Google Maps also has offline maps....

Major breakthrough? I don't think you have to even go there. Given our current rate of progress in biotech/genetics research (not even counting the acceleration that happens as time goes on), we can probably get significant life extensions for healthy people already in their 40s and 50s. Heck, given that they're getting life extensions, I won't be surprised if by the time their life extensions are "up" that they would have even more.

I'm sorry, but you could act a little more creative. If you have the technology to live forever, why can't you, or someone else still alive, find some way to restore your cognitive and bodily abilities to that of its prime?

Yeah, and the NDK also has a target called "x86", and the OS can tell what platform it's running on. How do you think NDK apps are presently being distributed on the Play store? Not sure what your point is.

You can just install it yourself (it's not a secret you can install Linux on chromebooks). It's not like chrome os can't run Linux. If the average user can't figure this out, they probably shouldn't be using Linux in the first place. They should stick to something easier like, well, chrome os.

Oops, bad choice of words. I meant the normalized remaining fraction of the life of the patent. If straight line is used, after 3 years of an 18 year patent, you would have: final damages = damages * (18-3)/18. Then the point is to replace straight line with double depreciation.

One way to avoid the patent cliff (and perhaps foster innovation) is to use double declining balance deprecation in accounting. As in, if a patent-holding company sues another company for patent infringement, then the final damages will be reduced by the fraction of the residual value. So patent-holding companies will be compelled to innovate, since at some point less than lifetime of the patent, another company may decide to violate it anyway since it's economic to do so.

Of course, I have no idea how this would apply to embargos.

1) It's not Google's job to fix said issues, nor are they going to get into/win that mess. 2) What's your better alternative? Don't fund it?

If you believe this, then you're falling for the exact same two-faced argument the cable providers said to the FCC back during the first net neutrality debate. I.e. they told the FCC net neutrality will absolutely DESTROY infrastructure investment, and did an about-face and told Wall Street that it wouldn't put a dent in investment.

"Fool me once...shame on...shame on you. Fool me, can't get fooled again!"

Your argument may have merit in rural areas (quite frankly, I don't know). But in the two biggest metropolitan areas in California, I haven't seen more than one service provider for cable, and one service provider for DSL. When I called the company that didn't offer service, they specifically said "that's [X Company]'s area, so by agreement we can't serve there." What competition are you talking about?

Usually the "seat moisteners and business preventers" are the last to go. They are that because they have some ability to not get fired. The ones who tried to change the company for the better tend to be outcasts, and are usually the first ones to go.

Just to nitpick, accountants (the ones in accounting roles) have absolutely no power. You mean HR/finance/management.

So...Google is strong arming ISPs to deliver the bandwidth they promised (which you paid for), and that's bad all of a sudden? And I think you can't fathom the amount of traffic that YouTube gets, so your sense of "margin of error" is probably orders of magnitude off. And at the end of the day, if I don't get my HD stream, then I don't have an HD cat video stream. I don't fucking care if it's within your "margin of error".

If you don't like this tool, well, go find something else that is reasonably objective, not "optimized" by the ISPs, and comes even close to the confidence of this data. Good luck with that.

Charging money for work? Preposterous!

Where is said camera, microphone, and gps unit in the Fiber box? You mean Android? Sure, but don't mix products together. That's like saying the government's NSA and NTSB are the same thing.