There's food, air, good climate and soil, and plenty of other useful resources in North America.
All of which are ridiculously ephemeral. One good sized rock dropped from space and ALL of it is gone and us along with it. Not to mention that we're working pretty hard to ruin the climate here without anywhere else to go should we really mess things up.
Space is just empty. Instead of short-sighted, I prefer to call it realistic.
Space is not empty - just sparse. And you can call your viewpoint whatever you want but it remains short sighted. Human survival is far more tenuous than you seem willing to acknowledge. If you care about the survival of the species then you'll find that getting humans successfully off Earth is an imperative. Otherwise sooner or later we are screwed.
I'm pretty sure that with $100 billion in funding here on Earth, we could achieve bigger medical breakthroughs, that are more relevant to general public health.
I'll concede the point once we stop spending trillions on bombing other people here on earth first.
And yet, the human habitation makes whole classes of experiments difficult or impossible, due to the atmosphere, the vibrations from movement, etc..
The primary thing we are studying on the ISS is the occupants. All the other experiments are just added value.
Capture some asteroids, use them for raw material, and build a base to use to get to the rest of the solar system.
Oh is that all there is to it? We don't need to learn how to keep people alive and healthy in zero G first? What is your proposal for radiation protection outside of the Earth's magnetic field? How do you propose to manufacture useful products out of asteroids of unknown composition given that we lack even basic space worthy manufacturing technology? How do you plan to keep people's bones intact and prevent the other physical deterioration we so far haven't even been able to figure out in low earth orbit? How do you propose to feed people on this hypothetical base?
I'm not even getting into the economics of it. I think you are being rather glib with a very complicated and difficult engineering problem. Your goal is a great one but a goal without a plan is nothing more than a dream.
So, what exactly is the point of manned space stations? Is it really worth it? Or would the money, time and effort be better invested in some other types of space activity - automated experimental stations, or - let's dream - building a "real" base in space?
The point is to learn how to allow humans to not only survive but thrive in space. Whether it is worth it is something you will have to figure out for yourself but for my part the answer is yes. I think it is the greatest adventure we are currently engaged in and I think it expands human knowledge more than anything else we are doing. As for building a "real" station, you have to crawl before you can walk. We don't yet have the technology to build a station on the moon or any other planetary body. That is going to take a while and will cost a LOT more money than we are currently willing to spend.
Except negotiating on a person by person bases for the same work is stupid.
No it is not. Even people hired for the same job vary in competence and qualifications. This is particularly true in programming - the difference in productivity between a competent programmer and a great programmer can literally be an order of magnitude apart. Should you pay two people with vastly different productivity levels the same amount merely because they share the same job title?
Why should a great engineer be paid less because they aren't a social adept as someone else?
Probably because business is a team sport and social ability matters even in engineering. Your ability to effectively communicate and work with others is important.
It's the same work.
That doesn't mean everyone is equally good at doing it.
Lots of smart people + huge bank account + significant access to the world's accumulated knowledge.
None of which is unique to Google. Google does not have privileged access to more than a tiny tiny subset of the world's information and none of that is specific to energy technology.
It's a formula worth trying on the problems that matter - in the past, lots of smart people and a huge bank account have only been applied by governments to military applications.
Baloney. AT&T, IBM, Westinghouse, GE and lots of other companies have had huge bank accounts and Nobel prize winning research departments. Bell Labs alone was responsible for 8 Nobel prizes, unix, C, transistors, lasers, CCDs, radio astronomy and more.
You can't "invent" cheaper tech--it only gets cheaper if you invest in mass-producing it.
That's only sort of half true. You can invent a technology that is fundamentally less expensive than previous alternatives at the same production scales. It's not merely a matter of more = cheaper.
The problem is that is only true for a few hours around solar noon.
For now. Furthermore a LOT of energy usage occurs exactly during that time. Let's say you have a grocery store and you need to power refrigerators. Guess when the maximum power drain from air conditioning will be? Exactly during mid day when the solar cells are at maximum efficiency. In my opinion most industrial businesses should have a rooftop covered in solar cells. It is wasted space now, it generates clean(er) energy right when it is needed, it distributes the grid, turns variable power costs into fixed costs and it should reduce costs in the long run. Rooftop solar on businesses makes a ton of sense. Doesn't solve every problem but it would be a big step in the right direction.
Just because it doesn't solve every problem doesn't mean you should dismiss the problems it does solve.
Wind is much better but people always seem to ignore they production vs consumption cycle problem with solar.
That depends very much on where and when you need the power generation. Wind is great but like solar it solves some but not all problems. It's not hard to find use cases where solar makes more sense and others where wind is the better option.
So yes, the bulk of our power usage (and Im not the poster you replied to) is over night.
So of course your usage habits clearly apply to everyone else in the world and nobody is ever in their home during the day. [/sarcasm]
If you want to trade anecdotal evidence the bulk of our electricity usage is during the day during the summer when our AC is running. Most of the night usage could easily be stored in a battery bank that could fit inside our house.
Solar cells could cost $0, and they still probably wouldn't make sense when compared to grid power that isn't made artifiicially expensive by Greenist boondoggles.
You might have a point if fossil fuel generation actually had to pay for all the environmental damage it causes. But since they don't and the real cost of heating your home is higher than you might guess from your monthly bill.
And if you think solar cells for free would not make economic sense for a huge portion of the population then you have NO idea what you are talking about. Nothing actually costs zero but super cheap solar cells with good efficiency would massively change the world energy markets.
It is, and will continue to be, so long as governemnts keep paying people to not build fusion reactors.
Please cite a single incidence of any government actually paying someone to not build a working fusion reactor.
My guess is that, when we finally get a working fusion reactor, it will be developed in a few years by a company that completely ignores all the 'basic research' governments have funded over the last fifty years.
Based on what? Something more than a hunch I hope. Or perhaps the simpler answer is that it's a really tough problem to figure out. Research doesn't care who funds it. Either the findings are useful or they aren't.
You are wrong. The gigantic economic boom of the 20th century was fuelled by cheap oil.
There is no single cause for such a complicated occurrence. Oil is certainly a part of the equation but there are a LOT more variables than just the price of oil.
If you don't like the choices previous generations made, you first should figure out WHY they made those choices before deciding they were wrong.
Most of the time the answer boils down to "it seemed like a good idea at the time". We use fossil fuels because they were available and we figured out how to make the economical sooner than some of the alternatives. We didn't know about some of the environmental side effects at the time. Same with nuclear. We tried all sorts of things with radiation that we now consider insane because we didn't know any better at the time. We figured much of it out in time but we didn't magically know all the problems with a technology the moment it was invented. So we build on what we know at the time and sometimes (like with fossil fuels) find out later on that maybe what seemed like a good idea before really wasn't. That's ok. What's not ok is doing nothing once you realize there is a problem.
What did it mean that one of the world's most ambitious and capable innovation companies couldn't invent a cheap renewable energy tech?
Umm, nothing. Google has no special expertise in energy tech. This is WAY outside their core businesses where they have a proven competence. The notion that they would to solve the economic problem of renewable energy where everyone else had (so far) failed is somewhere between well intentioned altruism and pure undiluted hubris. (not sure where on that scale though) The only thing Google has is smart people and a huge bank account. Those are nice assets to work with but just because you can throw smart people and money at a problem doesn't mean a solution will magically appear in a timely manner. Research is unpredictable and requires long term dedication. And even if you do succeed in coming up with a nifty new technology it doesn't automatically mean that the economics of it will be favorable. I'm not saying Google shouldn't try - I'm glad to see them working on and/or bankrolling research such problems. My point is that Google shouldn't be expected to be more likely to solve the problem than any number of other companies/organizations that have worked on these problems.
I am an agent. Though I would argue there is no difference between an agent and a recruiter or a headhunter.
There is a huge difference depending on who you represent and who pays your commissions. An agent works on behalf of someone typically for a talented individual. A recruiter or headhunter typically works for a company though they are an agent of a sort but not in the usual use of the word. An agent for Lebron James represent's Lebron, is hired by Lebron, and their sole goal is to get as good a deal for Lebron (and thereby themselves) as possible. The needs of the company only matter so far as they affect the negotiation. Recruiters (usually) are hired by the company and are a middle man who is hired to find talent the company might otherwise be unable to locate. Their financial interest is to get as high a salary as possible for whoever the company hires but they have no obligation to represent the interests of any particular individual seeking employment.
The IT industry in particular sees that as me taking a cut of your wages, but I don't negotiate with you about my rate. I negotiate with the company about what they are going to pay me for my finders service.
That means you are NOT an agent (for the employee) because you do not represent interests of the person seeking employment. If you represented the talent the company would have no involvement whatsoever in the negotiations regarding your pay rate. That would be entirely between you and the individuals you represent. Yes it is in your interest to negotiate as high a percentage for the employee as possible but they aren't who you work for. If Person A doesn't fit with BigCorp then you can move to Person B. That means you aren't an agent for Person A or Person B.
But for most of us this job is thankless with companies telling us to go jump and candidates thinking we are ripping them off
Welcome to sales. That's the life of any salesman. And you are right that not everyone can do it well.
Strictly speaking no it is not dumping. Dumping is the act of charging less in a foreign market than you charge in your domestic market. That isn't what Intel is doing. What Intel is doing might be considered a form of predatory pricing but it isn't dumping. All dumping is predatory pricing but not all predatory pricing is dumping.
You keep saying that. Do you really think if you say that enough, it will magically become true?
I say it because it is true. Google makes well over 90% of its revenue from advertising. Everything else they do is a rounding error from a revenue and profit perspective. What else would you call them? They might become something else someday but they ARE an advertising company. Virtually every product they make is based on enhancing or protecting their advertising business. Email, maps, search, etc are all about increasing context sensitive ad revenue. Android is a defensive play to keep phone makers (Apple & Microsoft especially) from locking them out of mobile platforms. Set top boxes? Same thing - a defensive play. If you don't see it then you aren't looking at the big picture.
Actually I'm not sure if I want to wear advanced battery technology on my wrist or my face if it is storing sufficient energy to easily rip off my hand or my head when something goes wrong.
Why not? You sit in a car that has fuel with 270 times the specific energy of batteries and FAR more Kgs of combustible material. You could increase the energy of your watch battery two orders of magnitude and still not get to gasoline.
A lithium air battery has half the specific energy of wood. I wouldn't worry too much about a better battery.
I just don't know how you get to the point where somebody is literally walked out of a building from a meeting after being "discovered" using Evernote. Either they were poorly informed or they were actively interested in obtaining secrets.
I've met, worked with and (unfortunately) employed many people who were decidedly clueless. If it wasn't laid out in black and white for them they would inevitably do something stupid even when you or I would think it was absurdly obvious that the action was a bad idea. I've seen people surf for porn at work, mass email sensitive documents, fall asleep in the front row of a company meeting, post sensitive company or customer information to public websites, etc. In most cases the person was "surprised" to find out their behavior was wrong. At hospitals I've seen people perp-walked from the building for HIPPA violations like looking up information about VIP patients and on a few occasions posting information about it to their facebook page. If you work for a big accounting firm you might get escorted from the building on a first offense for putting client information to Evernote because doing so violates several regulations. Defense contractors is an obvious one.
Short version, never underestimate how clueless some people can be. Hell, a big part of my job is writing bullet proof work instructions because if something isn't spelled out clearly to a 4th grade reading level then people will do it wrong.
A private entity cannot enforce anything upon the populace...
Care to place a wager on that? Private enterprises force things on the public all the time. Sometimes with the blessing of government, sometimes without. Government can override a private enterprise but in the absence of government action private entities can largely do whatever they want. If they are powerful they can even influence government to do their bidding at times. See regulatory capture.
Government has a very limited range of things that they do as well or better than the public at large (war/defense, money, basic law enforcement, etc) - governmental action beyond that range invariably becomes incompetent, expensive, dangerous, or worse.
The range of things government does competently is a fair bit wider than most people give credit for. There is some truth in what you say but government is often the least worst way to do quite a lot of things. Health care, social safety nets, infrastructure, contracts enforcement, basic research funding, and more are often better handled by governments than private enterprise. Furthermore just because some people in the US have an apparently allergy against government doing anything doesn't mean they are correct in their assertion that government is always bad. Lots of countries utilize governments for much more than the US does (notably for health care) with great success. Doesn't mean we have to do it that way but just because we don't do something a certain way doesn't mean it cannot be done. I'm not overly trusting of government myself but I also don't axiomatically assume government to be incompetent.
Never give government more power than the worst-case scenario you would be willing to live under.
That I would agree with. The problem is that we may have an honest disagreement about what constitutes a worst case scenario. Ask a libertarian or a conservative or a democrat and you'll generally get rather different answers.
It sounds pretty fascist to shitcan someone like that, especially if the policy they were fired under wasn't fairly specific about Evernote-type services.
Depends on the company and who their customers are. If your customer is the defense department (for example) then they might be pretty sensitive about you posting information to Evernote.
So under what do you file "bright Sun" or "Style"?
Google Glass is not made for bright sun (though they could fix that I guess) and they sure as hell aren't stylish. They look like the geeky research project they are.
If you have to wear glasses for a functional reason then it is fine to worry (a little) about how they look. Anyone who wears glasses purely for style without a functional reason is a douche.
Oh and bright sun = eyestrain. Seemed obvious to me...
I think we do have the technology, just look at the size of a raspberry pi.
Doesn't matter. The problem isn't really the electronics. The biggest technology problem is the battery. We simply do not have battery technology that is sufficiently advanced to make a lot cool ideas practical. Hell we can't even make a smartphone that lasts more than about a day or two of heavy use.
Is it true that Google Goggles are simply not attractive to wear?
Partly. They aren't stylish nor are they useful enough to overcome that deficit. But that isn't really even among the biggest problems with Google Glass.
1) People who don't need corrective lenses don't generally want to wear glasses. I wore glasses for 17 years before I had lasik and there isn't a way in hell you would get me to wear glasses again except for safety, eye strain or vision correction.
2) People don't generally like to use voice interfaces particularly in public. You don't see a lot of people using Siri out in public so why should Google Glass be any different
3) People are creeped out by the privacy issues even if many of the critiques aren't really justified.
4) They don't fit gracefully into most people's lifestyle. Much of the functionality of Google Glass is already covered by smartphones. Why do I need this conspicuous and much more annoying device second device to do something I mostly already have? It doesn't scratch any itch I have.
5) The best uses for it are more industrial - particularly augmented reality uses. Think work instructions while building a complicated assembly. But Google seems to largely be ignoring these.
healthcare - the US has the worst healthcare system of any developed nation, and it is privately run
Only deluded ideologues think that the US health care system is privately run. Yes it has elements that are privately run but you cannot ignore Medicare or Medicaid because they are the 800lb gorilla in the system. Insurance companies generally follow whatever pricing Medicare sets. Our more conservative leaning citizens often like to live with the illusion that private always equals better (sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't) and that our system is a private system but in reality is it is a public/private hybrid system with the public parts (Medicare mostly) leading the private parts on pricing.
As for the "worst healthcare system" comment, that is nonsense. Most expensive? No argument. But expensive != worst at least not by itself. Guess where all that nifty technology that the rest of the world gets to use is developed? More often than not, right here in the US - and we incur a lot of the cost for it. The US healthcare system has economic problems but the actual ability to treat disease is second to none. While I certainly won't argue that the overall US health care system is the best in the world (it clearly is not) I would absolutely argue that it isn't the worst either.
Slashdot Mirror
Take managers out of the equation and work gets done. Pretty simple.
Pity it will be the wrong work getting done. On the upside life is simple.
There's food, air, good climate and soil, and plenty of other useful resources in North America.
All of which are ridiculously ephemeral. One good sized rock dropped from space and ALL of it is gone and us along with it. Not to mention that we're working pretty hard to ruin the climate here without anywhere else to go should we really mess things up.
Space is just empty. Instead of short-sighted, I prefer to call it realistic.
Space is not empty - just sparse. And you can call your viewpoint whatever you want but it remains short sighted. Human survival is far more tenuous than you seem willing to acknowledge. If you care about the survival of the species then you'll find that getting humans successfully off Earth is an imperative. Otherwise sooner or later we are screwed.
I'm pretty sure that with $100 billion in funding here on Earth, we could achieve bigger medical breakthroughs, that are more relevant to general public health.
I'll concede the point once we stop spending trillions on bombing other people here on earth first.
And yet, the human habitation makes whole classes of experiments difficult or impossible, due to the atmosphere, the vibrations from movement, etc..
The primary thing we are studying on the ISS is the occupants. All the other experiments are just added value.
Capture some asteroids, use them for raw material, and build a base to use to get to the rest of the solar system.
Oh is that all there is to it? We don't need to learn how to keep people alive and healthy in zero G first? What is your proposal for radiation protection outside of the Earth's magnetic field? How do you propose to manufacture useful products out of asteroids of unknown composition given that we lack even basic space worthy manufacturing technology? How do you plan to keep people's bones intact and prevent the other physical deterioration we so far haven't even been able to figure out in low earth orbit? How do you propose to feed people on this hypothetical base?
I'm not even getting into the economics of it. I think you are being rather glib with a very complicated and difficult engineering problem. Your goal is a great one but a goal without a plan is nothing more than a dream.
So, what exactly is the point of manned space stations? Is it really worth it? Or would the money, time and effort be better invested in some other types of space activity - automated experimental stations, or - let's dream - building a "real" base in space?
The point is to learn how to allow humans to not only survive but thrive in space. Whether it is worth it is something you will have to figure out for yourself but for my part the answer is yes. I think it is the greatest adventure we are currently engaged in and I think it expands human knowledge more than anything else we are doing. As for building a "real" station, you have to crawl before you can walk. We don't yet have the technology to build a station on the moon or any other planetary body. That is going to take a while and will cost a LOT more money than we are currently willing to spend.
Except negotiating on a person by person bases for the same work is stupid.
No it is not. Even people hired for the same job vary in competence and qualifications. This is particularly true in programming - the difference in productivity between a competent programmer and a great programmer can literally be an order of magnitude apart. Should you pay two people with vastly different productivity levels the same amount merely because they share the same job title?
Why should a great engineer be paid less because they aren't a social adept as someone else?
Probably because business is a team sport and social ability matters even in engineering. Your ability to effectively communicate and work with others is important.
It's the same work.
That doesn't mean everyone is equally good at doing it.
Lots of smart people + huge bank account + significant access to the world's accumulated knowledge.
None of which is unique to Google. Google does not have privileged access to more than a tiny tiny subset of the world's information and none of that is specific to energy technology.
It's a formula worth trying on the problems that matter - in the past, lots of smart people and a huge bank account have only been applied by governments to military applications.
Baloney. AT&T, IBM, Westinghouse, GE and lots of other companies have had huge bank accounts and Nobel prize winning research departments. Bell Labs alone was responsible for 8 Nobel prizes, unix, C, transistors, lasers, CCDs, radio astronomy and more.
You can't "invent" cheaper tech--it only gets cheaper if you invest in mass-producing it.
That's only sort of half true. You can invent a technology that is fundamentally less expensive than previous alternatives at the same production scales. It's not merely a matter of more = cheaper.
The problem is that is only true for a few hours around solar noon.
For now. Furthermore a LOT of energy usage occurs exactly during that time. Let's say you have a grocery store and you need to power refrigerators. Guess when the maximum power drain from air conditioning will be? Exactly during mid day when the solar cells are at maximum efficiency. In my opinion most industrial businesses should have a rooftop covered in solar cells. It is wasted space now, it generates clean(er) energy right when it is needed, it distributes the grid, turns variable power costs into fixed costs and it should reduce costs in the long run. Rooftop solar on businesses makes a ton of sense. Doesn't solve every problem but it would be a big step in the right direction.
Just because it doesn't solve every problem doesn't mean you should dismiss the problems it does solve.
Wind is much better but people always seem to ignore they production vs consumption cycle problem with solar.
That depends very much on where and when you need the power generation. Wind is great but like solar it solves some but not all problems. It's not hard to find use cases where solar makes more sense and others where wind is the better option.
So yes, the bulk of our power usage (and Im not the poster you replied to) is over night.
So of course your usage habits clearly apply to everyone else in the world and nobody is ever in their home during the day. [/sarcasm]
If you want to trade anecdotal evidence the bulk of our electricity usage is during the day during the summer when our AC is running. Most of the night usage could easily be stored in a battery bank that could fit inside our house.
Solar cells could cost $0, and they still probably wouldn't make sense when compared to grid power that isn't made artifiicially expensive by Greenist boondoggles.
You might have a point if fossil fuel generation actually had to pay for all the environmental damage it causes. But since they don't and the real cost of heating your home is higher than you might guess from your monthly bill.
And if you think solar cells for free would not make economic sense for a huge portion of the population then you have NO idea what you are talking about. Nothing actually costs zero but super cheap solar cells with good efficiency would massively change the world energy markets.
It is, and will continue to be, so long as governemnts keep paying people to not build fusion reactors.
Please cite a single incidence of any government actually paying someone to not build a working fusion reactor.
My guess is that, when we finally get a working fusion reactor, it will be developed in a few years by a company that completely ignores all the 'basic research' governments have funded over the last fifty years.
Based on what? Something more than a hunch I hope. Or perhaps the simpler answer is that it's a really tough problem to figure out. Research doesn't care who funds it. Either the findings are useful or they aren't.
You are wrong. The gigantic economic boom of the 20th century was fuelled by cheap oil.
There is no single cause for such a complicated occurrence. Oil is certainly a part of the equation but there are a LOT more variables than just the price of oil.
If you don't like the choices previous generations made, you first should figure out WHY they made those choices before deciding they were wrong.
Most of the time the answer boils down to "it seemed like a good idea at the time". We use fossil fuels because they were available and we figured out how to make the economical sooner than some of the alternatives. We didn't know about some of the environmental side effects at the time. Same with nuclear. We tried all sorts of things with radiation that we now consider insane because we didn't know any better at the time. We figured much of it out in time but we didn't magically know all the problems with a technology the moment it was invented. So we build on what we know at the time and sometimes (like with fossil fuels) find out later on that maybe what seemed like a good idea before really wasn't. That's ok. What's not ok is doing nothing once you realize there is a problem.
What did it mean that one of the world's most ambitious and capable innovation companies couldn't invent a cheap renewable energy tech?
Umm, nothing. Google has no special expertise in energy tech. This is WAY outside their core businesses where they have a proven competence. The notion that they would to solve the economic problem of renewable energy where everyone else had (so far) failed is somewhere between well intentioned altruism and pure undiluted hubris. (not sure where on that scale though) The only thing Google has is smart people and a huge bank account. Those are nice assets to work with but just because you can throw smart people and money at a problem doesn't mean a solution will magically appear in a timely manner. Research is unpredictable and requires long term dedication. And even if you do succeed in coming up with a nifty new technology it doesn't automatically mean that the economics of it will be favorable. I'm not saying Google shouldn't try - I'm glad to see them working on and/or bankrolling research such problems. My point is that Google shouldn't be expected to be more likely to solve the problem than any number of other companies/organizations that have worked on these problems.
I am an agent. Though I would argue there is no difference between an agent and a recruiter or a headhunter.
There is a huge difference depending on who you represent and who pays your commissions. An agent works on behalf of someone typically for a talented individual. A recruiter or headhunter typically works for a company though they are an agent of a sort but not in the usual use of the word. An agent for Lebron James represent's Lebron, is hired by Lebron, and their sole goal is to get as good a deal for Lebron (and thereby themselves) as possible. The needs of the company only matter so far as they affect the negotiation. Recruiters (usually) are hired by the company and are a middle man who is hired to find talent the company might otherwise be unable to locate. Their financial interest is to get as high a salary as possible for whoever the company hires but they have no obligation to represent the interests of any particular individual seeking employment.
The IT industry in particular sees that as me taking a cut of your wages, but I don't negotiate with you about my rate. I negotiate with the company about what they are going to pay me for my finders service.
That means you are NOT an agent (for the employee) because you do not represent interests of the person seeking employment. If you represented the talent the company would have no involvement whatsoever in the negotiations regarding your pay rate. That would be entirely between you and the individuals you represent. Yes it is in your interest to negotiate as high a percentage for the employee as possible but they aren't who you work for. If Person A doesn't fit with BigCorp then you can move to Person B. That means you aren't an agent for Person A or Person B.
But for most of us this job is thankless with companies telling us to go jump and candidates thinking we are ripping them off
Welcome to sales. That's the life of any salesman. And you are right that not everyone can do it well.
Isn't that also called dumping?
Strictly speaking no it is not dumping. Dumping is the act of charging less in a foreign market than you charge in your domestic market. That isn't what Intel is doing. What Intel is doing might be considered a form of predatory pricing but it isn't dumping. All dumping is predatory pricing but not all predatory pricing is dumping.
You keep saying that. Do you really think if you say that enough, it will magically become true?
I say it because it is true. Google makes well over 90% of its revenue from advertising. Everything else they do is a rounding error from a revenue and profit perspective. What else would you call them? They might become something else someday but they ARE an advertising company. Virtually every product they make is based on enhancing or protecting their advertising business. Email, maps, search, etc are all about increasing context sensitive ad revenue. Android is a defensive play to keep phone makers (Apple & Microsoft especially) from locking them out of mobile platforms. Set top boxes? Same thing - a defensive play. If you don't see it then you aren't looking at the big picture.
Actually I'm not sure if I want to wear advanced battery technology on my wrist or my face if it is storing sufficient energy to easily rip off my hand or my head when something goes wrong.
Why not? You sit in a car that has fuel with 270 times the specific energy of batteries and FAR more Kgs of combustible material. You could increase the energy of your watch battery two orders of magnitude and still not get to gasoline.
A lithium air battery has half the specific energy of wood. I wouldn't worry too much about a better battery.
I just don't know how you get to the point where somebody is literally walked out of a building from a meeting after being "discovered" using Evernote. Either they were poorly informed or they were actively interested in obtaining secrets.
I've met, worked with and (unfortunately) employed many people who were decidedly clueless. If it wasn't laid out in black and white for them they would inevitably do something stupid even when you or I would think it was absurdly obvious that the action was a bad idea. I've seen people surf for porn at work, mass email sensitive documents, fall asleep in the front row of a company meeting, post sensitive company or customer information to public websites, etc. In most cases the person was "surprised" to find out their behavior was wrong. At hospitals I've seen people perp-walked from the building for HIPPA violations like looking up information about VIP patients and on a few occasions posting information about it to their facebook page. If you work for a big accounting firm you might get escorted from the building on a first offense for putting client information to Evernote because doing so violates several regulations. Defense contractors is an obvious one.
Short version, never underestimate how clueless some people can be. Hell, a big part of my job is writing bullet proof work instructions because if something isn't spelled out clearly to a 4th grade reading level then people will do it wrong.
A private entity cannot enforce anything upon the populace...
Care to place a wager on that? Private enterprises force things on the public all the time. Sometimes with the blessing of government, sometimes without. Government can override a private enterprise but in the absence of government action private entities can largely do whatever they want. If they are powerful they can even influence government to do their bidding at times. See regulatory capture.
Government has a very limited range of things that they do as well or better than the public at large (war/defense, money, basic law enforcement, etc) - governmental action beyond that range invariably becomes incompetent, expensive, dangerous, or worse.
The range of things government does competently is a fair bit wider than most people give credit for. There is some truth in what you say but government is often the least worst way to do quite a lot of things. Health care, social safety nets, infrastructure, contracts enforcement, basic research funding, and more are often better handled by governments than private enterprise. Furthermore just because some people in the US have an apparently allergy against government doing anything doesn't mean they are correct in their assertion that government is always bad. Lots of countries utilize governments for much more than the US does (notably for health care) with great success. Doesn't mean we have to do it that way but just because we don't do something a certain way doesn't mean it cannot be done. I'm not overly trusting of government myself but I also don't axiomatically assume government to be incompetent.
Never give government more power than the worst-case scenario you would be willing to live under.
That I would agree with. The problem is that we may have an honest disagreement about what constitutes a worst case scenario. Ask a libertarian or a conservative or a democrat and you'll generally get rather different answers.
It sounds pretty fascist to shitcan someone like that, especially if the policy they were fired under wasn't fairly specific about Evernote-type services.
Depends on the company and who their customers are. If your customer is the defense department (for example) then they might be pretty sensitive about you posting information to Evernote.
So under what do you file "bright Sun" or "Style"?
Google Glass is not made for bright sun (though they could fix that I guess) and they sure as hell aren't stylish. They look like the geeky research project they are.
If you have to wear glasses for a functional reason then it is fine to worry (a little) about how they look. Anyone who wears glasses purely for style without a functional reason is a douche.
Oh and bright sun = eyestrain. Seemed obvious to me...
I think we do have the technology, just look at the size of a raspberry pi.
Doesn't matter. The problem isn't really the electronics. The biggest technology problem is the battery. We simply do not have battery technology that is sufficiently advanced to make a lot cool ideas practical. Hell we can't even make a smartphone that lasts more than about a day or two of heavy use.
Is it true that Google Goggles are simply not attractive to wear?
Partly. They aren't stylish nor are they useful enough to overcome that deficit. But that isn't really even among the biggest problems with Google Glass.
1) People who don't need corrective lenses don't generally want to wear glasses. I wore glasses for 17 years before I had lasik and there isn't a way in hell you would get me to wear glasses again except for safety, eye strain or vision correction.
2) People don't generally like to use voice interfaces particularly in public. You don't see a lot of people using Siri out in public so why should Google Glass be any different
3) People are creeped out by the privacy issues even if many of the critiques aren't really justified.
4) They don't fit gracefully into most people's lifestyle. Much of the functionality of Google Glass is already covered by smartphones. Why do I need this conspicuous and much more annoying device second device to do something I mostly already have? It doesn't scratch any itch I have.
5) The best uses for it are more industrial - particularly augmented reality uses. Think work instructions while building a complicated assembly. But Google seems to largely be ignoring these.
healthcare - the US has the worst healthcare system of any developed nation, and it is privately run
Only deluded ideologues think that the US health care system is privately run. Yes it has elements that are privately run but you cannot ignore Medicare or Medicaid because they are the 800lb gorilla in the system. Insurance companies generally follow whatever pricing Medicare sets. Our more conservative leaning citizens often like to live with the illusion that private always equals better (sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't) and that our system is a private system but in reality is it is a public/private hybrid system with the public parts (Medicare mostly) leading the private parts on pricing.
As for the "worst healthcare system" comment, that is nonsense. Most expensive? No argument. But expensive != worst at least not by itself. Guess where all that nifty technology that the rest of the world gets to use is developed? More often than not, right here in the US - and we incur a lot of the cost for it. The US healthcare system has economic problems but the actual ability to treat disease is second to none. While I certainly won't argue that the overall US health care system is the best in the world (it clearly is not) I would absolutely argue that it isn't the worst either.