This is all part of facebook's elaborate plan to make their privacy policies look good.
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The simplest explanation for all this is that Google is trying to solve the energy crisis by burning its vast reserves of goodwill.
See also: book settlement, re: orphans.
I thought they would start using their information about people for extortion well before they got complacent enough to do something as stupidly destructive as this "Buzz" thing.
I didn't know Google was burning orphans, too. God damn.
It's not as if anyone really believed Google's motto was anything other than an ironic joke, at best? Right?
The simplest explanation for all this is that Google is trying to solve the energy crisis by burning its vast reserves of goodwill.
Personally, my reserves of goodwill towards the company burned off several years ago. I'm rather enjoying watching everyone else catch up with me.
And the amazing thing about the linked post is that this is a KNOWN PROBLEM. Every social networking site for the past 5-7 years has hit it (anybody remember getting spammed by Plaxo?). So much for Google being the smartest kids on the block.
Most people had no reason to dislike Google before. Why would they? (speaking as someone with little connection to the world of book preservation)
speaking as someone with little connection to the world of book preservation
Or Usenet either, apparently. Google Groups search has been a bad joke for a long time now, which is particularly sad when you consider just what a big deal they made of it when they acquired first DejaNews and then Henry Spencer's archive.
re: 12
Their business practice has been pretty bullying and aggressive in other areas, too. I suppose a lot of people don't really know, or care, about that, but they've certainly been at least as bad as their competitors who have worse reputations.
In my particular corner of the law, I've been dealing with Google related problems for years. I don't think Google's more evil than most companies, but good God is the notion that they are less evil a giant marketing ploy for rubes.
Obviously tech-savvy early adopters have no illusions.
It's not just an issue of book preservation. The orphan works are out of print, in copyright, but possibly in fine condition wherever they are.
I don't think I have any illusions about Google being not-evil, but Google Books has made my professional life so much easier. I have access to so much more than I would otherwise, and instantly, without waiting for the slow-turning wheels of ILL. And I can work anywhere there's an internet connection, rather than lug around books or spend my time in the basement with the microfilm readers.
18: Yeah, they're great for the public domain* (which I think is most of what you deal with), although I almost always go with the Internet Archive if they have the same book for better scan quality. We've had this conversation before.
*Although apparently not so great if you want to run computational textual analysis stuff or other projects requiring automated access to lots of works. People who want to do that have reported that google won't give them the kind of access they'd like, even restricted to just the public domain. At least this was true of a year or two ago; not sure if it's still true.
I never answered a Plaxo request, because I hated their spam so much.
deja-news was good, and I had an e-mail account with them. That was the first I'd ever heard of google, and the user interface got crappy once that happened.
I opted out of Buzz. Then I said that reader could only share my information with provate groups, and 0 groups are checked. What else can I do to protect myself? Maybe I should go back to yahoo mail. (Bostoniangirl still is.)
I never thought that allowing Google to read, index, and sell the contents of your email was worth the free storage.
Plus, my ex is a Google employee and occasionally weird things happen to searches on my second husband's unusual last name. And the children are convinced that he can read their Gmail without having been given the password--and they are probably right.
23: Did you turn off Buzz (link at the bottom of GMail)? If so, what you've done should be enough (from my limited playing around with Buzz).
25: I turned it off using the tiny link. I'm just kind of freaked out by the story that Becks linked to where the woman's abusive ex was notified of where she works.
Meh. Your abusive SIL already knows where you live.
If you're a long way from homehappy,
Can't sleep at night.
Grab your telephoneSMTP,
Something just ain't right.
That's evil,
Evil is goin on wrong.
I am warnin ya brother,
You better watch your happy home.
Well, long way from home and,
Can't sleep at all.
You know another mule,
Is kickbuzzin in your stall.
That's evil,
Evil is goin on wrong.
I am warnin ya brother,
You better watch your happy home.
When you use Google Glass Elevator everybody can see if you're wearing pants while flying.
Another screwy privacy issue with Google is Blogger commenting. I signed up with Blogger way back when so I could comment on Blogger people's blogs, using my anonymous hotmail account. Then Google ate Blogger, so I had a Google account -- no gmail, but a Google account linked to my anonymous hotmail account. No problem.
Then I signed up for a gmail account last week for RL communications, and used my real name for my email address. I wasn't thinking about any reason not to, so it's linked to the same Google account that got set up with my anonymous hotmail. Then I commented on some Blogger blog, and got a check box saying that followups would be sent to 'YOUR.REAL-NAME@gmail.com', which I'm guessing also means that my realname gmail address is visible to the blogger whose blog I commented on. I don't know that it is, but I don't know how to be sure that it isn't. And I certainly never told Google to start using the new address for blog-commenting.
This isn't a huge problem for me -- my anonymity isn't high stakes -- but it means that I can't comment on Blogger blogs anymore unless I really figure out how to keep Google from handing out my realname address frivolously. I've always hated registering in blog comments, and my prejudices have just been totally confirmed.
LB, go to bloger.com (NY: blawger) and you'll be able to edit your account details to hide real name/email etc.
Aren't I just Mr IT Help Desk today?
Thanks -- I just fixed it -- but my gripe stands: Google spontaneously started handing out an email address I hadn't told it to, just because it was newly created on the same account. That's just wrong.
(But really, thanks -- I hadn't realized that Blogger.com was still where to manage that. When Google ate Blogger I thought managing your Blogger account moved to somewhere in the Gmail account page; I don't really use Blogger, so I never thought about it too much. I probably would have figured it out eventually, but more likely I just wouldn't have commented on Blogger blogs for ages.)
I am -- LET ME INTO MY FACEBOOK! -- kinda confused about Buzz on mobile Gmail. The icon is there, still, even though I turned Buzz off on my computer. I clicked on the Buzz link to see if I could turn it off that way -- or to even see if it was on, really -- and immediately my iPhone informed that "This program would like to use your location. Allow?" So I said, no, thank you. I'm going to assume it is indeed off, I guess.
Thanks -- I just fixed it -- but my gripe stands: Google spontaneously started handing out an email address I hadn't told it to, just because it was newly created on the same account. That's just wrong.
I ran into this one too, a while back. HIGHLY vexing.
35: That's exactly the sort of thing -- you don't know what it's going to tell who if you agree to anything at all.
Also, though I'd much rather comment on Blogger blogs with some other shared login identity (or none) it is always eager to leave me signed in with my Google/Blogger account for commenting as long as I am signed into my gmail account in that browser. What's more, at least last time I checked, when I signed out on a Blogger comment page, it signed me out of gmail at the same time. I'd sure prefer those remember-mes to be handled separately.
How many days till the emergence of the baby beast?
kinda confused about Buzz on mobile Gmail. The icon is there, still, even though I turned Buzz off on my computer.
I have no clue if this would matter, but have you synched your phone since you disabled it? I remember once after unsubscribing from a lot of feeds in my RSS reader that they still showed up in my iPhone until I synched.
40: Oh, interesting. I have not. Huh.
I've also had problems with my Heebie identity showing up in unwanted places, that being my gmail account. Specifically, people have e-mailed my yahoo RL account with Picasa photos, and I've shown up there as Heebie.
Sometimes I just have two browsers open, one as Heebie and one as RL.
Beast is due on the 23rd. When she will actually arrive, of course, is anyone's guess. Things are already slowly progressing laborward, the OB tells me. Obviously we are all set to plug her directly into the social network immediately post Apgar.
I've adopted the two-browser approach, too. Dear overlords: please don't make me buy a separate computer just to say "fuck" on the internet.
43:
That was such a late start for her. She should start into the social network at the crowning.
Well, now that I own snarkfoxkit.com and snarkfoxkit@gmail.com, we can go into negotiations. Any reasonable offer considered.
Heh. I am apparently automatically following my boss on buzz, with whom I have corresponded on my realname gmail For a brief moment , I wondered if this meant he would see that my most frequent email to that account is a subscription to legal job classifieds. It appears not, though that would have been a fun explanation for why he suddenly saw the light on some significant matters yesterday.
46: No earlier than that, though. I generally find the tweets I get from fetuses to be pretty boring. Its either "Warm comfort" or "Vague dissatisfaction."
I guess a lot of tweets from adult humans wind up like that, too.
49: Srsly Mom, the chalupas don't sit well on this side of the placenta. #bestoddsdietfail
(The foregoing comment would have been less unfunny if I actually understood Twitter syntax.)
And the amazing thing about the linked post is that this is a KNOWN PROBLEM.
As is the importance of properly handling metadata, and, as Nunberg pointed out, google got metadata for the books they were digitizing from the libraries from which the books came—and then used different sources (why?) or rolled their own data-extraction tools ('cause they're so badass).
Remember! Nothing bad could come of something google does!
I had forgotten about the shittiness of usenet searches—I can search for strings I know for a fact are in a post (because I've got a saved copy on my hd) and google comes up with nothing (e.g.—you can find it by searching for the message-id, if you happen to have that handy, but "The archive for this group is currently unavailable"). I also find their blending of actual real usenet and "google groups" distasteful.
The other thing that Nunberg points out is that concomitant with the arrogance is the (apparent) sense that the only problems are engineering problems, and they've got great engineers, so there's no need to consult anyone else about what they're doing or get other perspectives. Hence the ability to glide right past known, but not primarily technical, problems.
I thought the predominant complaints were that Usenet posts from, say, someone's teenage years on rec.cosplay.goth were searchable now, not that Usenet posts were insufficiently searchable.
Oh, I see. Did google not respecte X-No-Archive:, or was it not formerly an issue because of the relative obscurity (then nonexistence) of DejaNews?
Sez wpedia: "Beginning in 2005, Google's newsgroup service (Google Groups) changed its handling of X-No-Archive, allowing messages with the field to be archived and made available for view for six days, after which the message is made unavailable in the archive."
That's … idiotic.
Of course X-No-Archive was introduced far too late for it to be of any good to many people.
So I disabled Buzz. Is this enough, or do I need to do more (e.g., stop using gmail altogether?)? I don't want "followers", nor do I want to "follow" anyone else. What a creepy concept.
I'd follow you anywhere, as long as it had good food at reasonable prices.
I don't want "followers", nor do I want to "follow" anyone else.
Okay, Mary Catherine is a No for the Unfogged parade.
I use GMail's IMAP servers and a local e-mail client, so I can't see any of this stuff...
I'm still a go for the parade, as long as I can be in front of the horses this time.
||
I would make the world's worst secretary. Entering someone else's edits to a document I've written drives me insane -- I miss things, I introduce fresh errors, and it takes me forever. When I've got two people giving me edits simultaneously, neither talking to each other or willing to defer to the other, it's even more fun.
!>
61: This afternoon, I'm making revisions to the diss chapter I sent out last week. I get notes from friends, revise and send to committee, get notes from committee, revise, send out for more notes... It's grueling, and I do worry about making new errors. When I draft something all at once, it rarely has any errors. But this process involves tying together old papers and bits of documents, constant re-reading and editing, and it's really hard to do that without screwing things up further.
62: Google's probably coming up with a great solution to that problem. I'd put money on it being awesome.
Was that the Google comment remover in action? Pretty slick!
Just about every major, negotiated transactional document I've ever looked at has obvious drafting glitches in it somewhere, no matter how high-priced the lawyers who vied over it. Those last few rounds of revisions just get too crazy.
There was a big complaint - a complaint from someone in a highly visible place, maybe Wired - about google groups just recently being a neglected wasteland. Google said they'd do something about it. This was a different complaint than the usual, I don't want my info showing up from the mid-90s complaint. I'll try to find the link later, but I'm supposed to be proofreading a paper and packing and going to the airport.
62: It sounds like you are being productive on the dissertation -- congratulations.
Did everyone see the conclusion to the story linked in the post?
I had forgotten about the shittiness of usenet searches--I can search for strings I know for a fact are in a post (because I've got a saved copy on my hd) and google comes up with nothing
Yes, I really hate this because usenet searches are otherwise a valuable tool for tracking the adoption of popular culture tropes and phrase (things like when did "snark" really catch on in its current usage).