Actually I think you could assign the copyrights for the sole purpose of suing others. What the judge found in this case was that Stephens Media didn't assign the copyrights. They retained ownership of the copyrights themselves, assigning only the right to sue without assigning any of the copyrights in question.
I think there's two basic questions that need a solid answer from the courts (who up until now have declined to directly answer the question) or the legislature (who've been paid large sums of money to avoid answering the question):
If, having legally purchased a copy of a copyrighted work, I wish to store it and access it by several different methods, is this something I have a legal right to do as a consequence of owning that copy?
If the answer to #1 is "Yes.", do I have the right to contract out the management, maintenance etc. of the storage system to someone else?
The various rightsholders have made much of what's different with digital media. I think it's time to put forward what hasn't changed: that this is the purchase of a copy of a work, just like always. Because I think putting it back into that context, just like books, just like music tapes and CDs, will make it almost impossible for the rightsholders to argue the point successfully. Don't argue piracy and such. If they try to bring it up, push back and say "No, we're discussing legally-purchased copies, ones we paid the author for, just like when we pay for a copy of a book.".
Because things get insanely hairy. For instance, what is the tax rate for an affiliate in California? There isn't a single rate for the state, it varies by location. Besides the state tax you've got county and/or city taxes plus the occasional special tax district. And no you can't go just by ZIP code, because we've got plenty of ZIP codes that span multiple tax jurisdictions with different tax rates. And the state doesn't provide Amazon with any way to get an authoritative (as in "If you charge the rate we give you, you can't be legally touched if it turns out it was the wrong rate.") answer to the question of what the tax rate is for a given affiliate address.
And that's just California taxes. What happens when the affiliate is in California, the buyer is in Texas where Amazon has a warehouse and thus a physical presence, and both states claim sales tax is due? Does Amazon charge taxes for both states on the same sale? Or if Amazon only charges taxes for one state, what happens when the other sues for failure to collect taxes due under it's laws?
The states want to have these taxes collected, but they don't want to answer the hard questions about the actual implementation: what are the rules for which jurisdiction applies, and how is the merchant told what rates apply to any given transaction? Until the states are willing to address those questions, IMO actions like California's are simply unfair.
It's sort-of people, yes they're idiots. But the bigger problem is an OS that assumes that any random removable-media drive is safe and that it should automatically execute programs on it when it detects new media in it. Instead the OS should assume that removable-media drives are not safe and that programs on inserted media are not to be run without the user doing something special to make them run.
On my Linux systems the OS doesn't auto-run programs on removable media at all. And I have it set to normally mount removable-media drives as "no execute" so programs on them simply can't be run without the user first copying them elsewhere and then setting the execute bit, or alternatively remounting the media with execute permissions enabled. Either way they have to do something pretty deliberate, and your average idiot isn't going to clear that bar. Windows offers at least the "no AutoRun" option, and it's easy enough to set it (flipping that setting on a new Windows installation is almost reflex for me by now), the only thing Windows doesn't offer is a "no execute" option for mounted media (and I'm sure it has it, just not obviously exposed in the UI).
I think there's a critical distinction, though. Let's start with a support beam. If I correctly account for all the loads and select a strong enough beam, and then I don't exceed design tolerances on the beam, we expect the beam not to fail. It may fail, but that'll be because it was damaged or something happened to force the load out of spec or something.
Challenger was a different matter. It was the equivalent of using a support beam that was only 95% strong enough for the load placed on it. When you do that, you expect the beam to fail even if nothing unusual happens to it. You can't predict exactly when it'll fail, but you know that if conditions remain normal that that beam will simply fail at some point. That was the situation with Challenger: the engineers didn't know exactly which launch it'd happen on but they knew conclusively that, given the erosion of the gaskets they'd been seeing, if things remained as they were the question wasn't whether there'd be a failure but merely when.
It's the difference between taking a gamble and playing Russian Roulette. With the latter, you know that if you keep playing someone will die. The only question is who. And just because I can't tell you right now exactly who it'll be, that doesn't mean I don't know it'll happen.
I think it's more the "one physical model for multiple consumer models" thing. You need LCD panels for both televisions and monitors. So instead of making 2 sizes of panel, one for monitors and one for televisions, they just make one. Since TVs need the widescreen aspect ratio and monitors can use it, we end up with monitors with screen sizes identical to those needed for widescreen TV.
Actually a lot of them are selecting matte, at least initially. They look at the handful of laptops with matte screens and ask the salesman if they can get the laptop they're looking for with that matte screen. But since the higher-end laptop doesn't come with a matte screen as an option, they settle on having to live with the glare and reflection as the price they pay for getting the 17" screen. Then the store counts this as the customer wanting glossy over matte, and uses that to justify only carrying glossy screens.
When I could code with Emacs and man in a terminal window, one monitor would do. But with say.Net and Visual Studio? No way. I need one monitor for Visual Studio itself, because the toolbars and necessary panes take up enough room that I need it maximized to get enough code visible to have a feel for context. And then the other monitor I need for documentation and reference windows, IM windows, e-mail, terminal windows, consoles for servers, all the miscellany that I need during development that aren't the IDE itself. I can work with one monitor, but it's a lot slower because the stuff that'd go on the second monitor is stuff I need to look at while I'm working in the IDE. If I can't see both at once, I have to keep switching and remembering what I was looking before the switch.
And honestly, is 2 monitors really that expensive for a business? As a private individual I can afford a pair of good widescreen monitors. I can probably afford an all-around more powerful system than businesses are deploying. And I don't get to depreciate the stuff like a business does.
itwbennett misrepresents what Proffitt said. Proffitt noted accurately that the Apache Software License doesn't require the release of the source code. Not just not immediately, it doesn't require it to ever be released.
Actually it has to do with the tendons. That "wrists up" position keeps the path through the wrist joint straight so the tendons don't have to make a bend there. That's also the ideal position for keeping the carpal tunnel straight and keeping the tendons and nerves that run through it from being compressed. That, IMO, is probably the single most important thing when it comes to avoiding CTS/RSI. The problem is that most office chairs these days are too low to get proper position at a standard desk.
Keystroke and mouse movement information won't help. The information you need is "What hand/forearm position are the typists using?", and software can't record that.
To quote my typing teacher, "*smack* Wrists UP!".
NB: proper typing position has the forearms parallel to floor, back of hand flat relative to top of forearm. Raise or lose the seat to achieve this. Fingers should dangle onto the keys, if the first fingerbone is horizontal your seat is too low and needs raised slightly.
Note that one aspect the judge noted was the lack of jurisdiction. The plaintiff hasn't been able to identify to the court even one defendant who the court has jurisdiction over, and the judge has noted numerous defendants the court definitely does not have direct jurisdiction over (the IP address involved is in a different state from the court, for instance). That changes the landscape pretty seriously, courts have a lot less authority to issue orders when it hasn't been established that they have jurisdiction to issue any orders in the first place.
Even if you can establish that you've been injured, if you don't know who did it you can't just go into court and have them order everybody in the city to start coughing up information until you find the person who injured you. You have to do the legwork to identify a possible defendant that you can make a plausible claim against, and you have to file in a court that has jurisdiction (if the injury occurred in California, I live in California and the defendant lives in Arizona, I can't file in a Kentucky court because they won't have jurisdiction over any aspect of the case, I'd have to file in either California or Arizona).
Well, if I had one of these laptops I'd simply contact whoever I bought it from about returning it as defective. If they balked, next step is to call American Express (you think I'd pay for something like this with anything else?) about a merchant refusing to accept a return of defective merchandise. Supporting documentation from the court filings, yadda yadda, and barring something unusual the money will be credited back to my card, the merchant's account gets debited and the merchant gets to argue with Amex's legal department about it. Good luck with that. Much better for me, last I checked $2000 malfunctioning laptop - $200 for "replacement" on eBay still = $1800 loss.
This is why my standard response when I receive notice of a class-action settlement is to return the paperwork with the "I decline to participate in the class" boxes checked. If you don't respond, you're considered part of the class and are bound by the terms of the settlement. By declining I preserve my right to make my own claim against the company.
Let Amazon's actions, and Twitter's, and others, be a lesson:
Never, ever make a competitor's (or potential competitor's) products and services a crucial part of your business unless you've got a written, signed contract with them that's got guarantees written in that they won't alter or discontinue those products and/or services and severe penalties if they fail to live up to those guarantees (scaled to the actual consequences to your business of the disruption, not to some arbitrary "fair" scale, and scaled to compensate you for those disruptions, not to be "fair"). Make sure your lawyers helped write the contract, don't touch a "take it or leave it" offer. Especially if their offer includes a clause that lets them change the terms at any time.
Doing otherwise is just becoming your competitor's unpaid R&D and market research department.
Typical Florian. RedHat didn't keep the payment secret. What they redacted was the amount of the payment, not that there was a payment. I suspect it was redacted at the insistence of the other party, who didn't want any of their other victims knowing what kind of deal to shoot for themselves.
They already do. There's a privacy setting (under "Things Others Share") where you can control who can see photos and videos you're tagged in. Of course, this being Facebook, it defaults to "Everyone", but you can change it. I set mine to friends-only in anticipation of just this kind of thing. Or worse. Even if you never do anything embarrassing, there's nothing in Facebook that restricts people to only tagging photos that're really you. Someone who's taken a dislike to you can attach your name to any photo of anyone doing anything at all. If someone does that, I want visibility limited to people who'll look and go "That's not him in that picture.".
Why not? The basic concepts are UI items/events and the actions that can be bound to them. Simply let me configure button icons that can be placed on the left and right sides of the titlebar, and let me bind actions like "minimize" and "close" to them or to mouse gestures or events like double-clicking on the titlebar. Then Gnome can ship with a default configuration, and if I happen to like something else I can configured it to work the way I want without impacting anyone else.
I don't care so much about minimize or maximize buttons. I just need two things: a way to get the window as big as physically possible for when I'm working in one app and need the screen real estate, and a way to get windows that I need open but don't need to pay attention to at the moment out of the way. Example the first: I'm working in a graphics app, don't expect to be doing anything but drawing and working in it while I've got it open, and want as much of the screen for the image as I can get. Example the second: the documentation web site I'm referring to occasionally while I'm coding that I don't want cluttering things up when I'm not actively reading it, but I don't want to close it and lose my location or page history on it.
Well, if you read the actual decision, you'll notice that the court says merchants can, according to the law, ask for the ZIP code as part of credit-card verification. What they can't do is record that ZIP code for other uses.
The problem that this case brought up is that, when that gas pump prompts you for the ZIP code? It isn't just for credit-card authorization. The station will use that ZIP code for that, sure, but they also store it in their database along with your name and purchase history and then cross-reference other databases to determine who you actually are. A name alone isn't unique, a ZIP code sure isn't unique, but in the majority of cases there's only one person with a particular name in a particular ZIP code so the company operating the gas station now knows your address, phone number, age, and can use that to get other information on you since now they can uniquely identify you. All the court's saying here is that that kind of double use isn't permitted. They can require you to give your ZIP code as part of a credit-card authorization, but they can only use that ZIP code for that purpose. If they want to store data on you they have to treat that as a completely separate request, not appropriate the information you provided to authorize your credit card.
I'm not sure what the obsession with the data is. I mean, it was already being broadcast in the clear to anyone listening. Everything from those homes has to be considered compromised regardless of what Google did or didn't receive. Just because Google doesn't have it doesn't mean a black hat wasn't listening in on it. Google having it confirms it's compromised, but you knew that already just from it having been broadcast in the clear. If this bothers you, why was your network wireless, broadcast-to-the-world, radio-based network running unencrypted in the first place?
It's kind of like the root passwords. When I find one of my admins who knew them just stormed into HR, delivered an angry tirade about how my company's scum and he's quitting effective immediately, then left the building, I don't have my people start checking to see if he's going to abuse his access now that he's left. I change all the root passwords ASAP to make sure he can't abuse his access, because by the time I know whether he will or not it's too late.
If you're running an unencrypted wireless network, it's because you don't care about whether anyone sees the data flowing across it or not. If you do care, you need to be running it encrypted. There are no other options. Caring about keeping a wireless network's data private and running that network unencrypted are simply mutually exclusive options, just like keeping some information private and posting it on a public bulletin board at the supermarket are mutually exclusive options.
Yes, it's easy to ignore. However, it does add a legal aspect: the web-site operator can't say "Well, the user didn't say they wanted to opt out.". Right now web sites work on the assumption that you're OK with being tracked unless you take some special action to tell them otherwise. This header is an explicit statement on every single HTTP request telling the web site that no, this user is not OK with data collection for tracking purposes. In any legal or enforcement action after that, the web-site operator has to explain why they ignored a direct, explicit statement by the user. It may not in and of itself prevent tracking, but it ups the legal risk and costs for the web-site operator if they ignore it and something happens. They can't say "The user didn't opt out.", which takes away one of the big things they depend on to cover their assets when things go wrong. It's easy to implement, it doesn't cost a lot of bandwidth, it doesn't depend on cookies or anything else stored long-term on the client side, it can be implemented in things that use HTTP but aren't browsers. I see at least some benefit, and little or no cost or downside to it.
You're assuming my hard drives aren't being backed up. This assumption would be incorrect. If the house burns down, I reload the new hard drives from the off-site backups. And yes, "hard drive" singular as in I don't need the performance and reliability of RAID for archival storage. Live storage yes, but for stuff that's not being regularly updated it's not worth the cost. If the drive fails I just restore from backups. If it's something that I need access to faster than a restore would take, or that's changing so often the latest isn't going to be on the backups, then it's not going to be on the archival drive in the first place.
$2/month for amounts in excess of 250GB? At that price I have serious doubts about the business model of the service. They're either skimping on hardware and support big-time, they're losing money at a fair clip, or there's some source of revenue they're not disclosing. Whichever it is, I'm pretty sure I don't want to be depending on them when things go south.
I store my photos on the terabyte hard drive I have dedicated to archive storage. In my case it's in the machine that acts as the general-purpose server for my home network, but you can buy dedicated storage boxes from companies like NetGear if all you want is a file server.
External services? Why in the world would I want my stored photos to be at the mercy of a free service deciding to close up shop? And it certainly isn't financially feasible to keep paying a monthly fee for storage.
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Actually I think you could assign the copyrights for the sole purpose of suing others. What the judge found in this case was that Stephens Media didn't assign the copyrights. They retained ownership of the copyrights themselves, assigning only the right to sue without assigning any of the copyrights in question.
I think there's two basic questions that need a solid answer from the courts (who up until now have declined to directly answer the question) or the legislature (who've been paid large sums of money to avoid answering the question):
The various rightsholders have made much of what's different with digital media. I think it's time to put forward what hasn't changed: that this is the purchase of a copy of a work, just like always. Because I think putting it back into that context, just like books, just like music tapes and CDs, will make it almost impossible for the rightsholders to argue the point successfully. Don't argue piracy and such. If they try to bring it up, push back and say "No, we're discussing legally-purchased copies, ones we paid the author for, just like when we pay for a copy of a book.".
Because things get insanely hairy. For instance, what is the tax rate for an affiliate in California? There isn't a single rate for the state, it varies by location. Besides the state tax you've got county and/or city taxes plus the occasional special tax district. And no you can't go just by ZIP code, because we've got plenty of ZIP codes that span multiple tax jurisdictions with different tax rates. And the state doesn't provide Amazon with any way to get an authoritative (as in "If you charge the rate we give you, you can't be legally touched if it turns out it was the wrong rate.") answer to the question of what the tax rate is for a given affiliate address.
And that's just California taxes. What happens when the affiliate is in California, the buyer is in Texas where Amazon has a warehouse and thus a physical presence, and both states claim sales tax is due? Does Amazon charge taxes for both states on the same sale? Or if Amazon only charges taxes for one state, what happens when the other sues for failure to collect taxes due under it's laws?
The states want to have these taxes collected, but they don't want to answer the hard questions about the actual implementation: what are the rules for which jurisdiction applies, and how is the merchant told what rates apply to any given transaction? Until the states are willing to address those questions, IMO actions like California's are simply unfair.
It's sort-of people, yes they're idiots. But the bigger problem is an OS that assumes that any random removable-media drive is safe and that it should automatically execute programs on it when it detects new media in it. Instead the OS should assume that removable-media drives are not safe and that programs on inserted media are not to be run without the user doing something special to make them run.
On my Linux systems the OS doesn't auto-run programs on removable media at all. And I have it set to normally mount removable-media drives as "no execute" so programs on them simply can't be run without the user first copying them elsewhere and then setting the execute bit, or alternatively remounting the media with execute permissions enabled. Either way they have to do something pretty deliberate, and your average idiot isn't going to clear that bar. Windows offers at least the "no AutoRun" option, and it's easy enough to set it (flipping that setting on a new Windows installation is almost reflex for me by now), the only thing Windows doesn't offer is a "no execute" option for mounted media (and I'm sure it has it, just not obviously exposed in the UI).
And one more step on the way from DNS to /etc/hosts. Next they'll be complaining that a flat namespace has management and scaling issues.
I think there's a critical distinction, though. Let's start with a support beam. If I correctly account for all the loads and select a strong enough beam, and then I don't exceed design tolerances on the beam, we expect the beam not to fail. It may fail, but that'll be because it was damaged or something happened to force the load out of spec or something.
Challenger was a different matter. It was the equivalent of using a support beam that was only 95% strong enough for the load placed on it. When you do that, you expect the beam to fail even if nothing unusual happens to it. You can't predict exactly when it'll fail, but you know that if conditions remain normal that that beam will simply fail at some point. That was the situation with Challenger: the engineers didn't know exactly which launch it'd happen on but they knew conclusively that, given the erosion of the gaskets they'd been seeing, if things remained as they were the question wasn't whether there'd be a failure but merely when.
It's the difference between taking a gamble and playing Russian Roulette. With the latter, you know that if you keep playing someone will die. The only question is who. And just because I can't tell you right now exactly who it'll be, that doesn't mean I don't know it'll happen.
I think it's more the "one physical model for multiple consumer models" thing. You need LCD panels for both televisions and monitors. So instead of making 2 sizes of panel, one for monitors and one for televisions, they just make one. Since TVs need the widescreen aspect ratio and monitors can use it, we end up with monitors with screen sizes identical to those needed for widescreen TV.
Actually a lot of them are selecting matte, at least initially. They look at the handful of laptops with matte screens and ask the salesman if they can get the laptop they're looking for with that matte screen. But since the higher-end laptop doesn't come with a matte screen as an option, they settle on having to live with the glare and reflection as the price they pay for getting the 17" screen. Then the store counts this as the customer wanting glossy over matte, and uses that to justify only carrying glossy screens.
When I could code with Emacs and man in a terminal window, one monitor would do. But with say .Net and Visual Studio? No way. I need one monitor for Visual Studio itself, because the toolbars and necessary panes take up enough room that I need it maximized to get enough code visible to have a feel for context. And then the other monitor I need for documentation and reference windows, IM windows, e-mail, terminal windows, consoles for servers, all the miscellany that I need during development that aren't the IDE itself. I can work with one monitor, but it's a lot slower because the stuff that'd go on the second monitor is stuff I need to look at while I'm working in the IDE. If I can't see both at once, I have to keep switching and remembering what I was looking before the switch.
And honestly, is 2 monitors really that expensive for a business? As a private individual I can afford a pair of good widescreen monitors. I can probably afford an all-around more powerful system than businesses are deploying. And I don't get to depreciate the stuff like a business does.
itwbennett misrepresents what Proffitt said. Proffitt noted accurately that the Apache Software License doesn't require the release of the source code. Not just not immediately, it doesn't require it to ever be released.
Actually it has to do with the tendons. That "wrists up" position keeps the path through the wrist joint straight so the tendons don't have to make a bend there. That's also the ideal position for keeping the carpal tunnel straight and keeping the tendons and nerves that run through it from being compressed. That, IMO, is probably the single most important thing when it comes to avoiding CTS/RSI. The problem is that most office chairs these days are too low to get proper position at a standard desk.
Keystroke and mouse movement information won't help. The information you need is "What hand/forearm position are the typists using?", and software can't record that.
To quote my typing teacher, "*smack* Wrists UP!".
NB: proper typing position has the forearms parallel to floor, back of hand flat relative to top of forearm. Raise or lose the seat to achieve this. Fingers should dangle onto the keys, if the first fingerbone is horizontal your seat is too low and needs raised slightly.
Note that one aspect the judge noted was the lack of jurisdiction. The plaintiff hasn't been able to identify to the court even one defendant who the court has jurisdiction over, and the judge has noted numerous defendants the court definitely does not have direct jurisdiction over (the IP address involved is in a different state from the court, for instance). That changes the landscape pretty seriously, courts have a lot less authority to issue orders when it hasn't been established that they have jurisdiction to issue any orders in the first place.
Even if you can establish that you've been injured, if you don't know who did it you can't just go into court and have them order everybody in the city to start coughing up information until you find the person who injured you. You have to do the legwork to identify a possible defendant that you can make a plausible claim against, and you have to file in a court that has jurisdiction (if the injury occurred in California, I live in California and the defendant lives in Arizona, I can't file in a Kentucky court because they won't have jurisdiction over any aspect of the case, I'd have to file in either California or Arizona).
Well, if I had one of these laptops I'd simply contact whoever I bought it from about returning it as defective. If they balked, next step is to call American Express (you think I'd pay for something like this with anything else?) about a merchant refusing to accept a return of defective merchandise. Supporting documentation from the court filings, yadda yadda, and barring something unusual the money will be credited back to my card, the merchant's account gets debited and the merchant gets to argue with Amex's legal department about it. Good luck with that. Much better for me, last I checked $2000 malfunctioning laptop - $200 for "replacement" on eBay still = $1800 loss.
This is why my standard response when I receive notice of a class-action settlement is to return the paperwork with the "I decline to participate in the class" boxes checked. If you don't respond, you're considered part of the class and are bound by the terms of the settlement. By declining I preserve my right to make my own claim against the company.
Let Amazon's actions, and Twitter's, and others, be a lesson:
Never, ever make a competitor's (or potential competitor's) products and services a crucial part of your business unless you've got a written, signed contract with them that's got guarantees written in that they won't alter or discontinue those products and/or services and severe penalties if they fail to live up to those guarantees (scaled to the actual consequences to your business of the disruption, not to some arbitrary "fair" scale, and scaled to compensate you for those disruptions, not to be "fair"). Make sure your lawyers helped write the contract, don't touch a "take it or leave it" offer. Especially if their offer includes a clause that lets them change the terms at any time.
Doing otherwise is just becoming your competitor's unpaid R&D and market research department.
Typical Florian. RedHat didn't keep the payment secret. What they redacted was the amount of the payment, not that there was a payment. I suspect it was redacted at the insistence of the other party, who didn't want any of their other victims knowing what kind of deal to shoot for themselves.
They already do. There's a privacy setting (under "Things Others Share") where you can control who can see photos and videos you're tagged in. Of course, this being Facebook, it defaults to "Everyone", but you can change it. I set mine to friends-only in anticipation of just this kind of thing. Or worse. Even if you never do anything embarrassing, there's nothing in Facebook that restricts people to only tagging photos that're really you. Someone who's taken a dislike to you can attach your name to any photo of anyone doing anything at all. If someone does that, I want visibility limited to people who'll look and go "That's not him in that picture.".
Why not? The basic concepts are UI items/events and the actions that can be bound to them. Simply let me configure button icons that can be placed on the left and right sides of the titlebar, and let me bind actions like "minimize" and "close" to them or to mouse gestures or events like double-clicking on the titlebar. Then Gnome can ship with a default configuration, and if I happen to like something else I can configured it to work the way I want without impacting anyone else.
I don't care so much about minimize or maximize buttons. I just need two things: a way to get the window as big as physically possible for when I'm working in one app and need the screen real estate, and a way to get windows that I need open but don't need to pay attention to at the moment out of the way. Example the first: I'm working in a graphics app, don't expect to be doing anything but drawing and working in it while I've got it open, and want as much of the screen for the image as I can get. Example the second: the documentation web site I'm referring to occasionally while I'm coding that I don't want cluttering things up when I'm not actively reading it, but I don't want to close it and lose my location or page history on it.
Well, if you read the actual decision, you'll notice that the court says merchants can, according to the law, ask for the ZIP code as part of credit-card verification. What they can't do is record that ZIP code for other uses.
The problem that this case brought up is that, when that gas pump prompts you for the ZIP code? It isn't just for credit-card authorization. The station will use that ZIP code for that, sure, but they also store it in their database along with your name and purchase history and then cross-reference other databases to determine who you actually are. A name alone isn't unique, a ZIP code sure isn't unique, but in the majority of cases there's only one person with a particular name in a particular ZIP code so the company operating the gas station now knows your address, phone number, age, and can use that to get other information on you since now they can uniquely identify you. All the court's saying here is that that kind of double use isn't permitted. They can require you to give your ZIP code as part of a credit-card authorization, but they can only use that ZIP code for that purpose. If they want to store data on you they have to treat that as a completely separate request, not appropriate the information you provided to authorize your credit card.
I'm not sure what the obsession with the data is. I mean, it was already being broadcast in the clear to anyone listening. Everything from those homes has to be considered compromised regardless of what Google did or didn't receive. Just because Google doesn't have it doesn't mean a black hat wasn't listening in on it. Google having it confirms it's compromised, but you knew that already just from it having been broadcast in the clear. If this bothers you, why was your network wireless, broadcast-to-the-world, radio-based network running unencrypted in the first place?
It's kind of like the root passwords. When I find one of my admins who knew them just stormed into HR, delivered an angry tirade about how my company's scum and he's quitting effective immediately, then left the building, I don't have my people start checking to see if he's going to abuse his access now that he's left. I change all the root passwords ASAP to make sure he can't abuse his access, because by the time I know whether he will or not it's too late.
If you're running an unencrypted wireless network, it's because you don't care about whether anyone sees the data flowing across it or not. If you do care, you need to be running it encrypted. There are no other options. Caring about keeping a wireless network's data private and running that network unencrypted are simply mutually exclusive options, just like keeping some information private and posting it on a public bulletin board at the supermarket are mutually exclusive options.
Yes, it's easy to ignore. However, it does add a legal aspect: the web-site operator can't say "Well, the user didn't say they wanted to opt out.". Right now web sites work on the assumption that you're OK with being tracked unless you take some special action to tell them otherwise. This header is an explicit statement on every single HTTP request telling the web site that no, this user is not OK with data collection for tracking purposes. In any legal or enforcement action after that, the web-site operator has to explain why they ignored a direct, explicit statement by the user. It may not in and of itself prevent tracking, but it ups the legal risk and costs for the web-site operator if they ignore it and something happens. They can't say "The user didn't opt out.", which takes away one of the big things they depend on to cover their assets when things go wrong. It's easy to implement, it doesn't cost a lot of bandwidth, it doesn't depend on cookies or anything else stored long-term on the client side, it can be implemented in things that use HTTP but aren't browsers. I see at least some benefit, and little or no cost or downside to it.
You're assuming my hard drives aren't being backed up. This assumption would be incorrect. If the house burns down, I reload the new hard drives from the off-site backups. And yes, "hard drive" singular as in I don't need the performance and reliability of RAID for archival storage. Live storage yes, but for stuff that's not being regularly updated it's not worth the cost. If the drive fails I just restore from backups. If it's something that I need access to faster than a restore would take, or that's changing so often the latest isn't going to be on the backups, then it's not going to be on the archival drive in the first place.
$2/month for amounts in excess of 250GB? At that price I have serious doubts about the business model of the service. They're either skimping on hardware and support big-time, they're losing money at a fair clip, or there's some source of revenue they're not disclosing. Whichever it is, I'm pretty sure I don't want to be depending on them when things go south.
I store my photos on the terabyte hard drive I have dedicated to archive storage. In my case it's in the machine that acts as the general-purpose server for my home network, but you can buy dedicated storage boxes from companies like NetGear if all you want is a file server.
External services? Why in the world would I want my stored photos to be at the mercy of a free service deciding to close up shop? And it certainly isn't financially feasible to keep paying a monthly fee for storage.