innerhippy

Last Saturday morning, I was greeted with a message on my Android HTC phone from the Google Book app congratulating me on the successful download. What download? On further inspection, I was now the proud owner of Jane Austin’s Pride And Prejudice. Downloaded at my expense over 3G.

The problem is that I never asked for this book. Furthermore, I have never even used the Google Books app before.

It would appear that Google decided to download this book for me. Surely not? Perhaps there was an innocent explanation? A software bug?

So I contacted Google and asked how this could have happened, how I can prevent it from happening again and what Google proposes to do about my network data charges. This is their reply:

Thanks for writing in to Google eBooks. As the Google Books app comes bundled with a suite of Google apps, it cannot be removed from your Android device.

Please go to Settings > Accounts & Sync > your accounts > Uncheck the “Sync Books” option for each account you have.

This should prevent the Google Books app from downloading any more updates or books.

As for the data issues, Pride and Prejudice is the only book that will download without your permission. It’s about 44KB. Can you please estimate how much this data cost you and I will talk to my supervisor about compensating you?

I suspect that because I have never used the Google Books app before, they have decided to push a book onto my phone to encourage me to start using it (and presumably to start buying books). So I am being charged for receiving an unsolicited service – a cold call, calling collect! Would this have happened whilst abroad, incurring astronomical roaming data charges?

Furthermore, I checked the Sync options on my phone, and guess what – the Sync Books option is unchecked. Another email to Google, another reply:

I am going to pass this information on to our engineers so that they can provide us with the information you requested.

I apologize for the inconvenience caused and will put all the efforts from my side to provide you with the information as soon as possible.

To be honest, I never thought I’d receive a reply from Google about this, let alone from a real human, and I certainly didn’t expect them to be so frank in their admittance.

The crux of the issue is this: how can a company like Google with their track record for doing slightly evil things ever consider that this is not a totally idiotic and stupid thing to do. This is not a software issue, this is not an edge case quirk: it is a deliberate and cynical policy in order to gain profit. The fact that I cannot even uninstall this app  indicates to me that Google still don’t “get it”.

Just got my census form through the post and the prospect of picking up my pen is making me very uncomfortable.

I came across this article in Computer Weekly:
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2011/03/07/245750/Lack-of-legal-safeguards-could-lead-to-census-data-breaches-warns-law.htm

Glen Watson, the census director, refutes claims that data would be subject to the Patriot Act (as it is being processed by the US company Lockheed Martin), on the following grounds:

“Under the contractual and operational arrangements we have put in place, no employees of Lockheed Martin UK or of its US parent or of any other US company will be able to access personal census data. The US Patriot Act could not therefore be used to access such data,” he said.

What he is saying is that they will be processing the data without actually having any access to it! Wow. I’m just imagining what the grant permissions would look like on their database…

So, does anyone know if there are safeguards to prevent our data from leaking over to the US? If the director of census doesn’t understand how a computer works, can I assume the entire operation is flawed?

Can I object to completing the census on conscientious grounds? (ie the conscious part of my brain is saying it’s being run by a bunch of fools)

This morning we were treated to Evan Davis interviewing a “representative” of Anonymous “coldblood”

I was expecting a full on assault – to vilify the 22 year old as an internet thug, a hoodlum, the kind of scumbag that middle England DailMailers would like to see locked up, or at lest publicly flogged with wet kippers.

But no, we were treated to an interesting insight into the mind of the bright, young hacktavist who, to his credit, represented his cause with aplomb (being interviewed by radio4 would have scared the crap out me).

Credit to Evan for being fair.

Hackers are nor crackers. Hackers build stuff (small things like the Internet, open source software etc). Crackers break stuff and steal things. Although the talents and skills are similar, the intentions are very different. Similar to a kitchen knife – a lethal weapon or handy utensil for chopping tasty things.

But. Piss off the hackers and they’ll bite back. Hackers are also driven by a fierce sense of social justice and democracy. If any government thinks they can censor the internet <insert random wikileaks reference> then they clearly don’t understand what they are up against. These hacktivists will run rings around any organisation <insert visa/paypal/amazon/swiss banks  reference> who try to attack the freedoms upon which the internet was created. (One more thing – Switzerland? Moral standpoint? WTF??)

Is this the start of anarchy? Are we seeing a fundamental shift in the balance of power? Are governments getting a tiny bit nervous?

I hope so. The battle lines are being drawn,and I know who I’m backing.

Maybe even Evan’s gentle approach will win the hearts of Tunbridge Wells….

First, a qualification: good as in audio quality, not musical content. The latter is subjective, the former is absolute.

I’m stuck in the middle of everything.

I’m not a parasitic downloader/filesharer who amasses stuff for free just because I can. I’m not an iTunes/Apple slave. I don’t have a Spotify account. I am familiar with The Pirate Bay. I appreciate excellent audio quality. DRM offends me. I don’t buy CDs anymore (I’d just rip ‘em and sling ‘em). I do have a high-end hard-disk music system (squeezebox) with all my old CDs rippled to FLAC format. I do not listen to compressed crap, mp3 AAC et al. I want to download top quality music on my terms.

and,

I want to support musicians.

So here’s the deal: I want a lossless audio format that I can download.  And I want to pay for it. I better repeat that, I WANT TO PAY FOR IT! But I can’t because the only option available to me is to download crappy mp3 format or give my first born to Apple. No thanks.

Here’s how it works: I often have Radio Paradise playing around my house through 3 squeezebox players, and whenever I hear a tune that I really like I jump on the artist’s website and check to see if I can buy their offerings in FLAC format. 99.99% of the time the answer is no. The 0.01% was today when I checkout out Blackstratblues. Clicked on Download, selected FLAC format – followed a link sent via email – downloaded their entire album (which is excellent) in 10 mins, then followed up their invitation to make a contribution to the band and fired off £5. Now that’s how it should work – the artists being rewarded directly for making great music. Nice.

I’d do this far more often if only it were possible. But it’s not. Apple have a lossless format for iTunes calles ALAC. Why have you done this Apple, why? You’ve done it again – tried to castrate an existing technology for your own market greed (just as Microsoft did with all those internet standards and protocols – note to Mr S. Jobs: Microsoft lost those battles and so shall you). Why not just use FLAC and not reinvent something that’s not quite as good just to include evil DRM?

My money is ready to be spent but nobody’s listening.