All the information Google wants on my Android

Basically it doesn’t do loads of things if I don’t tell Google my inside leg measurement.

The permissions are endless: Where am I?, link this account to my Google account, and that account to my Google account, connect these calendars.

I have to say that I never had anything like this on my iPhone.
Yes, Apple is a closed App store, but this never bothered me – it is just a service I used. Like the Android Market. I might have missed out on a few Apps, but I all I want to do is the basic things on such a piddling screen.

But Apple never gathered the information Google tries to get out of me. The Android just tries to use Google for everything. Gmail, Calendar, Address Book. And I have to go round switching everything off. Then something else crawls out of the woodwork, because I actually do want to read my gmail on the device, so have to tell it my account. So suddenly my address book offers to link up all the contacts it has found in gmail to my address book proper.

Apple had .mac or MobileMe or whatever it was, but I never subscribed, and the iPhone worked fine. Just because I need to have a Google account to join some groups, Google works like hell to make sure that Google becomes my main supplier of everything, and actually makes life difficult for me if I don’t. And keeps on squirrelling my information away. I can imagine that most people just give up and hand it all over.

The iPhone manages to provide seamless integration between the Apps without the server knowing who I am – why can’t the Android?

And in the end I trust Apple more than Google, and certainly after this. In 25 years as an Apple user I have never seen any information leak out. However, after a few years using Google, if I go to all sorts of web pages I am offered products in the middle of them based on what I have searched for and where I was in the world last.

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make syntax

Even after all these years, I find another bit of make syntax that does a gotcha, which I guess the whole world already knew.

# foo=bar
FOO=BAR

is not the same as

FOO=BAR        #foo-bar

You live and learn.
In case you are wondering, they are different when used as

BAZ=${FOO}-QUEX

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I did a Silly Thing

I had been spreading grit and salt with my hand (to keep my glove clean) and thought I would clean it and the bucket with snow. Big mistake.

Picked up a load of clean snow with the same hand. The pain was almost instant, and excruciating. By the time I had got to some clean water to wash it off, I genuinely thought I had damaged by fingers, although the pain was only in my hand, as all the fingers were now completely numb. I could see the skin was not in a good state, and guess that is what frostbite is.

Anyway, although I could feel it for a few days, there seem to have been no longer-term permanent damage.

But bathing my hand in salt solution that might get as low as -17C was clearly rather a Silly Thing.

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People who “hide” their email addresses

tosser(at)funny.farm
I mean, do they (or their organisations) think that email trawlers can’t work that out?
All it does is inconvenience the genuine people who want to contact them.
There are only about 6 spammers in the world, apparently – do you think they didn’t get your email a looooong time ago:- or will as soon as you put that up?
Or worse still, wanker AT room DOT one DOT bedlam.
And to cap it all, let’s make it an image so that I have to type in the whole thing absolutely correctly.

Or why not just give me a web form to fill in to send you a message?
That way I have to use your technology to do it, and then it doesn’t get into my normal processes – pissing me about again.

Or perhaps you want to just give me an email hash?
That’s just great to help me get in touch with you – yes Semantic Web Dog Food this applies to you.
http://data.semanticweb.org/person/hugh-glaser/html
It’s on my wiki page http://semanticweb.org/wiki/User:Hugh_Glaser, so why obscure it on the data page?

The reason you have an email account is to make it convenient for people to contact you.

I have actually decided not to email people about things I am sure they would like to know because of this;- open.ac.uk is worth mentioning as a particularly bad specimen.

So if you haven’t got systems that can cope with the spam, then get different ones. Don’t push the effort of futilely trying to protect youself from spam onto me.

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Getting Identity Thieved

Yet again I have to piss about dealing with someone using my identity. And for why?

Because as a company director I was required to give out my Date of Birth so it can be made a clear matter of public record at Companies House.

I even use a different mother’s maiden name for each company.
But what is the point of trying to protect my personal information when the law requires me to give stuff to them to publish to all comers?

Time the tossers sorted it out.

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