I did the same. I used to listen Last.fm a lot, and I discovered several artists that I hadn't heard of before, and bought quite a few albums as a result.

I had a monthly subscription, and I thought it was well worth the money. I wasn't that interested in the big name bands, what was interesting were the less well known artists from their huge database of music from around the world. But like you, I cancelled my subscription when they cut the "my loved tracks".

It was nice while it lasted, but .. the world moves on.

Missing option http://www.slicehost.com/

Excellent service, easy to use and reliable.
I've been using system for over 3 years and not had a problem.

That is absolutely essential.

First thing that occurred to me when I read the summary who controls the list .

Agree with you apart from the '.' in '.config'.

.... apps dumping hidden config files willy-nilly in my home is annoying as hell.

Not only is there no standard, but the convention of using hidden directories makes things worse.
Add to that the fact that many apps mix data (cache) and configuration (passwords) under the same hidden directory and it makes backing up the users settings a non trivial task.

Amazon don't store their inventory in the trucks. The trucks just collect the items that have been sold and deliver them to the consumer.

Amazon use large warehouses to store the inventory, large warehouses to store the data centers that coordinate the inventory, deliveries and purchases, and UPS use large warehouses to park the trucks when they aren't out delivering. All those warehouses will have nice big flat roofs - as opposed to the various sized odd shaped small roofs of all those individual brick and mortar stores.

I agree it would be good if the brick and mortar stores put up solar panels. But I don't agree that brick and mortar stores would somehow be better at providing solar power than online stores would. It would be better if the individual brick and mortar stores AND the large warehouses used by the online stores all used their roof space to generate some form of solar power.

Thank you. This is the first real evidence I've seen that the leaked documents do actually contain names.

Still not sure if the leak was good or bad. I'm working my way through the online documents myself, but this gives me a clue as to what kind of things to look for.

.. demanding that vendors include it as a compulsory package for Linux users who select "France" ..

What vendors ?

If you meant distributors (of Linux) ... there are 100's of them, and only a few that would be subject to French law.

A lot of the problems are due to the ambiguity in the way the various laws apply, and a lack of clarity in the way these are explained to the public, the security guards and police officers. This is not the security guards fault; they were probably instructed to 'watch out for suspicious activity', without a clear definition of what constitutes 'suspicious activity'.

One way to solve this might be for the local authorities to make a public statement to the effect that "Photography is legal and accepted behavior in public places; unless there are clearly displayed signs that prohibit it".

The important part of that is "the clearly displayed signs" bit. If the owners of a building or transport system don't want people to take photographs, then they must display signs that indicate that photography is prohibited. Without clearly displayed signs stating that photography is prohibited, then threatening arrest for taking photographs would automatically be considered as harassment and unlawful arrest.

We might see an outbreak of 'photography prohibited' signs almost everywhere, but at least it makes it clear where we stand. However, I suspect that there are many places where the owners or authorities are happy for their security personnel to discourage photography on an individual basis, but would balk at the idea of stating their policy in public. Requiring them to state the ban publicly, with permanent signs, may make them re-asses their policy.

"Is the potential threat really worth the cost of putting up all the signs, damaging our public relations and intimidating our passengers / visitors ?"

Once it is clear what places do prohibit photography, then if we (the public) are unhappy with the prohibition or feel that it is unnecessary at that location, we can petition the owners or responsible authorities to remove the ban (small print in the law could require that the sign clearly state who is responsible for the ban).

We do the same for parking in big cities. The penalty in London for parking your car where you are not allowed to is being wheel clamped or towed away. But, in order for this to be legal, there must be clearly displayed signs that state that parking is prohibited at that location and what the penalty is.

At least this might help to clear up the current confusion.

if you deny Google the right to encrypt on your network, Google still has the right to deny you any or all of their services

Which results in all the students at the school being taught to use Bing for internet searches ... perhaps not the best result for Google, or for the students.

The problem with Google Street View is that they are _taking_ new pictures and making them public.

Yep, that was the reason people gave for objecting to Google StreetView, that Google were deliberately setting out to take new pictures and publish them in a system that made it easy to find images of a specific street.

My question is ... now that I know that Google will include 3rd party geo-tagged images in StreetView. What are the privacy implications of me (as a private citizen) deliberately setting out to take lots of pictures of a street, geo-tagging them and upload them to Flickr, with the intention of making them available for Google to publish in StreetView ?

If enough people contribute geo-tagged images (and many mobile phones do this by default now) over time the density of 3rd party images in some areas could provide more coverage than the original StreetView images. We would end up with complete coverage with high quality un-blurred images, and no single identifiable entity to which the privacy laws would apply to.

Would the privacy laws need to be re-written to force Google to blur 3rd party contributed images as well ? If so, would the blurred copy would be a derivative of the original image, making Google complicit in copyright violation ? (many images on Flicker are published under versions of the Creative Commons license that don't allow derivatives)

Ok, how does this change the privacy issues ?

If Google takes the images themselves they have to blur all the faces and number plates, but if they include user contributed images of the same scene they don't need to blur them ?

So .. if I (as a private citizen) take pictures of a street and upload them to Flickr with geo-tags, Google will use them un-blurred.

What if I (as a private citizen) mounted a camera on a car and took LOTS of pictures and uploaded them to Flickr with geo-tags, Google would be able to use them un-blurred ?

Is this a crowd sourced way to un-blur Google StreetView one street at a time ....

I think what this (different) school is doing is fantastic, and I applaud their efforts and achievements. However ... checkout what happens at 4:37 in the video.

How Google Saved A School

Yes, different school, and the students are in school at the time, but .... I'm not sure I like the idea of teaching kids to accept this level of surveillance as 'normal'.