It used to be that the only downside of buying a fake was wasting your money. Now, the fraudsters will use radioactive paint, and if you buy a fake you'll get cancer.
Some things need to be out of the hands of the people because, quite honestly, the people are dumb and shortsighted.
They're fine with denying people rights because of race/gender/sexual preference. They're fine with their own rights being stripped away because of some vague promise that it'll help fight "terrism". They're fine with destroying the earth as long as they can save $0.20 a gallon on gas for the next year.
There are certain things that should not be up for vote by the people, and the environment is probably at the top of that list.
The point is that, if that's all the pages that MSN is indexing that contain that term, you're much less likely to get the most relevant results back for that and more specific related search queries.
If Google were to absorb Yahoo, the more likely outcome would be that they'd keep running both of them and end up just merging infrastructure on the backend. It would be like Youtube / Google Video is now.
I know you're joking, but figuring out how to handle IP is very important to this country. More and more, we're stopping the production of physical objects, so our economy is becoming increasingly based on intangible ones. I do think that a lot of the current enforcement crosses the line, but if there wasn't any at all, there would definitely be consequences on the US economy.
From what I've heard (I'm no expert), these processors are good at certain types of calculations, but horrible at others. Ask a Cell to run Folding@Home, and it'll be blazing. Ask it to do general-purpose computing, though, and you'll quickly see the strength of other processors.
You picked a very poor example. The people mailing envelopes are the light users, the people mailing packages are the heavy users, and they already do pay based on distance.
I want Comcast to pay me for using their service! I also want a new Corvette for $5k and Gwen Stefani to chill with me for the weekend! What I want matters, and no other concerns do! I'M THE CUSTOMER DAMN IT!
You have to deal with the reality of the situation. Some customers cost more than others, and as much as I wouldn't like it, it's not ridiculous to charge the high-usage customers more and the low-usage customers less.
If you're costing them more than they're making from you, they won't be sad to see you go, anyway.
Why would you need to turn it into a Linux media center? It's already a media center natively. It plays Blu-rays, is able to able to stream movies/music from any DLNA server or play them directly off its hard drive or USB external storage, and has some pretty decent format support (plays Divx/XVid).
There are other uses for Linux on it, but is media playing really one of them?
This is why I doubt this was some covert Google operation. Last time they wanted to protest eBay, they were going to throw a party about it. That's just how they work. This is more likely just someone at Google who was passionate about this topic and used their work computer to write the doc up.
Anyway, I'm glad this is being brought up again, because the move to block GCO from use on eBay is very, very shitty and should be as public as possible. Their official reason is that it doesn't have a "substantial historical track record of providing safe and reliable financial and/or banking related services", which works to keep out shady payment processors, but also apparently works for keeping out legitimate competitors.
Videos are information. Details about who is selling what items at what prices is information. Your payment details and history are information. Maps are information. Your appointments are information. Your photos are information. Your social network is information. Everything is information, and Google thinks that having all of it always available ("in the cloud" is the popular term nowadays, right?) and easily accessible is important. I, for one, agree wholeheartedly.
I can't find specific information about when they established that mission statement, but IIRC, it was well before they started branching out like crazy.
Google's mission is "search" in a way, but not the way you're thinking of. They want to be a lot broader than just web search. They want any piece of information that you could ever need about anything instantly accessible to you at any given time, whether that be a web page, your stored payment information, business documents, etc.
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. http://www.google.com/corporate/
It's even better than just the targeting. AdWords + Analytics lets you know what you're getting conversions off of and what you aren't. So if you spend $100 on two ads and one is profitable and one isn't, you can dump your budget into the one that's making you money and abandon the other one.
Relevance to users is great, but conversion tracking is the best part of internet advertising.
If you don't want to be tracked, then don't broadcast a signal. You're basically doing the electronic equivalent of yelling "I'M IN THE PRODUCE DEPARTMENT" as loud as you can.
The transmission of that power would be a huge, huge problem and immensely wasteful. You can't have a power system that's that centralized for such a huge land area.
It's safe because modern nuclear reactors are basically idiotproof. Even the worst nuclear accident in US history on an old design reactor had no real environmental consequences. (Chernobyl was a different story, but it wasn't a good design to begin with and the operators handled the situation just about as poorly as they could.) Read up on current reactors before you call nuclear power unsafe.
As far as the carbon angle, no power is completely carbon-free, but nuclear does quite a good job (the carbon emissions are from the uranium mining). Keep in mind that those same up-front energy costs also go into producing solar panels and wind turbines.
You do realize that one of the most common complaints from 360 owners is the noise from it, right? It pretty much ruins any quiet scenes in games or movies.
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It used to be that the only downside of buying a fake was wasting your money. Now, the fraudsters will use radioactive paint, and if you buy a fake you'll get cancer.
The more important question is: How much is that in libraries of congress?
Some things need to be out of the hands of the people because, quite honestly, the people are dumb and shortsighted.
They're fine with denying people rights because of race/gender/sexual preference.
They're fine with their own rights being stripped away because of some vague promise that it'll help fight "terrism".
They're fine with destroying the earth as long as they can save $0.20 a gallon on gas for the next year.
There are certain things that should not be up for vote by the people, and the environment is probably at the top of that list.
The point is that, if that's all the pages that MSN is indexing that contain that term, you're much less likely to get the most relevant results back for that and more specific related search queries.
If Google were to absorb Yahoo, the more likely outcome would be that they'd keep running both of them and end up just merging infrastructure on the backend. It would be like Youtube / Google Video is now.
I know you're joking, but figuring out how to handle IP is very important to this country. More and more, we're stopping the production of physical objects, so our economy is becoming increasingly based on intangible ones. I do think that a lot of the current enforcement crosses the line, but if there wasn't any at all, there would definitely be consequences on the US economy.
From what I've heard (I'm no expert), these processors are good at certain types of calculations, but horrible at others. Ask a Cell to run Folding@Home, and it'll be blazing. Ask it to do general-purpose computing, though, and you'll quickly see the strength of other processors.
You picked a very poor example. The people mailing envelopes are the light users, the people mailing packages are the heavy users, and they already do pay based on distance.
I want Comcast to pay me for using their service! I also want a new Corvette for $5k and Gwen Stefani to chill with me for the weekend! What I want matters, and no other concerns do! I'M THE CUSTOMER DAMN IT!
You have to deal with the reality of the situation. Some customers cost more than others, and as much as I wouldn't like it, it's not ridiculous to charge the high-usage customers more and the low-usage customers less.
If you're costing them more than they're making from you, they won't be sad to see you go, anyway.
A Chinese company that has little regard for copyright? This is an unexpected occurrence.
Why would you need to turn it into a Linux media center? It's already a media center natively. It plays Blu-rays, is able to able to stream movies/music from any DLNA server or play them directly off its hard drive or USB external storage, and has some pretty decent format support (plays Divx/XVid).
There are other uses for Linux on it, but is media playing really one of them?
The Google Checkout team has very publically prodded eBay before: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=google+checkout+let+freedom+ring&btnG=Google+Search
This is why I doubt this was some covert Google operation. Last time they wanted to protest eBay, they were going to throw a party about it. That's just how they work. This is more likely just someone at Google who was passionate about this topic and used their work computer to write the doc up.
Anyway, I'm glad this is being brought up again, because the move to block GCO from use on eBay is very, very shitty and should be as public as possible. Their official reason is that it doesn't have a "substantial historical track record of providing safe and reliable financial and/or banking related services", which works to keep out shady payment processors, but also apparently works for keeping out legitimate competitors.
More info on the original spat: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=google+checkout+ebay&btnG=Google+Search
The difference here is in the fact that Google has way, way, way better lawyers than the defendant in that case.
The best part, in my opinion, is that they requested a jury trial. If they get that, Viacom is even more screwed.
Videos are information. Details about who is selling what items at what prices is information. Your payment details and history are information. Maps are information. Your appointments are information. Your photos are information. Your social network is information. Everything is information, and Google thinks that having all of it always available ("in the cloud" is the popular term nowadays, right?) and easily accessible is important. I, for one, agree wholeheartedly.
I can't find specific information about when they established that mission statement, but IIRC, it was well before they started branching out like crazy.
Google does offer cost-per-action: http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=11635
It's even better than just the targeting. AdWords + Analytics lets you know what you're getting conversions off of and what you aren't. So if you spend $100 on two ads and one is profitable and one isn't, you can dump your budget into the one that's making you money and abandon the other one.
Relevance to users is great, but conversion tracking is the best part of internet advertising.
If you don't want to be tracked, then don't broadcast a signal. You're basically doing the electronic equivalent of yelling "I'M IN THE PRODUCE DEPARTMENT" as loud as you can.
It was only partially software. The 80GB still used PS2 hardware.
The transmission of that power would be a huge, huge problem and immensely wasteful. You can't have a power system that's that centralized for such a huge land area.
It's safe because modern nuclear reactors are basically idiotproof. Even the worst nuclear accident in US history on an old design reactor had no real environmental consequences. (Chernobyl was a different story, but it wasn't a good design to begin with and the operators handled the situation just about as poorly as they could.) Read up on current reactors before you call nuclear power unsafe.
As far as the carbon angle, no power is completely carbon-free, but nuclear does quite a good job (the carbon emissions are from the uranium mining). Keep in mind that those same up-front energy costs also go into producing solar panels and wind turbines.
Sure, that may work for a town of 1,300, but how about a city of 13,000? 130,000? 1,300,000? 13,000,000?
It's easy to make small areas run on solar and wind. It's infinitely harder to do so in any real population center.
To play devil's advocate, all that carbon is underground right now. Who says we can't put it back later?
You do realize that one of the most common complaints from 360 owners is the noise from it, right? It pretty much ruins any quiet scenes in games or movies.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=noisy+xbox+360&btnG=Search
That said, the noise is from the DVD drive, and if they're replacing the drive, chances are they'll pick something less noisy.