Google's Floating Datahaven

PDG writes "Google has pending plans to take its data centers off-shore, literally. By moving their data centers to floating barges in international waters, they are able to save money on taxes and electricity (using wave based power) as well as reside their operations outside the jurisdiction of governments. There is mention of hurricane and other caveats, but I wonder how they plan to get a bandwidth pipe large enough and still be reliable. Seems like a chapter out of a Neal Stephenson novel." You might recall earlier discussions on the same subject.

Comments

Re:Google & guns

[david.given]

Shooting people who obviously intend harm to you or your property is not a morally ambiguous situation: you shoot to kill.

Nonsense.

'Hey, kid! Get off my lawn! I just planted that and you're damaging my grass!' *bang*

In the more general case, any outright statement like that is an invitation to sociopathy, because it's very easy to redefine the word 'harm' to mean whatever you like. ('Hey, kid! Stop downloading that MP3! You're harming my contractually obligated musicians!' *bang*) Not to mention that 'obviously intend harm' is a very fuzzy terminology; consider the case a number of years ago now when a drunk UK tourist in the US got lost, tried to knock on someone's door to find out where they were, and was shot dead.

Oh, yes, and your second sentence translates to 'I was only following orders!'.

Try:

'A judicious approach of force, up to and including deadly force, when faced with a threatening situation, is morally defensible.'

Unfortunately that's a rather less snappy phrase and as such is rather less likely to be popular among those predisposed to violence.

Re:Google & guns

[rtb61]

You skip the real problem, invite someone to your home and because you don't like them, shoot them, then break a windows and claim they broke in. Another illogical point of course, is every gun owning home owner says awake all night every night and remains ready to kill any one they perceive to be an intruder. Of course the other requirement is criminals always must remain unarmed and naturally enough in the event an armed criminal breaks into a home with gun in hand is less alert than a home owner suddenly woken from their sleep, looking for the gun, loading it who of course still manages to get the drop on the criminal.

Fun fact to add, in a home with children it is a good idea to keep a loaded weapon in easy reach to kill criminals because children will not accidentally shoot themselves or other children. Now throw in the inescapable fact that most shootings occur because of a drunken fit of temper. To protect yourself from guns the best solution is not to arm yourself but to remove the gun from criminals, including drunken family members and other sundry idiot rednecks.