I find it a bit difficult to understand that something banal is socially positive.

Home delivery of everyday goods? Automatic dog walking? Assistance with farming? Private construction? Those all seem fairly logical/obvious extensions of what could be done with private drone ownership, which all have positive social potential.

I don't know that I agree with that. If anything, our laws need to evolve with such a new technology. The laws surrounding both the use of airspace and ground vehicle use don't perfectly apply.

I'd agree for *stricter* regulation for corporations, and for protection for the public against corporate use, but I'm not confident current law is mature enough to sufficiently protect private citizens from other private citizens when it comes to drone use.

Your comment above and sig are kind of ironic - having a right (scientists acquiring dangerous materials for experiences) certainly doesn't mean you *have* to exercise it (having those materials available for anyone without necessity) - by the same logic: just because everyone doesn't *have* to do something doesn't mean no one should be able to.

Technology has always had the capacity to be dangerous; that doesn't invalidate all usefulness. Why are we (slashdotters especially!) so afraid of some new technologies?

globaljustin seems to have an odd vendetta against Schmidt (he was pretty vitriolic in the recent Schmidt/Assange /. story).

Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile all have LTE (with varying levels of coverage).

Not responding to the AC, but I would amend your comment slightly as "If you're spending four hours a day commuting, and bitching about it, you're living in the wrong place."

Uprooting a family to reduce commute time isn't always realistic, but it's still technically a decision you have the ability to make. If having a job 2 hours away is what you need to do to make ends meet, you should realize that's your choice, and you should live with it without complaining to/blaming others.

Our top performing salespeople are all incredibly nice people that are easy to get along with. Sales is about developing and maintaining relationships, both with customers, and with the engineers/support people/managers that drive the concrete aspects of your business. If you need to be an asshole to be a good salesperson, then the product/service you're selling is terrible, or you don't understand it well enough to sell effectively.

a link to some random google analytics of words searched doesn't mean shit

It's actually a very specific Google Trends link, representing search interest for the term 'bitcoin', which didn't take off until roughly the same time as this interview. Google Analytics is something else.

You didn't read the basics of Bitcoin that's for sure

"[bitcoins] didn't take off until roughly the same time as this interview."

I didn't really read anything into Schmidt's lack of knowledge of bitcoin; they really didn't take off until roughly the same time as this interview.

Regarding his actual technical prowess, keep in mind he's essentially been a manager in some fashion for 30 years, albeit for very technical companies. As to whether or not he's qualified to run Google, I'd probably bring that up with Brin and Page, and then check out the success of the company over the last 12 years.

I don't know that it was any direct technological innovation by him that Schmidt (and others) are interested in him for, I think it's the fact that he's pretty technical and applies that knowledge on a far broader scale than many other people who share his level of technical prowess.

To some degree, I read that as a product of this being a transcript of a conversation. It's tough to capture a conversational setting in writing (even good written dialogue rarely makes for realistic spoken conversation). Also, Schmidt actively pursued setting this meeting up to talk with Assange directly, and based on a lot of the informal banter during the conversation, it definitely seemed like no one minded about being interrupted.

I was especially amused when Lisa Shields spilled water on her laptop, and Assange quickly 'saves' it from damage - somehow I was immediately reminded of the scene in Ronin when De Niro's character "accidentally" knocks a cup off a table, and Stellan Skarsgård's character instinctively catches it.

In the context of the terms they've written out, I assume "lend" means for a longer period of time than simply letting someone try them on. It's usually understood that lending an item to someone is letting them use it for its intended purpose, like lending a spare cell phone to someone to use until they get a new one, instead of just handing someone your shiny new cell phone to show it off.

Who said anyone was confused? Data collection and app permissions don't need to be "all or nothing."

Cyanogen definitely allowed this at one point (when looking at an installed app's settings, you could touch any of the permissions which would strike them out); it was hit or miss, with some apps crashing constantly when you disabled any of their permissions. I'm running 10.1 right now, and unfortunately this feature doesn't seem to exist anymore.