Fortunately, the world they're vaporizing exists only in a computer simulation
DAMMIT! I have a deadline on Wednesday and this would have been a great excuse to blow it off and kick back with a cold beer...
To make it worse, Google is openly engaged in large scale tax evasion/avoidance.
Just to nitpick (a.k.a. correct your misleading comment) evasion and avoidance are two totally separate things. One is illegal. The other is not. If you are aware that Google are evading tax then you should inform the taxation authorities in the relevant countries and become the hero of many an anti-Google fanboy.
Google are known to be avoiding tax, and to many people (including me) that smacks of immoral behaviour. Taxes are there for a reason. They pay for shit that helps everyone. However, the tax system can never, will never and should never work on the "honour" system. If you leave loopholes that allow people and companies to legally avoid paying as much tax as everyone thinks they should, then of course they'll use them. I mean Jesus, it's not rocket science. Pay $X in tax, or pay $Y in tax, where Y is much, much smaller than X. Both are perfectly legal. Which one are people going to pick? Aside from a select few, anyone who says "Oh I'd pay more than the minimum because it's morally right" is either a moron, lying, or simply wouldn't benefit enough from a tax avoidance scheme to make it worth their while.
If the government wants to moderate Google's behaviour (besides just pretending to want to) then they would fine them far, far more.
Maybe, but if they want to moderate Google's tax-paying behaviour then they should close the bloody loopholes that let them avoid it in the first place.
maybe even Jack Vance and Zelazny mentioned.
Vance mentioned further up. As I mentioned up there, an anthology of short stories from some fairly well known SF writers set in Vance's universe was published not so long back and is called "Songs of the Dying Earth". From what I understand (haven't yet read Vance's original works) it touches upon many of the characters and plots from his work so don't read if you're potentially upset by back stories that aren't as you imagined!
London may itself be a bit of a special case due to the large number of Universities, and cosmopolitan residents that are perhaps more inclined to enjoy the heft of a physical wad of paper in their hands than the cold and clinical smoothness of an e-book reader.
As for myself, I definitely prefer a paper copy of a book. Something I can stick on a shelf, give to my kids to read one day, lend to a friend, resell if the urge ever hit me and something I can leave in a bag on the beach without worrying about someone stealing it. Most of those things are made much harder, or more pointless, by having e-books.
Amazon is thought to have approximately 20% share in total book sales in 2011, so it may still be fairly indicative of the market as a whole.
Except brick-and-mortar stores don't really offer e-books, and Amazon is a skewed sample as they're pretty much the champion of digital book purveyance. So no, not fairly indicative at all I'd say.
He uses a siting classification system developed by Michel Leroy for Meteofrance in 1999 that was improved in 2010 to quantify the effect of heat sinks and sources within the thermometer viewshed by calculation of the area- weighted and distance-weighted impact of biasing elements to calculate both raw and gridded 30 year trends for each surveyed station, using temperature data from USHCNv2.
Had to read that a couple of times before my internal parser came back with an approximate translation into lay-English.
I fear that this will be ammunition for the climate change deniers, which if I understand correctly is not the intention here. The gentleman in question is merely pointing out possible bias and error and the open invitation is to critically analyse and see if his theory stands up. You know, like real scientific method! Still, I'll sit back now and watch the fireworks in what promises to be yet another pitched battle between the deeply entrenched sides in a war where actual fact is not nearly as important as name calling and idealogical strength of will.
And the insults start in 3.....2......1......
This makes sense.
Indeed. Most travel sites, and general shopping sites, initially organise things by what they call "Relevance", and in many cases this is a totally ambiguous term! Relevance for them can surely mean which supplier paid them the most for advertising. Organising results based on someone's hardware, if a correlation can be shown between the hardware and end choices for accommodation in this case, actually seems pretty sensible and less sinister than what I'd usually expect.
Looking forward to reading all the paranoid and rage filled comments though...
I work in the movie business, and I've noticed how the console games manufacturers have, in about 1/5th the time Hollywood used, turned themselves into everything that sucks about the modern entertainment industry.
While I totally agree with the sentiment, I feel compelled to point out that what you and I might view as a never-ending torrent of crap from both Hollywood and most of the gaming industry, others view as a wonderful rainbow tinged cascade of entertainment.
Of course they're wrong and we're right. Right?
Byte your tongue.
