It's a big hole to pour money in. Governments are always looking for those, especially ones that no political party will argue against.

End to end encryption is the only answer here. Maybe instead of relying on server certificates, which could be compromised, do the reverse -- the client certificate is used to secure the connection. That way everyone can use a CA (or even issue their own) that they trust. It puts the client in the driver seat, so instead of just stealing Google's key (or tapping Google's fiber), they have to get yours... One might argue that they could target you with advanced malware and steal your private key, but that is no different than what could happen today if they REALLY target you.

Makes sense that if you trust no one, why do you trust their SSL certificate? Why not make them use yours. In the case of on-line purchases, you trust the server based on their certificate but the client still controls the session key. And they trust you based on your login rather than the certificate.

Shrug... Something has to be done by the users. These governments are never, ever going to stop spying.

Before I started bike racing (and the inevitable crashing... broken collar bone right now) I went about once a decade. 15 years without seeing a dentist. When I finally visited, no problems and still never had a cavity.

It will only happen if there is money to be made from it.

Exactly. After years of mooching free DNS and mail servers from friends, I switched to the google apps account I had created years before and never used. It works great and I don't have to worry about my ISP ever turning off my service for running "unauthorized servers", plus google runs the spam filters for me. There is no such thing as a free lunch, so get the best value for it.

Google appears to be the most up-front about their privacy options and IMO has the best interface for controlling it.

If by few advantages you mean in addition to having a superior mobile app, better website, yes it is a small thing.

If someone is going to get your info, it may as well be the same company who knows how often you search for midget porn as well (you, not me).

Build your own storage array. It's not hard. ZFS!!!

I really think that is part of it.

What about standard deviation and median? At least give me a histogram.

What better way to attract the best nerds than high altitude wi-fi balloons? All those crazy projects attract people who want to feel their career won't be confined.

That is how it works. The turbines are always steam driven.

In theory, the savings went to the shareholders as profits the first year they fired those people. After that, it wasn't in the budget and wasn't a savings any more (in the most BASIC form of accounting).

It's very, very hard to justify spending money on something that will take a decade to pay for itself. There is almost always something else you can spend it on that will have a better return. And the computer systems are largely "soft" dollars -- ask yourself "what check did I not have to write" -- so unless you can cut some more people, it probably won't be approved.

Seconded. I bought another 8 drives at black friday prices and doubled my RAIDZ2 to 18TB. There just is no alternative to the functionality provided by ZFS. If you need big storage on an open source platform, you either pay a ton for fancy controllers or use ZFS. I've used FreeBSD for over 12 years now and there was only a brief time when I considered an alternative (Dragonfly), but ZFS has me locked in now. I wish the linux guys had gone for it instead of relying on btrfs.

$4600
---------
$1400 mortgage
$900 property taxes and homeowners insurance
$100 car insurance
$500 car payment
$400 food
$300 gas
$100 cable
$50 internet
$100 cell phone
$200 electric & gas
$50 water

Then you have other misc items and holy crap I'm broke and have not saved a DIME.