Posts by Gulfie

Java open-source frameworks 'pose risk' to biz - report

The assertion here is too narrow

As companies, in general, don't train, there are many developers who don't know how to properly use ANY of the libraries they touch on a day-to-day bases - open source or not. Most developers can't write good SQL and couldn't construct an outer join without Google or a book for help.

To get the best from any platform, technology or framework you need training - whether that be an expensive, £500-a-day classroom experience or your company giving you a couple of days to read the books and do the online tutorials.

Most companies won't even stoop to that.

O2 flogs logs of mobe locations to anyone with a wallet

Re: What is your data worth? Way more than you think, time to get paid for it.

Or... switch off your mobile when you go into Westfield / The Bull Ring / Shopping Centre of your choice.

Unless of course you have an iPhone. Turning it off doesn't work ;-)

Re: Should be fudged

I'd go a step further. Mobile service providers should not be able to use any of the data generated by their subscribers for functions that are not core to delivery of those services - kill off reselling to third parties and re-use for internal marketing at a single stroke.

Kind of like net neutrality - service providers would have to market to all their customers in the same way unless individuals elect to (a) block all marketing or (b) provide information to allow more appropriate marketing.

Eric Schmidt: Ha ha, NO Google maps app for iPhone 5

Re: Apple still have the lead on apps

Schmidt doesn't give a damn about app revenue. What he cares about is (a) putting Google technology into as many devices as possible and (b) the ad impressions he can sell on the back of that.

Google make most of their money from advertising, and having a successful (and soon to be dominant) mobile OS puts them in a position to carry on making money from advertising as desktop browsing continues to wane.

Apple make most of their money from hardware and are supposed to provide an "it just works" user experience to justify the hefty price premium paid for that hardware. Without decent mapping - actually it isn't the maps themselves that provide the value, its the ability to search for, say, Wagamama and then get walking directions to the one you choose - Apple are going to find it much harder to switch Android users - which in the high-value economies of the West is their target market these days.

Fans rap Apple's 'crap' Map app

Its emperor's new clothes syndrome.

Re: Also,

You're using that land incorrectly. Just build a runway, its no big deal.

Re: Shockingly bad.

If I was Google I'd actually withhold a Maps app. Just to show 'em.

Gotta find those heads first.

Better use an Android phone to get there!

Re: In case you've been living in a shed in outer mongolia for the last few years

Sorry, quote some reputable sources or STFU. I've heard nothing about Google forcing Apple to stop using Google Maps and I've been following the iOS mapping story for some time. Google has poured tons of money into Maps and everything it supports - Apple can't expect to stand up even 10% of that functionality inside a year.

I can believe that Google wanted too much money for turn by turn. And I can absolutely believe that they don't want to allow caching offline - a fantastic feature in the Android app.

Apple chose to move for a variety of reasons, and iDevices are the poorer for it. This is simply fallout from The Patent Wars. Live with it or get a more advanced phone like a Galaxy S3 or Galaxy Nexus!

Google defends drowning Acer's newborn Alibaba Linux mobe

Re: Perhaps

Alibaba were going to distribute a phone that was 'almost' android and were stocking up their app store with pirated copies of Google apps. In other words they were going to surf off the back of Google, paying no licensing fees but creating an unholy mess and discrediting Android further in the process - by making it look totally crap and incompatible with itself.

I would much rather Google cracked open the big guns and pointed them at Alibaba, they could have been much more circumspect about the whole Acer thing.

Re: "what appears, at a glance, to be clear abuse of market power."

It would seem that Google are saying that Acer can't stay in the OHA if they are also going to work with this company. That doesn't mean they can't make Android phones although it probably does mean they wouldn't be able to preload them with the key Google apps. Now introduce the fact that Acer is producing it for a company that is blatantly pirating Google apps and frankly I'm surprised that Acer are doing business with them. It would be a bit like building a media player for The Pirate Bay...

Whether that is an abuse of market power or not really depends on the contracts between Acer, Google and the OHA. You can bet that with at least two sets of high-powered lawyers drawing up those contracts there would be little room to shoehorn in terms amounted to an abuse of market power. I repeat - Google couldn't stop Acer building Android hardware if it left the OHA, it just wouldn't be able to licence the Google apps and therefore preload them.

Would Microsoft licence WP8 to a company that was producing nearly-WP8 handsets for a company that was distributing pirate copies of Microsoft WP8 apps? I don't think so.

Twitter back online (mostly) after unexplained outage

OK so find somebody that cares

Social diorreah site goes down. OMG send in the TA.

Please, get a life. Twitter content is not news. Twitter going down? That t really ISN'T news.

Google+ dying on its arse – shock new poll

You can't compare Google+ to Facebook

Facebook is a bit like reading a tabloid newspaper - full of gossip, tacky pictures and fluff. It is designed to keep you on their property, consuming their content and playing their games, and then coming back for more. They want to to spend as much time as possible on the site and had designed it as such.

Google+ on the other hand is something akin to an editorially independent broadsheet with a wide breadth and depth of information available and linked. It is designed to allow people to add, link to and discuss the things that interest them. In doing so Google gain two things - information about your interests (to use when targeting adverts) and human validation of information on the web (a huge mechanical turk, if you like) that they can use as another input to their search engine algorithms. Look at a stream of posts in Google+ and you see lots of links to content, almost all of which is not inside Google+ or even hosted by Google. It isn't designed to keep people 'on the premises' on purpose - so a Facebook comparison will always fail no matter how successful Google think they have been.

Google offers I/O tickets to atone for Code Jam snafu

Good fun - and a way forward for next year

I took part in the code jam and narrowly missed out from being in the top 100. It was good fun and Google took the right decision - but then I would say that!

More importantly less than 300 people took part so the odds of getting a ticket were very good. If Google have any sense they'll use code jam to select at least half the ticket holders for next year.

Code jam tickets are also non-transferrable - at least the ones issued this week are.

Bug silences Samsung Galaxy Nexus

There may be no Vodafone content...

... but they modify the OTA update handler so that it listens only to Vodafone. I had a Nexus One from them, as well as one straight from Google. Every time Google pushed an update, the Vodafone device didn't get it. Eventually I rooted it and installed a vanilla copy of Android - problem fixed, all the updates came through.

Other than that specific point, Vodafone didn't change anything in the device and even left tethering available.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Thanks for the tip

Didn't realise you could charge the Galaxy Tab by turning it off and plugging it into a USB port.

To do what you want with files, install File Expert - this gives you FTP access from a PC over WiFi. Much more convenient and flexible than Samsung Kies.

A few observations

The Apple chargers I had for my iPhone came in two parts. I've three Samsung chargers and had no problems with them.

The batteries in these tablets are BIG and they do take a long time to charge to full. That's the down side. On the up side you won't need to charge it again for several days - unless you spend a lot of time watching video.

Putting files onto it: Install Samsung Kies onto your PC, plug in the Galaxy Tab and you can move media around. If you want to do more than that, install File Expert - this allows you to FTP to and from the tablet over WiFi. That's how I do most of my file transfers. Or, buy the USB adaptor and plug in a memory stick.

I've not experienced the freeze issues you mention with YouTube or iPlayer. I watch most of my TV on iPlayer (not having a TV licence) so it gets almost daily use.

BTW your tablet *WILL NOT CHARGE* from anything but a Samsung charger. It will not charge if you plug it into a USB port - the Samsung charger delivers 2A where a USB port maxes out at 0.5a.

Re: Anyone got one yet

Yes, I have. It's fantastic. It has its faults, but if you don't want an iPad, this is currently the go-to tablet.

Of course, you can't currently buy them in Europe. But if you know somebody going to America, ask them to pick up a 32Gb WiFi only model at $600 (£370) instead of the list price of £600. Or... get someone to send you one. Even with VAT and the charge made to collect it, you're looking at £500 instead of £600

75% - Why?

You only give this tablet 75% but I can't see any justification for that. There are some minor design decision cock-ups but not 25% worth. We all have our preferences but, when compared to the iPad WiFi version... what is there that bugs you so much that you can't customise to your liking? And knocks 25% off the marks?

"Do remember, though, that the Android 3.x (Honeycomb) operating system reserves 48 of those pixels along its bottom edge, in portrait and landscape orientations, for on-screen menu buttons" - I have several full-screen applications (and a lot of games, needless to say) that would differ with your assertion. By default, certainly, but not if the developer decides to do things differently. As far as 1080p goes, well the point is that the tablet can cope with playing 1080p video, rather than running out of steam and stuttering all the time. And it will play 1080p through the HDMI adaptor.

Keyboard: Any bluetooth keyboard will work. And if you have a USB keyboard that's classed as a low-power device, that'll work too, once you've bough the USB adaptor (which IMHO should be bundled). As will game controllers, cameras...

The video editing software is on my Galaxy Tab, so I'm not sure why you wouldn't have it installed.

@LPF: I got my Galaxy Tab at Google I/O when it was running Android 3.0 and it was updated OTA last month to run 3.1. So Samsung are committed to upgrades. I'm waiting for 3.2 to appear soon.

Faults - after running one for three months using it frequently for 90% of my non-work web browsing, email etc: Only charging from the provided charger is a headache, so I've had to buy a second (one for home, one for the office) because if I'm caught short, I can't plug it into any old USB socket. Not being easily mountable as a USB drive on my Mac was annoying - until I installed some WiFI sync software and now I never use the cable. Oh, and although the tablet plays video, just you try and find the application icon for the player. The software is there, but you can't launch the bundled player and select a video. Annoying.

Personally I don't mind the missing HDMI output - I use DLNA software to stream from tablet to TV - but Samsung would have made more friends by building in the USB hub hardware instead of charging £25 extra for a small plastic lump. Think they have an ex-Apple marketing man. Bundle the adaptor, and put two power supplies in the box - and drop the price by £50 to make it less than the iPad. Then you've got a winner.

And the reason the WiFi only version has no SD slot is because the hardware to support it is on the same chip that does the 3G... which isn't fitted. I've not found 32Gb to be too little internal storage (although I might not feel the same about 16Gb).

LinkedIn pulls Facebook-style stunt

I've just turned off...

"Manage Social Advertising" and "Enhanced advertising" on the Account tab. Then I discovered "Turn on/off data sharing with 3rd party applications" on the Groups, Companies & Applications tab - turned that off too.

When will they learn...

(and when will we learn to take more notice of changing T's & C's on these sites?)

Amazon Free Apps start to rile developers

This isn't a non-story, its market abuse

Read the article properly. The terms and conditions signed up to by the developer stated that Amazon would pay at least 20% of the application's price, regardless of how much the punter paid.

Now they are changing the terms and conditions after the fact to suit themselves - and trying to stop people talking openly about it. I'd call that market abuse and definitely NOT a non-story. This becoming public knowledge could have a serious impact on (a) developers agreeing to this bad deal and (b) applications being submitted to Amazon - at all.

So as an Android dev, I was seriously considering using Amazon as a my 'number 2' outlet after the Android Market. However I've read enough to understand that all Amazon really seem to be doing is promoting themselves. The only reason this application got 100,000 downloads was because it was free. There has been no 'halo' effect for the developer - quite the reverse - but Amazon get a halo effect every day, with people going back to the app store to see "what's free today?".

Lesson for Android developers? If Amazon won't stick with its own T's and C's, don't use it. And as far as not being able to withdraw an application from the store... I'd be VERY surprised if the owner of the application couldn't legally require the removal of a product on sale at Amazon. Failing that, just upload a new version. Upgraders get the same functionality as everybody else, new users get a week's trial and a free upgrade to a 'new' application in the Android Market.

Oops! Ofcom's DCMS's own blocking easily visible to world+dog

Ofcom...

We know all about technology. Come to us for advice!

Sounds like they've outsourced their redaction service.

Evil Android Trojan records your calls

Proceed with this nonsense... but caution is advised...

Even with Market apps I'm getting very picky about what I will install. PermissionDog is an excellent tool for finding which of your apps has inappropriate privileges. I've removed several which had access to my address book. These included "The Weather Channel" and "QR Droid". Quite why these would need address book access is beyond me. I agree with previous posters (and as an active Android developer) that users should be able to selectively deny permissions on third party applications. Some third party ROMs now allow this. As a related point of interest, am I the only person to wonder why on earth TweetDeck has the ability to spoof my location?

Anyway there are three lessons to learn from this.

One: Users must be sensible about where they install applications from. Stick to the Android market and Amazon and your chances of being pwned are several orders of magnitude lower. Use something like PermissionDog to discover those applications that have seemingly inappropriate permissions, find alternatives and replace them.

Two: Android developers need to change their approach to application development. Develop your core application with the minimum of privileges required. If you want to integrate direct address book access, make that a separately downloadable free add-on - if it isn't a core feature and makes sense to do so. That way, users get the choice of whether to grant the privilege and use the feature, and your core software will probably get more downloads as a result.

Three: Google needs to enhance the security model so that users can choose how an application runs. I would suggest three preconfigured states - "quarantined" in which the application can't access any information stored on the phone other than its own, and can't do anything that would cost the user money - regardless of the permissions it actually requests; "with permission" in which the user gets to selectively grant access to such features when the software requests them and "full access" which is what we have now. We could also have individually crafted recommended settings for individual applications, as defined by the App Store police (or Amazon).

Overall as an Android developer I would also like to see Google create a store-within-a-store that is more heavily curated and policed, in the spirit of the Apple app store (from the security and quality point of view), and I would happily pay a reasonable yearly sum of money for my apps to be more heavily curated and inspected, and to appear in that inner store.

A decent free app...

So you'll be looking for the one that's stuffed with adverts, where the developer has little motivation to update or add new features. It might be "free" (as in beer) to download - but with all the apps I use regularly, I'll happily pay £2-3 to get rid of adverts - and this gives the developer the incentive to bring out new versions. Rovio please take note!

This kind of deep integration is very fiddly and difficult to get reliable on the reference platform, let alone every other phone out there (and yes, that is a problem). The good SMS-to-email or SMS-to-desktop apps starting to appear definitely won't be free, and if you need it that badly, you should be happy to shell out...

Sun compo entrants' privates exposed in public

Nice story, shame about the headline

So El Reg is more than filling the creating headline writing gap that has been left after the sudden demise of the New of the World. Well done.

iPad maker to replace 1 million staff with robots

Does this include Jeremy Kyle?

That is to say, will Jeremy Kyle be going to China as well? I'm sure we could have a whip-round, should be able to raise the money for a one way first class ticket in no time at all.

Film studios thrash BT in Newzbin site-block test case

Who's next on the block then?

Google. A search engine that facilitates copyright infringement on a massive scale.

Blocking is not the answer in much the same way that shutting down the web site is not the answer. Take away the reason for copyright infringement (the over-inflated cost of music and video) and the problem will (largely) go away. Blocking this web site will merely prompt the use of proxies or a proliferation of additional IP address.

"BT has actual knowledge of other persons using its service to infringe copyright"

Bugger. Better turn of the entire internet right now then!

Next 15in, 17in MacBook Pros to be MacBook Air skinny

I see me rushing to buy one of the last Unibody Macs

The problem with the air range is that there is no no user upgradeable hard drive or memory, no inbuilt DVD drive, and to get the battery life and control heat, most likely the larger units will sport less powerful CPUs and graphics than current Unibody models.

None of this is attractive to the power users like myself that buy (in particular) the 17" MacBook Pro. I need a portable powerhouse, not a desktop. And for that reason I can see myself picking up a new 15" or 17" MacBook Pro in September, before the 'new and improved' (read: walled garden) models arrive.

Music? iTunes. Video? iTunes. Software? App Store. Nope. Don't get it. And with the pigs ear that is Lion it will (a) get downgraded to Snow Leopard and (b) be the last Apple hardware I buy. Sad.

Apple Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Part Two

This review is a bit too kind!

As somebody who uses Macs at how and work, but does not subscribe to the iOS side of Apple, I've had a few issues with Lion. I did an upgrade of my early '08 MacBook Pro from Snow Leopard and the upgrade itself was very straightforward. However...

My first surprise was that, despite me performing an upgrade, Apple removed the installed Java - runtime and SDK. Now I knew Java isn't provided on the install disk but I did not expect it to be removed. Re-installing it was simply a matter of trying to do something - anything - with Java, so I settled on typing 'java -version' at the command prompt and it was installed seamlessly in a few minutes. That it is so seamless just re-enforces my belief that refusing to put Java in the core installation (regardless of the company that supplies it) is political.

I have turned off or removed pretty much all of the 'new features' that try to turn my workhorse machines into a kind of less-portable iPad. And the nerve of calling the (flipped) default scrolling behaviour 'natural'?! So for 10 years Apple machines have scrolled unnaturally? At least Apple had the good grace to give me an option to change back so I shouldn't grumble too much. Lion also removed my copy of Mercurial for reasons unknown, and didn't bother to tell me this.

Every time I log off I must deselect the checkbox that is ticked and will cause all my apps to re-open, even though I have disabled the restore feature globally in control panel. This is a small but very annoying detail that Apple should not have missed. I'd rather have an option to remove the checkbox from the logout dialog altogether - but there isn't one. Guess what - I log off or reboot when I want to clean the machine up. If I'm not finished, I just shut the lid on my laptop or hibernate my iMac.

The worst transgression through is Versions and Autosave. You gloss over how the introduction of Versions and Autosave has a fundamental effect on the way people work. For decades (literally) I've got used to the idea that, regardless of the OS I use, I must save my own files. Apple now saves them for me, without so much as a by your leave. And I can't turn it off. This sucks. If I open a document, make some changes, and then abandon them - too late! Already saved. As a side issue, 'save as' seems to have vanished from iWorks and TextEdit (for starters). WTF?

I could go on. I have a Snow Leopard Server running the (Apple-packaged) Tomcat with a production application. What is Lion going to do to my server? Remove Java? Yes. Remove Tomcat? Who knows. Provide me with the build-in Tomcat management options once I've got it all back? Who knows. This is messy so until I know the answers, I've put off spending the extra £35.

To improve the upgrade process, Apple need to provide a pre-upgrade program that will identify in advance what will go missing during the upgrade (or at least provide the information before the point of no return in the installer).

In their first service pack they also need to add in the missing options - turn off Versions, turn off the 'restore' checkbox when logging out...

For me, what is left post-upgrade and post-customisation is Snow Leopard with more desktop wallpapers and some annoying 'features' I can't turn off. I'm happy to spend £21 to stay current, but Apple needs to allow people to customise all of the Lion features, and not force us to use features we just don't want.

Beeb to fund ad-mungous Local TV for local people

Noooooooo!

Why bother? Seriously. I have 40+ free to air channels on my TV and I watch maybe half a dozen of them - sporadically. Who is going to watch this stuff? Why are we doing this? This is just adding to the "long tail" in broadcasting.

Presumably central government will be collecting some revenue on the back of this? I can't see any other reason to bother.

Apple ups Mac Mini spec, lowers price

Video Port Shuffle

Has anybody noticed that with Thunderbolt, Apple is on it's 5th or 6th video port standard in as many years?

DVI, Mini DVI, HDMI, Display Port, Mini Display Port and Thunderbolt.

Mind you it'll keep sales of port adaptors ticking over nicely. I do like the new cinema display though...

Why use Windows?

Just put Boxee (other media centres are available) on the native OS and you're ready to go. I have a Mac Mini that does just that. In the background it runs Hudson, and on power-up it logs in to a default account and starts Boxee. Stick it under the TV and plug an HDMI cable in.

OS X Lion roars, coughs on appearance in App Store

Actually...

You need an iTunes account and without iTunes installed the registration process in the AP store application doesn't work...

UK Serious Fraud Office mulls News Corp probe

IF the SFO get involved...

... then the Murdochs and Rebekah Brooks will be able to sleep easier at night. SFO has a dire reputation for (a) speed of investigation and (b) successful prosecutions (or at least, successful prosecutions with a sentence that can be called a deterrent)

Samsung rolls out Galaxy Tab 10.1

Yes it is...

But only through unofficial channels. The seller, DigiGood, is importing them, probably from the USA. This means that although you can get one today, you're probably over-paying and you can't get any of the useful accessories like the USB adaptor or HDMI adaptor - unless you go to the Samsung US site and get them shipped to you. In which case you may as well find a US online retailer that will ship you the tablet as well - $600 is £370, add 20% VAT (£74) gives you £444.

LulzSec hacker Sabu: Murdoch emails 'sometime soon'

These are not the emails you are looking for...

... because we deleted all the interesting ones years ago. I've no interest in seeing what Rebekah Brooks was ordering for lunch.

On the other hand I'd have a lot more respect if they manage to find/recover the really interesting ones.

Google turning us into forgetful morons, warn boffins

Fair point but...

As Einstein said himself - why memorise what is written down in a book? If you use something often enough - a second language, a smartphone, a collection of useful information - then eventually it will stick. If it doesn't stick, and it's available quickly, then what's the problem? Things move so quickly, and time is precious.

I'm more concerned about people using google searches to pick up 'facts' from unverified sources (I'm looking at you, Wikipedia).

Murdochs won't talk to MPs over phone-hacking scandal

We shouldn't be surprised here

After all, neither Murdoch is a UK citizen. Brooks can't avoid the summons, but they can.

Of course the offer to 'come back later' seems generous until you realise that they'll have had plenty of legal advice and know what is in the public domain - they'll be better prepared. But still untouchable from a legal standpoint, I imagine

More's the pity.

Question: Is NI a fit and proper organisation to be allowed to start a new newspaper?

Advice on offshoring issued to UK.gov IT bodies

Not just HMRC

According to Private Eye, the MOD has also sold off some of its own buildings to a company based in a tax haven!

There's an easy way to get rid of all those downsides...

... don't offshore any national or local government funded work. Don't stop foreign companies bidding, just make it a contractual requirement that all work is performed within the borders of the United Kingdom and no data goes offshore.

There. Problem at least partly solved.

Heroku: A development cloud for all seasons

App Engine...

... can also run Grails which being based on the functional language Groovy is also highly productive (I imagine there are other JVM-based languages supported as well but I've not looked into them)

Coder cracks iPad 2 jailbreak block

Didn't work on my Galaxy Tab or Nexus One

Obviously. And can we now banish the term fondleslab from Reg articles for good?

Apple site hacked 'by LulzSec' - report

No problemo...

They've got it all backed up in Time Machine and iCloud, right?

Oracle's Java plan trapped in last century

It's not about Java any more, its about the JVM

Right now, shipping 7 and 8 together, tomorrow, would have no greater impact on the future of java than doing nothing at all. I've been using Java pretty much exclusively for the last ten years and it has been capable of solving lots of problems very nicely (as long as you didn't want mobile - and Google have the Java Mobile issue solved very elegantly with Android).

Right now I'd just freeze the Java language spec at Java 7 (it seems a shame to waste the effort) and switch my attention to the JVM and functional languages instead. As the article hints, there are now a number of JVM based languages (Scala and Groovy come quickest to mind) that bring much-needed brevity, flexibility and frankly better productivity. As Sun simply didn't keep up in Mobile. Oracle cannot hope to keep Java competitive with the new kids, so why not just embrace them as first class citizens?

Of course from Oracle's point of view the problem here is that they don't have control over Scala, Groovy et as they do with Java so they may never be able to bring themselves to admit this in public.

I can write a web app in Groovy, writing 50% less code than I would in Java to achieve the same end - and still piggy-back on all that good open source Java that's out there - why would I waste my time writing Java? That's the pitch I give to managers when we're talking about greenfield development, and a position I've adopted only in the last few months. Functional languages have proved their worth, Java is dead, long live Java.

Oracle's Android claims slashed by US patent authorities

Re: More SCO goodness

Except that SCO's business model was already toast when they went down this road. Oracle are (fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) nowhere near SCO's situation at that time.

In any event the more things are pared down, the better for almost everybody (but not Oracle or Google). The sooner this nonsense is sorted out one way or the other, the better. Bang some heads together!

Comet in bad way after big losses

John Lewis is expanding...

...so you'll be able to go in there and get much better advice to boot before you decide which TV/phone/computer you buy from Amazon...

Too many stores because...

... the plan at head office is to bear some losses while they put the major competition out of business.

Shame they are all trying to do the same thing though! Stick to your core business, make sure you know what you are doing, put the customer at the centre of your business (with training second)

Formula 1

Push alerts...

Push alerts for third party Android apps are technically still in beta. I'm pretty sure that F1.com would run up against the usage limits too.

Although still beta, the push does work very well though. As does the F1 app on my Galaxy Tab 10.1...

Met arrest alleged Lulz hacker

"...a list of email addresses and passwords..."

If the census hack has happened... and this guy was involved... both pretty big IFs right now - it's not anything as insignificant as a list of email addresses and passwords. And everybody in the UK who appeared on a census form is affected.

Causing damage 'because you can' isn't sticking it to the man, it is abstract anarchy. If you don't like your political masters then use the system against them - vote them out, stand against them, call them to account for their actions. Hacking systems and then just distributing sensitive personal data is a pointless waste of effort which costs others time and money to mop up after, with a net change of zero...