They are not using the free version of the google apps. The paid version has the server in our control, maintained by us. Google only updates the executables and server side stuff, they dont get to see any data or anything. The authentication server somehow switches from mail.google.com to $company.com/mail somehow. What kind of redirection etc done and how much google can glean from this nugget I am not sure.

Imagine, company A uses google docs. Company B sues company A and fires a huge fishing expedition subpoena during discovery to Google. No matter what the contract says between A and Google, Google will minimise its cost and it will not fight the fishing expedition as strongly as company A would. It would be very foolish of company A's lawyers to depend on the contract language with Google and allow Google access to the data of emails and internal documents. Our company legal is quite sharp. They really would not like our documents outside our control. I don't know how much we are paying Google. But given the response we get from Google for down times and tech support questions it is likely to be between 50$ to 100$ per seat per year.

Microsoft used to pay hosting service providers to switch to IIS. To gain a few server count numbers in netcraft.com surveys or something. It actually paid people to use Bing. Well let us see how much they are willing to give Munich to buy one more headline. All the while Google is consolidating its position in search and is seriously undermining the Office monopoly through Google docs.

I just met a 50 something guy who bought Nokia latest phone Lumia 650 or whatever. His phone constantly forgets the google log in, changes the ring tone and randomly shutsdown. Normally some kid or a nephew would have fixed the issue had it been a iPhone or android. There is no kid in his extended circle who knows to troubleshoot a microsoft phone. His complaint is not the problems with the phone. ALL his phones malfunction because he answers yes/no to prompts without fully understanding the questions. But there are always children who would bail him out.

I wonder how long its desktop monopoly is going to provide the cash to try these gimmicks.

Our (S&P Midcap) company switched to Google docs + Google Apps packages successfully. It lets people buy Microsoft products too if they ask for it. But except for a few fancy presentations including lots of animation no one on the engineering side uses Microsoft. Some in accounting use Excel. But almost 90% of the time people stay in google docs. Slowly people have figured out what features not to use in Microsoft to interoperate with Google docs. There is relative peace and clam. Its integration with gmail, and collaborative editing and sharing makes google docs very useful. We no longer have multiple versions mutating through the email attachments. That is the biggest benefit as far as the users are concerned.

If you can plug in the USB either way, then there will not be scratch marks on the phone when a drunk tried to plug it in the wrong way. Then his brother might not have tell tale scratches in the phone he borrowed. Then how can Sherlock impress Watson? Bad idea.

But Austin is in Texas. They elect dumb assess as governers, open carry deadly weapons, inject creationism in school textbooks, they are anti family planning. Life is not with living if you got to live it in Texas.

Your face will occupy all of one quarter of a pixel 25cm x 25cm. Good luck seeing your face from satellite. It is high res. But not so high as to see a face.

Does not go back very far. Just last 100K years. Similar to the La Brea tar pits in age and diversity. Tar pits preserve bones and lots of micro fossils very well, but it is very tedious to clean them out. May be this one could be easier.

NFL is a non-profit organization. It does not make any profit. What you call 9 billion dollar profit, might look like profit, walk like profit, bark like profit, smell like profit, bite like profit. But it is NOT profit. IRS will not get a dime.

America has been consistently electing politicians who promise to cut taxes. And they have been dutifully cutting the taxes for the richest people (and corporations which are people). But corporations are special citizens who can claim a non-profit status and exempt themselves from taxation. It is very expensive to create a new people-citizen. But corporate citizen is just a 25$ filing fee, no nine month waiting period, no active cooperation between two different people required. Corporation-people don't go to jail. They can be killed when it is suitable without any penalty. But corporation-people can be enslaved by other corporation-people and people-people. Corporation-people can have religious beliefs when it is profitable to have them. But they don't have religious responsibilities .

Don't blame the politicians. Blame ourselves, collectively.

Who's talking about borrowing any money from anyone? What part of cunning Wall street bankers pulling levers of influence you don't get? They will steal the required money from the Chinese. Probably with active collusion with the top Chinese government officials. If there is one thing our banksters are good at, it is using influence over government to steal money from the tax payers. And one thing Chinese, Indian, Russian, Brazilian governments are good at is in stealing money from their citizens. It is a match made in heaven.

The Europeans invested so much and spent so much to build the original Panama canal. They went bankrupt and USA picked up the semi finished canal cheaply. At that time that canal was part of Columbia. A group of influential bankers in New York with pulled levers in Washington DC, overseas American Navy etc, intervened in an internal conflict in Columbia and peeled off the zone of the canal from Columbia. They got Washington to recognize Panama with their puppets as the government. The puppets signed a highly lopsided deal favoring the banksters. They pocketed the money and walked off the mess. It took some 18 more years of stand off and then US Taxpayers stepped in and compensated the Columbians for stealing their canal.

So don't worry, our government could be weak and our military power could be misapplied. But we have some really cunning bankers who would steal the loin cloth of Papua New Guineans if they could make a dollar or two. They will steal this spanking new Chinese built canal from Nicaragua for us. Some two decades later we the tax payers will compensate the victims of their greed.

One of the main stumbling blocks for residential solar is that a typical home owner is ill equipped to make the decision, (investment needed, financing, amortization schedules, expected future price of grid electricity, sizing etc) and find the contractor to execute it. Also resale, value of home etc etc come in. The solar city model is where they own the panels, they install it, you only pay metered electricity, you get to keep the grid for back up. In the end they pack it and take it away when you want to sell the home if the buyer is not interested in it. Suddenly the home owner can try solar for very low risk.

Even without subsidies, this model has reasonable pay back period in places like Arizona or Hawaii. Of course storage technology is very bad at residential levels. Solar thermal has better storage using molten salt. But not viable at homes. But home storage does not have the size, weight and crashworthiness requirements of auto batteries. The flywheel storage mechanical batteries might become viable. But almost all the proposed storage have issues.

Do you realize Indians (from South Asia, not those mistakenly named Indians by Columbus) are Caucasians?

In fact when the Chinese Exclusion Act stripped Indian Americans of their property rights in the early 20th century, they argued the Act did not apply to them because they were Caucasians. It went all the way to the SCOTUS where Chief Justice Sutherland ruled, "yeah yeah Indians are Caucasians, but the law still applied to them because when the Congress said Caucasians they meant White, and the Indians are not White, so off you along with the Chinese."

Yeah, these places have laws friendlier to the employers than the employees. So all the employees with skills in demand have moved to places where they can name their prices. People left behind in those places are usually low skilled. When things like fracking or oil well drilling requires skilled labor they get imported from other places at premium prices. I know quite a few oil rig/fracking rig operators living in places like Naperville Il, and work on 4 weeks on 2 weeks off rotations.

Free market is a bitch. You skew the laws favoring employers, employees with skills leave, creating a vicious cycle.

... I think such a large office space needs some sort of transport for people to go from one end to another. Should not be emitting gases and ideally be very silent. Wonder who has the know-how to conjure up such a vehicle ;-)

Before you grade his performance first decide what his job is. Whether he is going to be graded as a doctor trying to save a dying patient? Or a doctor doing terminal care, pain management etc to ease the passage? Or transplant surgeon who should harvest usable organs for transplant? or is he just an undertaker brought in to dress up the corpse for one last ride in the Cadillac?

[The car analogy is left to the astute reader].