Looking at the chart, and reading their descriptions, it does look like they are following insustry-standard codes for what they mention at least. The only difference is that they are painting the whole pipe, not just marking by bands.

Examples:
Picture 5 (http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/all/5)
Caption: "The blue pipes supply cold water and the red pipes return the warm water back to be cooled."
The suggested markings ("Chilled Water Supply" and "High-Temp Hot Water Return") match the colors shown. You can also see labels on the pipes over on the right of the picture fitting the description.

Picture 9 (http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/all/9)
Caption: "The bright pink pipe in this photo transfers water from the row of chillers (the green units on the left) to a outside cooling tower."
The suggested markings state that this color should be used for condensate / steam, which seems to match the description. Likewise, you can see a label to the left on the green pipe stating "Chiller Condenser Water Supply". The suggested markings indicate this would also match. The label on the yellow pipe is "Chiller Condenser Water Return", which might possibly fit with "Low-Temp Hot Water Return" as suggested on the linked page.

So, it looks like they are following standard conventions as close as possible. Keep in mind this tour isn't just for people who live and breathe pipe standards, it's also for the average person too and is meant to be a little fun.

Nothing built-in, unfortunately, but Google Voice works well. If both parties have it, they can send messages to and from the application and it's all counted as data. Since it's a normal phone number, people without it can use standard SMS on their end. The only difference with normal SMS is that Google Voice doesn't handle short codes (those four or five digit numbers often used by marketers and special lists). If you want something even more cross-platform, Google Talk, which uses XMPP, also works great and is a full-fledged IM service.

Given the animosity between Apple and Google over the whole Android thing, I don't think they'll be working on or agreeing to any kind of cross-platform messaging system anytime soon. Even then, they'll run into issues with the cell carriers in the US who will be very upset over being cut out of revenue they used to get.

Actually, the USPS doesn't have any air fleet nor do they do own any railroad assets. They have to purchase space from other carriers like UPS, FedEx, DHL, and AmTrak. Basically, like any other private company, they have to contract that part out.

I'm not sure if they get any special breaks on their ground vehicles, though.

I wish CSS could support a bit more programmer-centric syntax too, but I've found a great stop-gap with SASS and Compass using the SCSS syntax. It's basically like CSS, but better because it supports variables, mixins (reusable snippets), and other shortcuts for making CSS. The tools themselves might be coded in Ruby, but they generate plain CSS that you can use anywhere.

Yeah, if you don't use OS X enough to be familiar with the annoyance, you would probably be confused. It's quite the pain when you're used enough to the way the other OSes handle it and happen to be using OS X.

I think the escape sequences mentioned are similar to what is described here.

Interesting on Firefox behavior. I normally don't use the keyboard for movement there, so I wasn't aware. Besides, the behavior is different depending on where the "focus" is. For example, textboxes in forms grab control of the movement keys. Scrolling with a touch pad or mouse is more consistent.

Concerning VI, "G" in command mode will get you to the last line of the file you are editing. Likewise, "1G" or ":0" (zero) will take you to the first line. Similarly, ^ and $ will take you to the beginning and end of the current line in command mode. If you're not familiar with all the text movement options, I highly suggest learning as it makes things like deleting 10 lines at once very easy.

Oh, thanks for the information. I don't work all that often in OS X, so I wasn't aware of that modifier. I'd personally like the behavior the other way around, but it is what it is.

The issue the parent had is that certain keys on the keyboard behave different from how UNIX and Windows traditionally handle them. For instance, PgUp and PgDown only scroll the viewport. They do not move the cursor. The fun is when you're very used to the cursor moving and then press one of the directional arrows to find you're back in the original position. You have to remember to click the mouse in the document to re-set the cursor position. Likewise, Home and End move the viewport to the very top and bottom of the viewport, not the expected beginning and ending of the line, if you're in a multi-line textbox.

So, while the keys do work, they are quite different from other OSes out there, leading to some very annoying behavior if you're keyboard-centric.

I wonder how the license for their software would work with the App Store.

I know that there are, or were, problems under the GPL, but potentially the binary they provide could be licensed solely under the MPL. Growl is BSD, so there isn't really a problem there.

Yeah, there was a lot of confusion when the change happened. I think the support issues with Snow Leopard were due to the whole sandboxing thing Apple announced with the App Store, but I'm not entirely sure on that since I don't touch OS X all that often.

I do agree with the basic argument and think it entirely disingenous when a company or group pulls that kind of thing. A good example, although old, is the case of Sveasoft and the GPL. That whole situation wound up getting pretty bad as the owner started attempting to wring money from the software by putting kill switches in the firmware and blocking customers who released the GPL source code. Even worse in that case was that the owner didn't actually own all the copyrights for the software they were controlling.

Growl is still open source, you can find it over at https://code.google.com/p/growl/ and build the source code using the instructions at http://growl.info/documentation/developer/growl-source-install.php. The source tracks the official releases from the developers and is still BSD licensed.

If you don't want to build from source, they do offer a pre-built binary for free, or maybe you can convince a developer friend to build it for you.

Either way, there is no bait-and-switch. The source has always been free. They just decided recently to start charging for the process of building and verifying binaries.

I respect your decision, but must ask you to think a bit about the larger picture of GoDaddy themselves.

Not only have they come out in favor of a law that allows any company to claim copyright infringement and get a whole domain blacklisted easily, but GoDaddy has also engaged in other negative customer-hostile acts such as selective DNS "blackouts", which at least in the past resulted in the entire country of China being cut off from all domains using GoDaddy DNS.

They've also been accused of not paying overtime for their employees.

Also, keep in mind that with SOPA, GoDaddy still hasn't made an attempt to have their name removed in Congress as a supporter of the bill, so their "reversal" is just a publicity stunt.

Do you really wish to reward a company that's engaged in some fairly unethical behavior and also some behavior that is targeted specifically toward getting their customers to pay them more by degrading their services unless one pays? The company has shown a pattern of making choices that favor itself at the expense of its customers. SOPA may not be in your circle of concern, but their unethical behavior certainly should be.

Still, at the end of the day it is your choice.