Certainly my family will have access to my local data. However things like Google+, the rarely used Facebook, my Google Docs and assorted other "in the cloud" data is a lot more questionable. Some of those things they may never find. Others, they can perhaps get control of depending on the policies of the providers (send us a death certificate + proof you are next of kin or the executor of the estate or whatever). Some of it will probably remain in the sole control of the providers as well and just be there until the providers get tired of storing it.

For Chrome users, the LinkPeelr extension works well to pre-decode links for you in a little tooltip window. I've been using it for quite some time and it seems to work pretty well. Saves your from many a rickrolling or goase link. Although I guess when people bounce them through several layers of link shortener it doesn't work for that.

It would be more correct to say the vulnerability (flaw) is in the windows kernel and the only currently known exploit is through the safari browser. There are decent odds that some other vector will be found through which to exploit this. But for now it looks like the exploit through safari uses a lack of correct input sanitization (in safari) in order to exploit the Windows kernel vulnerability. It would probably be possible to craft an exe to do privilege elevation using this kernel flaw by passing similar bad parameters to the kernel - but of course local elevation of privilege is much less of a threat than a true drive by like this exploit through safari.

Tons of schools use Google as their email provider. Here's a quote from a Time article from 2009:

Google now manages e-mail for more than 2,000 colleges and universities, enabling students to transform accounts capped at 100 mb into Google-managed inboxes that allow for 70 times as much mail. Microsoft also provides free Web-based mail for thousands of schools, including colleges in 86 countries.

Here's the article: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1915112,00.html. Now, a specific school? Sure, my daughter and I just toured California State Sonoma and they use Google services.

You know, you hit the nail on the head. I have 21 years with my company and I personally started on a help line for Point Of Sale equipment in the Credit Card dept (proprietary card), moved from there to LAN administrator, and on to programming and system images. That POS help line? It is in Manila now. The Credit Card department? Outsourced. Oh, there is still a card with our company name on it. It just isn't handled at all by our company anymore. I wouldn't have even been able to start with the company today without moving overseas and working for peanuts. Low Cost Geography they euphemistically call it. In the same way those of us who are technical experts in the design departments no longer have any internal source to draw on for new hires. The lower end jobs where the best of the workers could have moved up are all overseas. The middle of the road jobs are mostly gone too. It's only the top end design groups that are left in the US. And we have nobody to pull from when folks retire, switch jobs, or get laid off. We supposedly hire from colleges, but those that come in are woefully unprepared. They would have been fine after spending a couple of years in those middle tier jobs - but they just don't cut it for the ones where you need a lot of experience. They will someday, but not right away. It makes long term succession planning for your group more a "rob from Peter to pay Paul" game of musical chairs where you try to poach from other groups.

I think next, they will figure out that simply reminding you to buy milk when you are near a store isn't very smart. You buy the milk, then it sits in your car while you go to work. When you get back out of work, you see the milk is spoiled. Next, the patent will be for "location based reminders that remind you to buy milk when you are on your way home and you are near a store that is within 30 minutes of your house ". I work 38 miles from home - which in the morning is a 40 minute drive and on the way home is an hour and 25 minutes. I don't want milk while I am near work - that would be stupid. I want it when I am almost to my house and on the way home.

"what color is RMS's beard?"

That's a trick question as it depends on what he has been eating recently. Bazinga!

Thanks for the print view. I had gotten to question 17 and then the quiz started failing. The print view allowed me to finish (and no, I didn't cheat). But, I only got 70 (14 out of 20). It says I am a "geek dilettante". Damn! And I got the Morgan Batesman / USS Bozeman one right too. Where's that trophy? (I'm not interested in the prostitute; just the trophy - see, more geek cred!)

And, they are saying the metadata should travel with the file - and not be a bolted on construct supported in different ways by different file systems. To continue your analogy, the car should still say "Toyota" and "Camry" on it even when it is moved from the parking garage to the parking lot. It should still have other metadata like "2006", the info on the door sticker like the curb weight, etc. Past implementations of this at an OS level have been a bit hit or miss with some file systems supporting an add on structure for meta data and others not supporting it. (This is not to say that some file formats don't already have this built in - certainly some do).

No, he is talking about Majel Barret playing Number One in "The Cage" - the original Start Trek pilot with Captain Pike; the one that was later made into "The Menagerie" where Spock was court martial-ed for returning Pike to Talos IV after his severe radiation burns rendered him wheel chair bound. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059753/

Basically, now that congress limited the amount that banks can charge merchants to 21 cents per transaction for debit card use, the banks are looking for ways to keep their revenue. Some were charging about 44 cents per debit transaction to the merchant. So now, BofA will charge $5 per month per account for each month in which a debit card is used (except at an ATM).

When I was a kid, your commercial for the Commodore VIC-20 convinced me that I had to have one (because Captain Kirk was advertising it!). I used it to learn some programming (both BASIC and assembler) and it was the early foundation for what I do today. The question: Did you actually use one of them day to day or was it just something they hired you to advertise and they gave you one and it sat in the corner?

Well you can take the network difference part out of it by using WiFi for the connection. The idea in the browser benchmark is to see how well the browser can perform with as many other variables (such as network) removed. It would be interesting to see them do a couple of mobile tests. Examples could be the native android browser on 4 or 5 current top of the line phones, and maybe a single android phone with several alternative browsers from the market (firefox, dolphin, etc).

Well, that would work except for the fact that ESPN, Disney, etc. charge the cable company per person who has access to the channel. So, let's say you have that bundle for $50 a month and it includes Disney and ESPN. If I don't subscribe to those in the new model, the cable company no longer has to pay for them (to ESPN and Disney). Since they don't have to pay for them, they can be solvent just fine getting something less than $50 from me for the channels I do subscribe to. Of course this only works for the channels that the cable people have to pay for. However, that seems to be a lot of them these days.

We also aren't going to migrate from NewEgg either. For example, I used to buy bare drive kits from them. Now I buy USB drives. I used to buy a new video card. Now I buy LCD panels. I still buy NAT routers from them. They certainly still get my business, it has just moved up the value chain from components to more finished products.