In other words, "if we think you could sue us and set a precedent, we will give you your money back. But if you're poor, we won't respond to your phone calls."

Google is trying this with their YoutTube Red, which removes all advertising from YouTube.

I believe it is actually kore profitable than advertising. With ads, an average person is worth between $0.01 and $1 a month (depending on what type of ads), much less than the $9 for YouTube Red.

Hello sir, we're performing an investigation. We accept cash, check, and credit card. Just hand us your wallet, sign here, and then realize you can't afford to hire a lawyer because we took all your money.

This happens, or something very similar. There have been multiple cases where someone faces charges and the government freezes all their bank accounts, preventing them from being able to hire a good attorney to defend themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/us/justices-weigh-freezing...

BECAUSE THIS IS GREAT.

Hey that's fine, no need for a warrant. You just have to let the judge know that you think that person is a terrorist. And also what reasons led you to think they're a terrorist. Oh, and also what it is you're looking for, and why you think you'll find it.

So... basically a warrant.

Keep in mind that many judges are elected (even when they run unopposed).

I can see the attack ad now:

"Judge Soandso thinks that terrorists deserve a greater right to privacy than you do. Judge Soandso protects terrorists. Vote Judge Otherguy."

Kinda turns this into a rubber stamp.

Eventually someone might figure out the right words to use to counteract that strategy.

"Judge Otherguy's tough-on-crime strategy led to a $1500 DUI charge for an innocent grandmother on SSI who was poisoned by her doctor. Vote Judge Soandso to protect the elderly."

Federal judges are not elected

Often there are things that "are not in dispute", i.e. both sides agree. That's pretty close to a definition of a fact.

In this case, there is no disagreement that the FBI had CD's containing documents from the defense.

I have determined that relying on Google products is just a bad idea.

I once included Google's V8 engine on a project I was working on. Google would regularly make breaking changes with no documentation. Developers were required to figure out the new interface on their own... occasionally you would find someone else on a forum somewhere who had reverse engineered it, saving you the time.

Sure, Google can do whatever they want. They have no obligation to people using their open-source projects. But he result is that many developers will be reluctant to use those projects in the future.

> But he result is that many developers will be reluctant to use those projects in the future.

For the short term foreseeable future, there's a continuing larger number of people coming in to the field who've not yet been burned, and will continue to choose Google libs/projects without that experience. Google doesn't seem to need to worry about burning a few bridges here and there, yet. Maybe they'll need to adapt in the next 10 years?

Google probably doesn't care whether developers use their open source projects -- they hardly make any money from it and they make 95% of their money from advertising.

Google does expect you to put in a lot of continuing effort to use their APIs as well. I suspect this is deeply engrained in their culture.

If by "continuing effort" you mean, "parsing new errors in your build, realizing that functions you used have been removed, and finding no information on the web", then yes, I absolutely agree

For what it's worth, they're working on changing that now that Node.js exists.

The show is interesting because it combines a late night talk show format with a news format. Their special segments are often in the same format as a nightly news program, where they take an issue, perform research, and prevent a side.

Should we hold these types of shows to a talk show standard or a news standard?

When CBS presented a fabricated military report about George W., they were rightly condemned for presenting false information and presenting it as fact. If, instead, the fabricated document had been shown on John Oliver, would we think it's OK simply because John Oliver is partly comedy?

> The show is interesting because it combines a late night talk show format with a news format.

As with The Daily Show, The Nightly Show, and the (former) Colbert Report, among others, the format is a variation of the format of a mixed news/commentary show of the type that is the staple of the cable news networks, and they all use that format because they are parodies of that kind of show.

It's not just techies or criminals that want this level of security: companies also want to keep things secure, trust me. In the oil rig industry we used TrueCrypt to secure (1) employee/vendor lists, and (2) location scouting information. Given how difficult it is to obtain tis information, competitors would pay big dollars for this information, regardless of how obtained

How do we know which plugins are secure? If I wanted access to people's browsing info, a plugin would be the way to get it...