Nonsense. Everywhere but Gmail* that Google has tried to take on Yahoo - they've gotten their hands burned. Google does exceedingly well at buying startups and entering businesses where there's little to no competition... But (outside of search where they really did have a clear new idea), their record of taking on entrenched competition is mixed at best.

* Which was aimed as much at Microsoft as Yahoo!, and took a long time and (essentially) forcing Android users to have a Google account to best either one of them.

Thanks for saving me the trouble of rolling out my canned reply on the topic. That question gets asked and answered every time the topic of Yahoo! comes up...

The thing too is that I already had a login that worked with gmail, voice, youtube, chat and the play store. All of a sudden I need to register for a G+ profile to be able to leave comments on Youtube and Google Play because.....

You tell me.

Because... one of the keys ways for Google to compete with Facebook in the only arena that matters (the bottom line) was to compete for advertising dollars. G+ was a shortcut to more easily tracking Google users across multiple services and increasing the value (to Google) of their massive database of user information.

Again with the complete failure to grasp reality. Facts aren't perjoratives or talking points. They're facts.

Okay.. where's the source of food energy which is going to allow zombies to be mobile more a few days after they turn?

Assuming "fast" zombies, a genuine zombie disease would burn out faster than ebola as they consume all their "food" almost immediately.

Depends on who's freedom you want to respect.

How is a "government" agency the same thing as a "Corporation"?

I've never really understood the vitriol toward G+.

That's because you've drunk deeply of the kool-aid.
 

The press doing what they do (and no doubt strongly encouraged by Facebook, Microsoft, Apple) created a narrative of Google taking aim at Facebook and how they will most certainly fail. Google has repeated many times what the G+ initiative was about, but the press either ignored the facts or said Google was lying. How dare Google try to disrupt their narrative with something as inconsequential as facts. G+ is a framework to unify Google services. Before, it was a complete mess. You had different userids and passwords

If all they wanted to do was to create a unified login, all they had to do was the same thing Yahoo and many other services have done... Simply announce the availability of (or requirement for) a unified account and provided a link to a page with relevant information and tools.

But that's not what they did.

The created a "Facebook [like|light] streaming update system. ("Light" because it was very feature incomplete.) They emasculated Picasa (and their last best hope for competing with the likes of Flickr and Photobucket) in order to encourage people to use the Photos application which was integrated into that system. Pre-launch they very carefully recruited celebrities, tastemakers, and influential internet personalities across a wide range of activities to be early adopters and to provide users with a ready made suite of people to "follow" and "like". (Seriously, you don't go to the effort of recruiting the like of Thomas Hawk (photography) or Marc Spagnuolo (woodworking)* unless you intend to attract photographers and woodworkers to your service - something an integrated login doesn't need.) And then they marketed it extensively (one of the very few times Google has actively marketed anything) as a social service.

In short, they pretty much did everything possible to make G+ look like a social media system (and a successor to their previous, failed, attempts) and a competitor to Facebook. It's not all surprising in light of this that media (and the public) failed to buy their belated claim that the whole thing was nothing but a way to introduce a unified login and account system.

* Both are internet personalities with a significant following in their fields.

The default government stance is that these things are legal, until proven illegal (challenged in court).

This default stance clearly indicates that our government is against its people. We live in a police state.

Am I the only one who is generally confused by Intel Marketing and rebranding blitz on their products.

Back in the olden day, We had 286, 386, 486... Life was easy, sure there was the SX vs DX (Math-co-processor addition). Then instead of the 586 we got the Pentium. Then is the Pentium pro the 686 or was that the Pentium 2. Then they added the budget Celeron to the name, but still it made sense. Finally at a point where the Ghz peaked around 3ghz, We got the Core and the Core Dual, then the Core 2, after the Core 2, intel swapped to using the i3, i5, and i7, and with a new number scheme.
Now they are doing this with the Atom, so we are just adding to the confusion.
I just want a simple method to knowing what I am running on and if I need my processor upgraded. That i5 runs faster than the 3 year old i7. If I want to upgrade, I may not want the newest but 1 generation behind. But it is so much harder to figure it out now.

Well there is danger, as some "facts" are politically motivated.
Liberal values, tend to see things as dangerous. The dangers of GMO food (While there is so proven science to show otherwise), Chemical whatever when used in a consumer good must be bad, because if you drink it in raw form you will die...

Conservative values, tend to lead to things being safe, Global Warming is not caused by Humans, The chemicals that we pump into your water supply is safe.

Points evidence or lack of evidence is often explained as a conspiracy by their opponents to keep the truth away from us. (Sometimes this is true, smoking, lead, etc...) Other times it is just hoping it isn't the case and delaying the process until real evidence comes out.

Especially if it is rather new, much of the science is just in the hypothesis state, and probably just started recording data. There isn't facts, but a lot of opinions, worded as fact.

Now Google as an institution is left leaning. While their intentions may be good and not trying to push a political agenda, their algorithm will closely match what how their brains would match facts vs bluster, thus creating a subconscious autonomous political leaning system.

I am not saying that they didn't have zombie fads before. But the current fad has gone on for too long. There is too much thinking about zombies as a problem. We need to focus on more serious fictional characters such as wizards.

See my point. You are blaming capitalism on all our problems, however as of right now, increase trade and free market shows a reduction of war. When countries get isolated from free trade, they get more and more radicalized, as their exposure to other people become limited.

The human condition is to stick with the people you know the best. Trade, is what brings us out of our little world, to talk to other who are not like us. What would happen if we solve world hunger and the scarcity of supplies across the world, we would all cluster in our own little worlds, without having to talk to those folks not like us. Humanity like what is comfortable and safe. If we have all of our needs met, we will just cluster with our particular cliches.

Their model basically assumes that you - the person who read the study - would be the only one who would flee to some location where you expect to be safe, and everyone else would stay where they were. If humans really were like that then by all means, follow the advice. But of course, many other humans would react to a zombie apocalypse by fleeing to the country. Quite probably, some would bring infected (still asymptomatic) victims along, which would infect others in the "isolated" sanctuary. How many residents from LA would drive to Death Valley because it seems like a place where zombies wouldn't be? Well guess what: That immigration wave is exactly how zombies get there. A better model would account for this predictable human flight behavior before arriving at a final recommendation.

You are right. But only because nobody is actually looking at the problem. Comcast, Time Warner and COX are not the problem, they are the symptom of the problem.

The problem is last mile infrastructure ownership. Municipally owned last mile solves that problem. By pushing the problem from the last mile, to a more centralized COLO facility can solve the problem, by allowing Verizon, Google, Time Warner, COX, Comcast .... and whoever else wants in, access to the same customers.

This gives choice (missing currently) to the customer, rather than lock-in to a Franchise agreement holder.