I hate to break it to you, but without Woz it is highly likely that nobody would even have heard of Jobs.
And without Jobs it's pretty unlikely most of us would have heard of Woz. It was a partnership and while it lasted a pretty remarkable one. Woz was a technical genius and Jobs was a sales/design genius. You need both to be successful, especially in a startup.
The difficult bit is really the engineering on a large project and developing all the parts and actually building the thing.
Nope. The most difficult bit is getting the right-of-ways. Presuming the design actually works (not a trivial presumption) the construction shouldn't be terribly hard once the financing and right-of-ways are obtained. But getting those right-of-ways is a hugely difficult problem and will account for much of the cost of such a project.
If they fire the employee who gave notice, that employee is probably eligible for unemployment benefits.
Sadly I've had to deal with the unemployment agencies as an employer. They RARELY care much whether the person quit voluntarily or not. The rules are that if they quit voluntarily they aren't eligible for unemployment benefits but it really doesn't work that way in practice. We've had people leave voluntarily with no notice, apply for unemployment and start working again somewhere else while still collecting unemployment. We had one employee do that and the only way we could get out of paying undeserved unemployment benefits was to offer to rehire her. (she did not respond thankfully)
Being a good person is something that will always be good for you.
Demonstrably not true. And giving two weeks notice or not giving two weeks notice does not determine whether you are a good person or not. There are circumstances where not giving any notice is perfectly appropriate and justified. The reverse is sometimes true as well. If someone is treating me badly then I am going to leave. It's MY life and I'm not going to waste it trying to martyr myself proving how much better I am than someone I don't respect.
Being an asshole because you can not see any immediate ramifications of your poor decision does not make it a good one.
Cute (though false) way to frame the issue but first you need to prove that not giving two weeks notice somehow will prove to be a "poor decision". It might but since none of us can see the future with perfect clarity you're going to have a pretty hard case to make. Furthermore you'll have to prove how quitting immediately makes someone an "asshole". They might be one but that typically is established LONG before they leave their job.
If someone has invested a lot in training you and you jump ship to go somewhere else that could result in some burned bridges. I've seen it happen more than a few times. I've seen sales people jump ship and take customers with them when they get a better deal. That rarely results in fond feelings.
If I'm the hiring person and you don't give your current employer notice then I'll assume that you are a snake and will do the same to me later, regardless of whether I would need knowledge transition at that point.
You SHOULD assume that any employee might not give you notice. Sometimes employees aren't able to give you notice because they fall ill. Sometimes they get an opportunity and have to act on it immediately. Sometimes things just don't work out between the company and the employee. Plan accordingly. I run a small manufacturing company and I assure you that two weeks notice makes little practical difference. It's certainly not enough to find and train an adequate replacement and if you cannot gracefully transition that person's work then management screwed up bad. In my case that means *I* screwed up since I'm the boss.
The two weeks notice thing is nice and courteous but if someone is leaving without prior notice the first place you should look if you want to know why is in the mirror. I've walked out of jobs without any notice and I assure you that it was because of the unprofessional behavior of those I worked for. It doesn't necessarily mean they are a "snake" but what it does mean is that you have a poor understanding of what at-will employment really means.
How sure are you that you won't ever want the old job as a reference? I've been surprised at how well some older references have worked for me.
I've been in the workforce for about 25 years now. A good reference is NEVER a company. It is a person you know. It is impossible for a company to have a personal relationship with you or to know you. It is always a close colleague or someone I had a good personal relationship with who provided the references. Whether I gave two weeks notice or not has never once been a factor.
Like when you are saying "fuck you guys" as you are walking out the door and don't expect any references from them ever. Not recommended, but sometimes cathartic. Would be considered "non professional"
If I'm at the point where I'm walking out the door flipping the proverbial bird to the people behind me then the "non professional" behavior has already been done by someone other than myself. I walked out like that once when I was accused of something I didn't do for a job that paid $2.25 an hour (less than half minimum wage at the time) by some idiot manager. The non professional behavior wasn't me walking out but it was what caused me to walk out.
No notice is probably the biggest middle finger you can give a company and still remain within the bounds of the law.
I assure you it is not. There are much worse things you can do without breaking a single law. Doesn't make doing them a good idea but no notice is really barely better than 2 weeks notice. Businesses should assume people won't necessarily show up the next day because sometimes accidents happen. I've had employees suddenly get very ill and from the perspective of the operations of business that is really no different. If a company is really screwed by one person not showing up then management did a terrible job of organizing the workload and sharing important information and that is the fault of the company.
I think if you don't give notice then it raises red flags for your new employer.
If you already have a new employer then why would it raise flags? They've already hired you and (probably) have no idea what sort of circumstances you plan to leave your old employer under unless you have informed them and that would be pretty dumb to do.
But industries are so small that why would you want to burn bridges?
Sometimes bridges are worth burning. Not a good idea as a general practice I'll concur but if someone came to me and said I'll triple your salary, you'll work with nice people and you get to work 20 hours a week I'd consider burning a few bridges for that. I've also had the "pleasure" of working for a few real douchebags and those are bridges I wouldn't mind burning either.
As an employer, we don't give references for people who don't give two weeks' notice.
Big deal. Most HR pros will advise you not to say anything more than confirming that the person did work there and for how long and possibly in what sort of general capacity they were employed. Giving a performance review is generally considered a bad idea as it provides no benefit to the former employer but can result in lawsuits if they say the wrong thing. You can of course make exceptions if you like but mostly by not giving references you are just being petty.
It's just common courtesy.
So do you give them two weeks notice when you terminate their employment? That would be quite courteous. Or does the courtesy only get extended if it favors you?
I've never heard of a company giving a two-week notice to an employee that's being laid off or fired.
I've seen it happen from time to time. Happened to my brother in law actually - he got several weeks notice and severance. Unusual I'll admit but not unheard of. The problem for companies giving notice to someone is that some people don't take it very well and cause problems. I had an employee quite just a few days ago and quietly sabotaged a bunch of stuff as a parting "gift". (nothing really destructive, just time consuming to undo) Most people would be sad to be given notice but would behave like adults. The problem is you can't tell who the ones are who will take it REALLY badly are ahead of time.
Once you're reached the point where you know it's time to leave, under what circumstances would you just up and walk out or give only a short notice?"
If you are leaving because you can't stand the place and there are no contractual or financial constraints on your behavior then just leave and get on with your life
There are only two reasons to give two weeks notice. 1) You are leaving under amicable terms, have the time to spare and out of courtesy want to ease the transition for your former employer OR 2) You need the cash and can't afford to walk out now. Two weeks is almost never enough time to really be of any meaningful benefit to an employer and many employers will escort you out of the building the moment you put in notice anyway. Unless you had a really close and long relationship with your boss/colleagues then you probably aren't going to be asking for a reference in the future anyway so what is to be gained by giving notice? Maybe it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside but the feeling isn't going to be reciprocated in many cases. The business will continue without you and in most cases you giving notice just gives both parties a couple of uncomfortable weeks together.
I don't trust the makers to competently build in security, and I believe that once everyone knows your cell phone is likely to be tied to your bank account, it's a soft target.
A sensible and cautious approach. However it isn't all doom and gloom. To encourage customers to use online banking the banks largely have indemnified users against loss due to unauthorized access. The details vary but you typically can get your money back because it is insured or guaranteed by the bank. Might cause a lot of inconvenience but it's doable. It's not really any more or less secure than accessing your bank through a web browser on a PC. Not to say you couldn't be hacked or have some problems but in practical terms it is a manageable problem in practice.
Frankly the soft target isn't your phone, it is your online user name and password. THAT is the point where most people fall down. Why bother breaking they crypto when you can just social engineer or guess your way into the account? Not to say you shouldn't be concerned about the strength of the crypto but it's not what keeps me up at night.
That said if you have an account with a lot of money in it, it isn't a bad idea to isolate that account from the web if practical. You really only need access to a relatively small amount of cash at any given time so why give online thieves an opportunity if you don't truly need online access to the account? I also think debit cards are the work of the devil. A credit card is fine and an ATM card is ok but debit cards are WAY too easy to abuse. If you have a credit card I cannot fathom why you would ever use a debit card.
The SEC exists to prevent corporations messing with their own share prices by cooking the books or insider trading.
The SECs mandate is quite a bit broader than that. It exists to enforce all securities laws and exchanges within the US. Insider trading and accounting are a piece of that but they do quite a bit more.
Obviously this doesn't apply to Bitcoin, since the intrinsic value of Bitcoins don't relate to the operation of an individual corporation.
There is no such thing as intrinsic value as it relates to currencies as they have no value independent of their market value. Furthermore the dollar doesn't relate to the operations of individual corporations either so I'm not really sure what your point is.
Additionally - Bitcoin is designed to be so independent that price fixing can't really occur - hence no need for the SEC.
If you really believe that then you and your money are likely to soon be parted. There are FAR more types of securities fraud that can occur than simple price fixing.
In Australia, only transactions in AU dollars are regulated by the government - most foreign exchange transactions are not regulated
I assure you that cannot possibly be true. If it were true then there would be HUGE incentives for everyone to deal in currencies other than AUD as they could escape all kinds of regulation.
This is a false equivalency. The US government is allowed to regulate it's own money - that is - the sovereign currency that it issues.
The government's powers to regulate currency and other financial instruments goes well beyond just the US dollar. This is WELL established in our laws. If it is a financial instrument used for interstate commerce (which bitcoin clearly is) within the US then the US government has the ability regulate it. Bitcoin is a currency and will be treated as such which means there are some rules to follow. Companies that want to build a business around bitcoin will find that there is a considerable amount of regulation surrounding currencies precisely because of all the previous attempts at corrupt behavior.
Bitcoins aren't defined or issued by the US government, so it has as much right to regulate Bitcoins as it has to regulate the Euro.
You'll find that you are quite incorrect on that assertion. The US government has a well established right to regulate the use of any financial instrument used within its borders. The fact that it isn't the dollar is irrelevant. The government can regulate ANY currency or other financial instrument used within its borders.
You might be naive to expect that nobody would ever read a postcard in transit, but realistically it's pretty unlikely - your card is one among tens of thousands, and these people have a job to do.
I think that was my point. It's quite unlikely anyone will care about what is written on a post card but you would never be dumb enough to presume no one would ever read it and you act accordingly. Email communications are VERY similar. The vast majority of the time no one cares what is in the email but it's quite easy for certain people to look if they care to do so. I suggest you behave accordingly. If you have something requiring more privacy then chose a different means of communication or take steps to encrypt your message.
The original intent of the framers of the constitution of the US most definitely would have included email and remote electronic document storage to be no different that the US Post or a safe deposit box.
Who gives a crap what the framers thought? These are the same guys who said all men are created equal WHILE OWNING SLAVES. They also intended for women to be unable to vote. That was CLEARLY their intent. If it was not they would have written a different document. Any argument that starts "the intent of the framers" is broken right from the start. You cannot possibly divine what the framers would have thought about email.
And when I make a phone call, I do have an expectation of privacy. Not an absolute guarantee, but an expectation.
Expectation of privacy has a VERY specific legal meaning and it has little to do with your (or my) subjective opinion about what should be private. Emails do not enjoy a strong expectation of privacy in the legal sense and you should behave accordingly. I remain convinced that to act otherwise is naive. That said I happen to agree with your argument that our representatives have failed us but let's not confuse the legal issue at hand with the moral one. The laws as written do not protect email communications to the degree that they should.
He took a *salary* of one dollar. He got paid far more than that. Huge difference. I'd happily take a salary of $1/year in exchange for 5 million shares of Apple stock and a private jet.
You have a folder named Music, you have subfolders named A, B, C, D,... How exactly does that not scale?
Depends on how much time you care to spend/waste organizing your music collection. I've done it that way in the past but it's modestly time consuming to set up and depending on what you are doing can be a pain to maintain. Personally I prefer to spend as little time on it as possible messing around with organizing my music and would rather have a database handle it even if the database is not perfect. It just isn't my thing. Itunes sucks in a number of ways but it is generally good enough for those like myself who just don't really care that much and would rather have some software handle the details.
Edison was a dick who took credit for work that his underlings did. Jobs is of the same cut.
CEOs like NFL quarterbacks always get too much credit when things go well and too much blame when they go badly. It's the nature of the position. Jobs didn't usually take personal credit for much of what happened while he was in charge. His speeches seldom revolved around his own contributions. Rather he got credit for it from outsiders whether he deserved it or not. Apple has a LOT of very talented people working there and while Steve Jobs clearly was a very effective CEO, he could not possibly have been responsible for everything that happened. Business is a team sport and even if you have a standout player they can't do it all on their own.
You write it up, it gets sent only to the addresses you specify, and there's no third party that gets a copy of the email (it's not like speaking in a room with a third party presence).
The closest physical analogy to sending an (unencrypted) email is sending a post card. Sure, it's intended for only one recipient but a bunch of people and/or organizations have to handle it along the way to get it there. Only someone who is quite naive would believe that none of the people in the delivery chain would ever read the post card. Most won't care but there is no reason to presume that the "privacy" of the message will be respected. Email in general has rather little in the way of privacy rights and until it does have such legal backing you should behave accordingly.
Don't get me wrong, I think the actions of the NSA are clearly illegal and a violation of our fourth amendment rights but I think people are pretty naive about just how private emails really are in practice. If you wouldn't send the information on a post card you probably shouldn't send it on an email either.
You really don't. They are pretty gross and really bad for you.
what I find pathetic is that they ceased production for a product in such high demand. whoever handled the bankruptcy fucked up.
The company didn't go through Chapter 11 bankruptcy where you keep operating and restructure the company. The company did a Chapter 7 where you liquidate the company. A Chapter 7 bankruptcy occurs when you no longer expect the company to have a reasonable expectation of remaining a going concern. When you do that you stop production because the company no longer exists and is being sold for the residual value of its assets. Someone bought the assets and started production again which is exactly what you might expect in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Peer to peer, no third party involved. Just some software on your machine and the recipients
If your proposed peer to peer software is aware on both ends of the public and private key (which it would have to be), effectively you would be trusting a third party for key distribution. Could be that I'm missing something but I don't see how peer to peer software solves that problem for you. I don't know how you ensure that both ends of the conversation are secure along with the tunnel between without already having exchanged keys in which case the peer to peer software is redundant.
The reason Enigmail works, cumbersome thought it can be to use, is because it requires no trusted third party for key distribution. (Key generation is another matter obviously) You generate the private key, get it to your recipient (probably by hand delivering it), and then use the public key to encrypt the message. Only the person with the private key (hopefully just the intended recipient) can decrypt the message. If you rely on a piece of software to get the private key to your recipient then you necessarily are trusting a third party for key distribution which seems to defeat the entire point of public/private key encryption unless you can somehow be sure you can trust the third party completely.
Like I said, I can see ways to make it convenient (like your proposed software) and I can see ways to make it secure but I so far haven't seen any practical way to accomplish both.
Slashdot Mirror
I hate to break it to you, but without Woz it is highly likely that nobody would even have heard of Jobs.
And without Jobs it's pretty unlikely most of us would have heard of Woz. It was a partnership and while it lasted a pretty remarkable one. Woz was a technical genius and Jobs was a sales/design genius. You need both to be successful, especially in a startup.
The difficult bit is really the engineering on a large project and developing all the parts and actually building the thing.
Nope. The most difficult bit is getting the right-of-ways. Presuming the design actually works (not a trivial presumption) the construction shouldn't be terribly hard once the financing and right-of-ways are obtained. But getting those right-of-ways is a hugely difficult problem and will account for much of the cost of such a project.
If they fire the employee who gave notice, that employee is probably eligible for unemployment benefits.
Sadly I've had to deal with the unemployment agencies as an employer. They RARELY care much whether the person quit voluntarily or not. The rules are that if they quit voluntarily they aren't eligible for unemployment benefits but it really doesn't work that way in practice. We've had people leave voluntarily with no notice, apply for unemployment and start working again somewhere else while still collecting unemployment. We had one employee do that and the only way we could get out of paying undeserved unemployment benefits was to offer to rehire her. (she did not respond thankfully)
Being a good person is something that will always be good for you.
Demonstrably not true. And giving two weeks notice or not giving two weeks notice does not determine whether you are a good person or not. There are circumstances where not giving any notice is perfectly appropriate and justified. The reverse is sometimes true as well. If someone is treating me badly then I am going to leave. It's MY life and I'm not going to waste it trying to martyr myself proving how much better I am than someone I don't respect.
Being an asshole because you can not see any immediate ramifications of your poor decision does not make it a good one.
Cute (though false) way to frame the issue but first you need to prove that not giving two weeks notice somehow will prove to be a "poor decision". It might but since none of us can see the future with perfect clarity you're going to have a pretty hard case to make. Furthermore you'll have to prove how quitting immediately makes someone an "asshole". They might be one but that typically is established LONG before they leave their job.
Why would that require burning bridges though?
If someone has invested a lot in training you and you jump ship to go somewhere else that could result in some burned bridges. I've seen it happen more than a few times. I've seen sales people jump ship and take customers with them when they get a better deal. That rarely results in fond feelings.
If I'm the hiring person and you don't give your current employer notice then I'll assume that you are a snake and will do the same to me later, regardless of whether I would need knowledge transition at that point.
You SHOULD assume that any employee might not give you notice. Sometimes employees aren't able to give you notice because they fall ill. Sometimes they get an opportunity and have to act on it immediately. Sometimes things just don't work out between the company and the employee. Plan accordingly. I run a small manufacturing company and I assure you that two weeks notice makes little practical difference. It's certainly not enough to find and train an adequate replacement and if you cannot gracefully transition that person's work then management screwed up bad. In my case that means *I* screwed up since I'm the boss.
The two weeks notice thing is nice and courteous but if someone is leaving without prior notice the first place you should look if you want to know why is in the mirror. I've walked out of jobs without any notice and I assure you that it was because of the unprofessional behavior of those I worked for. It doesn't necessarily mean they are a "snake" but what it does mean is that you have a poor understanding of what at-will employment really means.
How sure are you that you won't ever want the old job as a reference? I've been surprised at how well some older references have worked for me.
I've been in the workforce for about 25 years now. A good reference is NEVER a company. It is a person you know. It is impossible for a company to have a personal relationship with you or to know you. It is always a close colleague or someone I had a good personal relationship with who provided the references. Whether I gave two weeks notice or not has never once been a factor.
Like when you are saying "fuck you guys" as you are walking out the door and don't expect any references from them ever. Not recommended, but sometimes cathartic. Would be considered "non professional"
If I'm at the point where I'm walking out the door flipping the proverbial bird to the people behind me then the "non professional" behavior has already been done by someone other than myself. I walked out like that once when I was accused of something I didn't do for a job that paid $2.25 an hour (less than half minimum wage at the time) by some idiot manager. The non professional behavior wasn't me walking out but it was what caused me to walk out.
No notice is probably the biggest middle finger you can give a company and still remain within the bounds of the law.
I assure you it is not. There are much worse things you can do without breaking a single law. Doesn't make doing them a good idea but no notice is really barely better than 2 weeks notice. Businesses should assume people won't necessarily show up the next day because sometimes accidents happen. I've had employees suddenly get very ill and from the perspective of the operations of business that is really no different. If a company is really screwed by one person not showing up then management did a terrible job of organizing the workload and sharing important information and that is the fault of the company.
I think if you don't give notice then it raises red flags for your new employer.
If you already have a new employer then why would it raise flags? They've already hired you and (probably) have no idea what sort of circumstances you plan to leave your old employer under unless you have informed them and that would be pretty dumb to do.
But industries are so small that why would you want to burn bridges?
Sometimes bridges are worth burning. Not a good idea as a general practice I'll concur but if someone came to me and said I'll triple your salary, you'll work with nice people and you get to work 20 hours a week I'd consider burning a few bridges for that. I've also had the "pleasure" of working for a few real douchebags and those are bridges I wouldn't mind burning either.
As an employer, we don't give references for people who don't give two weeks' notice.
Big deal. Most HR pros will advise you not to say anything more than confirming that the person did work there and for how long and possibly in what sort of general capacity they were employed. Giving a performance review is generally considered a bad idea as it provides no benefit to the former employer but can result in lawsuits if they say the wrong thing. You can of course make exceptions if you like but mostly by not giving references you are just being petty.
It's just common courtesy.
So do you give them two weeks notice when you terminate their employment? That would be quite courteous. Or does the courtesy only get extended if it favors you?
I've never heard of a company giving a two-week notice to an employee that's being laid off or fired.
I've seen it happen from time to time. Happened to my brother in law actually - he got several weeks notice and severance. Unusual I'll admit but not unheard of. The problem for companies giving notice to someone is that some people don't take it very well and cause problems. I had an employee quite just a few days ago and quietly sabotaged a bunch of stuff as a parting "gift". (nothing really destructive, just time consuming to undo) Most people would be sad to be given notice but would behave like adults. The problem is you can't tell who the ones are who will take it REALLY badly are ahead of time.
Once you're reached the point where you know it's time to leave, under what circumstances would you just up and walk out or give only a short notice?"
If you are leaving because you can't stand the place and there are no contractual or financial constraints on your behavior then just leave and get on with your life
There are only two reasons to give two weeks notice. 1) You are leaving under amicable terms, have the time to spare and out of courtesy want to ease the transition for your former employer OR 2) You need the cash and can't afford to walk out now. Two weeks is almost never enough time to really be of any meaningful benefit to an employer and many employers will escort you out of the building the moment you put in notice anyway. Unless you had a really close and long relationship with your boss/colleagues then you probably aren't going to be asking for a reference in the future anyway so what is to be gained by giving notice? Maybe it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside but the feeling isn't going to be reciprocated in many cases. The business will continue without you and in most cases you giving notice just gives both parties a couple of uncomfortable weeks together.
I don't trust the makers to competently build in security, and I believe that once everyone knows your cell phone is likely to be tied to your bank account, it's a soft target.
A sensible and cautious approach. However it isn't all doom and gloom. To encourage customers to use online banking the banks largely have indemnified users against loss due to unauthorized access. The details vary but you typically can get your money back because it is insured or guaranteed by the bank. Might cause a lot of inconvenience but it's doable. It's not really any more or less secure than accessing your bank through a web browser on a PC. Not to say you couldn't be hacked or have some problems but in practical terms it is a manageable problem in practice.
Frankly the soft target isn't your phone, it is your online user name and password. THAT is the point where most people fall down. Why bother breaking they crypto when you can just social engineer or guess your way into the account? Not to say you shouldn't be concerned about the strength of the crypto but it's not what keeps me up at night.
That said if you have an account with a lot of money in it, it isn't a bad idea to isolate that account from the web if practical. You really only need access to a relatively small amount of cash at any given time so why give online thieves an opportunity if you don't truly need online access to the account? I also think debit cards are the work of the devil. A credit card is fine and an ATM card is ok but debit cards are WAY too easy to abuse. If you have a credit card I cannot fathom why you would ever use a debit card.
The SEC exists to prevent corporations messing with their own share prices by cooking the books or insider trading.
The SECs mandate is quite a bit broader than that. It exists to enforce all securities laws and exchanges within the US. Insider trading and accounting are a piece of that but they do quite a bit more.
Obviously this doesn't apply to Bitcoin, since the intrinsic value of Bitcoins don't relate to the operation of an individual corporation.
There is no such thing as intrinsic value as it relates to currencies as they have no value independent of their market value. Furthermore the dollar doesn't relate to the operations of individual corporations either so I'm not really sure what your point is.
Additionally - Bitcoin is designed to be so independent that price fixing can't really occur - hence no need for the SEC.
If you really believe that then you and your money are likely to soon be parted. There are FAR more types of securities fraud that can occur than simple price fixing.
In Australia, only transactions in AU dollars are regulated by the government - most foreign exchange transactions are not regulated
I assure you that cannot possibly be true. If it were true then there would be HUGE incentives for everyone to deal in currencies other than AUD as they could escape all kinds of regulation.
This is a false equivalency. The US government is allowed to regulate it's own money - that is - the sovereign currency that it issues.
The government's powers to regulate currency and other financial instruments goes well beyond just the US dollar. This is WELL established in our laws. If it is a financial instrument used for interstate commerce (which bitcoin clearly is) within the US then the US government has the ability regulate it. Bitcoin is a currency and will be treated as such which means there are some rules to follow. Companies that want to build a business around bitcoin will find that there is a considerable amount of regulation surrounding currencies precisely because of all the previous attempts at corrupt behavior.
Bitcoins aren't defined or issued by the US government, so it has as much right to regulate Bitcoins as it has to regulate the Euro.
You'll find that you are quite incorrect on that assertion. The US government has a well established right to regulate the use of any financial instrument used within its borders. The fact that it isn't the dollar is irrelevant. The government can regulate ANY currency or other financial instrument used within its borders.
Is There a Good Device Holster?
You mean a purse? Calling it a "holster" does not make it more manly as it is not a handgun.
Oh and the answer is probably no. I refer you to Betteridge's Law of Headlines.
You might be naive to expect that nobody would ever read a postcard in transit, but realistically it's pretty unlikely - your card is one among tens of thousands, and these people have a job to do.
I think that was my point. It's quite unlikely anyone will care about what is written on a post card but you would never be dumb enough to presume no one would ever read it and you act accordingly. Email communications are VERY similar. The vast majority of the time no one cares what is in the email but it's quite easy for certain people to look if they care to do so. I suggest you behave accordingly. If you have something requiring more privacy then chose a different means of communication or take steps to encrypt your message.
The original intent of the framers of the constitution of the US most definitely would have included email and remote electronic document storage to be no different that the US Post or a safe deposit box.
Who gives a crap what the framers thought? These are the same guys who said all men are created equal WHILE OWNING SLAVES. They also intended for women to be unable to vote. That was CLEARLY their intent. If it was not they would have written a different document. Any argument that starts "the intent of the framers" is broken right from the start. You cannot possibly divine what the framers would have thought about email.
And when I make a phone call, I do have an expectation of privacy. Not an absolute guarantee, but an expectation.
Expectation of privacy has a VERY specific legal meaning and it has little to do with your (or my) subjective opinion about what should be private. Emails do not enjoy a strong expectation of privacy in the legal sense and you should behave accordingly. I remain convinced that to act otherwise is naive. That said I happen to agree with your argument that our representatives have failed us but let's not confuse the legal issue at hand with the moral one. The laws as written do not protect email communications to the degree that they should.
Jobs got one dollar per year.
He took a *salary* of one dollar. He got paid far more than that. Huge difference. I'd happily take a salary of $1/year in exchange for 5 million shares of Apple stock and a private jet.
You have a folder named Music, you have subfolders named A, B, C, D, ... How exactly does that not scale?
Depends on how much time you care to spend/waste organizing your music collection. I've done it that way in the past but it's modestly time consuming to set up and depending on what you are doing can be a pain to maintain. Personally I prefer to spend as little time on it as possible messing around with organizing my music and would rather have a database handle it even if the database is not perfect. It just isn't my thing. Itunes sucks in a number of ways but it is generally good enough for those like myself who just don't really care that much and would rather have some software handle the details.
Edison was a dick who took credit for work that his underlings did. Jobs is of the same cut.
CEOs like NFL quarterbacks always get too much credit when things go well and too much blame when they go badly. It's the nature of the position. Jobs didn't usually take personal credit for much of what happened while he was in charge. His speeches seldom revolved around his own contributions. Rather he got credit for it from outsiders whether he deserved it or not. Apple has a LOT of very talented people working there and while Steve Jobs clearly was a very effective CEO, he could not possibly have been responsible for everything that happened. Business is a team sport and even if you have a standout player they can't do it all on their own.
You write it up, it gets sent only to the addresses you specify, and there's no third party that gets a copy of the email (it's not like speaking in a room with a third party presence).
The closest physical analogy to sending an (unencrypted) email is sending a post card. Sure, it's intended for only one recipient but a bunch of people and/or organizations have to handle it along the way to get it there. Only someone who is quite naive would believe that none of the people in the delivery chain would ever read the post card. Most won't care but there is no reason to presume that the "privacy" of the message will be respected. Email in general has rather little in the way of privacy rights and until it does have such legal backing you should behave accordingly.
Don't get me wrong, I think the actions of the NSA are clearly illegal and a violation of our fourth amendment rights but I think people are pretty naive about just how private emails really are in practice. If you wouldn't send the information on a post card you probably shouldn't send it on an email either.
I've never had a twinkie. I want to try
You really don't. They are pretty gross and really bad for you.
what I find pathetic is that they ceased production for a product in such high demand. whoever handled the bankruptcy fucked up.
The company didn't go through Chapter 11 bankruptcy where you keep operating and restructure the company. The company did a Chapter 7 where you liquidate the company. A Chapter 7 bankruptcy occurs when you no longer expect the company to have a reasonable expectation of remaining a going concern. When you do that you stop production because the company no longer exists and is being sold for the residual value of its assets. Someone bought the assets and started production again which is exactly what you might expect in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Peer to peer, no third party involved. Just some software on your machine and the recipients
If your proposed peer to peer software is aware on both ends of the public and private key (which it would have to be), effectively you would be trusting a third party for key distribution. Could be that I'm missing something but I don't see how peer to peer software solves that problem for you. I don't know how you ensure that both ends of the conversation are secure along with the tunnel between without already having exchanged keys in which case the peer to peer software is redundant.
The reason Enigmail works, cumbersome thought it can be to use, is because it requires no trusted third party for key distribution. (Key generation is another matter obviously) You generate the private key, get it to your recipient (probably by hand delivering it), and then use the public key to encrypt the message. Only the person with the private key (hopefully just the intended recipient) can decrypt the message. If you rely on a piece of software to get the private key to your recipient then you necessarily are trusting a third party for key distribution which seems to defeat the entire point of public/private key encryption unless you can somehow be sure you can trust the third party completely.
Like I said, I can see ways to make it convenient (like your proposed software) and I can see ways to make it secure but I so far haven't seen any practical way to accomplish both.