But do you want a computer where someone else can replace your OS with three minutes and a screwdriver without you being able to tell that they did so?

Yes, if you click a link that takes you to the advertiser's site, they know you did so. It's no different than if you typed in their URL, except that they see a referer header from Google, and find out what search terms you used to find them. Google didn't give them any of that information, though, YOU did.

If you opt out of personalized ads, there's no value to Google in tracking you.

The news at 11, of course, is that said serial port access is provided via TCP on a public IP, on a known port, with no password.

Yes, you can, at least with Google. Google provides opt-out tools, and they work. I know some of the engineers who work on opt-out and they're quite serious about ensuring that nothing identifiable gets stored about users who present an opt-out cookie. Any team that tried to work around opt out would be in trouble... and would get Google in trouble during its regular FTC privacy audits, pursuant to the consent decree Google signed.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but I don't speak for Google. The above represents only my personal opinions.)

This is a common misunderstanding of Google's business model. Google doesn't sell information. At least, not very much. I think there are a few minor products that involve selling aggregated, statistical information, but they're an insignificant part of Google's revenue stream. Where Google makes money isn't by selling information about users, it's by using information about users. Google doesn't deliver information to advertisers for them to decide who to advertise to, Google accepts ads from the advertisers and uses the information it has to decide which ones to show to which users. Advertisers don't see the user data and have very little control over the targeting of their ads, which is fine with them because Google is better at the targeting than they are anyway.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but I don't speak for Google. The above is all public information.)

To be honest he said 15 years of his life which means he may have start before Dish became spammers (not sure how long their scummier business practices have been around since I have a mental filter on snail mail spam that gets immediately recycled and my home phone is given out to noone who doesn't absolutely need it like our local schools or our doctors office).

Whatever fines are collected should be distributed to the people
They are, in a much more efficient way that cutting everyone a check, by lowering the amount of taxes which must be collected or the debt that must be incurred by the federal government.

That's no longer true.

The Catalyst drivers have made *huge* gains over the past year to year and a half, both in terms of performance and stability.

Civ V and the recent Civ-BE preview run just fine on my HD 7870.

Then you'll notice them.

My Nissan LEAF has a speaker mounted in the driver-side front wheel well which makes noise (a tone that sweeps across the frequency range, to cover people with frequency-limited hearing) whenever the vehicle is moving below 20 mph. It's not fake engine noise, it's better.

As to the article... I have learned to really enjoy the silence of an EV. Engine noise annoys me.

That's true... but why doesn't it apply to Android phones? They're also associated with Google, and also have cameras.

FWIW, I think Google has a big PR problem to solve here. The perception that Google slurps up all information available isn't really correct, either, but it's pretty difficult to convince people of it. The Google dashboard was an attempt to show people what Google actually knows about them but (a) hardly anyone knows about it and (b) most who look at it assume that it's only what Google wants them to know that it knows.

I think in the long run the only solution for Google is to move away from advertising, to a payment-for-services model. That won't happen with much of the existing service suite, but advertising can be de-emphasized by growing in other directions.

True, but the point the GP is making is that such wealth status is a choice. It's a choice that's a good idea regardless of your career field.

This gets to the heart of the matter; it's all a question of perceptions/feelings. Perhaps it's because of something in Google's original ads and videos about Glass, or something else, but people perceive the main purpose of Glass to be video recording and assume that anyone wearing one is recording them, while they don't think the same thing of phones with cameras. Even though phones are actually better video recording devices, and almost as easy to record with covertly.

(Disclaimer: Because some AC thought I should mention it, I am a Google employee. I don't work on Glass, and don't speak for Google, though. This is only my own personal opinions. I've only used Glass a handful of times myself, though I've frequently been around other people wearing one.)

When I say something that may be construed as defending Google, I do post a disclaimer. I didn't think this qualified.

And, yes, I'm pretty happy with my compensation :-)