Exactly, it's the norm in the UK. I started out just over 20 years ago, and only senior managers had offices then. Now even they're out in the open plan office in many places.

Classrooms are also open plan, so it was no different to what I was used to from education. Every environment in which I've been expected to work has been like that, from my first day of school right up until now.

I see the plus side, which is that even though I'm working on my thing I can pick up on conversations around me - and often make a contribution that would not happen if we were all hidden away in cubicles or offices.

That makes sense to me. The warning is saying "this site claims to be secure but the certificate doesn't check out in some way, be careful", whereas http makes no claims to be secure and hence no warning is given.

There is no need for SSL everywhere and punishing sites without it by ranking them lower is just plain wrong. Why on earth would a brochure style site for a business need SSL? Why does Wikipedia need SSL (for readers, not for editing)? Why do blogs need SSL for readers? Why does the BBC News website need SSL?

There are a vast number of sites that have no need for SSL and it's simply unnecessary overhead.

No, it really isn't. Labels do not play well with IMAP and I find it keeps downloading the same mail dozens of times.

Plus the inbox categories (social and promotions) save me from setting up filters for stuff. Trouble is, that's not reflected in IMAP so that stuff still ends up in my inbox.

Does it? I've found the label system is a bit funky with IMAP, and Thunderbird seems to like downloading the same mail multiple times. I only use it to sync a backup copy, as I tend to use the web client, but I've found it's not that smooth an experience.

Other than that gmail just works for me. The tabs were a handy addition - it saves me setting up filters to keep less important stuff out of my inbox - and the spam filter is pretty much perfect. It doesn't need to change, and is a large part of me sticking with google for other services (and even using Android). If it changed too much, I'd have an incentive to look at alternatives.

And the danger of dropping anything from schools is that these skills are much, much easier to pick up as a child. I think I'd find it almost impossible to learn how to play an instrument now because I never did as a child. Same with sports. Most of my motor skills were picked up as a child or teenager - so I can type (even though I started on a ZX Spectrum!) and play pool to a reasonable standard. And, er, that's about it.

I'm not too proud to admit I got the reference :)

What it boils down to is whether the cloud service is more reliable than doing it in-house - which has more downtime? Can you do it better than Azure? The cost then comes into it - can you do it better for less money? The only no-brainer is the service that is both more reliable and cheaper, otherwise you're looking at tradeoffs.

For some small businesses, cloud solutions may be both cheaper and more reliable than doing it in-house, especially if the core business is not IT related.

Of course, that assumes that customers of cloud services have done a proper analysis and aren't just jumping on a bandwagon.

I assume something better than the 520 has come out at that price point then, because I've got one of those for work and it's dire.

That's a feature that appeared officially in 4.3 and disappeared again in 4.4. Yes, it can be done now, but it means rooting your device. I was comparing default functionality between Android and iOS. Obviously if you root/jailbreak then almost anything is possible.

Those limits work both ways. The sandboxing is great for security, but at the expense of flexibility.

On Android I can't have the Facebook app and refuse it access to my SMS messages. On iOS I don't have the option to give it access.

I'm not in a hurry if the look of the new gmail app is a sign of what's coming.

I'm late to this, so it probably won't be read, but I think towards the end it was possible to sync over a network. Even if there was no official way, there were open source sync tools that understood the data format, so it would've been possible.

The thing is, the Palm Pilots predate ubiquitous data networks - serial/usb tethered sync was pretty much the only viable option. They were just slow to adapt. Their first couple of phone offerings were OK, decent stabs in the pre-iPhone era, but the Palm Pre was awesome - just a little late to market. It was a great OS - to my mind better than the competition, but it sort of ended up the Phillips v2000 to the VHS vs. Betamax of Apple vs. Android.

Or "B logically follows from A. Therefore B is true if I want it to be. Unless I do really but don't want to tell you I do, or I can make a drama out of it not being true."

I'm trying not be misogynistic but sometimes it really is hard to follow the logic. Maybe it's just the one I'm seeing. I sort of assume attacking the logic of a certain action is somehow preferable to simply saying "I don't want to".

I should just accept that logic and relationships are non-overlapping magesteria.

Meh. Bad weekend.

True. I cringe if I forget a password and the password recovery actually emails me my password rather than sending me to a link to enter a new one. Not many do that now, but at least one large shared hosting provider does and if anyone should know better...