Most answers to these questions are concentrating on the snooping. System admins should not snoop, unless specifically told to do so by someone in authority.

But few are talking about office politics. Do not stick your head in the sand! Listening to the grapevine is not snooping. Learn what's going on the same way everyone else can, by keeping up with how the company's presentation did at the trade show and that sort of thing, not by abusing system administrator privileges to read private email and the like. You have an interest in knowing if the company is about to go bankrupt, be sold, or layoff a whole division. You also want to know if you have enemies and if so, who they are and why they hate and fear you so you can guard yourself. It may be that someone somehow views you as a threat to their job, and they'd like to get you before you get them. Doesn't matter that you aren't a threat, what matters is that they see you that way. You may be able to show them otherwise, and they'll stop trying to plant knives in your back. Or maybe not. There are a lot of sick bastards out there who want power so they can enjoy making others sweat, make their lives hell. You don't want to be surprised by your job being eliminated, and if that's likely, you want to know that with as much advance notice as possible.

Also, while small towns are subject to hearsay just like any other social group, if someone's reputation is unjustly being damaged they will have a much greater chance to set the record straight, or at least make clear that they dispute an allegation involving them so everyone knows there are at least two sides to the story.

On the Internet, it doesn't work the same way. I made this argument here once before. In a nutshell, the fredom of speech argument might cover putting something on a web site and linking to it from popular sources, but it doesn't guarantee to put it in context. It also doesn't guarantee that if a negative piece of information is later updated to reflect changing circumstances then everyone who saw the original negative comments will also see and understand with equal weight the subsequent changes.

These imbalances are fundamentally unfair to the victim, and this principle has been recognised by professionals for a long time. Courts famously seek "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth". In journalism, a basic principle is that if you're writing a piece criticising someone you also give them a right to reply, including actively inviting them to comment. But in the mob rule world of the Internet, no such professional ethics necessarily apply, and that is why it may be necessary to adopt new strategies so that technologies such as search engines can be stopped from (deliberately, maliciously, innocently, accidentally or otherwise) amplifying any damage.

Further, if you read Google's document they indicate that in the case of data protection removals they inform the webmaster of the URL that has been de-listed, with no information about the details of the request or the requester. This seems like a sensible and serious attempt to balance the right of the webmaster to know that his content is no longer being indexed (for some searches) with the right of privacy of the person requesting removal.

It also seems to be the cause of the hoopla a few weeks back which put Google in the crosshairs of many who claimed the company was trying to sensationalize the removals. Google had removed the link when the searched topic was the name of a commenter on the article (who asked for it to be removed), but not when the searched topic was person the article was about, or other relevant terms. The webmaster saw that the URL had be de-listed for some searches and the paper wrote an article about how the URL had been removed entirely, even though it was obviously in the public interest, asserting that Google was intentionally removing things that weren't justified under the law in order to provoke a backlash against it. The assumption that it had been removed entirely was incorrect, of course, but Google couldn't provide information about the rationale or scope of the removal without violating the privacy of the requester.

I, personally, think the "right to be forgotten" is ridiculous, but it appears to me that Google is trying very hard to comply with it, letter and spirit.

(Disclosure: I'm a Google employee, but I have nothing to do with any of this and know nothing about it beyond what I read in the press. Also, I'm not a company spokesperson of any sort; they pay me to sit at a desk and pound out code.)

+1 Insightful.

Given the German peoples' repeatedly demonstrated ability to be an economic powerhouse even against severe odds, that's a really telling point.

Actually, that's exactly the way life works, right up until some multi-billion-dollar megacorp decides to step in with technology that never forgets and that makes information (potentially including partial, inaccurate or misleading information) available more easily and to a much wider audience than would otherwise be the case.

<kneejerk>Sure it will, right up until the police turn up at Google's European workplaces and start arresting their corporate officers for contempt of court.</kneejerk>

That possibility may or may not be hyperbole, of course.

However, one certainty is that US corporations are playing with fire if they attempt to circumvent the spirit of European court rulings based on technicalities. I do wonder whether, sooner or later, some European judge is going to make an example of someone, even if it's not in this particular case. And in practice there may be little that person can do to defend themselves if a judge does decide to throw them in jail for a few days for contempt just to make their point abundantly clear.

Also, given the US government's much-discussed powers to compel organisations to do things and keep quiet about it, clearly these organisations are aware of the possibility. And given that the entire point of the original court ruling in this case was the remove what the court considered inappropriate attention, it's not as if any search engine is going to get much sympathy claiming they didn't understand what they were being told to do or why.

I don't know, I drove through portions of former East Germany not too many years after unification, and from what I saw, it worked *exactly* as well as you'd expect. The difference between west and east was stark and startling. In the west, there were occasional items in need of maintenance and modernization, just as you'll find anywhere, but by and large everything was well-built, well-maintained... and cheerful. The last bit is hard to explain, but it was more than just the use of bright colors on stores and signs, it was just an overall feeling of energy and exuberance. In contrast, nearly everything in the east was poorly-built, in need of maintenance, and drab. The roads were narrow, rough and full of holes. The bridges were rickety-looking and clearly needed maintenance. Many, many of the buildings had sagging rooflines, especially the farmhouses and barns. Much was unpainted, rusting steel, or unpainted, drying and spitting wood and what was painted was clearly painted only to make it last longer because it was all gray and black.

It strikes me that that's *exactly* what I'd expect a culture that habitually pretends to work to fool the planners to produce. No energy, no motivation, no reason to innovate.

From what I understand, it has been a huge burden on western Germany to drag their eastern fellows into the 21st century. The other thing I noticed when driving through east Germany, both that first time and even more a few years later, was that it seemed like they were rebuilding the entire country at once. And I know my west German friends grumbled often about the taxes for reconstruction, though they seemed generally to think that it was a price worth paying.

I prefer to arrive late and leave early to make up for it.

Not "partly as a result". The things you mention are cultural issues, and problems, but not related to electronic enablement of 24x7 work.

I think it's safe to assume that all of the data you put into Google services is fair game. I suspect (but don't know), that Google isn't actually able to make the kind of detailed, nuanced use of the data that is often speculated, but the privacy policy says they collect the data you put into their services, so I'd assume that all of it is collected.

Doesn't exist. Government requests have to go through the process of being vetted by Google's attorneys and are rejected if not legitimate, including if overly broad. The NSA shouldn't be able to tap the lines between data centers any more, either, because it's all encrypted now.

They don't, except for aggregated non-personally identifiable. That means it's not possible to identify a person.

Google isn't that dumb, and neither are attorneys or judges.

You're right, I had not heard of node.js. Checking, I see that node.js was released in 2009. An eternity for regular users, but for casual users, really not all that long ago. There is plenty of old documentation out there that should be retired because it's older than node.js and Javascript 1.8.5.

In 2011, the Javascript 1.8.5 release added some sorely needed missing functionality that I used to complain about: Object.keys, and similar functions. The book I had was too old to cover these new features.

Although Javascript can be used on the server side, it's not so easy. What do you need to run a Javascript program? A browser. You don't want to have to run a browser on the server. GCC doesn't have a front end for Javascript. You could use Rhino to translate from Javascript to Java, and run that on the server side. Closure compiles Javascript to Javascript. Helpful to make Javascript run faster, not helpful to make it run. There may be some proprietary, commercial tools for compiling or running Javascript.

So, what do I not know about? What tools are there for running Javascript outside a browser? Or, is there some tiny browser like Lynx or Links that can do it?

It's not the ripping software, it's the digital recording function, i.e. the ability to write to disk.

Here's what the court said in the RIAA v Diamond Multimedia case: (internal citations removed)

Unlike digital audio tape machines, for example, whose primary purpose is to make digital audio copied recordings, the primary purpose of a computer is to run various programs and to record the data necessary to run those programs and perform various tasks. The legislative history is consistent with this interpretation of the Act's provisions, stating that "the typical personal computer would not fall within the definition of 'digital audio recording device,'" because a personal computer's "recording function is designed and marketed primarily for the recording of data and computer programs." Another portion of the Senate Report states that "[i]f the 'primary purpose' of the recording function is to make objects other than digital audio copied recordings, then the machine or device is not a 'digital audio recording device,' even if the machine or device is technically capable of making such recordings."

So it really depends on what else the car's ability to write to disk is both primarily used for, and what it is primarily marketed for. The latter is probably worse for them; even if the car happens to be writing map or diagnostic information to disk, probably ripping CDs is what is mainly being advertised.