Do I really "need" Google

ohnonot · 2017-01-03 08:44:05

Sector11 wrote:

that "should" in there gives doubt.

they always put that stupid disclaimer in there.
it's not the linux world, where the GPL is the state of the art, and some of the posters are wannabe-entrepreneurs, or what, idk.

rant aside, i haven't yet heard of an android device that CANNOT be rooted, but it's best to doublecheck your howto sources. i recommend you find at least 2 articles, at least one of them from xda-developers, and if they say the same, you're good to go.

Sector11 · 2017-01-03 15:20:56

^ Very good advice - RE: 2 articles - at least one from xda.

While you don't know of an Android device that can't be rooted, I'm dealing with: me!
I'll get there - just a matter of more time, more reading and possibly a few (or more) questions.

ohnonot · 2017-01-03 22:33:10

Sector11 wrote:

While you don't know of an Android device that can't be rooted, I'm dealing with: me!

fear of the better half's wrath make typos creep in?
]:D

Sector11 · 2017-01-03 23:16:56

^ OH yea, there is that element as well. We're paying for this beast over the next year, well, maybe 8 month left now, and I certainly do NOT want to brick it during that time. I'll play with my 'tablet' and hope for the best when the time comes. It will come, like I said, more reading/research on my part, while she's busy with something else. So I don't hear: "What are you doing, ¿Conky?" - "Yes, Dear!"

ohnonot · 2017-01-04 11:56:44

^ i understand the tension with new hardware, esp. if it's tied into some contract.
i always by used, so the pressure isn't that high.

Sector11 · 2017-01-04 13:13:28

"Used" here by the definition alone usually means 'stolen'. The number of people being stabbed or shot for their phones is climbing at an alarming rate.

Old video but: this guy, was released because the judge said he could not tell if the gun was real or not. Six months later he was in jail for drug related charge and a shoot out with the police, so yea, the gun was real! The Canadian tourist had a 'camera' on his helmet. Today the motochorros shoot/stab first and then grab what they want. It's gotten to the point here if someone points a gun at you you have a 90% chance of being shot. Saw a robbery on video, three people on a bus, one stayed with the bus driver and kept the bus moving, another guy stabbed a woman who was NOT resisting just sitting there, three times, before running out the back door of the bus.

The Govt is in the process of having stolen phones 'turned into paperweights' by implementing a GSM blacklist in reverse I think. IF your phone isn't on a whitelist it's unusable and if it's stolen, report it and it's "bricked". How I have no idea but it's suppose to start in March and all phones must be registered by then, even though we just got it recently. Apparently they have to do something with the chip.

ohnonot · 2017-01-06 05:03:52

i'm sorry to hear that.
global news tends to focus on a few areas/keywords, but it seems sh*t is going down in many more places around the globe, every day.

Sector11 · 2017-01-06 16:18:50

Yea, it's not like the 50's/60's where doors were left unlocked and houses empty all day and there were no problems. Or like the first time I came here for a two week visit.

I lived on the ground floor of an apartment building with a 'small' patio off my living room, no fences so the grass beyond the patio was public area. I left, locked the door, to the hallway of the apartment building, and when I got home found that the patio door was not locked. No problem, everything was still there.

A friend from here went to Canada, with a 'mini' tour guide I wrote him. He fell asleep on Parliment Hill in the shade of a tree in mid summer. Woke up with a start and grabbed his napsack that was still beside him, surprised that it was still there, and with nothing missing. I got an email: "I want to live here." He's now working as a graphic artist at the UN in NYC

Mind you that was 17 and 14 years ago respectively.

g33zr · 2017-01-06 20:43:48

^If you want security, invest in a German shepherd dog for an effective combination of motion control sensor, alarm system, and body guard. My wife and I have one each.

Sector11 · 2017-01-06 20:59:20

He'd (She'd) take up half of our apartment.

Plus they are not permitted by our landlord, but I'd love one ... or a a Siberian Husky

chris667 · 2017-01-07 06:57:28

When it came to phones, I ditched Google last year. The device was a marvel, but I found myself looking at it when I was out and supposed to be enjoying myself. I find it quite rude when people do it to me, so I won't do it in front of them.

Smartphones can be useful but if part of the cost of them is giving Google an endless stream of data about you, it's too high. I'm not sure there's anything too sinister going on with it right now, but as they own it forever you can't say what will be done with it in the future. the right to a private life is a cornerstone of a healthy society, and we give it up at our peril.

The phone I have now:
* has a vaguely amusing name "KAZAM Thunder B5!"
* the battery lasts for days
* has an inbuilt voice recorder so I can make recordings of conversations with customer services (surprising how quickly you get a response from bad customer service when you tell them that you'll upload your conversation to Facebook)
* it has a little media player/file storage area, where I can upload the keyfiles for important things I work on, with backups in my safe on USB sticks and encrypted on a hard disk. You still need a strong password to get at them, and of course they would be impossible to get without physical access to the device. I think that's a meaningful security upgrade for things you have to keep online.
* Oh, and it cost £10. My cheap Android phone cost 10 times as much.

The project this year is to ditch the last Google product I directly use, which is Calendar. With all Google products, you can't say with any sort of certainty if it will remain free, or even still exist in the future. That's important when you depend on it. I think I'll use Fastmail, who have been doing my email since 2001. I just need a way to look at the calendar offline.

Last edited by chris667 (2017-01-07 06:58:10)

ohnonot · 2017-01-07 09:25:01

Sector11 wrote:

A friend from here went to Canada, with a 'mini' tour guide I wrote him. He fell asleep on Parliment Hill in the shade of a tree in mid summer. Woke up with a start and grabbed his napsack that was still beside him, surprised that it was still there, and with nothing missing. I got an email: "I want to live here."

whatever else negative (weather/daylight) and boring one can say, this is its big advantage.
girls go hitchhiking by themselves in the summer.

well i intend to change the news bit at least: i might be living in one of the safest countries, but i still consider myself a european citizen.

Last edited by ohnonot (2021-07-02 09:37:55)

ohnonot · 2017-01-07 09:35:17

chris667 wrote:

The phone I have now:
* has a vaguely amusing name "KAZAM Thunder B5!"
* the battery lasts for days
* has an inbuilt voice recorder so I can make recordings of conversations with customer services (surprising how quickly you get a response from bad customer service when you tell them that you'll upload your conversation to Facebook)
* it has a little media player/file storage area, where I can upload the keyfiles for important things I work on, with backups in my safe on USB sticks and encrypted on a hard disk. You still need a strong password to get at them, and of course they would be impossible to get without physical access to the device. I think that's a meaningful security upgrade for things you have to keep online.
* Oh, and it cost £10. My cheap Android phone cost 10 times as much.

they have an interesting webpage.
it works without the slightest bit of javascript or cross-site requests! that in itself is a big bonus.
the phones themselves don't strike me as particularly revolutionary... i couldn't find your particular model, sounds like a sane cross between dumbphone and internet/media capabilities?

The project this year is to ditch the last Google product I directly use, which is Calendar.

i'm not using google calendar (thanks to f-droid and offline calendar), but i'm thinking to centralize my calendars at some point, probably with a caldav server. haven't looked into it yet, but my todos are spread out across different media (incl. paper) in a most unprofessional manner...

Sector11 · 2017-01-07 15:07:53

I have never used Google calendar from day one. I can understand why some might though, access from any machine anywhere is a big draw.

caldav server «««--- again an internet online thing.

I don't need that function so locally I use: reminder although reminder can be used with iCalendar and CalDEV

Description: sophisticated calendar and alarm program
 Remind allows you to remind yourself of upcoming events and appointments.  Each reminder or alarm can consist of a message sent to standard
 output, or a program to be executed. 
 
 It also features: sophisticated date calculation, moon phases, sunrise/sunset, Hebrew calendar, alarms, PostScript output, tcl/tk front-end
 and proper handling of holidays. 
 
 Reminders can be created by the remind scripting language or by using the graphical frontend package "tkremind".
Homepage: http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind/

man page is 2907 lines long - so you jhave to figure it's powerful - and it is, also if you join the mailing list; help is just an email away. The developer, Diane Skoll, is fantastic and very active in helping people. I use it in conky even though it's a terminal app. Mobile diesel wrote a 'calendar' bash script, that someone else had to tweak over the years, to highlight the days of the durrent month with "reminders" active.

BTW: You could put the "/home/sector11/.reminders" anywhere (Dropbox) and call it anything or have more than one:
~/.reminder_eagle
~/.reminders
~/.reminders-2
~/.reminders_cb
~/.reminders-copy
~/.reminders_gg
~/.reminders_juntos
~/.reminders-test

so my daily reminder pops up in the middle of my screen on boot time. While my other conky on Desktop #2 looks like this. As you can see, BL is coming up to it's second year.

So, at least I don't need Google for calendar stuff ...

It's got some pretty healthy helpers too, from their website:

Remind ships with three back-ends: rem2ps generates PostScript calendars; rem2html generates HTML ones, and tkremind provides an X Window GUI for Remind.
Paul Pelzl has written an excellent curses-based front/back-end for Remind called Wyrd.
Daniel Graham has a wxPython front/back-end called wxRemind.
Mark Atwood has written rem2ics, a program to convert the output of Remind to RFC 2445 iCalendar format.
Patrick Hof has ical2rem.rb, a Ruby script that goes the other way... it converts iCalendar format to Remind.
Paul Sand has remind.cgi that builds on Remind and Rem2HTML to make a convenient CGI interface to Remind.
Richard Kelly has a syntax-highlighting file for the Kate text editor.
Jochen Sprickerhof has a number of Remind helpers written in Python:
- A library to convert between Remind and iCalendar.
- A Radicale (CalDAV) storage back-end for Remind and Abook. This allows syncing between Remind and Android.
- A tool to sync from CalDAV to Remind and vice-versa.

My ~/.reminders-test file - to explain a couple of things - and I'm just scratching the serface :

 07 Jan 17 @ 11:55:18 ~
  $ remind -c1 ~/.reminders-test
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                January 2017                                |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
|  Sunday  |  Monday  | Tuesday  |Wednesday | Thursday |  Friday  | Saturday |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
|1         |2         |3         |4         |5         |6         |7         |
|          |          |          |          |          |          |          |
|Año Nuevo |1st       |          |B sam's   |          |Today 7th |          |
|          |working   |          |98th      |          |or -1     |          |
|          |day       |          |          |          |          |          |
|          |          |          |every     |          |          |          |
|          |          |          |Wednesday.|          |          |          |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
|8         |9         |10        |11        |12        |13        |14        |
|          |          |          |          |          |          |          |
|B tom     |          |          |every     |          |Baby €agle|          |
|          |          |          |Wednesday.|          |Squawks   |          |
|          |          |          |          |          |          |          |
|          |          |          |          |          |          |          |
|          |          |          |          |          |          |          |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
|15        |16        |17        |18        |19        |20        |21        |
|          |          |          |          |          |          |          |
|B bob's   |          |          |B dick    |B harry   |          |          |
|70th      |          |          |          |          |          |          |
|          |          |          |every     |Today is  |          |          |
|          |          |          |Wednesday.|the 19th  |          |          |
|          |          |          |          |          |          |          |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
|22        |23        |24        |25        |26        |27        |28        |
|          |          |          |          |          |          |          |
|          |          |          |every     |          |Papa €agle|          |
|          |          |          |Wednesday.|          |Flies     |          |
|          |          |          |          |          |          |          |
|          |          |          |          |          |          |          |
|          |          |          |          |          |          |          |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
|29        |30        |31        |          |          |          |          |
|          |          |          |          |          |          |          |
|          |          |» Last Day|          |          |          |          |
|          |          |          |          |          |          |          |
|          |          |Last Work |          |          |          |          |
|          |          |Day       |          |          |          |          |
|          |          |          |          |          |          |          |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+

 
 07 Jan 17 @ 11:55:26 ~
  $

Points of interest:

B sam's 98th - 4 Jan - birthday - yup, does ages too!

Baby Eagle Squawks - 15th of the month - mid month payday - or the working day before the 15 if the 15th is a weekend (or holiday - but I didn't configure that)

Papa Eagle Flies - end month payday - 3rd last working day of the month (again holidays are not configured in - but can be if needed.)

I like remind!

Sector11 · 2017-01-07 15:44:17

ohnonot wrote:

sounds like finland.

whatever else negative (weather/daylight) and boring one can say about finland, this is its big advantage.
girls go hitchhiking by themselves in the summer.

boring - why would you say boring?

First site I click on The Official Travel Guide of Finland with a video: WHAT ARE THE FINNS LIKE? and a naked guy in boots, from behind, pointing at the northern lights. Interesting video - less then 3 minutes and no nudity either. Very clever of the Finnish Official Travel guide.

Second came: 21 Reasons to Love Finland - and, if I may add, three to be weary of - the three brown bears in the opening photo.

#1 The Best place to spot The Northern Lights
- Some of world’s best Northern Lights can be spotted in Finnish Lapland.
- The Aurora Borealis – as they are also called – can appear more than 200 nights a year. That’s pretty much every winter night.

And right there - you have me! I've seen them only a few times in my life - SO Beautiful!!!!!

#2 More forest and water than anywhere else in Europe - sounds like Canada - More forest and water than anywhere else in Europe the Americas

Restaurant day? When?

... and down further: The Cleanest Air

and just under "3+ million saunas" ... that REALLY caught my attention:

Safest place in the world.

then I saw:
Nowhere near #21 ... but you have my vote! IF, and that's a BIG if, I ever travel again: It's to Finland!

EDIT: I wanna see a moomins!

Last edited by Sector11 (2017-01-07 15:46:13)

g33zr · 2017-01-07 17:40:57

^One downside is the Finnish language, but you could speak Swedish, which is easier to learn, along the Finland's west coast and on the Aland archipelago. On the other hand, lots of folks speak English in Finland. Another downside would be black flies and mosquitos in the warmer months...like in Canada.

Sector11 · 2017-01-07 18:32:12

ol' geezr wrote:

^One downside is the Finnish language

... try telling a Finn that.

Should be easy enough to learn:

epäjärjestelmällisyydellistyttämättömyydellänsäkäänköhän

Hmmmmm ... tai ehkä ei

Now about black flies and mozzies ... gimme a mozzie over a black-fly any day!

And black flies are in your neck of the wood too, can't put all the bad stuff on us Canucks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_fly wrote:

In the wetter parts of the northern latitudes of North America, including parts of Canada, New England, Minnesota, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, black fly populations swell from late April to July,

And then comes horse flies - those suckers deserve to be hunted with 12 gauge shotguns, they don't bite, they slice out a hunk of you. HATE them!!!!

Loggers on the west coast of B.C. train mozzies to lift logs for the lumber trade.

g33zr · 2017-01-08 01:42:34

^ Horse flies AND deer flies...is there a difference? You're right about mozzies vs. black flies. I recall once upon a time on a mountain top in northern New Hampshire. Each time we sat down to grab a bite to eat, the wind died and the black flies attacked. We kept moving around the top of the mountain looking for wind. The black flies won and we retreated from the top of the mountain pronto!

Sector11 · 2017-01-08 02:33:37

Horse flies are bigger than deer flies but when you're being bit by either who's really looking, swat it, smack, stomp that sucker flat!

Black flies are just plain downright nasty blood sucking pests that attack in clouds! Noooo not one or two but clouds of them.

Let get back on topic, "Do I really need the Google Fly?" And look at this sucker! OMG!

Don't leave the baby unattended!
"Where's little Joey?"
"The fly took him, Martha, the fly took him."

johnraff · 2017-01-08 06:38:45

ohnonot wrote:

an interesting webpage.
it works without the slightest bit of javascript

Why do you say that? Just open the page source - it's loaded with javascript! Or, do you mean, even with all of that disabled, the page still manages to work? That's true of many web pages, and should of course be the norm.

#161 2017-01-03 08:44:05

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#162 2017-01-03 15:20:56

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#163 2017-01-03 22:33:10

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#164 2017-01-03 23:16:56

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#165 2017-01-04 11:56:44

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#166 2017-01-04 13:13:28

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#167 2017-01-06 05:03:52

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#168 2017-01-06 16:18:50

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#169 2017-01-06 20:43:48

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#170 2017-01-06 20:59:20

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#171 2017-01-07 06:57:28

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#172 2017-01-07 09:25:01

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#173 2017-01-07 09:35:17

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#174 2017-01-07 15:07:53

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#175 2017-01-07 15:44:17

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#176 2017-01-07 17:40:57

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#177 2017-01-07 18:32:12

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#178 2017-01-08 01:42:34

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#179 2017-01-08 02:33:37

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#180 2017-01-08 06:38:45

Re: Do I really "need" Google

Board footer