Slashdot Mirror

They've stolen this idea from episode two of Black Mirror.

From the patent - Filing date: Mar 19, 2004. Black Mirror originally aired in December 2011. Clearly Microsoft didn't steal this idea from Black Mirror, however, that makes it all the more chilling, does it not?

Google Chrome extensions documentation - Manifest files - web_accessible_resources (linked from TFA):

web_accessible_resources
An array of strings specifying the paths (relative to the package root) of packaged resources that are expected to be usable in the context of a web page.
[...]
Resources inside of packages using manifest_version 2 or above are blocked by default, and must be whitelisted for use via this property.
Resources inside of packages using manifest_version 1 are available by default, but if you do set this property, then it will be treated as a complete list of all whitelisted resources. Resources not listed will be blocked.

The real bug is Google leaving spying backdoors open. Note that by "you" they mean extension developers, not browser users. I don't see why a web site should need access to a browser extension at all. If an extension wants to modify a page, it can just do that without communicating with the website. If an extension wants to communicate with a website, it can inject a script into the page that sends an XMLHttpRequest. Of course DOM changes can also be detected, but in most cases that doesn't allow direct inference of _what_ changed the DOM.

Btw "pregnancy or religion" as the most private things in life? That's new. Usually the safe-for-work example is "you have a terrible but shameful disease and need to access online information about it".

1. He will find all your installed extensions among the ones he's looking for, because every Chrome extension have a manifest.json file. This means that he just needs to crawl https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions for GUIDs of all the installable extensions, and he can detect your full extensions list.
2. There's no such a generic detection method for Firefox extensions. You can detect some (e.g. adblockers) by testing for their specific behavior and effects on web pages (e.g. how some DOM elements have been removed/hidden/inserted), but you can't develop a catch-all detection script, because Firefox extensions are generally undetectable.

Doesn't list anything, even if I enable Javascript for its site in NotScripts (yet another reason to install this little lifesaver).

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/03/retracting-mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction

I can understand why the professional reporters are horrified. But I keep remembering something a poet once said:

The case was defended on the squarest, most idealistic, and most foolish level imaginable, and on the other side the dirt was so filthy that the defense refused to believe it existed, or, as in my case and probably in others, actually believed it.--Kenneth Rexroth, An Autobiographical Novel, p. 199.

Which is more important: the working conditions of thousands or their sensationalization by one man?

Ya know, the neat thing about life in general and language in this case is the very thing you pretend to not understand.

Actually, dick, Google has no idea what you're talking about either.

So, go on and ride that high horse into the sunset; no one here will miss you.

Actually, "easily" isn't quite right. A modern nuke at the center of Tel Aviv would likely damage the Dome of the Rock and would actually cause 1st degree burns on people attending the mosque at the time.

Scroll down to the summary of effects:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions

And then just for comparison:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&hl=en&ie=UTF8&t=m&vpsrc=6&msid=213315406666518218600.0004add52cad03b1fc1d9&ll=31.778654,35.234774&spn=0.004104,0.006738&z=17&iwloc=lyrftr:m,3530997153513861536,31.778052,35.235386&f=d&daddr=Temple+Mount,+Old+City,+Jerusalem,+Israel+(%D7%9E%D7%A1%D7%92%D7%93+%D7%9B%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%AA+%D7%94%D7%A1%D7%9C%D7%A2)&geocode=%3BCQgVpcDxKFdRFf_k5AEdO6YZAiGg8Rv-M58AMQ

This guy?

http://www.linkedin.com/in/glennochsenreiter
https://plus.google.com/116872648979136579900/posts

SAIC is a CIA asset.

That's what I hear, but TFA doesn't say if they are involved in these particular measures.

I found it pretty fun....

There is a group at Google called PACO - http://code.google.com/p/paco/ PACO is a tool for building your own personal tracking experiments. This is very much at the project stage. They will be demoing at the VLAB event "The Uploaded Life: Personal Evolution through Self Tracking" at Stanford on March 20th - http://www.vlab.org/article.html?aid=438

Is this a type of thing that could develop into a business? Come to the event to hear a discussion on that question and more with Gary Wolf Co-Founder of the Quantified Self and Three-Time Tour de France Winner Greg LeMond. There will also be a presentation by the company Healthrageous, which is tackling the general health problem using biometric devices, machine learning and virtual digital coaching to help regular people achieve better health.

Pretty hard to avoid I-10, really, at least for a big chunk of the state. It's the main way to get to central Texas (or anywhere east), unless you want to take some pretty big detours, if you're following at least certain otherwise obvious paths from pts. west of El Paso. You could go way north, but otherwise ... well, it's pretty bleak: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Sierra%20Blanca,%20Texas

I've been through that stop quite a few times, but I guess I just look too clean-living to even bother with the dogs ...

timothy

More on the value of copyrights and copies
TED Talk Video
Comic author Rob Reid unveils Copyright Math (TM), a remarkable new field of study based on actual numbers from entertainment industry lawyers and lobbyists.

Web Page
http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html

Download 18MB mp4
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TEDTalks_video/~5/S3_r1Bi3kc4/RobReid_2012.mp4

No, Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. is going strong, because it's a diversified publisher that targets the lucrative education market with nearly all of its products.

There is little evidence that the digital Britannica encyclopedia is selling AT ALL, because Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. is a privately held company that doesn't have to tell you anything about where it's making money.

It was an Interior Checkpoint, which is the "third layer" of border patrol. The checkpoint in question it only about 10 or 20 miles from the US-Mexico border, just to the east of El Paso, situated on a stretch of I10 that has very few alternate routes.

I'm not sure about the legality or Constitutionality of these checkpoints, but if I were setting up a third layer to catch people that have slipped past the first two, this seems like a really good spot to do so.

No highways to the east get any closer to the border until you get down to the tip of Texas near Big Bend Ranch State Park. I10 past El Paso parallels the US-Mexico border for 60-80 miles. The checkpoint is located just where I10 turns into the interior of Texas; the perfect place to catch people that snuck across the border where it parallels I10 and are traveling east.

I've been through that border checkpoint probably more than half a dozen times. I've never seen any drugs dogs out, however.

Like this:

One piece I/O machine
(you might have to resize the browser width a bit)

Last year we heard many stories from Android developers that they didn't get paid while their app was being purchased. People complained to Google, heard nothing, and eventually found their way onto a dev. forum. Result of all that? Google locked down the forum telling people to e-mail them and eventually removed the entire forum all together.

Even though one of the most heard complaints in that thread was that Google never responded to e-mails.

You'd think they'd learn from this lesson but no: they are at it again" !. How long before that thread will get a lock down as well ?

It amazes me how much people tend to look the other way with ill practices like there merely because "Its Google". Especially since its plain out obvious what is going on; "divide & conquer". With a group devs. can make a stand, but alone its almost not worth the effort because the fee's are marginal at best.

And the world looks on and doesn't seem to care, amazing.

There's no official Google policy page where it says you can use an anonymous pseudonym -- it says just the opposite. The post by Yonatan basically says that their algorithm tries to enforce something that looks like a name, but if you are flagged then your profile will be deleted if you can't back it up with either something like a license or a current online following. The official policy, in two different places:

https://www.google.com/intl/en-US/+/policy/content.html

"13. User Profile Name

To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles, use the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of those would be acceptable. "

http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1228271

"Google+ makes connecting with people on the web more like connecting with people in the real world. Because of this, it's important to use your common name so that the people you want to connect with can find you. Your common name is the name your friends, family or coworkers usually call you." [emphasis mine]

[..]

"Most people use their legal name, or some variant of it, in the real world. We recognize that this isn't always the case and allow for other common names in Google+. If we challenge the name you intend to use, you will be asked to submit proof that this is an established identity with a meaningful following. You can do so by providing links to other social networking sites, news articles, or official documents in which you are referred to by this name. Note that this name and your profile must represent you, and not an avatar or other secondary online identity."

There's no official Google policy page where it says you can use an anonymous pseudonym -- it says just the opposite. The post by Yonatan basically says that their algorithm tries to enforce something that looks like a name, but if you are flagged then your profile will be deleted if you can't back it up with either something like a license or a current online following. The official policy, in two different places:

https://www.google.com/intl/en-US/+/policy/content.html

"13. User Profile Name

To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles, use the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of those would be acceptable. "

http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1228271

"Google+ makes connecting with people on the web more like connecting with people in the real world. Because of this, it's important to use your common name so that the people you want to connect with can find you. Your common name is the name your friends, family or coworkers usually call you." [emphasis mine]

[..]

"Most people use their legal name, or some variant of it, in the real world. We recognize that this isn't always the case and allow for other common names in Google+. If we challenge the name you intend to use, you will be asked to submit proof that this is an established identity with a meaningful following. You can do so by providing links to other social networking sites, news articles, or official documents in which you are referred to by this name. Note that this name and your profile must represent you, and not an avatar or other secondary online identity."

This nerd isn't on Google+, or Facebook, and won't be until they officially abandon their "real name" policies. I find it odious that these companies intentionally lock out those who have a need, or even just a desire, for privacy.

Ah.
Google's current name policy.

As well as the policy itself, also read the long post by Yonatan Zunger on that page, concerning "name-shaped".

Unofficial summary: Google no longer requires real names; it merely requires that the name represent a real person.

(I do work for Google, but I do not speak for them on this or any other issue. Yonatan does, however.)

https://www.google.com/search?q=warterbo&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=dKz&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&sclient=psy-ab&q=waterboarding&oq=waterboarding&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=0l0l1l7865l0l0l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0&gs_l=serp.3...0l0l1l7865l0l0l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0.frgbld.&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=4b79eadf07cd0623&biw=1628&bih=858

Yes, Google has been sending out notifications encouraging sites to fill more of the screen with Google ads. I'm trying to find the link where someone reported getting a notification that they should put more ads on their page, because they had less than 3 "ad units". That included the "heat map" referenced above. I haven't found that yet, but I found this Google video "Monetize your content". "Ideally, every page on your site should have some form of AdSense on it". Yes, the Google sales rep actually says that.

In related news, Google is dropping their "domain parking" business, where Google hosts ad-filled pages for parked domains. Not because domain parking is evil. They're just outsourcing the hosting. Google suggest using another domain-parking company like Sedo, which serves Google ads.

Everything: The Missing Manual

I don't even understand why there is a missing manual market anymore. ,The only more puzzling thing is the game guides are still sold.

Looking at teh googles, it would seem the current administration isn't the culprit.

Does the name change with each presidency?

Interesting. So viewing history is a stored part of an account, and is something that would be available to anybody who gained access to the account?

Yes, obviously, and there are several ways to access it. One of them your dashboard : https://www.google.com/dashboard/ .

Seriously? You need a cite for the profits of a publicly traded company? I hope you don't have any strong opinions about economics.

About 6.8% before "other" (all the stuff not easily catergorized, or losses the company is trying to hide the nature of), about 4.9% before taxes, about 4.3% after taxes, most of which is paid out as dividends.

That the company fritters away a portion of it's revenue small enough to be considered insignificant when taken in the context of their overall balance sheet, does not detract from that.

According to their 2011 financial reports, they spent 14% of their total revenue on R&D in 2011, just over 5 billion dollars. That's a *significant* portion of revenue, we're not talking about petty cash here.

If they keep funding billions of dollars worth of projects that "go nowhere," then that takes away from the projects that COULD be making them more profitable. The 16 billion we're talking about here represents about 3 years worth of Google's R&D budgets. That's 3 years worth of R&D effort for which they have little or nothing to show, and for which some unspecified "long term" ROI may be possible.

If they think that billions of dollars invested will increase their profitability at some point in the future, that's one thing. But I fail to see any reasonable ROI horizon for "billions of dollars on driverless cars = we save a couple million a year on driver salaries." Or, "we save 30 million a year on energy from our wind and solar projects, and that justifies spending billions of dollars on them." These *are* questions that investors are going to ask of Google - and it's not necessarily borne out of a "short term profits uber alles" mindset. A 20 year ROI on a multi-billion dollar investment is a LONG term investment, and yet they're not even talking about how they expect that these investments today will benefit them in that sort of a timeframe. It's "well we wanted to do this, and it sounded cool, so we did it... and we don't know if it'll ever be profitable."

No, it's actually a promotion for the new Sabre Pyramid Tablet!

the internet of the late 20th century and the first few years of the last decade was you go find the information you want. Google flourished because they were able to organize it better to make life easier for you.

No, before Adwords Google was a modest sized company with decent growth - no Yahoo! or MSN, but still a rather decent third place. Then, in 2000, came Adwords. And then Google 'flourished', at least in the sense of cash flow... which blinded everyone (even Google itself) to reality - they were still a distant third in terms of eyes on their own pages.

Then along came Facebook, and beat Google and everyone else at their own game. Not only garnering more eyeballs, but also getting more time on the page per eyeballs, *and* gathering more data allowing for more accurate (and more profitable) advertising.

Facebook, twitter and the rest of social is the new internet. You "like" or follow brands and then read the stream of their updates/news feed. sort of like a custom RSS feed. the point is that you no longer find the information, you are fed a stream of data. just like TV of the 20th century where you sit in front of a box and consume the content.

That, fed by geek hubris, is a popular mythperception. It makes the geeks feel better about themselves, and gives the pundits something to holler about to endear themselves to the technorati... but it's bullshit. If you actually watch things like Yahoo Buzz and Google Trends you see the daily ebb and flow of people seeking information. Yeah, the shallow readers will only see the shallow people searching out Hollywood buzz, but discerning readers following them over time will note the searches for more serious information as well.

What you, and other shallow readers miss is that there are two kinds of information people use the web to seek. The first is their 'daily dose'. News on their favorite sports teams, their favorite bloggers latest posting, sales at their favorite stores, following the latest trends etc... etc... That's why (among other things) RSS feeds were invented. One stop for everything. (Hold on, more on that in a minute.) Millions of people search daily for these, and thus they dominate search trends - most of the time. The second is "situational searches", what do if your 1996 Taurus breaks down?, what do these purple spots on your forearm mean?, how to cut a rabbet without a tablesaw?.... Literately an infinity of different detailed searches, with millions of people each searching for millions of different things. These, they don't show up in 'top results', misleading those who mistakenly take top search results for the whole of the search universe. Though the hints have always been there for those with eyes to see... Like the guy who sued google over the ranking of his flower shop. Or JC Penney's being slapped by Google for their misleading methods of getting to the top of their categories.

The other thing missed by the shallow and short of memory is that the portal, one stop for everything, has been the Holy Grail of the commercial internet since practically Day One. Even Google has tried their hand at this early on, first by making their site(s) easy to use by introducing a single username/password for all their services. Later, they introduced Google Homepage (since rebranded as iGoogle) to the great joy of the geek community. ("Now we can use Google instead of Yahoo! or MSN!" Oh, the irony - since much of the same community derided portals.) Alongside that came their RSS reader, Google Sites, Google Business, Picasa, etc... etc... Ever more services and sites trying to keep eyeballs on Google's ads and trying to gain even more personal information to more accurately target those ads.

this is where google is having problems.

Google has gone nuts with the ads.

Myspace tried that. It didn't work out well for them.

Google's advice to their AdSense advertisers is both funny and pathetic. Google suggests that the content should be a tiny box in the center, surrounded by Google ads on all sides. Google has actually sent out emails to AdSense advertisers telling them that they should have more ads on their page. That's what Myspace looked like during their screaming dive to irrelevance.

(We give away Ad Limiter which cuts Google ads on Google search results down to one ad per page. Since AdBlock Plus sold out and started allowing ads from their "partners", Ad Limiter is picking up a modest number of users. Or you can use DuckDuckGo, which limits itself to one ad per page.)

He's claiming that they used to let the engineers spend 20% of their time on whatever they thought was cool, but now there's an ultimatum (it's not clear if it's official or not) that everything has to be subservient to the goal of pushing "social" and "sharing" in general

BTW, this is not true. I work for Google, have a 20% project that has nothing to do with social or sharing (in fact it's an open source Bitcoin related project), and before this one I had a different 20% project which now has a team of two full time engineers on it, which is also not related to sharing or social.

The guy who wrote this blog was not actually an engineer. As somebody who is, I can say that at least in my part of the company 20% time is alive and well. It has not been killed. It requires managerial "approval" only in the sense that your manager needs to know about it, but they aren't allowed to pick/choose your 20% projects or tell you what to do. As a way to stimulate research it's very effective and one of my favourite things about working here.

Over the years I've read a lot of stuff about 20% time and how it's supposedly just a scam, or whatever. I think a lot of the confusion stems from the fact that it's always been somewhat vaguely defined. As far as I know there's no precise, written set of policies for 20% time. It's just a tradition that's always been there. The result is that whether you succeed with it or not is largely up to the individual - you need a certain amount of confidence and drive to make it happen. And bad managers can potentially try and discourage you, even if they aren't supposed to, or give you insane deadlines so you feel you can't use it. But there are ways to report such situations and try to fix them.

Hi, I work on the Google accounts team (on spam and security).

I just want to clarify something. We don't merge accounts using non-explicit / ambient information like you are suggesting. I suspect what happened is that at some point, you used your Gmail account on YouTube and we noticed you already had a YouTube account (you were logged in to both). When YT was acquired it obviously had its own account system and over time, that has been integrated with the regular Google account system. As part of that accounts have been merged together. It may be that you don't remember this happening, but we definitely don't try and spot related accounts and merge them without some explicit user action.

I'm not sure why you think people would be able to see your YouTube viewing history. That's a private part of your account, it's hard to imagine that ever changing. Unless your account gets hacked nobody else can see it, and we put a lot of effort in to try and stop account compromises (it's what I work on all day, in fact).

Anyway, a lot of peoples concerns about privacy boil down to (a) transparency and (b) control. That's what BasilBrushes concerns seem to be about and it's completely understandable. The Dashboard (www.google.com/dashboard) might help. This stuff is discussed in the privacy principles document, which is the official voice of the company on the topic. I actually think Google has got a lot better at these principles (transparency, control) over the last few years - we have made things like Chrome incognito mode, the Dashboard, the Ads Preferences Manager, added better security against hackers (no.1 privacy threat) etc. But peoples expectations have gone up even faster, so there's still lots of work to do.

This isn't the first or only way to code for Android on Android. See TerminalIDE c4droid for your C compiling needs, and the scripting layer for Android for Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, beanshell, etc. There have been many ways to code for Android on a device for years it's just this one is coming to popular attention right now because it is so good.

This isn't the first or only way to code for Android on Android. See TerminalIDE c4droid for your C compiling needs, and the scripting layer for Android for Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, beanshell, etc. There have been many ways to code for Android on a device for years it's just this one is coming to popular attention right now because it is so good.

This isn't the first or only way to code for Android on Android. See TerminalIDE c4droid for your C compiling needs, and the scripting layer for Android for Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, beanshell, etc. There have been many ways to code for Android on a device for years it's just this one is coming to popular attention right now because it is so good.

Maybe you could link to something useful, like the actual market page ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui ) instead of some garbage like the Google+ page, which has no useful links or information at all.

What about GSA? http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/

He called them 'canali' which is Italian for channels; a word that does not carry the same anthropomorphic baggage as canals.

Thank heaven it didn't get mistranslated into cannoli - we'd have a line of Paula Dean wannabees lines up for launch.

It could happen to Linux as well. But it doesn't.

Linux does have comparable remote-access protocols to RDP, all of which have had plenty of remote exploits in past. For example have a look at CERT advisories on SSH and X11. Don't even get me started on VNC, which is often not updated automatically because it's an installable add-on instead of a system component.

It could happen to Linux as well. But it doesn't.

Linux does have comparable remote-access protocols to RDP, all of which have had plenty of remote exploits in past. For example have a look at CERT advisories on SSH and X11. Don't even get me started on VNC, which is often not updated automatically because it's an installable add-on instead of a system component.

Google is being billed as a for profit corporation, not as a charity or a non-profit. Investors should have the right to choose to invest to make profits. They should also be able to choose to donate to charities or research projects.

Are they really?

I'm sure I recall when they floated originally that they specifically stated they would not be paying dividends.. and their own FAQ says:

Does Google pay a cash dividend?

No, we have never declared or paid a cash dividend nor do we expect to pay any dividends in the foreseeable future.

So I would suggest that any investors hoping to make a profit in this way would be rather foolish to invest in Google..

In my area we have this road

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=ashton+road+manassas+map&hl=en&ll=38.77646,-77.515125&spn=0.001349,0.00284&client=ubuntu&channel=fs&hnear=Ashton+Ave,+Manassas,+Virginia&gl=us&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=38.77646,-77.515125&panoid=WKJGTDUgf7ieF6DJK6VaEw&cbp=12,142.67,,0,-7.65

It is a divided 4 lane road with limited access, nothing residential, almost no cross traffic for at least a mile. The speed limit is 35 and the county police have been sitting here just about every day since the road was built about 10 years ago collecting income. There are quite a few places in the county with similar artifically low speed limits and the police hang out there as well.

In 2011, Google spent $5.2 billion on research

Just to put that in perspective, the entire DARPA research budget for 2011 was 3.28 billion. This is the organization that develops a lot of the "Gee whiz" technology oft discussed right here on Slashdot. For a single company to devote more money to R&D than DARPA is just mind-blowing.

DARPA has of course done amazing things in its history, and if Google can even approach the same magnitude of results it will change the technology world. Whether it can achieve something that impressive is an open question.

Interestingly, the current DARPA director, Regina Dugan, has announced she is leaving the Pentagon to work for Google. So perhaps I am not the only one to notice the parallels ... Dr. Dugan is one of a very small handful of people with experience managing multi-billion-dollar research budgets.

It doesn't require any software development. Google bot check against 2 user agent in your robot.txt: Googlebot and Googlebot-News. There is also a lot of possibility with some meta tags.

support.google.com

This was hard, wasn't it?

You spent years masturbating while taking the life of innocent animals

I generally just ignore statements like this, because they typically indicate a completely irrational attitude of a sort which no rational response can enlighten, but since the rest of your post is almost rational, I'll make an exception this time.

Your comment indicates a complete misunderstanding of hunting and hunters -- at least all the hunters I know. There is no joy in killing, and there's certainly no sexual component to it. The joys of hunting are many, and the feeling of success at taking your quarry is a big part of it, but not because it's a kill. In fact, I find that I enjoy hunting just as much with a camera as I do with a bow, and I enjoy both of them much more than I do with a rifle. The truth is that other than taking my son bird hunting, all of my hunting for the last few years has been with a camera.

I enjoy being out in nature. I enjoy watching, tracking and learning about the animals. Being a successful hunter requires a great deal of understanding of the habits, instincts abilities and preferences of wildlife. I enjoy testing my skill against theirs, seeing if I can predict their actions well enough to position myself on their path, and if I can move quickly and silently enough to sneak up on them. I also enjoy eating them. If it weren't for that, I would only hunt with a camera, because getting good photos is even more challenging, and because cleaning, dressing, hauling and butchering is hard work.

I obviously have no problem with killing them; it's the natural order of things and, as I said, I like the meat. But your theory about why hunters hunt and what we get out of it is completely wrong.

It doesn't really take me that long to reply to you. Sometimes I'm taking a break, or waiting for Houdini to fnish a render pass, or whatever.

So you're a HWOPS SRE? FWIW, it's blaze builds that motivate me to read and post on slashdot.

The reason why you bother me is because you feel the need to comment in every goddamned Google story.

I comment on whatever I find interesting. That generally means stories about software development, security, cryptography, some politics (especially anything related to the TSA), and stuff about my current and previous employers. It just happens that there are a lot more stories about Google than the rest... and the comments posted about Google are more wrong than the rest. Yes, I do have the disease.

Like I explained to you already, there is no real internal communication.

Have you ever worked anywhere other than Google? I may have an advantage here, in that I spent 20 years in the industry, working for/with dozens of large corporations (I was a consultant for much of my career). I've seen a lot, and I'll tell you that Google is incomparably better.

There was a long internal debate about the Real Names policy and the Vic Gundotra asshole just ignored it.

You're wrong. Vic didn't ignore it, he explained it. You apparently didn't agree with his rationale, and neither did many others, but that doesn't mean it wasn't provided, nor that the debate wasn't real. I personally agreed with the Real Names policy. I think pseudonymity/anonymity is very important, but it also provides huge potential for abuse which would really lower the value of Google+. I think pseudonymity can be done in a way that works no Google+, but I agree with Vic that it has to be done carefully. It's better not to allow it than to allow it and then screw it up -- and trying to make sure that a pseudonymous account's real identity never leaks, across all of the Google properties, is definitely not trivial.

Ditt

It's been that the big ISP's and cellular companies have fought these municipal initiatives tooth and nail, including suing and getting their legislative slaves to pass laws outlawing them. A quick search tells the real story.

Yes. If fairly valued at a PE of say 25 or so (which is still low for their growth rate), their stock should be at $875 or so.

MOT, INTC, EMC, JNPR are all similarly valued. But have much lower growth rates.

BIDU is the only large tech company with a similar growth rate. It's PE is 46, which would put AAPLs stock price at $1615.
VMware has lower growth, but a PE of 60. AAPL would be at $2100 if similarly valued.

http://www.google.com/finance#stockscreener

When someone asks me to give a look at their computer, I always ask for a compensation.

Not money.

I ask them that they cook me a paella. Dressed like a chicken.

And when they ask why I send them this:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2921512832440775751

They probably can't see it because their PC is broken though.