"Privacy is dead"

"Privacy is dead - get over it", according to Steve Rambam, a private investigator specialising in Internet privacy cases. It may well be that he is right. Far more of what you do online can be tracked than you probably realise. How much does it matter? Discussing this with a friend yesterday, he commented that he has no concerns because everything he does is above board. Robert X. Cringeley (yes, that's his real name) explains several reasons why even the innocent should be concerned. While some of his illustrations are American, exactly the same principles apply here in NZ. What he didn't dwell on is how officialdom can badly mishandle data - for instance, we constantly read stories of innocent people suffering injustices because some department or other has mistaken them for someone else, or because the department's computer is incapable of correcting wrong data that gets entered against a person. All email and cellphone traffic around the world is now scanned by government security agencies for keywords that might alert them to terrorist or other undesirable activity. You and I can quite unwittingly - and innocently - use those keywords in our conversation and have our details flagged. Huge amounts have been written on this. Erik Larkin's PC World article is a good starting point, and I would also suggest this Wikipedia article to learn more.

Google suggestions and beyond

If you use Google (and who doesn't?), lately you have probably noticed that when you type in the search box, Google tries to guess what you're looking for and offers suggestions in real time. This feature is called, surprise!, Google Suggest. Personally, I find it very helpful, and sometimes I'm astonished by how accurately it predicts what I am looking for. However, I can imagine that some might find it irritating, and in a shared computer environment even downright embarrassing. Fortunately, it's easy to turn off. Click on the "preferences" option at the RH side of the search box, and at the foot of the preferences page you will find the field "Query Suggestions". Select "Do not provide query suggestions in the search box" and save your preferences. More info on Google Suggest can be found here.
But one thing that Google - along with most other search engines - struggles with is a query in plain English: eg, "How many Kiwis play soccer?" This may be about to change, thanks to a new system being developed at Harvard University. A NZ Herald article calls it the biggest internet revolution for a generation.

The new system, Wolfram Alpha takes the first step towards what many consider to be the internet's Holy Grail – a global store of information that understands and responds to ordinary language in the same way a person does. Although the system is still new, it has already produced massive interest and excitement among technology pundits and internet watchers. Computer experts believe the new search engine will be an evolutionary leap in the development of the internet.

Converting pdf files to Word or text format

I frequently have to try and convert pdf files to editable text, and it usually is a hassle. Acrobat has a tool to grab and copy text, which you can then paste into a Word document, but among the resulting problems is that every line of text has a forced return, and paragraphs are made by two forced returns. Here is a tip to fix this, using Word's Find and Replace function. (1) Type Ctrl-H to bring up the Find and Replace dialogue box. In Find, type ^l^l. (^l finds forced, or soft, returns, so you are asking Word to find instances where there are two forced returns.) In Replace, type some nonsense character, such as ##. Choose "Replace all". (2) In Find, type ^l. In Replace, replace the ## with a spacebar space. Choose "Replace all", and this will strip out all soft returns, replacing them with a space. (3) In Find, type ##, and in Replace type ^p (the character to find Paragraph returns). Choose "Replace all". (4) Finally, in Find, replace the previous characters with a double spacebar space. In Replace, type a single space. Choose "Replace all" and all double spaces will be converted to singles. Voila! It's clumsy, I know, but at least it works. In the same way, if you have a document that uses a paragraph return at the end of every line, you can use the same technique.
Knowing there must be a better way to convert pdf documents, I have searched high and low for a freeware program, completely without success. (Yes, there are plenty of commercial products, but I am dedicated to open-source where possible.) The best I have come up with - discovered today - is an internet service, KoolWIRE, which is rather nifty. Using the site, you email them a copy of the pdf file, and they quickly email you back a Word conversion (mine came back within two minutes, which is remarkable). The result was not perfect, but the closest to the originating document that I have seen in tests.