoughts on some of this and think they should be expanded on a bit more.

Reason? Christianity is based on the living example of Christ who gave up "HIMSELF" for the Mission of the Father which was the salvation of the many.

Separatism, narcissism and many other negatives are growing within our society, we are of course, not immune to these influences.

Are these sociological trends affecting our thinking on this and many other subjects?

I find it a good question for myself, perhaps others will as well.

I only post this here because this is a different "type" of thread than we usually have have on the Logos Forums. I mean no offense, simply stating my observations and interest.

Blessings all.

Rene Atchley

In an ideal world filled with ideal people we would treat each other ideally. Christianity has had (as best that I can tell) less than an ideal history of how it treats people with different, minority, opposing, or simply new ideals. Within the contemporary history of America itself are examples of Asians (WWII), Irish, Catholics, Gays, women, Germans (WWI), Native Americans, and other minority groups that have been discriminated against because of their status. Now we are talking about allowing or encouraging "communities" access to the whole range of human expression to be judged by religious people within an American historical context....lol...sorry I pass.

Jack Caviness

Every lexicon is another persons thoughts, research, work on particular words, every commentary is chock full of the sociological trends/thinking patterns of the time from which it comes.

But I usually know who wrote those comments and can therefore more easily analyze the value of those comments. Popular Highlights, on the other hand, are anonymous, so I cannot evaluate their value.

I could imagine this scenario:

[quote]Popular Highlights indicate that 10 users highlighted this paragraph, but is does not tell us why or what highlight they used. I can imagine that 4 people marked that it is very useful, but 4 others marked it as garbage, and 2 really intended to highlight the previous paragraph [8-|].

HOWEVER, having said all that, you have given me reason to reexamine my position in regard to turning the Visual Filters off [8-|].

*********************

The responses of the privacy seekers intrigue me, for we had a very similar discussion 3 years ago. Many of these same objectors then cried foul that Logos would dare to store then very private Bible Study notes and Prayer Lists on their servers. Now, it seems that they have allowed Logos to store their data on the Logos servers, but object to Logos using that data for statistical purposes. Those protestors will have to forgive me for not taking their objections seriously, for it does not appear to me that they are very serious in their propositions.

Since I have voluntarily chosen to place my usage information on the Logos servers, I have no problem with anonymous data mining.

Samuel

Yet, I still find these comments very odd.Don't care or want to know what others are thinking? Then why do you own Biblical software which has a plethora of others thoughts, writings intwined within it and that presents these thoughts at a single click.

Well because there are certain opinions and information that are valuable. There is a lot that is not. The early church was "open" but the apostles didn't do Facebook "community style" study. They valued the Scriptures. They listened to each other. They didn't get the opinions of everyone else, they stuck with trusted ones. In the same way, they instructed in doctrine. Yes, there is a place for open discussions in the church, but gaining information from a social and communal is not the same. There are reasons why we trust certain information or consider it valuable from the Scripture all the way down. It's always been that way in the church.

Likewise, I don't think there's a valid comparison between some of us asking Logos to not track our keystrokes and "openness" in the early church. They would have cringed at the type of surveillance that has become normal in our society. The arguments for "openness" and "nothing to hide" tend to be a little utopian and often enable information gathering that ultimately becomes enslaving. Obviously I'm not accusing Logos of that, just addressing the overall bigger issue.

tom

Many of these same objectors then cried foul that Logos would dare to store then very private Bible Study notes and Prayer Lists on their servers. Now, it seems that they have allowed Logos to store their data on the Logos servers, but object to Logos using that data for statistical purposes. Those protestors will have to forgive me for not taking their objections seriously, for it does not appear to me that they are very serious in their propositions.

Excuse me Jack, but how in the h - e - double hockey sticks do you know if I am storing my prayers on Logos' servers? Here is a hint: I am not! Please do not make assumptions on what I am doing and then make blanket statement based on your assumptions.

Fr. Charles R. Matheny

Understood Samuel and, we understand the Apostles were using the Old Testament as far as Scriptural writing, some Jewish commentary and of course, the teaching of Christ.

On one hand, I agree with what you are saying about the "mining" of today.

On the other hand, as you point out, things are very different.

Society used to be much more open and did not have some of these "privacy" issues because of the openness .

Air conditioning, the Television drove people "inside" and away from community life.

By "drove" i mean pulled them in and these new mediums changed the way people viewed each other, interacted with each other and trusted each other.

We are now seeing another "driver" much like the Television/Air conditioning systems that is having , perhaps, just as profound an effect. This one is mobile technology and texting. The sociological ramifications are just starting to show up with enough "proofs" to be pretty startling and we will not know the total impact for another 20 years, but the data so far-is not good.

At any rate, just 50 to 60 years ago, everyone was much more "social" than they are now and "privacy" was an altogether different conversation.

Privacy conversations changed drastically after the widespread acceptance of the television, and, air conditioning which allowed people to spend more time inside, separated from the community around them. Architecture followed the new "privacy/television/air conditioning" trend and Large front porches were replaced with "entry points" that were simpler a covered area to stand and get your keys out.

The porch was no longer needed, the local community meeting places on every street-were gone.

With that loss was the loss of "safe" on the street, next to go were "sidewalks" because people don't want others walking close to their house and invading their "privacy ".

Thus, while we used to play in the front yard in the evenings, while everyone sat on the porches and watched, talked, communicated, we raced on the sidewalks, people stopped and talked on the sidewalks and the whole area was "ours" , our common life, our safe place, our community, this was quickly replaced with with no trust, no sharing, no community life. It was replaced with "privacy fences" , no sidewalks , no porches, no conversations and no trust.

Everyone stays in the house, private life.

All I am saying is that this is a bigger subject than "just what I want" which can be very unhealthy thinking.

Yes, again, we do want options on what we see and use.

Yes, we need options on what we participate in.

Yet, the more we isolate, the more difficult it becomes to be a society.

Patrick S.

Sigh... all this endless discussion.

Who was it who said "You can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time."?? Some guy called Abe Lincoln...

This is the bottom line:

a) Logos will never please everyone

b) The discussion pro & con is moot with respect to the European Union, because (and I don't have chapter and verse, and am not going to waste time looking for it) the EU has privacy laws protecting citizens. And it doesn't matter two hoots if the Logos EULA is "governed by the laws of the State of Washington, USA". So what. Sorry guys, but the USA is not the center of the world. If Logos sells a product to EU citizens without privacy controls — and, worse, states that it is going to do so regardless — then good luck with that. I don't believe that Logos is bigger than companies like.... oh what's their names.... Google, Facebook, Apple. And stating in an EULA that Logos intends to do data mining, and thinking that because it is written in an EULA that will excuse them from not providing privacy controls, and therefore they will be free from any legal risk won't wash either — because EU laws (as I understand) don't allow companies to 'EULA away' end users' rights.

So clearly the only practical and sensible option is to:

a) put a big red switch in Preferences along the lines of 'Share information' - YES / NO (and no, M.J., it's no big deal to code it)

b) the setting would have to be, by default, "NO". Again the guideline rule in the EU is people have to 'opt in', not be tricked into being opted in by default and having to explicitly 'opt out'.

c) there should be something clearly stated during installation etc. about data mining and privacy.

and then move on — please! There are enough issues/problems etc. with the software that are much more important for everyone to be investing time in — like having a stable product that we don't have to worry about blowing up and losing hours of work.

And again.. can I clearly state, for the record, that I can see benefits in there being feedback on product usage and/or data mining for 'social features', who wouldn't want to see a good tool like Logos get better? But that does not change the reality of the requirement of user choice privacy controls. So I'm not being a Neo-Luddite or technophobe (ha, that'll be the day) and I don't wear a tinfoil hat — I just want to see things settled so other pressing issues with the platform can be dealt with.

p.s. and I am still waiting to be informed as to what is the difference between these settings:

and will the 'Data Mining' settings be part of, or extra to, the 'Send Feedback' selector.

Also Logos cannot tell users to just turn off 'Use Internet' to avoid data mining because Internet access (for getting things from Logos, not to Logos) is a necessary function for full use of the software that people have paid for. So 'Use Internet' cannot be used as a pseudo privacy switch, won't be allowed.

Mark O'Hearn

What I find most ironic in all this is that the same company that keeps an understandably strict policy at its forums about theological discussion and debate is now embarking on having its same users collaborate within its program. Surely theology will then be an issue, right?

For me the Logos community is not the Church, though that is not to suggest that I believe many users are not Christians. Like the Christian assemblies in the first century, even among true believers there were carnal and spiritual (mature) members (and heretics). Hence all the divisions that Paul mentioned earlier in this thread.

Jack's comment concerning trusted authors is sound. Authors can earn our trust in the books they write by allowing us the opportunity to examine their theology. We cannot do the same without knowing the theology of others.

Ultimately this is why Christians have placed themselves into separate camps - the desire to protect themselves from error. Of course we all think (myself included) our camp is the perfect one, or at least the best one available until He returns and gets rid of all these man-made divisions. The church of Corinth is a classic example, and I have always been amazed that Paul did not praise those "with Christ" from the other mentioned groups. Seems clear to me that there should be no divisions whatsoever.

To that end this direction Logos seems to be headed is again noble, but it is flawed, and could prove destructive to new believers in feeding on false doctrine by others they won't even know. Today we are just talking about highlighting, ratings, reviews, etc., but where does tomorrow take us?

Regards

Michael G Parry-Thomas

all this sounds very interesting,

how can you even think about doing this sort of thing when you can't even get

video resources to stream correctly ,. I still cannot get the videos to work,

the product. I am trying to get to work correctly is called The Greatest Book Series

why can't logos 5 use the videos from my dvd why do I have to streamer them?

mick

Graham Criddle

Hi Mick

I still cannot get the videos to work,

the product. I am trying to get to work correctly is called The Greatest Book Serie

Didn't the process which Bradley outlined at http://community.logos.com/forums/p/55400/400829.aspx#400829 get this working for you?

If not, I suggest you post back in that thread

Graham

Andy

The discussion pro & con is moot with respect to the European Union, because (and I don't have chapter and verse, and am not going to waste time looking for it) the EU has privacy laws protecting citizens.

I am confident that Logos has nothing to worry about on this count.

Part of the confusion pertains to the way in which this thread refers to 'privacy' in broad and imprecise terms. The Data Protection Act (the primary legislative framework pertaining to information governance within the UK which, in turn, reflects EU directives), is particularly concerned in respect of the safeguarding of personal identifiable information (broadly speaking). The issue, therefore, is whether Logos' data mining activities violate the protections regarding personal identifiable information. It seems that Bob has been very clear that the information thus analysed does not contain, nor is associated with, personal identifiable information.

The utilisation of the cloud to synchronise documents might be a concern (as Logos, by its own admission, do not apply the highest level of safeguards to this information) except that the legislation allows for a differentiation in respect of degrees of confidentiality. The information governance controls required in respect of medical records are, therefore, very different from that required in respect of, say, a prayer list.

Consent is also a factor. Agreement to the EULA constitutes consent (in the context of sensitive personal identifiable information, a more rigorous test, in law, may be required).

I cannot comment as to how this might relate to US law.

This is not intended to placate or reassure those who are unhappy with regards to the practice of data mining. It is intended, however, to bring clarity to the notion that Logos is invading or violating the privacy of its users (in a legal sense). From an UK/EU perspective, this notion is not supported by the current legislative framework.

You refer to violation by Google, Facebook, et al. I see no benefit in rehearsing the specific controversies here, except to say that I am unaware of any correlation between those specific scenarios and the activity of data mining (particularly where this is stipulated in the EULA).

Harry Hahne

If there is a complex (but powerful) feature or function in a software package like Logos which data mining shows is used infrequently and/or ineffectively should the software company cut it out? After all, data mining clearly shows that it is not being used very much, and most of those people who do use it don't use it well/properly — it's right up there on the far side of the bell curve.

It is almost certain that the more advanced tools such as Syntax searches, Graphical Queries and transcriptions of ancient manuscripts will only be used by Bible scholars and advanced students using Greek and Hebrew. In fact, even they will not use these specialized tools every day. But does that make these tools less important? These less used tools are like some specialized tool in a craftsman's toolbox. He does not use it every day or on every project. But when he needs it, none of his everyday tools will do the job.

Most of the cutting edge advances in any field are made by specialists who use tools that the average person would not understand. This is no less true in Bible scholarship. Scholars deep deeply into minor details of the biblical text and present the results of their analysis in scholarly journals and meetings of professional societies. Then other scholars test their work to verify its accuracy. Very precise tools are necessary for this research and the continuing scholarly dialog. The work of scholars largely goes unnoticed by average Christians. Eventually the results of their research filters down into commentaries and popular Christian books and then pastors start using the information in their sermons. But scholars are important part of the body of Christ that protects the body from the attacks of skeptics and internal decay withing the church.

The beauty of Logos is that it provides a wide range of tools and resources for everything from new Christians to the most advanced scholar. I hope Logos will continue to offer tools and resources for the 1% who want to dig deeper. The whole church will be the better for it.

MJ. Smith

Popular Highlights, on the other hand, are anonymous, so I cannot evaluate their value.

Somehow, I think people are loosing track of that. I find it humorous that there is all the fuss about something of the nature of "in a resource that has been highlighted by more than some number of users out of approximately 750,000 users, this particular word or phrase has been highlighted by at least x percentage of those users." the highlights. meaning - positive, negative or neutral - is totally unknown e.g. it may be marking a difficult word, the end of one's reading, strong agreement, strong objection, point the prof might test on ... This strikes me as anonymous and useful primarily for sociological studies.

I suspect that the real issue is fear that it may become a slippery slope to the point that we could at least make educated guesses as to the group and/or meaning of the highlights. If I shared that concern, I would share the objections of the privacy seekers. If I am wrong and their real issue is the data-mining itself, Logos has been mining out data openly for several years. It is simply that old fears have been resurrected.

Patrick S.

The discussion pro & con is moot with respect to the European Union, because (and I don't have chapter and verse, and am not going to waste time looking for it) the EU has privacy laws protecting citizens.

I am confident that Logos has nothing to worry about on this count.

I wouldn't be so sure. Not saying that any EU commissioners or whatever are knocking on Logos' door right now, but why push it?

I cannot comment as to how this might relate to US law.

Without wanting to offend any of our US brethren, I would have to say I am really not 'bound up' by American law. Who says it is perfect?

Agreement to the EULA constitutes consent

As I said, Logos cannot abrogate EU users' civil rights via an EULA, foreign or not. And if I was them I would not put it to the test. What the heck would be the point?

Point in case (and this is the reason I included Apple in my previous post) is Apple's situation regarding warranties in the European Union. Apple was selling extended (AppleCare) warranties in the EU. Only problem is that the standard (free) warranty period granted to the consumer through purchase is longer than Apple's standard (guess what they provide in America) warranty and they were trying to charge EU users for extended (AppleCare) warranties which overlapped the default warranty. Guess who lost? And paid out a lot into the bargain.

Also I believe Facebook is also currently in privacy hot water in the EU and it is not even anything related to PII (Personally Identifiable Information) it's related to not giving users the option to control their own privacy.

This is not intended to placate or reassure those who are unhappy with regards to the practice of data mining. It is intended, however, to bring clarity to the notion that Logos is invading or violating the privacy of its users (in a legal sense). From an UK/EU perspective, this notion is not supported by the current legislative framework.

We're not talking about "invading" or "violating" we're talking about not providing any means whatsoever of opt out — and setting that as a default.

Also heck, if Logos was invading or violating privacy then they would be in even deeper doo doo.

Then there is the point about sending possibly personally identifiable information cross border (to servers under the jurisdiction of the US). European MEPS are getting really twitchy about that point.

And again, what I am saying is:

a) Why risk it? Why risk (and they very likely eventually would be) stepping on governments' toes; why risk aggrevating and alienating some percentage of their user base?

b) It's not that big a deal, put the option in their to opt in / opt out and believe that most people will be interested to support / benefit from user data aggregation and let's move on.

[Edit] The statement "let's move on" I was meaning in the sense of let's agree that there are valid differences — which can be addressed — and let's move on improving Logos as a tool for us studying the word. As I had outlined in a couple of previous posts.

Andy

I wouldn't be so sure. Not saying that any EU commissioners or whatever are knocking on Logos' door right now, but why push it?

I agree that users cannot waive their statutory rights by EULA or any other means.

My point is, succinctly, this: the data mining activity as described by Logos does not involve or relate to personal identifiable information. Therefore, there is no risk of liability (in respect of UK/EU legislation). The EULA is relevant inasmuch as it establishes consent in relation to Logos lawful activity.

I share your concerns regarding some of the practices reported in relation to Google, Apple, Facebook, et al. Again, even allowing for the examples you kindly provide, I still maintain that the activity of those companies is not relevant to the data mining practices as described by Logos (these other issue differ in substance and in scope).

This issue (relating to the practices of Logos), from a UK/EU perspective is not a matter of law.

I accept that there is an issue of preference and, for some, a matter of conviction. I think you fairly reflect this in your observation,

why risk aggravating and alienating some percentage of their user base?

I certainly agree with your concluding point,

It's not that big a deal, put the option in their to opt in / opt out and believe that most people will be interested to support / benefit from user data aggregation and let's move on.

Finally, it is not my intention to be combative (please forgive me if this appears so [:|]). I recognise and greatly appreciate your many helpful posts on the forum. I also appreciate your fair and reasoned contributions to even potentially fractious debates such as this.

I am just concerned that anxieties and fears are not fuelled by a lack of clarity regarding matters of law and matters of fact.

I will happily allow you the final word on this issue and trust we can agree to disagree on friendly terms [:D]

Beloved Amodeo

Community tags supplement your own tags, and are intended to harness the "community" wisdom about a particular resource, helping you find things more easily and better understand your library.

Your comments are priceless.

Better understanding your library is a priority for someone like me with nearing 6,000 resources. It is my habit to tag each of my resources as I add them to my library. It would be very useful to have some way to maximally classify a resource by being able to expose some of the major themes in a resource. Sort of like an interesting words feature or to borrow an idea from Amazon kindle, x-ray the major features of the resource. This would be useful to those who search from collections something I do often.

We're lighting up collaborative documents at http://documents.logos.com. This will eventually be enabled for almost every document type.

The "personal" use case is your being able to publish (read-only) or collaborate (shared editing and ownership) documents with any group you'd like. A pastor / professor / teacher could publish notes on a book of the Bible. Students could collaborate on a note document on a textbook. A scholar could collaborate on a highlighting project with a research assistant.

A wish I have is to collectively wrestle into submission first Greek, then Hebrew, and Latin, finally German. The community encouraged by FaithLife may be a candidate for a willing proficient anointed soul to offer this. Reading Augustine which has been suggested in another thread "Reading the Fathers," is another e.g. of the same. Again, I appreciate the time you invested into baring your ideas and explanations.

Patrick S.

It is almost certain that the more advanced tools such as Syntax searches, Graphical Queries and transcriptions of ancient manuscripts will only be used by Bible scholars and advanced students using Greek and Hebrew. In fact, even they will not use these specialized tools every day. But does that make these tools less important? These less used tools are like some specialized tool in a craftsman's toolbox. He does not use it every day or on every project. But when he needs it, none of his everyday tools will do the job.

Most of the cutting edge advances in any field are made by specialists who use tools that the average person would not understand. This is no less true in Bible scholarship. Scholars deep deeply into minor details of the biblical text and present the results of their analysis in scholarly journals and meetings of professional societies. Then other scholars test their work to verify its accuracy. Very precise tools are necessary for this research and the continuing scholarly dialog. The work of scholars largely goes unnoticed by average Christians. Eventually the results of their research filters down into commentaries and popular Christian books and then pastors start using the information in their sermons. But scholars are important part of the body of Christ that protects the body from the attacks of skeptics and internal decay withing the church.

The beauty of Logos is that it provides a wide range of tools and resources for everything from new Christians to the most advanced scholar. I hope Logos will continue to offer tools and resources for the 1% who want to dig deeper. The whole church will be the better for it.

Well put — and I trust that Logos continue with this in the spirit of Philippians 3:12

DAVID

Hi All!

I just tried to delete this post in "My Activity" on the "Logos Bible Software Forums" page since I re-wrote it better and posted it below, but it seems I was unable to delete it from here. It looks like I only deleted it only from "My Activity." Oh well, so much for trying to de-clutter this forum from one of my posts. Anyway, please just disregard and read my next post.

Thanks and God bless you all!

Blessings in Christ,
David
<')))>< <')))>< <')))>< <')))>< <')))>< <')))>< <')))><

Hi Bob,

I echo Ron's sentiments...especially as a missionary and PhD student going abroad to a remote location for my field research. Being able to use my Logos without any requirement to connect to the Internet except occasionally for updates would be greatly appreciated as while I'm remote (hopefully not more than 2-3 months) I'll be using a Satellite phone at US $1 per minute so extremely cost prohibitive to use Logos if Internet access required.

Thanks and God bless you all!

Blessings in Christ,
David

DAVID

Hi Bob,

Blessed greetings in Jesus' precious name; I pray this finds you well in our Lord!

I have two concerns, please.

1) As a missionary/teacher
and PhD student going abroad soon to a remote location for my field research, being able to use my Logos without any requirement to connect to the
Internet except occasionally for updates would be greatly appreciated as
while I'm remote (hopefully not more than 2-3 months) I'll be using a
Satellite phone at US $1 per minute which is extremely cost prohibitive to use
Logos if Internet access is required.

2) Also, I would strongly desire a way to opt out of being tracked by Logos, not because I don't trust you all, but because of the sensitive places I travel. My concern is that if you can track my Logos use it opens up a portal that could be hacked by those monitoring Internet use where I may travel. I think you understand my concerns are not reflective of Logos but are out of concern for those who monitor the Internet where I travel, and out of safety for those with whom I interact and myself.

Thank you and God bless you all!

Blessings in Christ,
David
<')))>< <')))>< <')))>< <')))>< <')))>< <')))>< <')))><

Jack Caviness

I just tried to delete this post in "My Activity" on the "Logos Bible Software Forums" page

For a limited time, you can delete/edit your posts from the More drop down menu at the right top of your post. You cannot delete a post after someone—in this case, you—has responded to it. However, you can still edit the content for a few hours. Most of us usually just replace the content with something like "Deleted by author".

being able to use my Logos without any requirement to connect to the
Internet except occasionally for updates would be greatly appreciated

You can do that in both L4 and L5, and this ability will continue for the foreseeable future. Some features may be added in the future which will require internet access, but the functionality you now have will still be available offline.

My concern is that if you can track my Logos use it opens up a portal that could be hacked by those monitoring Internet use where I may travel.

Then, just being connected to the internet for synching and updates will open you up to the same tracking. The data mining discussed in this thread is taken from data placed on Logos' servers by the synchronizing features of both L4 and L5. This discussion concerns some users who object to the data from their use of Logos being tracked in this manner.

Does this answer your concerns? Do you need more information? My email is jackcav at triad dot rr dot com if you need information but do not wish to share your concerns publicly. (My address is separated in this manner to make it more difficult for spambot to contact me [8-|])

Sir Maru

Since information is collected anyway about our uses of Logos, how about posting the most interesting search of the day for Logos 5 and its results from its many users.

That would give some of us, who still have not purchased Logos 5, some idea how it is being used. At a minimum it would hold our interest and may motivate us to upgrade from Logos 4 in time.

BriM

As a concession to "the missionary with the solar-powered laptop and no Internet connection", and to people who still want an isolated stand-alone software package, you can run the software with Internet access turned off. (It's becoming more and more difficult to maintain this functionality, but we'll try to keep it as long as we can.)

Whilst I agree with the sentiment that we should have the ability to opt out of our data being collected, I'm much more concerned about the direction of making Logos REQUIRE the internet.

My concern here is to ensure that everything I have already purchased continues to be accessible unimpeded even if access to Logos servers was permanently unavailable. It's concerning that you'll only TRY to maintain the ability to run without internet access. What I fear is an increasing reliance on an internet connection to Logos encroaching into the existing core functionality such that features we already enjoy and rely upon are increasingly 'enhanced' by an internet connection.

What happens if one is traveling without internet for a few weeks? Or working in a country with unreliable coverage? Or, my biggest fear of all, what happens if Logos the company, ceases to exist?

I would want to be sure that Logos s/w is happy to run without any further connection to Logos servers, i.e that it doesn't continually attempt to access the internet and become slowed down by network timeouts, that it doesn't pop up nag screens to tell me how much better my life would be if it could access Logos over the internet, etc.

If it truly does become impossible to 'maintain this functionality' then I would like to see the change postponed until a new major release of Logos so that those who share this concern can stick with the old release free from the risk.

Schezic

The Sky Is Falling !!! ...THE SKY IS FALLING !!!

Jack Caviness

What happens if one is traveling without internet for a few weeks?

For a test, you can simply turn internet off in Tools—System Settings and see how well L5 works.

If it truly does become impossible to 'maintain this functionality'

That will not happen with the current version. If you do not want to have to rely on internet access, then do not upgrade to a version that requires that access.

The Sky Is Falling !!! ...THE SKY IS FALLING !!!

That is your very best post yet [:D]

Samuel

As a concession to "the missionary with the solar-powered laptop and no Internet connection", and to people who still want an isolated stand-alone software package, you can run the software with Internet access turned off. (It's becoming more and more difficult to maintain this functionality, but we'll try to keep it as long as we can.)

Whilst I agree with the sentiment that we should have the ability to opt out of our data being collected, I'm much more concerned about the direction of making Logos REQUIRE the internet.

My concern here is to ensure that everything I have already purchased continues to be accessible unimpeded even if access to Logos servers was permanently unavailable. It's concerning that you'll only TRY to maintain the ability to run without internet access. What I fear is an increasing reliance on an internet connection to Logos encroaching into the existing core functionality such that features we already enjoy and rely upon are increasingly 'enhanced' by an internet connection.

I agree this is a reasonable concern. While high speed internet seems ubiquitous in some places, it is far from that around the globe. Hopefully Logos takes this into consideration and makes sure that Logos functions well as a desktop application in the future and does not require a constant internet connection for core functionality. I'm not sure why Logos would say it's getting "more and more difficult" to maintain software functionality without a constant internet connection. There's nothing difficult about reading and searching resources we have on our computer which is, I day say, 90% of what Logos users do.

DMB

That was fun, Schezic! What else you got?

Schezic

Here Ya go, Little Girl. [:)]

Patrick S.

The Sky Is Falling !!! ...THE SKY IS FALLING !!!

Ooops... that gets you the award [:P]

BriM

For a test, you can simply turn internet off in Tools—System Settings and see how well L5 works.

I know that Logos 5 works without internet because my travel schedule was such that my Logos install had no internet access for a couple of weeks and it was fine. My worry is that Bob's comment talks of this being a concession and implies that a future version may not be able to do this.

If you do not want to have to rely on internet access, then do not upgrade to a version that requires that access.

Precisely. But the trouble is, I don't know whether a new version still works in the same way until I have it. And once I have it, if it turns out to no longer work like this, I have no way to download the old copy. That's why I was asking for the change to be done at a major release so that we can be informed of the change and choose whether to accept it, rather than it automatically downloading.

I think it's a reasonable request as they will presumably want to charge for the new functionality that needs the constant internet.

Schezic

Ooops... that gets you the award

I respect your right to your opinion. ... You do know the common knowledge about opinions? [:)]

Jack Caviness

But the trouble is, I don't know whether a new version still works in the same way until I have it.

Do not believe that such a major change in the operation of Logos will come without announcement. Such a major alteration of program operation would also require a major revision to the software.

Perhaps you are reading too much into Bob's comments.

Dean J

As a concession to "the missionary with the solar-powered laptop and no Internet connection", and to people who still want an isolated stand-alone software package, you can run the software with Internet access turned off. (It's becoming more and more difficult to maintain this functionality, but we'll try to keep it as long as we can.)

Bob,

PLEASE continue to allow Logos to function without being connected to the Internet. I don't mind being connected for updates, resource purchases, syncing, etc., but there are many times that I am not connected to the Internet. I don't want to HAVE to be online for Logos to function. This is really an important issue for me.

Thanks,

Ron

It's a biggie for me too.

Russ White

Bob:

You need to read "The Shallows," in a bad way. I know you think community is the future --and that it's an unmitigated good.

But as a network engineer, I can tell you that once your end users start actually paying for the bandwidth they use, they're all going to reconsider the "cool factor," of all this sharing.

And as a scholar, I can paraphrase what C.S. Lewis said many years ago -- "if Shakespeare were alive today, we'd cure him by the time he left elementary school." How can you cure a Shakespeare? By putting him on Facebook. And all you're doing here is trying to make Logos the Facebook of Bible study.

Don't "try to make it a goal" to add value without a connection to the Internet, make it a priority, an absolute must. Don't "think about allowing people to turn the social pieces off," make it a priority. We live in a world where applications are now being sold to take you off of the Internet for periods of time so you can get work done.

Personally, I would suggest you not bet the future of your company on social media. These things are like pendulums. There's a nice swing going in one direction right now, but it's going to swing back. The last thing I want is for Logos to be crushed under the swing away from social media and the "share everything all the time with everyone" mentality, which would cost me an $42,000 investment.

It's not just your business you're playing with here.

Russ