I didn't say it was easy. Good privacy is hard. Creating your own robust software is hard. So the options are to become a neo-luddite, or some open-source fascist. Or accept what is out there, for all the benefits and penalties that are out there. It _is_ a matter of trust.

What I did say was if one doesn't like their options, they need to do something about it. Contribute to an open source project. Call out the worst offenders publicly. Support those that do it right.

I'm sorry you saw this as a personal attack on you and your browser.

You either trust Google with your data, and use their services, or you don't. Same with Facebook, et. al. If you're using this browser, you're trusting this company that they're doing what they say. Maybe you'll peruse the OS code, maybe not. But it's still who and how much you trust. Ultimately, if you want better privacy than what's out there, you need to roll your own browser. Find an open-source project you like, put the features you want in it, take the features you don't want out of it, and go on your merry way.

I like the Stanford approach better. http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2007/03/fairy-use-tale

I have a feeling this will be Streisanded into a real word pretty soon.

As I remind my students, "Beta" to Google means they haven't figured out how to profit on it. If they can find a way to profit on it, it then becomes one of their many appliances. If they can't, it gets killed. Clearly, Google didn't have a way to profit on Reader, as they couldn't on Wave, as they couldn't on Health. If they can find a way to profit from Keep, it'll keep. Otherwise it'll be gone like the rest.

As a teacher, I often find the need to discuss details with other teachers about a student that I don't want to document in an e-mail (that can be subpoenaed.) In addition, I have students of low-socioeconomic status who don't have a computer at home, can't use work e-mail for personal matters, and rely on the POTS to communicate with the world. I use my desk phone everyday.

The NFL won't let you buy tickets to home games? How droll!

I'm reminded of the Intedictor LiveJournal account during Hurricane Katrina. You do whatever you have to do to get the job done. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdictor_(blog)

Actually, Level 1 on SpinRite is fine for SDD, as it's read only. Which does what it needs to, verify the data is accessible, and the drive recognizes if the "sector" is bad. http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-338.txt

Seriously, if all the major free e-mail services signed every outgoing e-mail, wouldn't that cover about %MADEUPPERCENTAGE (but certainly more than half, perhaps closer to 90%) of all e-mail? Have Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail/whathaveyew create a public/private key for each user, create a new e-mail header for keys (so it's not lurking in the sig confusing people.) This covers most of the Joe User situations (people who run their own server would know enough to sign their own email) and puts the onus on Hotmail/Gmail/Yahoo/whathaveyew policing their own users (heaven forbid!)

r/DARPA/ComStar

And bring on the Fourth Succession War!

How long until Facebook has Disambiguation pages?

http://www.hpmuseum.org/hp01.htm

LED Calculator watch. From 1977. Waterproof to 10 meters, and Magnetic-Field-Proof to 60 Gauss.

Sometimes I feel we're working backwards here.

Nobody thought about those poor children at 10 AM. On a Wednesday. Because their cameras were all at the Media Day. Or whatever NFL was doing at the JerryDome today

The Super Bowl will take as much power as a medium sized town. Good news for those Texas doctor's offices and schools who got power outages of 2-3 hours. Clearly we're not as important as JerryWorld.