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In the Google Navy
theodp writes "Having already assembled a private Air Force, Google's top execs now seem to be turning their attention to building a personal Navy. At last count, CEO Eric Schmidt's wife had assembled a stable of three classic racing boats — the Swan 80 Selene, the 46-foot W-class Equus and the Alerion Mischief. Perhaps not to be outdone, the press is reporting that Google founder Larry Page just snapped up a $45 million superyacht called Senses from New Zealand businessman Sir Douglas Myers, who referred to the ostentatious-yet-awesome yacht as his 'adventure boat.' As Google likes to say, 'just the latest steps in Google's commitment to a clean and green energy future.' So, do Google execs eat their own carbon footprint calculator dogfood?" All I know is if Larry wants to go fishing, I'll bring bait — or he can come here and fish on Zen's pontoon boat. It only leaked once, the engine usually starts right up, and while there's no helipad, I'd love to watch someone try.
slashdot = stagnated
It's not really a Navy unless it's got guns, or a least archers or spear-throwers or something.
Enormously rich person buys large object, news at 10?
Thank you /. for sticking "in the navy" in my head. It also somehow has a YMCA blend to it too. Say, wasn't Google at one time at least helping NASA develop rockets?
Seriously, who cares? Why is this on the main page of slashdot?
Liberals don't really care about causes, just looking like they care.
U mad Taco?
I remember the heady days of the LNUX IPO. Boy were you all riding high back then. ESR was planning to charge for speaking engagements, after putting pen to paper one last time for us, in the form of a gloat over what he thought was new found wealth. You yourself were entertaining questions about what kind of car a newly minted millionaire geek drives.
Those days are off behind you now though. No doubt you once dreamed of yachts and air forces and the like. But that was 6 or 8 company name changes ago and who knows how many realignments of the business model. Can you even buy a toy boat now?
Probably not.
"and while there's no helipad" What? No way! Count me out then unless accommodations are made for my Xheli.
Home of The Suki Series
Ask the guy who got his face shot off by Dick Cheney.
Read radical news here
you, apparently, ARE mad. and i dont even know why.
not to mention that someone not aspiring to buy yachts or millionaire sports cars would be the person who would have acceptable qualities, than the one who would seek to equate its own ego with those external objects to supplement it, or toy with them.
Read radical news here
I predict they will cruise around the world taking photos of every harbour, ship and shoreline.
I also predict they will get into trouble for doing that.
All of the world's marine traffic in real-time is already on Google... (ok, its basically just overlayed AIS data, but still its effing cool ! just try to find an application that is cooler! or is it wetter?)
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
Carbon footprint of racing sailboat is pretty much 0, at least while it's actually racing. I'll grant you that construction and the diesel auxiliary contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, and especially if they're having it moved around on a container ship so it's ready to go in exotic locations, and then flying in to sail on it, they're pretty much at the head of the line in terms of their individual contribution to future generations' climate-related misery. But overall, I think sailboats should be way down your list if you're making a catalog of climate-hostile consumption.
Still, I realize this is slashdot. Let the poorly-informed outrage fly!
I hate to post this on slashdot... -5 TROLL here I come... but it's true.
"A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellowman, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money" -- G. Gordon Liddy
Just like Biden said... everyone should have a 2500sq ft or less house... as soon as Al Gore, and Biden sell their mansions and move to a 2500sq ft house, I might listen to them.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
You can search the net with ease...
Do No Evil.
Yours In Odessa,
Kilgore Trout
terrible Google Wave pun
remember the floating data center idea? They're doing it with style. sys admins on the night shift need to party, right?
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
do Google execs eat their own carbon footprint calculator dogfood?
All those words... but together they.... the letters, the letters...
So it's come to this. After all those centuries, English, this is what you've become. Face down in the left gutter wearing Comic Sans with an empty carton of Strunk and White. Googling your own blogfeed indeed.
I just hope you're happy.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Does this article fit the "news for nerds, news that matters" criteria? Does every web site now have to show how pitiful my existence is compared to the "rich and famous"?
Does owning a $45 million yacht significantly increase your probability of getting laid?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
They've got some catching up to do with Oracle
Yvan elgoog eht nioj!
A navy has guns. Calling this a navy is like calling Jay Leno's garage a tank regiment. Just sayin'.
Generally speaking, the only kinds of racing that have anything approaching a 'green' fotprint are the kinds of racing that leave footprints.
Auto racing can't claim a green footprint. Even solar racing has a manufacturing footprint that is noticeable.
Boats? Powerboats of course just crave fuels. Sail? Except perhaps for some small classes, they rely on exotic materials. Smaller classes are starting to give in to this a little bit.
Planes? hehe... Gliders? Carbon-fiber.
Even bicycles use such exotics that their footprint is scary, perhaps the worst emissions/lb. of anything.
But footracing, horse racing, maybe.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
How's that "Don't be evil" working out?
Carbon-neutral? Nope.
Excessively reckless and wasteful? Yep.
The top AOL execs were never this ostentatious.
Well, we did buy Time Warner. They were bigger than your yacht and stable of Cigarette boats.
Kriston
THIS is a boat.
If I had Larry Page's stupid amount of money, I'd get a real ship. Plus, you can make money with it if the GOOG stock tanks.
Or just load it up with 1400 hot chicks and sail around the world.
And of course, there's always THIS boat
How is carbon fiber not 'green' - you are keeping some carbon form becoming CO2! Heck the manure from horse racing is probably worse for the environment than small amounts of carbon fiber and cloth.
what if social and environmental stress become obvious issues? I'm a doomer: these ships are safe heavens, a result of strategic planning. the rich can afford walled gardens and construct privacy islands. sadly, they can't escape capitalism. it forces them to be the number one, to conquer markets they don't have interest in. so they can't buy out effectively.
I think sailboats should be way down your list if you're making a catalog of climate-hostile consumption.
Why?
http://galenfrysinger.name/eh61/harbor02.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Monterey_CA_harbor_p1070194.jpg
http://www.pictureninja.com/pages/new-zealand/north-island/auckland-harbor-sailboats.jpg
http://www.harborsailboats.com/images/mainpage.jpg
http://www.gdanmitchell.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/SouthBeachHarborMornFogSF20090701.jpg
http://reve.ed.shizuoka.ac.jp/photos/Honolulu02.jpg
http://thetriton.com/directory/userlogo/21736-5724_b.jpg
http://www.boatharborslocator.com/ca%20marin%20county/ca_marin_ar_lowrie_yacht_harbor.jpg
The coasts and inland lakes of every wealthy nation are littered with harbors filled with composite and hardwood sailboats and yachts. You dismiss concern over the climate impact of these because....?
If there is a more effective way to foster resistance to climate regulation than exempting the toys of the wealthy I'll need some help from the audience, because nothing comes to mind.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
... we'll get Google Davie Jones' Locker View, real soon ...
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I was going to make the same exact point.
As these are proper ocean cruiser boats you are not going to move them by container ship. 24m worth off composite hull is something you move by water with a hired crew, not by ship. Sailing such boats from A to B so that the person with excess pocket money can use it where they want it is a pretty good job if you can have it by the way. I would not mind being a sailing crew on one of those :)
So the only greenhouse emissions are from the leerjet flying you to the sailing destination and back.
If there is to be a choice, I woul definitely go for this (and Larry Ellison America cup obsession) compared to let's say top Microsoft execs lobbying for specia exemptions to the USA import regs so they can import limited use supercars for their personal consumption (which they did at least once).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
But what about Good Google? How much carbon is saved each year, for example, by their handy maps? (Now if I could only get my wife to stop printing them out and just write the directions on a piece of waste paper) How much does Google reduce carbon by efficiently locating points of interest -- and someday -- helping you get your car to the nearest electrical outlet. Sniping at rich people's yachts is I guess a family tradition but the real problem with carbon hypocracy stories is they really don't take in the big picture. I'm for an all electric civilization; wave, wind, sun and nuke. Google is an extremely valuable part of that as it makes things smarter. They can keep their yachts and hovercraft and jet planes.
Making a carbon fiber epoxy composite uses a bunch of energy etc. I imagine that's what he referred to.
You're not keeping carbon from being CO2, net.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Careful, it didn't end so well for L. Ron Hubbard.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
It comes with a helicopter. Sweet. Someday, the Obama's will be guests of honor. Larry Page visits the White House so often, that he must have already invited the Obama's for a ride...perhaps in two years...
you can easily move very large ships from ocean to ocean via a piggyback ship.
in fact, there are ships designed for this very purpose, and moving a large sailing yacht is one of their main customers.
these specialized ships take on ballast and essentially purposefully flood their own decks and then the large sailing/motor yachts are driven over the deck, pilings are set to support them, and the ship pumps out the ballast to raise itself above the waterline.
why?
because its a lot cheaper to pay for one large transport to move from continent to continent than it is a whole bunch of little ones that require not only propulsion but electrical power as well.
Someone with money bought a boat. News at 11.
I mean come on ... who the fraq cares?
Hurricane Island Outward Bound
OB
I seem to remember an old? 60-minutes piece on the culture of Google where execs drove normal cars to work and shopping sprees to shave off excess millions were universally frowned upon.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/30/60minutes/main664063.shtml
One such company is Dockwise Yacht Tranport - www.yacht-transport.com The larger the Sailboat / Yacht the more likely it is to move from place to place on it's own bottom.
Any idiot can buy yachts and planes. You're not a truly awesome geek millionaire until you have a self-sufficient private island.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
This is my documentation that if someone from google wants to buy the best in personal/corporate submarines, it's over here -> http://www.ussubmarines.com/submarines/phoenix_1000.php3 Check it out, you will be impressed if you haven't seen it before. How much for the finders fee? I might be able to right my own ship if everything works out ;-)
...then you should get a badass boat like this one, a 190 tons displacement, 37 meter costal patrol boat purchased by an early Internet pioneer from the Royal Navy.
...missed the boat.
Thank you, thank you. Oh you're too kind.
Probably when pigs fly; or maybe when all power is gleaned solely from the sun and/or nukes. But then that only accounts for carbon created for power generation. What about the emissions from the servers themselves while running, plastic wire coatings decaying, the actual creation of the parts that make up the servers - etc., etc., etc.
The only way for Google to ever be green in reality is to cease their business. Let's get real.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Would all the asshats surfing the web with their 150 watt processors and 225 watt video cards for the sole purpose of trolling Slashdot kindly rethink their asshattery?
You mean Google's CEO isn't gay? waht?
Sounds like an adventure boat to me.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
I Know this is slashdot and RTFA is off the menu - but since I race (rather cheaper) boats I did.
Eric hasn't bought any boats. He hasn't gone sailing. It's his _wife_ who bought them, and went sailing.
So obviously this reflects really badly on Google, just the way it did when BP Exec Tony Hayward went sailing in the middle of the Gulf Crisis (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/20/tony-hayward-bp)
Not to mention the noxious chemicals in the epoxies, manufacturing the carbon-fiber to start with, etc.
And the manure from horse racing has its usefulness. More than the discarded carbon-fiber components from the sailboat, which at best lay inert in a landfill, and at worst leach interesting stuff into the aquifers below when the landfill inevitably fails.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
this is dumb. seems to me that these are personal watercraft, not google's.
On a boat
On a boat
On a motherf@ckin' boat!
OP is being a jealous little wanker. Sure the dudes are rich and occasionally spend like rich dudes. The real carbon-footprint issues they can affect (and have done an admirable job with) are via a) the company's datacenters , b) the company's hardware, and c) the company workforce. A minor change in any of those 3 categories far outweighs any individual action.
So, a little credit where credit is due, and perhaps a little better understanding of what "scale" means, eh, CmdrNimrod?