American media companies to remember is that they're not American in thought, taste or outlook.
What is American thought, taiste and outlook.
Americans are a rather diverse group of people. Ranging from extreamly liberal to hard conservative and with a lot of points in between.
Sure we have some cultural norms, like every other country. But judging our culture from our media doesn't give a full picture.
Based off of media.
1 out of every 4 people is an aspiring actor.
80% of the population lives in California
15% lives in New York City, no one lives upstate.
4% lives in Illinois .
1% elsewhere
(There is a wide range of cultural diversity across each state, most of it isn't covered my the media)
Nearly everyone is self centered/as some odd quark.

What is called American culture is just Hollywood culture, that isn't representative of the full United States.

Heck I live next to a Mennonite community in the middle of nowhere, we have High speed internet, decent cell coverage... And a diversity of pleasant friendly people and jerks who have no regulard for others. And like real life often they are one and the same based on the situation.

I think it is the case HP R&D was running a bit too informal. As in they were not doing any real good Research and Development, and were mostly slaking off.
I mean what do you think that is new and exciting from HP now? Printers Color and Black and White? While they are still the leader in printers they are mostly the same thing that has been around for decades. I can still find some Laserjet 4 kicking around and printing the same quality as the newest ones, they are just a little slower to do it. Desktop and Laptops? HP PCs are more or less the cheap mans out. On the PC Side Lenovo has been winning on the professional end, then a slew of cheaper makers on the consumer end.
HP does a lot of other stuff too... But much of it isn't giving much press, and is falling behind.

R&D May be slacking off, enjoying the care free "creative" work environment, a bit too much. Putting in a dress code, is to remind them that yes you are at work, not social time.

Business casual dress isn't any more uncomfortable then dress down is it? But when you get up in the morning you say to yourself I need to dress for work.

I miss the single player adventure games like from Sierra and Lucas Arts where you can engross yourself in a story game line, and have work to solve puzzles and you celibate when you continue the story plot, without having to use twitch like hand eye coordination, or play online with a bunch of people just trying to mess you up.

But those times have ended. It is too easy and tempting to get spoilers on line, people tolerance towards game frustration has diminished...

Now he made a popular open source game, people liked it and it grew for a time. That is great... however times change, and popular games soon become tiresome. Updates and fixes and new content doesn't really excite as much after a while.

There isn't really that much to gain in Open Source games, because of the entertainment value of the game vs practical value. A game will offer a few months of joy perhaps a couple of years, then it will get old and tiresome, and they will be a new one out. You are better off selling it make a lot of money from it, then go on to new projects once it has peaked. I am not trying to be Mr. Anti Open Source, but Open Source works better on serious infrastructure type of projects, Operating Systems, Web Servers, Databases, programming languages... These tend to have long term demand, and invested interests on maintaining the project, including full time support. If my company is dependent on the success of an Open Source project, it may be useful, to hire resources to contribute to it, it may be a better value then buying stock into a closed source company, as you are actively contributing you get a better say on what goes on in your critical infrastructure software needs.

But he used vague requirements so not to give enough information for an actual informed decision.

But in general it sounds like it is going to be expensive and a lot of work, with working out a lot of details more then storing and backing up data.
Then the question but how do you present it back to the clients? That is a different can of worms.

The real question should be.
Which consulting company should I work with on a big data project?
Have you worked with some that seems to be able to give you a clear goal and time lines, and meet the budget specified.

It is in theory... However right now I am not seeing the need for it. I am currently at 10-15mbs about 100x slower... I am able to stream HD video, while browsing the web at the same time. Unlike the old days of dial up when I started at 2400bps and even when I went to 14.4k and 28.8k even when I got to college and we had about 1-5mbs It was a point where we wanted more speed. However now unless I am downloading the latest Linux/BSD distribution ISO that I feel like playing with. It doesn't feel slow or non-responsive any more.

However I expect once a good portion of people switch to GB speeds, I will need to upgrade, because sites and services will be designed to handle the new average bandwidth Streaming 8k video, more teleconferencing tools etc...

The big assumption is that a majority people want a car sharing system.
We still have people using cars as a status symbols, people putting special customization to make them more effective for their life style. And a lot of people do live off the beaten path, having to wait an hour for a car ton come to drive an hour to get to your destination isn't very practical.
Yes I heard the reports about those crazy millennials who will change everything...
Just as those baby boomers who were hippies who then became yuppies then to be tea party.

As the economy improves and these people get settled, they will most likely go back to the traditional American Dream, a car for each person, with enough room for the full family, with the power and build to survive a military conflict.

I though on Slashdot we hated Eye Candy?

The Glass effect blurs too much, so you are unable to see what is behind it.
The Lamp effect is marginally useful so you can pick your icons where you mouse cursor is jammed at the bottom of the screen.

It isn't that older CPU couldn't support multi-threading, but the fact it was a single CPU, And threading similar tasks will not offer performance increase per coding complexity. So most programs were not multi-threaded, to do parallel processing, they were multi-threaded as to not hinder the User Interface, or to handle multiple interface requests. (Such as having many users login to the same port) .

Most Desktop applications didn't even bother going that far.
Now with multi-CPU cores, you can have each CPU doing the same calls in Parallel so you can do major speed improvements in you single app.
It isn't the peaking in hardware technology, but reliance on legacy software that was designed for simpler times.

Chances are that guy is using the same admin password you are too. It makes it much easier.

The PC have improved. But with Parallel processing. And most programs are not coded to take advantage of the multiple cores. So the speed of any one of your programs has more or less peaked. However you can run more at the same time.
Until we can come up with easier methods than threads hacks added to most languages, we will still be mostly programming for a single CPU and not parallel processing. It will also help for more colleges to have Parallel processing as part of its undergrad program. Most introduce it in Grad School.

I applied there a while back, a decade or so.
The interview questions on the form I found to be really bias towards younger hipster type of people.
Asking questions on political philosophy and working in a startup environment.

Experience for Google doesn't seem to matter.

The issue with age discrimination is from experience with that older fellow who is just coasting to retirement not willing to learn or change, and has been in the same position for decades.
However there are also the ones who are just as on top of it as them whipper snappers and can code circles around them.

I think it is part of the normal bad science reporting.
But for a lot of stuff now we cannot get the actual picture but a series of datapoint that a computer will translate as an image. Where assumption are made in the program and some parts may be distorted or just wrong.

P-II with 640k RAM? That is one hard to find configuration. During the Pentium 2 age the normal ram is 32-128megs of ram.

For 640k you probably would be using an 8088-286.

Notepad type of programs when printing send raw text.
The more advanced word processors sush as word perfect and word for DOS send additional print commands.
The bad cable may not been able to pickup the extra commands.
Or more likely the printing from word, had the port speed set a little faster then the bad cable can handle.
I wonder what would happen if you printed a J

Being hungry, while working with industrial equipment can lead to dangerious mistakes.
I wouldn't make a diet from it, but it is better then starving.