Or what if this email was going to be evidence in a case against Goldman Sachs.

This is exactly why this goes through the courts. Sorting stuff like this out is kinda why courts exist.

This all seems fairly reasonable to me.

You have enough people doing enough things, eventually someone is going to make a stupid mistake. In hindsight there is probably plenty of stuff that could have or should have been in place to prevent this, but then there always is when looking back at a problem.

Google seems to be acting reasonably. Putting a process in place where companies can quickly and conveniently "take back" emails seems like a bad idea. Requiring a court order ensures that this goes through a strict process and is well documented. Google doesn't seem to be "fighting" this so much as saying "get a court to tell us to and we'll happily do it for you".

And I don't get the impression that Goldman Sachs is pounding their fists on the desk here either. They are doing everything they can to repair or prevent damage caused by a mistake they made. They are seeking out the court order and probably other stuff internally.

Certain areas around here they have ridiculously long lights.

The idea is basically everyone gets a turn, so everyone gets a flashing left arrow, then both directions get a green.

Traffic throughput is probably the same and it's probably way safer than the traditional "wait for an opening to turn left" approach, but damn if it doesn't piss off just about everyone.

Context is king.

The fact that he mentions "disabled folks (except deaf folks, naturally)" in the same sentence makes it perfectly clear that "regular" in this context refers to people who are not disabled (excluding deaf folks, who in this context may fall under the category of regular).

It's not politically correct, but I doubt many people were actually confused as to the meaning of "regular" in the OP.

There's always nano :)

It's useful in a very small handful of circumstances. The main one that comes to mind is checking the time in a meeting or other situation where it would be inappropriate to haul out a phone (although the social expectation of not playing with your phone in these situations is eroding fast).

Mainly though, it's a piece of jewelry. I know some people are repulsed by the very idea of wearing anything more than the most utilitarian of cloths, but I like wearing one. Mine has a clear faceplate showing off the intricate mechanical workings, which is something I find cool and suits my personality. Other people get something out of the workmanship that goes into those $2000 watches.

Not everything needs a practical purpose. Some stuff is just cool.

Or after I hit submit.

There is no case where a user is going to want a tag (or an accidentally created tag) deleted. It's always something the user does not want. There is no valid reason for a user to intentionally enter something in the assumption that it will be removed for them prior to being posted. Warning the user that invalid tags have been removed from their post (or would be removed from their post) seems reasonable.

This I could at least understand as a cultural thing. A fun gotcha left that way intentionally.

If they actually added new features like this to beta, rather than just making a shittier and less functional wrapper around what we've currently got, it might give beta a reason to exist.

It's not about broken tags.

It's about instinctively typing <some required parameter> when describing the syntax of something and having it unintentionally treated as an (invalid) HTML tag, causing it to be disappeared.

My point was that some kind of warning might be more helpful than just silently deleting the content.

It's a sad moment of realization that I actually like getting cloths for Christmas now. Mainly because I suck at picking stuff out myself and hate shopping for cloths in general.

Having a job, a fiance, hell owning a house (or well a gradually increasing piece of one) doesn't make you an adult. When someone gifts you a tonne of socks (sister works at a Marks Work Warehouse and gets some ridiculous employee discounts) and you think "awesome, I really needed these", I think that's the moment one realizes they are an adult.

In my completely impractical approach, it would be up to the user (or whoever controls the gateway) to decide what data the device can send.

So you also have an IDL that describes the fields, potential values, and update rates for your earthquake monitoring, that a user can either allow or deny.

Obviously it starts to become easier to slip in data covertly, but this idea is impractical anyway, so what the heck!

You really do highlight the problem though. There is a great amount of legitimate useful purpose for this kind of stuff, but there is really no easy way to control that data once it's gone.

Clothing doesn't just provide obscurity.

It provides warm, and soaks up sweat. Imagine wearing the same shirt for say.. a month. That's probably what will happen to your couch, and it's a lot harder to throw the sofa into the washing machine every day.

* houseOnFire=<yes|no>

Random thought: slashdot obviously filters html to a limited subset of allowed tags. Why not warn the user that "you've got some invalid html there bro!" I know this is my fault for not previewing, but still, this seems trivial and I can't be the only one that makes this mistake occasionally.

Most us hate this stuff, but it's the way everything is heading. Much like social networking, it's going to become increasingly difficult to live a "normal" life while abstaining.

So with "just don't use them" off the table, how do we at least make this more secure. My first thought would be to approach it the same way we approach it when wanting to connect two computers we can't trust and provide a limited subset of functionality. Things like well defined IDLs that define a precise message set, and gateways that are trusted which verify that only conformant data passes. In other words, let the nest have a billion sensors, but the only message your infrastructure will allow it to send out is: houseOnFire=.

Obviously completely impractical for even a geek audience. So I'm at a loss.. any other brilliant ideas?

Where'd you get that from?

I don't disbelieve it, and it would certainly make a lot more sense, but I don't see this mentioned in either article, and the blog post linked seems to imply that they went straight to C&D.

I find it very strange that they are continuing to allow them to use the trademark/trade dress with the non-commercial condition.

I don't understand trademark law, but I thought it didn't matter whether money was being made or not.