I guess if you are in middle- or high-school, this could be a nice service for storing your homework and such. But if you are a business, or your files need to stay confidential for some other reason? I don't think Google Drive can be trusted with that kind of material.
If you are a business, Google probably expects you to use Drive through Google Apps which has a different set of assurances and terms of services (even in the free version.)
Does this mean you also can't store on your G-drive anything you don't have permission to reproduce.
Given that putting a file on Google Drive -- or any similar cloud-based storage system -- involves taking a file for which you have a local copy and reproducing it remotely (potentially multiple times), that should be fairly obvious.
For example, if I am reviewing a manuscript an I place it on my Gdrive then I've given permission to Google to reproduce it.
Well, yeah. Its pretty hard for them to store it in their redundant storage systems, and make it available for you to use on multiple devices, without reproducing it.
Yet I don't have that permission to grant.
If you don't have the right to have a third-party agent make multiple copies of something on your behalf, you probably shouldn't be directing them to do so. The problem is not the fact that their Terms of Service explicitly call out that you need to give them permission for the things that they need to do to implement your requests when you use the service.
actually, the House and Senate can pass different versions of a bill
Not if it is going to be become law.
but then it goes to a conference committee.
A conference committee is an entity to which a bill is referred in order that a single bill to be passed by identically by the House and Senate can be crafted. The bill that actually becomes law has to be passed identically by both Houses.
You have a simple law, and thousands of court cases modifying that law, with no means to reference the modifying court cases in the law itself, so it's impossible to "know" the law.
Both statute laws and court cases that form binding precedent (as well as some that don't) are published. As are products that link from one to the other. Its not impossible to trace them, but it does take work, but you don't have to do all of it yourself, as there are organizations that expend considerable resources doing this, and will, for a fee, let you have access to their work product.
With a suitable structure, you could try to crowsdsource this work, but I suspect you'd find that the universe of people with both the skills and willingness to be objective needed to do it well and the universe of people with the motivation to do it for free have less overlap than you might want.
What if you are not connected to the internet constantly? does this make your device worthless? How does one work 'offline'?
You use the locally-cached version of the files. That's what "your local drive is also Google Drive" means. It means that, just as with the Google Drive app for MacOS or Windows, your Google Drive has a local copy.
For apps, you use Chrome's app installation features to make offline-available web apps. So, both your files and the apps you use to work with them are available locally when disconnected, and synced with the cloud when a connection is available.
We should be clear about the problem. All this information actually is publicly available
This much is true.
We should be clear about the problem. All this information actually is publicly available: the US Code is versioned by codification year (a new version is codified every six years with interim supplements), and you can find out who voted for or introduced what (including amendments) in the Congressional record. The Code of Federal regulations and the Federal Register serve an analogous function for agency regulations.
So the problem is not the availability of the information. It is all publicly available from multiple government sources on the internet
Except when it isn't. With respect to federal statutes, for instance, the US Code, as you note, is widely available, but it is not the complete body of US statute law. It is the output of the subset of the statute law that happens to be phrased as insertions, updates, moves, and deletions to the US Code.
The actual thing you are looking for is the Statutes at Large, which "is not available in electronic format" but only "from the Superintendent of Documents, or at any Federal Depository Library."
Want to hack law ? Then start by by putting the entire code of law in an SVN-like system. Including proposed laws. With traceability of authors, who voted for them, etc... And an associated wiki for comments. And a complete list of cases that used them. This would be invaluable.
You probably need to start first with 100% codification of statute law, which no jurisdiction in the US that I am aware of has (certainly, the federal government does not), and establishing a fundamental (e.g., Constitutional) requirement that all future proposals for legal change include complete codification of all operational provisions.
Otherwise, uncodified law becomes a convenient route for evading the whole structure you set up.
I trust Google to be around for a while, but not necessarily any of their services beyond Search, Gmail, Youtube, and (to a smaller extent) Docs.
Well, that seems to cover the immediate issue, since "Drive" is just a new name for the heart of Docs (what used to be the Docs web UI is now called "Drive" and looks pretty much exactly the same except for the branding, the Drive web UI is the place on the web where you access the files that used to be part of Docs, and where you invoke web applications to create or edit them -- including the Docs apps, though with the rename also came a new SDK which allows third-party apps to be installed and be invoked through the same UI.)
what's in it for them? why would this all be free forever?
Because it (via the SDK) gives people an incentive to store more files in Google's cloud storage, and turns what used to be the Google Docs web interface (now renamed as the Google Drive web interface) into a virtual desktop on which web applications -- sold through the Google Chrome Web Store -- can be used from any browser to access the stored files. By increasing the attractiveness of the Chrome Web Store to application developers (because it provides a user base besides Chrome browser and Chrome OS users to target), it makes Google more money as a middleman in app sales.
Google is offering a folder that syncs, at a lower price on an ID management platform many people already use. Seems likely to work.
More than that, its an enhancement to an existing cloud storage system that many people already use: "Google Drive" is just a rollout of new features and tools for Google Docs.
And, really, the Dropbox-like desktop app (while its what is getting lots of attention, perhaps because people have been looking for a "Google Drive" -- and hacking together their own since Google's only public cloud storage was GMail! -- for quite some time) isn't the only big feature of Drive. The perhaps bigger feature, I think, is the SDK and integration of third-party web apps into the open/create functions on the Drive (formerly Docs) web interface on an equal footing to the Docs editors, which basically turns the Drive web UI into a "desktop" for web apps, where the Chrome Web Store is the app market.
Note: This is Motorola Mobility, which ultimately means Google.
Except that it doesn't. Google will inherit anything Motorola Mobility gets out of this if China approves the acquisition, but until then Google doesn't have management control over Motorola Mobility.
Re:What are the prospects for a 3rd-party FUSE cli
on
Google Drive Goes Live
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· Score: 2
Does anyone know if there's something in the Google Drive API that forbids (or tries to forbid) usage by anything other than an Officially Approved® Google Client?
Not really. The closest thing is that apps have no access to a user's Google Drive unless the user has installed the app through the Chrome Web Store. And given the way Google uses OAuth, if you want to have an app that access the Drive API without an immediate web interface that the user is logged into, you'll need them to approve (via the web) a special "offline" token for your app, as well as installing it through the Chrome Web Store. But there doesn't seem anything that prevents a third-party desktop app so long as it jumps through the right hoops.
Or do you think it's likely that Google will eventually provide their own FUSE client for Google Drive (like they did for Google Docs with "google-docs-fs")?
AFAIK, google-docs-fs was not provided by Google, it was provided by a third-party developer who happened to host the project on Google Code.
I think the OP had a legitimate gripe. Not everyone wants to run a local executable from a company that has demonstrated a lot of interest in prying into your privacy.
Then, well, don't. You can use Drive without using the desktop client app, though you lose some of the new functionality Drive has over the old Google Docs cloud storage (which it replaces.)
Google could easily have provided a client built upon an open api and won a lot of favor.
Drive has a published API. I don't see any evidence that anyone has demonstrated that the Google Drive desktop app doesn't use it. So, I'm not at all convinced that the knee jerk reactions wouldn't be the same no matter what they did.
If you mean "the various Google editors for documents, spreadsheets, drawings, and presentation that were and still are called 'Google Docs'", you don't have to use those with Drive either, though they are available (and the SDK allows third-party web apps to supplement them for creating or editing files online, and even to replace them as the default editors for various file types.)
I thought that's what Google Docs is.
Now that the rest of what was Google Docs before today has been renamed "Drive", that is what Google Docs is. The cloud storage and web-based file list UI that are now part of what is called "Google Drive" used to also be part of "Google Docs". You can use the Drive part without using the Docs part (essentially, the Docs part is a set of apps that handle create/open actions from within Drive, and which can now be supplemented with third-party apps that can do the same thing.)
Regardless, how do I use it outside of the above definition?
1. The same way you could use the cloud storage part of Google Docs without using the online editors part that is still "Google Docs" before the cloud storage was renamed Drive -- upload via the Drive (ex-Docs) web UI, share via the Drive web UI, and download via the Drive web UI. None of that requires the online editors.
2. Using the new desktop applications, which provide a synchronized local copy of the files stored in your Drive (ex-Docs) cloud storage.
3. Using third party web apps installed through the Chrome Web Store using the new Drive SDK which can manipulate files stored in your drive cloud storage, including the ability to handle create/open actions initiated through the web UI.
You don't have to use the "Google Docs" (even if, by that, you mean the Google Drive web UI which used to be the Google Docs file list web UI) with Drive either.
I can just drag and drop files to the share in Finder.
And you can drag-and-drop files to Google Drive when you have the MacOS or Windows desktop app installed, too.
I don't want to use Google Docs!
I'm not sure what you mean by "Google Docs" here.
If you mean "the cloud storage space for any kind of file that used to be part of Google Docs", well, since that's what Drive's storage is, that's kind of a deal breaker (if a circular argument) with Drive.
If you mean "the Google Drive web UI, which used to be the Google Docs file list web UI", you don't have to use those with Drive, though it is available.
If you mean "the various Google editors for documents, spreadsheets, drawings, and presentation that were and still are called 'Google Docs'", you don't have to use those with Drive either, though they are available (and the SDK allows third-party web apps to supplement them for creating or editing files online, and even to replace them as the default editors for various file types.)
This is true in the sense that Google Docs could already store any kind of file and what Google did with drive was: 1. Rename Google Docs to "Drive" 2. Expand the free storage quota 3. Provide desktop and mobile apps and SDK
Its false in the sense that you can store files that Google Docs can't edit (and, you can use the web interface to edit files that Docs can't edit itself, since the Drive SDK allows Drive apps installed through the Chrome Web Store to register associations with file types so that "open with [app]" is available from the Drive UI (and the user can chose to set an app as the default editor for a particular file type, as well.)
I tried signing up with my regular gmail account and it wouldn't let me.
I had no problem logging in with my non-apps account. In fact, if I'm logged in and navigate to docs.google.com, I actually get the Drive web UI (which is virtually identical to what the Docs UI was before Drive was introduced.)
Plus, I thought you could store your Docs files online before?
Google Docs included both a number of file editor applications and universal (any file) cloud storage. Drive is basically an enhancement to the cloud storage part (which is now renamed) to expand the free quota, provide desktop apps which provide desktop integration, providing an SDK, etc,
I don't see how it's different, except being much less useful than its competitors.
How is it "much less useful than its competitors"?
Meh. narcotics wouldn't be such a problem if the USA finally accepted (once again) that drug prohibition/criminalization doesn't work. Education and treatment do.
I've yet to see any evidence that education does, on either addiction per se or drug use more generally (the studies I've seen of particular popular anti-drug education efforts have shown no measurable anti-drug effect, most notably, the incredibly visible Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program has been studied and found to have no detectable impact on drug attitudes or drug use patterns, but a very strong positive impact on attitudes toward law enforcement. Strangely, its still marketed to parents and voters as a public anti-drug program rather than a public pro-law-enforcement program.
We only have to worry about narcotics and terrorists if we import them. It takes two.
This is clearly true for narcotics (which is, though often brutally so, mostly a rational business.) It less so for terrorists (which notably are not.)
We're trying harder and harder to import terrorists all the time by shitting on other countries, that's our foreign policy
I would argue that development efforts like those conducted by USAID are exactly the opposite -- they are directed at both the supply side of terrorism (by giving people in developing countries something productive to do) and at the demand side (by doing the opposite of what you describe as "trying harder and harder to import terrorism".)
It's called getting up and walking in the direction away from the volcano. Don't need a car, all you need is a great pair of legs. It's not brains, it common sense.
Well, you have one of the largest cities in the world, and its completely surrounded by mountains. Given the past history from the volcano, trying a mass evacuation on foot would probably kill more people than the likely number that would be killed by not evacuating (noting that you need to weight the number that would be killed in a more-significant eruption by the probability of such an eruption actually occurring.)
Tell me exactly why it is our responsibility to find ways to assist developing regions.
Because when they fail at developing in a way that produces legitimate exports, they instead develop in a way that produces, for instance, narcotics and terrorists as their exports.
Which, humanitarian concerns aside, also has adverse effects on the US economy.
Certainly newer programmers are more likely to have some experience in current technology and not have ingrained habits based on excessive speculation in now-outdated technologies. And its a lot easier at a glance at a resume to measure "newer programmer" than to measure flexibility and adaptability.
So, there's probably lots of not-great programmers that are going to be useful shortly after they get out of school, get more useful as they get used to actually working in industry and get to know approaches that are useful with the way industry is at the time, but then will reach a point where their approaches are set in stone, and they adapt poorly to new technologies.
The really good programmers will keep getting better as long as they are working -- barring failing mental faculties from disease or injury -- but they're a minority of programmers to start with, and identifying them takes evaluation on more than "years of experience" and other similarly simplistic metrics -- which most of the people evaluating prospective programmers probably aren't competent to do.
So, if you are a really good programmer, you probably need to identify some other really good programmers (and other good people in whatever fields you need) and get out, with them, from under the thumb of less-good management before too long in industry.
Slashdot Mirror
If you are a business, Google probably expects you to use Drive through Google Apps which has a different set of assurances and terms of services (even in the free version.)
Given that putting a file on Google Drive -- or any similar cloud-based storage system -- involves taking a file for which you have a local copy and reproducing it remotely (potentially multiple times), that should be fairly obvious.
Well, yeah. Its pretty hard for them to store it in their redundant storage systems, and make it available for you to use on multiple devices, without reproducing it.
If you don't have the right to have a third-party agent make multiple copies of something on your behalf, you probably shouldn't be directing them to do so. The problem is not the fact that their Terms of Service explicitly call out that you need to give them permission for the things that they need to do to implement your requests when you use the service.
Not if it is going to be become law.
A conference committee is an entity to which a bill is referred in order that a single bill to be passed by identically by the House and Senate can be crafted. The bill that actually becomes law has to be passed identically by both Houses.
Both statute laws and court cases that form binding precedent (as well as some that don't) are published. As are products that link from one to the other. Its not impossible to trace them, but it does take work, but you don't have to do all of it yourself, as there are organizations that expend considerable resources doing this, and will, for a fee, let you have access to their work product.
With a suitable structure, you could try to crowsdsource this work, but I suspect you'd find that the universe of people with both the skills and willingness to be objective needed to do it well and the universe of people with the motivation to do it for free have less overlap than you might want.
You use the locally-cached version of the files. That's what "your local drive is also Google Drive" means. It means that, just as with the Google Drive app for MacOS or Windows, your Google Drive has a local copy.
For apps, you use Chrome's app installation features to make offline-available web apps. So, both your files and the apps you use to work with them are available locally when disconnected, and synced with the cloud when a connection is available.
This much is true.
Except when it isn't. With respect to federal statutes, for instance, the US Code, as you note, is widely available, but it is not the complete body of US statute law. It is the output of the subset of the statute law that happens to be phrased as insertions, updates, moves, and deletions to the US Code.
The actual thing you are looking for is the Statutes at Large, which "is not available in electronic format" but only "from the Superintendent of Documents, or at any Federal Depository Library."
You probably need to start first with 100% codification of statute law, which no jurisdiction in the US that I am aware of has (certainly, the federal government does not), and establishing a fundamental (e.g., Constitutional) requirement that all future proposals for legal change include complete codification of all operational provisions.
Otherwise, uncodified law becomes a convenient route for evading the whole structure you set up.
Well, that seems to cover the immediate issue, since "Drive" is just a new name for the heart of Docs (what used to be the Docs web UI is now called "Drive" and looks pretty much exactly the same except for the branding, the Drive web UI is the place on the web where you access the files that used to be part of Docs, and where you invoke web applications to create or edit them -- including the Docs apps, though with the rename also came a new SDK which allows third-party apps to be installed and be invoked through the same UI.)
That's what the desktop app provides, yes.
Because it (via the SDK) gives people an incentive to store more files in Google's cloud storage, and turns what used to be the Google Docs web interface (now renamed as the Google Drive web interface) into a virtual desktop on which web applications -- sold through the Google Chrome Web Store -- can be used from any browser to access the stored files. By increasing the attractiveness of the Chrome Web Store to application developers (because it provides a user base besides Chrome browser and Chrome OS users to target), it makes Google more money as a middleman in app sales.
So does Google Drive. https://developers.google.com/drive/v1/reference/
More than that, its an enhancement to an existing cloud storage system that many people already use: "Google Drive" is just a rollout of new features and tools for Google Docs.
And, really, the Dropbox-like desktop app (while its what is getting lots of attention, perhaps because people have been looking for a "Google Drive" -- and hacking together their own since Google's only public cloud storage was GMail! -- for quite some time) isn't the only big feature of Drive. The perhaps bigger feature, I think, is the SDK and integration of third-party web apps into the open/create functions on the Drive (formerly Docs) web interface on an equal footing to the Docs editors, which basically turns the Drive web UI into a "desktop" for web apps, where the Chrome Web Store is the app market.
No, because Google doesn't own Motorola Mobility yet (and may never own it) since the Chinese government still hasn't approved the purchase.
Yes, if Google is allowed to buy Motorola Mobility, it will take ownership, but that hasn't happened yet, and might not ever happen.
Except that it doesn't. Google will inherit anything Motorola Mobility gets out of this if China approves the acquisition, but until then Google doesn't have management control over Motorola Mobility.
Not really. The closest thing is that apps have no access to a user's Google Drive unless the user has installed the app through the Chrome Web Store. And given the way Google uses OAuth, if you want to have an app that access the Drive API without an immediate web interface that the user is logged into, you'll need them to approve (via the web) a special "offline" token for your app, as well as installing it through the Chrome Web Store. But there doesn't seem anything that prevents a third-party desktop app so long as it jumps through the right hoops.
AFAIK, google-docs-fs was not provided by Google, it was provided by a third-party developer who happened to host the project on Google Code.
Then, well, don't. You can use Drive without using the desktop client app, though you lose some of the new functionality Drive has over the old Google Docs cloud storage (which it replaces.)
Drive has a published API. I don't see any evidence that anyone has demonstrated that the Google Drive desktop app doesn't use it. So, I'm not at all convinced that the knee jerk reactions wouldn't be the same no matter what they did.
Now that the rest of what was Google Docs before today has been renamed "Drive", that is what Google Docs is. The cloud storage and web-based file list UI that are now part of what is called "Google Drive" used to also be part of "Google Docs". You can use the Drive part without using the Docs part (essentially, the Docs part is a set of apps that handle create/open actions from within Drive, and which can now be supplemented with third-party apps that can do the same thing.)
1. The same way you could use the cloud storage part of Google Docs without using the online editors part that is still "Google Docs" before the cloud storage was renamed Drive -- upload via the Drive (ex-Docs) web UI, share via the Drive web UI, and download via the Drive web UI. None of that requires the online editors.
2. Using the new desktop applications, which provide a synchronized local copy of the files stored in your Drive (ex-Docs) cloud storage.
3. Using third party web apps installed through the Chrome Web Store using the new Drive SDK which can manipulate files stored in your drive cloud storage, including the ability to handle create/open actions initiated through the web UI.
CNETs How to get started with Google Drive
Google Drive SDK docs
You don't have to use the "Google Docs" (even if, by that, you mean the Google Drive web UI which used to be the Google Docs file list web UI) with Drive either.
And you can drag-and-drop files to Google Drive when you have the MacOS or Windows desktop app installed, too.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Google Docs" here.
If you mean "the cloud storage space for any kind of file that used to be part of Google Docs", well, since that's what Drive's storage is, that's kind of a deal breaker (if a circular argument) with Drive.
If you mean "the Google Drive web UI, which used to be the Google Docs file list web UI", you don't have to use those with Drive, though it is available.
If you mean "the various Google editors for documents, spreadsheets, drawings, and presentation that were and still are called 'Google Docs'", you don't have to use those with Drive either, though they are available (and the SDK allows third-party web apps to supplement them for creating or editing files online, and even to replace them as the default editors for various file types.)
No, it doesn't. Though Google, assuming most users want a desktop client rather than just an API, does provide a client.
The API is here. Its a dirt simple RESTful HTTP API with four operations.
Feel free to build your own client if you don't like Google's.
This is true in the sense that Google Docs could already store any kind of file and what Google did with drive was:
1. Rename Google Docs to "Drive"
2. Expand the free storage quota
3. Provide desktop and mobile apps and SDK
Its false in the sense that you can store files that Google Docs can't edit (and, you can use the web interface to edit files that Docs can't edit itself, since the Drive SDK allows Drive apps installed through the Chrome Web Store to register associations with file types so that "open with [app]" is available from the Drive UI (and the user can chose to set an app as the default editor for a particular file type, as well.)
I had no problem logging in with my non-apps account. In fact, if I'm logged in and navigate to docs.google.com, I actually get the Drive web UI (which is virtually identical to what the Docs UI was before Drive was introduced.)
Google Docs included both a number of file editor applications and universal (any file) cloud storage. Drive is basically an enhancement to the cloud storage part (which is now renamed) to expand the free quota, provide desktop apps which provide desktop integration, providing an SDK, etc,
How is it "much less useful than its competitors"?
I've yet to see any evidence that education does, on either addiction per se or drug use more generally (the studies I've seen of particular popular anti-drug education efforts have shown no measurable anti-drug effect, most notably, the incredibly visible Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program has been studied and found to have no detectable impact on drug attitudes or drug use patterns, but a very strong positive impact on attitudes toward law enforcement. Strangely, its still marketed to parents and voters as a public anti-drug program rather than a public pro-law-enforcement program.
This is clearly true for narcotics (which is, though often brutally so, mostly a rational business.) It less so for terrorists (which notably are not.)
I would argue that development efforts like those conducted by USAID are exactly the opposite -- they are directed at both the supply side of terrorism (by giving people in developing countries something productive to do) and at the demand side (by doing the opposite of what you describe as "trying harder and harder to import terrorism".)
Well, you have one of the largest cities in the world, and its completely surrounded by mountains. Given the past history from the volcano, trying a mass evacuation on foot would probably kill more people than the likely number that would be killed by not evacuating (noting that you need to weight the number that would be killed in a more-significant eruption by the probability of such an eruption actually occurring.)
Because when they fail at developing in a way that produces legitimate exports, they instead develop in a way that produces, for instance, narcotics and terrorists as their exports.
Which, humanitarian concerns aside, also has adverse effects on the US economy.
Certainly newer programmers are more likely to have some experience in current technology and not have ingrained habits based on excessive speculation in now-outdated technologies. And its a lot easier at a glance at a resume to measure "newer programmer" than to measure flexibility and adaptability.
So, there's probably lots of not-great programmers that are going to be useful shortly after they get out of school, get more useful as they get used to actually working in industry and get to know approaches that are useful with the way industry is at the time, but then will reach a point where their approaches are set in stone, and they adapt poorly to new technologies.
The really good programmers will keep getting better as long as they are working -- barring failing mental faculties from disease or injury -- but they're a minority of programmers to start with, and identifying them takes evaluation on more than "years of experience" and other similarly simplistic metrics -- which most of the people evaluating prospective programmers probably aren't competent to do.
So, if you are a really good programmer, you probably need to identify some other really good programmers (and other good people in whatever fields you need) and get out, with them, from under the thumb of less-good management before too long in industry.