SO Google has amalgamated 70 privacy policies for various free tools online into one policy.
that makes things much easier right? Been thinking about privacy, about how much info we want anywhere about us. As i was thinking about this, the UK government announced plans to be able to monitor the calls, emails, texts and website visits of everyone in the UK. Internet firms will be required to give intelligence agency GCHQ access to communications on demand, in real time.

I am very conscious of leaving a physical trail. I am aware my car is quite unnoticeable, but someone who had seen it a couple of times and knew where I liked to park could find me reasonably easily, if they thought about it.

I try and pay with cash when I can. It allows me to actually feel the money leaving my hands and makes real the amount being spend. It also means I spend less.

In physical life it’s kinda easy, yet on the Internet people actively try to find out all about you.
If you are reading my blog, My blog keeps a small record of some of your data. It then reports to me, things about
: your computer – your browser, your screen resolution, what operating system you use.
: your behaviour – how you came to my site, what you read, how long you spend here, what links you click.
: your location – where in the world you are when you read my blog, your ip address.
Thinking about it I dislike this level of information, I am uncomfortable with having it and as such I will disable that before I publish this post.

The point is if this is how much information I can have about you without trying to actively track you, how much do we give away to major companies for free? I have a reward card for several shops, at a basic level they give me “rewards” while I give them information which can be used to sell me more stuff, or perhaps be sold to other companies.

The recent story about the supermarket target in the US developing a system to observe the buying changes around when a lady was pregnant, and send appropriate vouchers, seems good work. When these arrived before the lady had told close family, well that’s a bit of an issue.

The data protection act protects us for records on computers under uk law. There is a big questions about how we engage with data being kept outwith UK law, I wonder about the amount of information that is available and how we control our own data in foreign countries. I think this new government seems at best misguided, at worst, a serious risk to the idea of security. Especially given the current process is (to my very basic understanding) similar to the process of getting a warrant to search your house.

I don’t think the Internet needs regulated. But companies do need regulated. Sharp business practice on wall street or the city of London is legislated against (or more accurately should be), it is monitored and where necessary compliance is necessitated.

I think companies virtual presences should be monitored and compliance thought where they are out of line. Facebook has 900 million users. By owning the data on Facebook, (Yes they own ‘your’ data), analyzing it, and then selling it to advertisers, Mark Zuckerberg is an 18 times billionaire.

Iain Bell in the Sunday Herld neatly sums up how i am feeling about all this in an excellently written piece.
“This begins to look like capitalism’s next phase, achieved with the willing co-operation – the uninhibited enthusiasm – of the masses while governments hitch a ride. Partly it’s conditioning: see how the queues form whenever Apple punts a new toy. Partly it’s technological drift: try to work without access to email. The largest part of it, though, is something new. It is the belief that nothing personal matters enough to be worth protecting.
…
Privacy is identity. In my (non-Face) book, the private person is the person you truly are. Give that away, daily and nightly – give it away to a corporation or a government, indeed – and you disappear into the collective, beloved of SF writers. We needn’t resort to fiction, though. The plain phrase “my business” sums it up. But I think I am being outvoted, and outvoted overwhelmingly.”

Don’t know, but is really sits uneasily with me.

The questions abide.

Music

1
npr – live concerts podcast
i couldn’t live without this podcast.
really. it is awesome.
2 hours of Radiohead on the In Rainbows tour live from California, no problem, here you go
The Decemberists premiering The Hazards of Live as a live song cycle, have it free
Andrew Bird live from SXSW last month, here is the whole set, and check the archives for one from 3 years ago.
it is eclectic and wide ranging cast of bands, it is an excellent source of bands who in three months time everyone will be talking about.
It has a two main forms. the long form full concert or the short form Tiny Desk Concert.
my top recommendation.

2
The Concert – classical music from the Isabella gardener museum
Quite a lovely and surprising pod from the museum.
generally works by a soloist or combination of players up to quartet. For someone like me with no knowledge of classical music this Pod has an easy way of allowing people into the music. a brief introduction from someone at the museum about the theme of the music and the composer, and intro to the players and we are away.
a lovely wee pod.

3
Canada Live – CBC radio 2
a new discovery – yet the last few updates have brought, Daniel Landois & Emmylou Harris, Cowboys Junkies and Bruce Cockburn.
A nearly very good pod. The only thing stopping it being excellent, is the guy who hosts it, (I think for contractual reasons), he has to speak after every second song, Unfortunately he chooses to impose upon us how important this artist is. but it is edited and divided into chapters well so you can skip over his chapters!

sports
1
the Guardian Football Weekly with James Richardson
Woooof! what a pod.
it has a light touch, it is funny, to the point, covers the continental game, and has James Richardson from Football Italia!
seriously though it does exactly what you want a football podcast to be, a reflection of the conversation a group of mates who watch a lot of football may have.
and as it is recorded twice a week it reflects whats happening currently which is nice.
very good pod.

2
Americarnage
The tagline of Sports, Culture & Nonsense, just about sums up this award winning podcast. A good mix of sports chat, analysis of each other and random Kevin Costner addiction the pod is a winner. It covers all four major American sports, (baseball, NBA, NFL & Ice Hockey) which will limit listener numbers and does include the occasional bad word and adult reference, but it does it in a light way.
Quality fun and you don’t even need to know who Curtis Painter is to join in.

3
Scottish Football Podcast, BBC Scotland
Half an hour or so of the best football news from BBC Scotland. quite listenable and just the right length i think
updated daily which is also nice.

What sports and music pods do you listen too?

(i didn’t buy anything.)

I doubt any of them make sense, in a joined up sense but in my brain somehow they make sense….
– Steve Jobs thoughts on using flash in iPhone, iPod and iPad.
– A small section in the Andrew Marr show (BBC Sunday mornings) on the relationship between MP’s and the electorate.
– The current tranche of press releases from The Church of Scotland on the future of the CofS
– and an ecumenical meeting of clergy with the local Community Planning Partnership.

Something has to change.
I was thinking this as I sat in a two hour meeting between staff and clergy, and local political instruments. In the meeting the head of the local Non-Government Independent Charities which are core funded by the Local Government, (do you see what they did there?), saw an impotent, poor excuse for a meeting. I found the whole thing disappointing.

on reflection a couple of things hit me.
- we had chosen to engage, but the relationship was not an even one. we were being regarded as useful information and propaganda sources, but not ‘partners’. The power relationship was skewed so far out of kilter
- secondly our engagement had been needy. As minorities within the relationship, we had gratefully taken everything we had been given with a respectful and humble attitude. (Just like Jesus?) My friend came up with the paraphrase of Jesus ‘Innocent as lambs, slippery as fuck.” In our meeting we had got the innocent bit right, but the slippery, well we were probably grippy rather than slippery.
- thirdly our engagement was uncreative,without focus or agenda, and chaired in a bizarrely partisan basis by the chair who was part of our group.

something needed to be changed. Yet I am unsure how to articulate the change which is necessary.

I dont think my experience of this is unique, but when i then read the mass of press releases coming out of the Church of Scotland in the run up to the general assembly I began to wonder about how universal these thoughts are.(CofS have been talking about money, how they do church, part time ministry, Gay clergy. Just about anything they can.)
As I have read things from press releases, quote for ministers, and leaks from reports, I got that feeling again. As a pew dweller I have no real power within the church. Everything is decided by committee, (the essence of Presbyterianism) at local, and national level. this give democratic authenticity to decisions but there seems to be a general unwillingness to change. My problem here is my understanding of any church as the only institution which exists primarily for the benefit of those outside it.
Engagement is on the established terms.
creativity is not a noted by product of any committee meeting of any sort.

something needed to be changed. Yet I am unsure how to articulate the change which is necessary. (I am unsure I have articulated the problem well!)

Some light as shed on this by the small section in the Andrew Marr programme, where they did a bit on the relationship between the MP’s and the electorate. its basic theory was that the electorate think of it as an upper class lower class relationship. (MPs upper class, electorate Lower class) yet politician after politician, in their memoirs and comment thought of it more as the relationship between the masters and servants, with Mp’s being as the servants.

I am unhappy leaving that expressed view unchallenged, but when you apply that thinking or position to the CCP or the CofS, the power dynamic changes, and the opportunity for change becomes something which can be worked towards. the problem then is how to make change happen and something creative for those involved.

Hence the inclusion of Steve Jobs open statement on the relationship between Apple and Adobe. It does several things very well. It outlines the problems, and outlines the future course of action which seems sensible given the argument simply put forward.
(You can read it here. Thoughts on Flash @ Apple.com
His comments are accurate, seem reasonably considered, yet clear and decisive action is called for. Change is advocated for.

My dominating thought though reading this was who is doing this for that meeting we had, who is doing this for the CofS assembly stuff i have been reading, (even who is doing this for the MP’s). something needed to be changed. It was articulated well the change which is necessary.

I wonder where else that is done?
I wonder where else that is done creatively?

let me explain.

I have been on twitter for a good we while now and follow various people, i have about the same amount of people who follow me. I don’t follow everyone who follows me, and i am not followed by everyone i follow. I find it is nice and less intrusive in some ways that say instant messenger, bebo chat or facebook chat. It is not for conversations in the same way as skype is.

On Tuesday morning their was a delay on the motorway I drive to work. We got stuck.
i got my book out of the boot, my wife had her bag, and Jacob had an ipod with the film ‘ratatouille’ on it. we were happy and sitting. I wanted to let people know what was happening as I though it may be funny. (it kept me amused). Anyway following a twitter about the dire traffic updates on BBC Fivelive. Colin Kelly, who is a DJ on Clyde One responded with something about Clyde’s travel updates being top notch. His second twitter response was tune in and i will play a song for you.

So I did and an hour into the traffic jam my twitters were quite cool. Colin mentioned some stuff on the air about the traffic and about reports about things happening. I thought thats me and smiled and thought well, that’s quite good.

he played a song then, almost word for word, read out one of my tweets. I was stunned.
it would have been very simple to get disheartened and lose yous soul in a 2hour traffic jam issue, but this turned it around, made us laugh, hopefully make other people laugh and made the person involved sit slightly lower in his seat! (quite right too!)

anyway I don’t advocate Twitter as a way to get on the radio. but as a tool for communication of interesting bizarre and sometimes cool stuff. yeah i think so. Oh and now i follow Colin and he follows me.

so answer the question. what are you doing?

Ultimate Iphone accessory – M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System – sweet.
via the ever excellent macenstein

i appear to have got a new phone

it could be fun.

It has been a day now.

Has anyone seen my phone?