IANAS

Google's unofficial privacy notice:

"Just as a sender of a letter to a business colleague cannot be surprised that the recipient's assistant opens the letter, people who use web-based email today cannot be surprised if their emails are processed by the recipient's [email provider] in the course of delivery. Indeed, 'a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.'"

A counter-argument by John M. Simpson, Consumer Watchdog's privacy project director:

"Google's brief uses a wrong-headed analogy; sending an email is like giving a letter to the Post Office. I expect the Post Office to deliver the letter based on the address written on the envelope. I don't expect the mail carrier to open my letter and read it. Similarly when I send an email, I expect it to be delivered to the intended recipient with a Gmail account based on the email address; why would I expect its content will be intercepted by Google and read?"

A possible rebuttal to Simpson's counter:

I think Simpson's counter is flawed for two reasons: 1) Google's brief isn't that wrong headed. 2) While I have vaguely read many non-commital assurances from Google that my information is not being abused, I recall no contract that my information was going to be classified as private.

This was a discussion that came about long ago, when webmail was growing in popularity, and, now that I think about it, I can recall making a decision that the convenience of webmail, and a universal mail account that I could keep between ISPs and various other forms of connectivity was worth the probability that Google was using the contents to deliver advertisement. The fact that it was free made the offer that much more enticing. That many added-value services were employed by Google to keep me using their services isn't Google's fault if I decide to change my mind on the balance of convenience and security.

Google's example of a receptionist reading the intended recipient's mail, while possibly hasty, doesn't imply the economic contract that goes along with using the U.S. Postal Service. The policies of the USPS are mandated by law, funded from taxpayer sources and the sale of government issued stamps and is gauranteed, ultimately, by the stability of the U.S. Government. While, in a larger sense, Google has some gaurantees by the U.S. Government regarding their freedoms to practice lawful business, the privacy of email is not one of those gaurantees, nor have they, to my knowledge, offered a private gaurantee analogous to that offered by the U.S. Postal Service.

I don't have a record of all the things Google has said over the years about the privacy, or lack of it, related to the GMail service. Perhaps the facility and ubiquity of it lulls one into a false sense of security. I would not be suprised if the arguments, if these are going to be the central themes of the trial, will result in a judgement that says, in effect: "While there may be some merit to the idea of an implied contract of some kind with email, either web-based, non-web-based, or both, this case does not meet the litmus of wrong-doing." Google will then consider, and probably ultimately reject, the idea of a secure, private, paid service and people will continue to expect that the USPS will at some point offer email.

That the ISP wants the cutstomer to buy a 'server' package is the long and the short of it. The legal definition of server is irrelevant, as there likely isn't one that will suit. What the ISP is targeting is an economic activity, it's what they consider to be a priviledged use of the bandwidth, really, that they reserve unto themselves until the customer buys it from them. It's really more about port access than it is about serving webpages, which for this purpose may as well be hotdogs. If, at the time the contract was drawn, more people were interested in webserving, and email was something only techies knew about and could do easily, then it would be the email ports that the EFF would be suing for. The definition of what a server is, is irrelevant. The average home user's PC is really neither a client or a server, since these terms can be applied differently to all manner of different kinds of traffic, as the P2P example shows. It's really about so-called priviledged economic activity.

I'm not convinced. It is apparent to me that 13.04 will contain alot of bug-fixes and feature upgrades that 12.04 will not. How many package maintainers are going to spend time polishing packages when the next incremental version is going to contain the fixes and features? Does it take a medical degree?

Agendas. Believe it or not, the word is out, people have agendas. And other people know it. So if your in a tech support role, even just for a minute, and you are working with an office worker, and they suspect you have an agenda to make /your/ job easier, even if it makes theirs harder, they aren't necessarily going to believe you when you talk about the benefits, especially if you start talking open-source and freedom and alot of other things that doesnt affect them in the here and now, or have obvious and immediate benefits. They will just politely nod and smile and say 'that's too hard' and go back to thinking your a geek while you think they are stupid. No agreements about agendas, bad communication and sketchy profit motives contribute to the slowness of general Linux adoption.

They just don't understand. On linux, I can read this post, go "ooo, what's that?', click to my open terminal, 'sudo apt-get install lyx', click back to the browser to compose my response, /without any input to the terminal/, and by the time I am ready to preview and post, LyX is waiting for me to try, fully installed and ready to go. They still don't understand.

Although the presentation layer is obviously different, I look at distros like this and Ultimate Edition (http://http://ultimateedition.info/) and have the same thought. "Why are they releasing new forks on 12.04 and not 13.04? This seems overcautious.

Maybe someone can explain to me the wisdom of releasing a distro based on 12.04 over 13.04. Does that not seem overcautious?

So basically, there are some companies that are looking for gaurantees of higher profit margins. How is this news?

I think it's tragic when quacks try to justify medicalizing economics and it gets passed off as science. It's utter horsesh*t. Love is not an adult human need. Case closed.

If the GNU were interested in a branded distro, I think they probably would have done it already. Stallman and Debian talked alot about the Mach kernel for it, but we still aren't seeing it making it into the community. The GNU toolset is just as critical to Linux success as the kernel, but they just didn't appear to be interested in doing the kinds of things the LKM did to get the name out there.

Conservative business owners are still cash-shy, and are trying to squeek by with aging, degraded equipment, no experienced tech support and paper airplanes. Gentlemen, start your engines. It's muthaf*ckin' ON! TURN IT LOOOOOOSE!!!

Do us a favor and start using less paywall links.