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Comment Re:I switched from sitting to standing. (Score 4, Interesting) 312

I'd recommend a standing desk to anyone with the willpower to make it through the transition.

And I'd recommend a sit-stand desk to anyone at all. Even if you don't stand all the time (I don't), being able to spend part of your day standing will make you feel better without discomfort, in fact being able to switch back and forth is more comfortable than sitting.

Comment Re:Information = Wealth = Power (Score 1) 98

Then it's not the same as mine. I've also followed the company from the beginning... and I have the benefit of the insider view.

Unless your insider view involved board meetings making top-level executive decisions, I'm not impressed.

Obviously not, but you may not realize how open the company is internally. Larry Page stands up in front of the entire company every week, for example, and takes -- and answers -- live questions. There are no negative consequences for asking hard questions, and hard questions do get asked. Sometimes the executives duck or dance around them, but not very often, and questions that aren't really answered continue getting asked until they do get answered.

In addition to that, other than things like acquisitions there are very few "top-level executive decisions" at Google. Most decisionmaking is driven from the bottom up.

You're probably still not impressed. Whatever. I'm just giving you my perspective and opinion. I would think that an intelligent insider's viewpoint would be of use to you; you're certainly free to dismiss it, whether or not that makes any sense. Time will tell, and I'm quite confident that the future will bear out my statements.

YouTube was a very obvious acquisition. What YouTube needed to survive and grow was low-cost scalability and a way to monetize the views it was getting. What Google had was massive data centers and network connectivity, plus a proven revenue model.

YouTube managed to grow to epic proportions before Google had to "save" them, as you imply. They also good have slapped ads onto their service at any time without Google buying them out.

Not according to YouTube employees who made the transition.

Comment Re:Information = Wealth = Power (Score 1) 98

My basis is the same as yours, except not from the inside, and not from just three years.

Then it's not the same as mine. I've also followed the company from the beginning... and I have the benefit of the insider view.

The tipping point came when they bought YouTube for an obscene amount of money (at the time). You don't spread your tendrils in such fashion throughout the industry just because you like technology.

YouTube was a very obvious acquisition. What YouTube needed to survive and grow was low-cost scalability and a way to monetize the views it was getting. What Google had was massive data centers and network connectivity, plus a proven revenue model. YouTube also needed a better search engine, and Google was interested in finding ways to index and search non-textual content. It was an ideal match, technologically.

Comment Re:Yay for government!!! (Score 3, Informative) 139

Yes they did, I was told it was on an active account, specifically a gophone account. I had to fight to get them to deal with this. After talking to that rep I was transferred to a "manager" which had an even thicker accent.

It was the 3rd person I had to talk to after being transferred all over the place. You might follow the rules, but a LOT of your fellow reps do not. Regularly I get told different information by two different reps, it seems that either you guys do not get trained consistently or the offshore people are utterly useless.

My most recent AT&T fail. I wanted to change plans and get a new phone as I was eligible for a new one. well the CSR changed my plan and then told me I had to pay full retail for the phone because changing the plan removed my eligibility. He refused to fix it and it was only customer retention that fixed it after I said, "well then Cancel all my accounts if you can not do that"

suddenly something that was impossible was possible.

Comment Re:Nonsense (Score 5, Funny) 294

Back when I worked as a web administrator at my local university back in the early 2000s, the admin make-work types decided to bash out a web policy , mostly to keep standards up and guard against legal liability (Admittedly we had students setting up websites on chemistry lab pcs turned webserver with novel meth recipes and all sorts of shenanigans before that). All good and fine, I asked to be on the committee as an advisor, and so I was.

Then the whole thing went off the rails, every page needed to be approved by a department head, 10,000+ pages of previously existing data had to be retrofitted with full dublin core metadata descriptions, and so on and so on for about 400 pages of rules and policy that despite my best efforts I could not stop. These people had no fucking idea.

The crown was an insane rule that every new hyperlink had to be aproved not just by a department head but by the vice chancellor himself.

And so thats what I did, and I made sure it was done good and proper. I wrote a perl script that took all new pages on the webserver network (about 50-100 new pages a day) and then whenever a hyperlink appeared it spat out a 1 page document for approval *per link* requiring the vice chancellor and a lawyer to co-sign off on. All with witnesses. All in all about 400 pages a day of paperwork for the vice chancellor and a lawyer.

The policy lasted 3 days before I was dragged into the admin building to be ordered to stop producing the reports. I went in with my union rep. I said "Sorry , no , thats the official policy as passed by the university senate and the website will need to be shut down if this isn't done.". Since the next senate meeting was two weeks away, I made sure every god damn day that stack of paperwork was done by the vice chancellor for a glorious fortnight before the senate could revoke the whole damn policy.

It was a magical and golden time to be a union protected government (Universities are mostly run by the state in australia) employee.

For some reason later that year I was passed over for a promotion though. I wonder why, lol.

Comment Festo has been doing this for years. (Score 5, Interesting) 36

Every year, Festo, the German robotics company, builds an exotic new kind of robot as a demo. Many of their robots have been "soft".

Here's their whole list of experimental projects. They've been doing "soft robots" since 2007. Others were doing "soft robots" before that, but the control usually wasn't that good. Festo builds soft robots with smooth, precise control. Festo's specialty is precise control of pneumatic systems, so they know how to do this.

Comment Re:Information = Wealth = Power (Score 1) 98

Google's primary goal is the technology, the profits and competitive advantage are a means to that end, not the other way around.

They are empire building. The technology is a means to that end.

The basis for your claim is?

The basis for my claim is three years of seeing how the company operates and what decisions it makes, and how, from the inside.

Comment Define homeless.... (Score 2) 320

The hustling scammers, the druggies and drunks, the mentially ill, or the real homeless that are down on their luck and actually trying?

Because the first two I ignore completely. The mentially Ill I feel really bad for, and the onesthatare really down on their luck are not on the street corners hustling for money. Those people are helped by my donations to homeless shelters and to women and children shelters.

The fake hustler that is claiming they are a veteran standing there with a sign? Or the one guy I see push his wheel chair up to the corner then get in it with his hand out? they can stuff it.

Comment Re:Yay for government!!! (Score 4, Interesting) 139

It is a royal pain in the ass to get a IMEI blacklisted. I had to fight AT&T even though I sent them the police report and the phone was in their records as my property.
"But it's currently activated" Yes, by the thief, blacklist it.
"but that is one of our gophone customers", Yes the thief blacklist it.
"but but....." Do I need to get a lawyer involved?
"One moment please...."

99% will not force them to blacklist the phone but just let it go. To hell with who they sold the phone to, I was not going to stop until the phone was forever disabled from being a phone.

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