Well, actually, if Google asserts the right to your message content (and they do) then the gov't would only need a warrant if Google declined to turn over your e-mail to them.

And I quote:

"11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services."

Google can choose to turn your e-mail over to the government, or the Chinese or the Scientologists or Lord John Whorfin if they wanted to. This ruling only says if they tell the gov't to sod off that the gov't has to come back with a warrant to compel them to change their tune.

It even pervades information services. I wonder how many people get busted telling their boss or client they're working on Project A because they were on Twitter or Facebook talking about doing something totally different.

Accountability, for better or worse, is rising to a whole new level due to voluntary and involuntary location and presence services.

How embarassing for Texas. Some of the comments made by these Board of Education people just demonstrate a shameful ignorance. And these people were ELECTED?

I can do a lot of things with Office 2010 than I couldn't do with Office 2000. Search folders, RSS, Galleries, better task management, better calendar sharing, better utilization of 64-bit machines....

Windows 7 has some nice advantages as well - it's faster, has better 64-bit support, some nice improvements to the UI (such as pinning items to the taskbar), is more secure...

Are either of them "must upgrades for everybody"? No. Some people will do just fine staying on Windows XP and Office 2000. But a lot of people, especially folks who are power users, will find a lot to like in the new versions.

Shouldn't be doing what? Getting a job or having a home?

Maybe there needs to be a way for her to remove her abusive ex from her list of contacts.

I'm not saying your usage is erroneous. In some contexts it does make sense. This just isn't one of them. When you use language, you need to be sensitive to context, you can't just blinding plug in whatever definition suits you.

Unless you're in politics, of course...

I also tried to put myself into the shoes of an Iranian fundamentalist,but I got frustrated and decided to throw those shoes at someone.

Google vs. the goverment. What's the difference? Precious little. Trusting your privacy to Google is like mailing your private files to the FBI. American or Iranian, it's all goverment. Wake up and guard your privacy. What little you have left.

Never ask any question here that essentially asks: "Am I shit because I use Windows?". You will always get plenty of "yes"'s here.

Fortunately, being a geek has nothing to do with what Slashdotters think of you.

I'd moderate this retarded if I could, but it's not an option. Probably Palin had it removed. Anyway, allow me to explain.

Not sure if I'm being clear here, but a "standard change" is not an estimate - it's something we've done before and know exactly how long it takes. If you are doing any actual estimating, the more "estimating" you do vs. using historical data, the more range of error you'll have. I'll babble on this subject for a while, but that's the gist of this post.

There are different types of changes. If you're estimating something you've done a hundred times, you know exactly how long it will take. Something like custom configuration for a client, routine maintenance, things like that. You'll be correct on how long it takes.

If a customer wants a new web service, and you've never done a web service, you're going to be wrong no matter how much you quantify. You can determine how many objects you need to create/update, but you can't tell how long it will take.

In other words, estimating has to take into account many different things:

How many objects will be updated/added
How many of those will be trivial vs. complex changes
Level of familiarity of the person/people implementing it
Assumption that the number of objects is correct, and nothing was missed
Necessary documentation available *and correct*
Historical accuracy of estimating (are you getting better at estimating overall?)
Historical accuracy of estimating the kind of change requested (are you getting better at estimating *this*?)
Overhead of gates/reviews and change control or other process
Testing resource availability, familiarity with the new items, correct documentation supplied to whomever is testing

If MSDN or man page isn't correct, you're going to do a lot of debugging. If the client's web service you're connecting to doesn't match what you were given, you're doing rewrites once you hit testing. If your change is ready to go but a company-wide routing change is scheduled for the same date so you can't test your implementation, you're stuck. If the CSS works until someone enters a long comment, and you need to find a workaround to the layout, you're better off just saying won't fix.

Bottom line, the more foreign something is, the more incorrect you will be. If you are estimating something you've already done, there's not need to estimate - it's already done! So by definition, we are either dealing with something simple like search/replace and run, or something foreign where you're going to be wrong no matter what.

I'll close with - in a modern company, all code should be reusable. So you only do things once. So you can't learn to estimate more accurately, since you're always estimating something different. The only way to have accurate estimating is to have a solid team working together for a while, and doing similar work. Just limit yourself to things you know, and you'll be right.

A cost/benefit analysis of switching might come in handy. There are other support issues besides just security.

Since my last post, I realized that GSM and UMTS patents aren't the only patents affecting mobile phones. Multitouch gesture patents are another, and the licensing structures for these don't seem to be as reasonable and nondiscriminatory as the licensing structures for, say, GSM and UMTS patent pools.

Slashdot and Apple are based in the United States. In the United States, the three national carriers with decent coverage are Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T.[1] These carriers do not give a discount if you use a SIM-only (AT&T) or CSIM-only (VZW/Sprint) plan with your own handset instead of taking the carrier's subsidized handset. So in order to make your handset affordable to customers in the United States, you have to get your handset onto one of the United States carriers' subsidy plans. Nokia has had trouble doing this, leaving Apple and Google as the primary handset operating system publishers.

[1] T-Mobile is a national carrier that does offer a discount for bringing your own handset, but I'm leaving T-Mobile out of it because "there's a map for that" to an even greater extent than with AT&T.

You are running a software built by said commercial 3rd-party company. They don't need that server in the middle to see all of those things.

So there's no increase in capability if they are malicious. There is an increase in risk if they are incompetent - and do something like cache requests/responses containing that data.

Oh come on, he might be able to find a willing female. But not on that deadline, Comicon isn't until July.