This is Weird

This is Google's summary that pops up when one searches for William Seward:

When I saw the location of birth, I thought it interesting, but plausible, that Florida was as specific as they could get. Then with the place of death, Auburn, I thought I had spotted something that needed fixing in Wikipedia. I assumed Auburn, AL, but I also know there are other Auburns, and so intended to look it up. But then I visited the actual Wikipedia page, which provides this information:

Florida, NY and Auburn, NY. So Google decided (likely with no human intervention) that if they said "Florida," people would automatically think of a place in NY, and if they said "Auburn," people would immediately realize it was the Auburn in New York. Oops.

Now I need to see if anyone famous was born in Athens or Calcutta (Ohio, of course) or Lisbon (Maryland) and see where Google says they were born.

Jesus, Google!

Apparently someone at Google has decided that composing an e-mail is too straightforward, and so they've decided to muck with Gmail yet again. Zoho, anyone?

Google Does Evil and then Lies About It

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-08-09/google-said-to-face-fine-by-u-dot-s-dot-over-apple-safari-breach

Today Google agreed to pay apple $22.5M for allegedly breaching Safari users' browser settings to set cookies. That's evil.  The payment is apparently a record high, but for Google is just a slap on the wrist

But then the above-linked Business Week article quotes Google to say "...[we have taken] steps to remove the ad cookies, which collected no personal information, from Apple’s browsers.” This strikes me as fundamentally dishonest. No, cookies gather no information. However, web servers accessing cookies left previously do gather information, so placing the cookies aided Google's gathering of information about users' browsing behavior. And a user's browsing behavior strikes me as private.

Chrome as Nagware

Now whenever I start Chrome, it asks me to sign in to the browser. Why? It's a browser, not an OS. Apparently this will let me sync my bookmarks, history, and settings on all my devices: "With Chrome's sign-in feature, you no longer need to fret about your bookmarks or apps being "stuck" on one computer." Who's enough of a dweeb to fret about this stuff?

Different machines have different characteristics, so maybe I want different settings. Maybe I want different bookmarks, history, and apps at home and at work. Maybe I want to try out a setting or an app, but not spread it across all my systems until I decide I like it. Maybe an app is stealing data. Do I want it spread across all my machines quickly and automatically?

I think this is a feature that some people will want. But the way Google is going about it, nagging us to log in every time we start the browser, apparently with no setting to disable the request, feels coercive. And when a corporation attempts coercion, I worry about ulterior motives.

Manually Configure Your DNS Settings in Linux

Using your ISP's or employer's DNS servers may or may not be a good idea. Are they configured properly? Are they monitoring your lookups? Note that some employers may have policies regarding what DNS servers clients use, so you may want to look into those policies.

When visiting a Wi-Fi hotspot, do you really trust their DNS settings? By default client machines using DHCP will get their DNS settings as well as other addressing information from the DHCP server, which would be the router at a wireless hotspot. Trustworthy? Why would anyone think so?

First, don't bother with the Gnome/Mate/Cinnamon networking applet. It will let you make the change, but doesn't successfully change the system configuration. Instead, find the Network Settings. In the Mate menu it's at System|Administration|Network. It should something look like this:

Click on the padlock where it says "Click to make changes" and enter your root password. Click on the connection you want to configure. For this example I'm using a desktop on a home network using Verizon FiOS. Feeling neither trust nor love for Verizon, I'd rather not trust their DNS servers. Instead, I'll use OpenDNS. Here's a little piece at the bottom of their home page:

Note the two IPv4 addresses, 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. Enter these addresses in the DNS Servers box under the DNS tab. There are other choices for a public DNS, e.g., Google.

One unfortunate aspect of the GUI management of DNS settings is that with wireless connections, the settings must be made for each access point, which means that the first time you connect to a new access point, the DNS server address will default to the access point or its DNS server. Fix it as above and then restart networking.

At the Google page there is a link to a nice little introduction to DNS security.

Google's New Bugger, err, Blogger, No, Bugger Interface Logo

With thanks to Dynamoo.

New Gmail Stinks Maximally

First impression after spending ten minutes looking for a way to revert back to the much more usable older interface was where's my calendar gadget. My next impression is that I just replied to an e-mail, and there's no god-damned archive button.

I'm sure one of those obscure pictographs will perform the archive function, but doesn't Google have a single software engineer who has spent even a minute thinking about usability??

Google F'ing With Blogger Again

Google, over the last several months never hesitating to replace a decent user interface with a bad one, is again F'ing with the blogger interface. Lovely (not). Why the rush away from usability?

Allowing Apps Access to Accounts

EFF points to an interesting article The Perpetual, Invisible Window Into Your Gmail Inbox which talks about pitfalls of allowing apps access to one's Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, etc., accounts. It's a good read, though my basic advice is don't give access to your e-mail to any app. However, with a smart phone the temptation might be great.

One of the sites mentioned there is http://mypermissions.org/. I recently deleted my Google+ account and barely use my Windows Live account, so the only account of interest there was LinkedIn. It turns out they think I had given access to two applications, an event announcement app and a survey app. They are probably both innocuous, but I was never aware of giving them access, and actually like the idea of getting rid of their useless event announcements, so I was able to disable them. Also, looking through my LinkedIn settings, I saw a number of settings that they had chosen for me by fiat, as I never would have chosen to allow e-mail from partners, for example. All that is cleaned up, but apparently bears revisiting from time-to-time.

In my Gmail account I had sharing among various Google services enabled and the ability to use my Google account to log in to some services enabled. Basically, if my Google account is penetrated, other dominoes fall.

Escaping from the Google+ Minus

Sharing Picasa albums doesn't work well with Google+. When I would send a link to an album, the receiver would be redirected to a Google+ photo page. The album maps would be removed, and the user would have to click to see entire captions. Almost as bad was a big, obnoxious entreaty to join Google+ at the top of the page. This morning I deleted my Google+ profile, which I never saw a practical use for anyhow, and Picasa is returned to full functionality.

The instructions are here: http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=98083

Above I said that I had never seen a practical use for Google+. This is not strictly true. A few months ago I had circles and stuff, and would have been fine with it, but the Gmail page would always announce activity among those in my circles. It was distracting, and though some of what was going on was interesting, little of it related to anything that needed the sort of immediate attention Gmail seemed to suggest.

Resisting the Monopolies, Unsuccessfully

I've had occasion to be unhappy with both Google and Amazon lately, and one difference is that Amazon has employees that work in customer service, though it seems they become dysfunctional as soon as one says 'Linux.' Google, though they have no customer service personnel, does understand Linux well.

It is unfair, of course, to say that Google lacks customer service. The fact of the matter is that, though I send them a little money every year to store more stuff on their servers, Google does not view me as a customer. The advertisers and marketeers are Google's customers.

But first, Amazon, since that's a quicker issue. Overall I love Amazon. If I can buy it at Amazon (or Zappos, or LL Bean), I tend not to shop. I love my Kindle. The last time I moved the price was a fixed price plus something like $0.50 per pound. Kindle books weigh much less and fit well into carry-on.

I also used to like local bookstores. I still like Barnes & Noble, but their locations are inconvenient, and indeed have been inconvenient to every place I've ever lived. By and large, local bookstores are gone. There are none that I'm aware of in or near Catonsville. I blame Amazon. I blame myself and people like me. I blame the states for not collecting sales tax on online purchases.

I've just started another round of Amazon doesn't care about Linux-based customers, or doesn't care enough to provide a working MP3 downloader. First, why make us use a downloader? Why not just use open web protocols? Users have perfectly usable web browsers. Second, why not let us use clamz. I can sometimes download an MP3 album using clamz, and sometimes not. Sometimes it works without a hitch, and sometimes the Amazon web page holds me hostage until I either cancel the order or download a non-functional Amazon-provided downloader, one that would have been perfectly appropriate a few years ago on a Linux of the era.

Of course, the Linux community shares some of the blame for that, by not providing backward compatibility. As Henry Spencer reputedly said, those that don't understand Unix (e.g., the Ubuntu folks) are doomed to re-implement it, poorly. Why exactly can I not install a program on a current Linux that worked fine a couple releases ago? I know I can play games and force it to install, but there's nothing interesting about that and it's not a constructive use of time.

So, now I've taken a step away from the monopoly and downloaded an album from cduniverse.com, a completely satisfactory experience. However, their descriptions are less complete than Amazon's, and their prices seem higher. In other markets, the monopolist, e.g., Microsoft, produces low-quality products at high prices. In this market, Amazon doesn't care about fringe customers.

Google has made me reconsider my reliance upon them by screwing up their user interfaces across the board. Okay, Google Translate, formerly Google Language Tools, has improved, and maybe other things have as well in ways I have not noticed. How reliant upon Google am I?

• Gmail
• Chrome
• Blogger.com
• Picasa
• search
• reader
• calendar
• documents
• maps
• YouTube
• alerts

I would certainly miss them if they were gone. To avoid Gmail's terrible interface, once Google stops nagging me about switching to the the new interface and tries to ram it down my throat, I may go back to an e-mail client, like Thunderbird.

For search I have been using DuckDuckGo fairly regularly, and mostly like it. What I don't like it that it seems Wikipedia is almost always the first result. Why start with something that's unlikely to be very good?

I could abandon Blogger and go back to LiveJournal or some such.

I could go back to a mix of Firefox and Opera rather than my current mix of Firefox and Chrome, but I find that Chrome works better at the financial and e-commerce web sites than any other browser, though it's been a few releases since I've tried using Firefox to pay a bill.

If Picasa's UI doesn't degrade much from it's current state, I prefer to stay there since I don't know of any other similarly-useful photo site. Maybe I could adjust to photo streams, but for most of what I do, albums are a better fit. Yahoo? Who else?

Reader is very convenient, but I could start using RSS more directly. That's inconvenient, though, which I guess is Google's point.

Google Hates Us

First Google Docs. Now Gmail. Google is trying to push us to unattractive interfaces with the idea that we are basically illiterate, unable to deal with words on the screen, and hoping to switch to obscure pictographs. Gmail's new interface is ugly, with little contrast between the foreground letters and the backgrounds, it spaces things out so that screen real estate is used poorly, it forces us into greater use of frames meaning that the arrow and page up/down keys are less useful, and, other than that, I don't like it.

Google Language Tools Improved

I like a couple of the new features of Google Language tools:

So what does 'Canada' mean?

First note the Spanish keyboard. Nice--this makes it much easier to type Spanish.
Now notice the tabs at the tops of the text areas, allowing one to quickly change the translate from and translate to languages. And the languages are easily changed. Nice.

Also worth noting is that they now support Latin, which was not the case not too long ago. Google is about search, and to a large degree search is about language, so the work'they're putting into this shouldn't be a surprise.

Skydrive/Windows Live or Google?

For the past month or so I've been using Microsoft's Skydrive to save files online for transfer among systems and off-site backup. I have a free gigabyte there. I've also been occasionally using Google Documents for this purpose. In each case, what I transfer is an encrypted compressed tarball, and I saw little difference in terms of performance or convenience.

Today I've decided to stop using Skydrive--it's too unreliable. Two of the last three times I've tried an upload (using Chrome from an Ubuntu box) the transfer to Skydrive has stalled. Each time, when giving it extra time, I've opened a tab and Windows Live informs me that if I leave the page the upload will be canceled. WTF? I was leaving that tab open and going somewhere else.

Until yesterday I would have said I like Skydrive, and that it's nowhere near as clunky as Outlook Live, which is very retro, and very limited in what it allows one to do. Now, I think I can say Microsoft online services are to be avoided.

Do these work better with IE on a Windows machine? Probably, but that defeats the purpose of a web-based service. Why might they work better with IE/Windows? Possibly ActiveX, and intrusive access to the PC.

Any Pluses for Plus? Minuses?

I've been on Google Plus for a few weeks now, and I don't see it as ever being worthwhile. Of course, I still don't see any reason to be on Facebook or Twitter. They all primarily waste time.

I'm not on the verge of deleting my Plus account, but I don't see any good reason not to.

Google Attempting to Coerce Picasa Users

For the past few weeks I have been prompted by Picasa to link my photos to my Google profile. This nagware appears every time I visit Picasa. It also appears I cannot comment on even my own photos without linking my Picasa account with my Google profile. I got rid of the nagging (or so it seems) by deleting my Google profile. It seems I've done this before.

Google has no regard whatsoever for its users' privacy.

Alta Vista to Shut Down, but Apparently not Babel Fish

PC World has a brief article announcing the end of Alta Vista, the best search engine before Google, and in the author's opinion (and mine) the second best search engine to date. I would let this pass without comment, as one of the last vestiges of DEC going away, but I read a (likely false) report that Yahoo will also be shutting down Babel Fish, which is a fairly good, convenient, translation service. I guess would be partly to blame here: just as I stopped using Alta Vista when Google came along, I've been gravitating toward Google Language Tools rather than Babel Fish lately.

However, the second page a Google news search led me to as I tried to ascertain the fate of Babel Fish says it has been spared for now.

Google Web History: Beware

I deleted and paused my Google Web History some time back, thinking that meant Google would stop collecting "my" web history. This morning I was changing some Google account settings and clicked on Web History. They had started maintaining web history for me again. So I again had to delete everything and "pause" my web history. Apparently pause does mean pause, and Google pops the account off pause willy-nilly, or by some algorithm known to them, but not to their users.

The thing to do is to remove the web history. From Google Account Help:

Using Web History: Deleting
You can delete Web History from your Google Account at any time. Just follow these steps:

Click the My Account link from the Google homepage.
Click Edit next to 'My products.'
Click Delete Web History. Make sure you're signed in to your Google Account to see the My Account link.
Note: Deleting Web History from your Google Account will erase all items from your Web History and stop your Web History from being recorded in the future. You can also remove individual items without deleting all of your Web History.

Quick Note on Address Bar Auto-Completion

Firefox and Opera, by default, have a search field (it's a text field but Firefox calls it the search bar) to the right of the address bar. I've removed mine--it's redundant and cumbersome (or so I thought, but see point 3 below), and an information leak.

I often have students in my office for advising and typically go over their online records. This means they look at my web browser. This also means they can read titles of tabs (fine, so be it) and contents of the search bar. I'd hate to have a student read too much into the fact that I've recently searched for Shaun Cassidy. So in my office I removed the search bar and just open a new tab (^t) and hit the g key. This takes me immediately to Google.

(1) Most of my searches are Google searches. I played with Bing when it first came out, but Bing's results don't seems as good, and Bing seems to use a fair amount of client-side scripting, which I'd rather avoid. Google does too, but they already know everything about me.

(2) I may sometimes prefer a Wikipedia search or some such, but very often the appropriate Wikipedia page is near the top of the search results, so Wikipedia search is redundant.

(3) Doing a quick lookup for this posting led me to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/search.html, which points out that one can select text and drag it to the search bar, which seems to work well. So my search bar is, at least temporarily, back in my Firefox window on most of my machines--just not the one in my office.

The WikiLeaks Furor

There has been an uproar about WikiLeaks in the press lately, and until recently I've felt that Wikileaks has done more good than bad, pointing out cases where the US (and other) governments have lied to their populaces, condoned torture, etc. I won't go into the ethics of the current batch of releases because there is simply too much to review, but I would like to make a few comments.

1) http://news.netcraft.com/ has been doing a great job of covering the back-and-forth of WikiLeaks availability, changes in their hosting and DNS services, etc.

2) Tonight I decided to spend a few minutes looking at the site. Among other things, I was interested in whether it would be difficult to get to. Two things worked right away. (a) Googling WikiLeaks led directly to 213.251.145.96 (registered to wikileaks.org in a block owned by OVH ISP in Paris), so the DNS is not necessarily needed. (b) Verizon's DNS service redirected me to http://mirror.wikileaks.info/, but some of the links at that site, e.g., the one to obtain a secure connection, did not work.

3) Some of the calls for the US government to launch web attacks against WikiLeaks are largely over the top and naively stupid. I wouldn't be surprised to discover attempts to hack into their database or their servers, but the idea of launching DDoS attacks against ISPs and hosting services in the US, Europe, and elsewhere is just silly. The US launching cyber attacks against France and Russia? Not a good idea.

4) I read one leaked dispatch, http://213.251.145.96/cable/2009/08/09BRASILIA1017.html. This is tagged "UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY." One phrase I really like is advice to the USG (US Government, I suspect), "speak softly and carry no stick." The article talks about attempts to keep the Brazilian government from authorizing pharmaceuticals in Brazil to produce generic versions of AIDS drugs, in other words the bureaucratese seems to suggest that the US government is more interested in corporate profits than in dying Brazilians. Not a big surprise.

This is exactly the sort of thing US (and Brazilian) voters should be aware of, and also not the type of leak causing much of the uproar.