The argument is less over which one controls all of China than it is over which one is the "Real China". The current governing bodies of both refer to a "One China, Two Areas" rule which allows them to cooperate economically without fighting.

Having spent some time in Taiwan, the people there refer to themselves as Chinese, not Taiwanese. They don't speak Mandarin, they speak Chinese. Which is to say, their national identity is "Chinese" and that's what works for them. They also have a standing military that is completely independent of PRC.

That said, the only reason they can maintain that independence is because of how close they are tied to the US. RoC knows it, we know it, and Mainland China knows it.

Obligatory xkcd

I'm using a very me-centric definition of abrupt. I don't want it to stop and it's stopping before then, thus abrupt :-P

And counting back the years, you are correct. It was 05. It launched the same year I could buy beer.

The look of that one is instantly familiar, and I love it. I don't see a method of importing iGoogle settings though, and the widgets (gadgets on their site) look like it's using the ones hosted by Google. I would assume that Google's widget hosting is going away along with iGoogle.

I've taken Netvibes for a spin and it's working pretty well. There are a few things that make you aware it's an RSS reader and not a home page, but I think they'll clean those up )or give you the option to turn them off). Your iGoogle widgets won't transfer over when you import your settings, but they seem to have a pretty solid roster of widgets to pick from. All RSS feeds transferred properly, although I had to set the number of headlines to display again.

There are a couple of things I don't like about Netvibes so far. I don't want it to tell me how many stories are unread, especially in the title bar. I had to set the zoom level to 125% because the text was too small. And the widgets aren't as plentiful / don't work the same as the iGoogle widgets. That last one is to be expected. The first two should be fixable. It might be part of the "Refugee" theme I'm using? Not entirely sure yet.

Overall I'm happy with it though; it does update the RSS feeds much faster than iGoogle did.

With iGoogle shutting down in November as well, it's getting overlooked by all this talk of Google Reader. I've been using iGoogle since '04, and it coming to an abrupt end is unfortunate.

That said, it looks like Netvibes will import your iGoogle settings directly and supports the same interface. I'm going to sign up and try it out.

I've already installed and configured Feedly on my phone, tablet, and in Chrome, but it's not the experience I'm looking for. Feedly is all about being a newspaper. iGoogle was all about all of the headlines at a glance, sorted however you like, on one screen.

Other than Netvibes, has anybody found an alternative to iGoogle I should check out?

Alright, so I made that whole story up.

That was obvious from the subject line.

Go back to bed, grandpa! :-)

That's better than in Boston. An MBTA bus is not late until two hours past its scheduled arrival time. I found this out a couple years back. In January. I'm sure you can imagine my displeasure.

It may have been years since I researched this topic, and it may have been in a Pennsylvania public school that the paper was written, but here's what I can recall from memory about the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution, specifically about illegal search and seizure and how it relates to public schools:

Police entering the school to complete a search are just that: Police. As such, they are bound to the full effect of any Local, State, and Federal laws regarding search and seizure. That part is clear-cut and dry. Immediately after that, however, it gets fuzzy.

For example, a student's locker is their personal space, right? Not always. It's government property, but there is a confidence held with the school that possessions stored within specifically designated areas will remain private. This has gone both ways in court, and largely depends on the circumstances.

If the police want to avoid that whole argument, then they have the easiest of ways to have that space searched and items collected: school administrators. This is where a student will realize that, because they are under 18 (and under 21 in some states), they have very little say in the situation.

Police need Probable Cause to search without a warrant. School administrators need only "Reasonable Belief", also called "Reason to Suspect" or one of many other phrases. As long as the student or the property are on school grounds, a school administrator has full and complete privilege to any of that students belongings, and the option to detain the student against their will until Police arrive.

So, what constitutes Reasonable Belief? Quote simple, really: anything at all. Did the kid look funny? Did the administrator think they overheard a foul comment? Reason to believe.

This may have been a long way of getting around to it, however the fact remains that this cell phone was taken in accordance with the law and is fully permissible as evidence. It doesn't matter why the administrators were looking through the kid's pictures, they can claim anything now.

The real test of law here is whether child pornography prosecution can be used against minors who willingly took and distributed the pictures of themselves. Furthermore, can the boys be charged for receipt of something they did not have the option to reject? I don't know about you, but I don't have a choice to reject an SMS on my phone, it just accepts it no matter what.