No, actually I'm not.

Yes, actually, you are.

The GP was being a pedantic twat by picking a definition of generation that was a) clearly not what the article was talking about and b) incorrect based on his/her own choice of definition.

And you're an ignorant twat not only by creating a definition out of thin air that has no bearing on or relation to the actual definitions, but by also by being clueless and thick headed enough to not recognize the difference when they're pointed out to you.

In virtually all cases, generations are pegged at 20 years. The common "Gen X", "Gen Y", etc are all 20 year spans. In fact, virtually every named "generation" of the last century were equal or slightly less than 20 years.

You're confusing two different things, which isn't surprising since they more or less use the same word.

• "Generation", used standalone, is a noun and describes a measure of time expressed in a fraction of human lifetimes and is generally pegged at around 30 years. ("Three generations ago we did this thing or that thing.")
• "Generation ___" is a proper noun and a descriptive term for a generational cohort or a social generation. ("Millennials are all this social trait or that social trait.")

There is no real reason why Google can't do all of these things.

From the enterprise users POV, the problem isn't necessarily Google's ability to do these things. (Though that is a huge question mark.) It's trusting Google to do these things. Google's history is littered with half ass projects of one kind or another... Some cancelled half complete, other left lingering in limbo and half complete for years. Of the products that are more-or-less complete and functional, the vast majority of them languish for months between bizarre and incomprehensible "upgrades".
 
This history does not lead to confidence in the customer that they can build a business around Google's offerings.

Something like 60% of the active volume of trades are HFT that is lasting less than a second. That isn't investing in a company that is gambling.

That sounds insightful - but really, it's stupid as hell and relies on swallowing decades of nonsensical propaganda... propaganda that vanishes like a soap bubble in a hurricane the instant you apply any actual thought.
 
The propaganda? That buying stocks is "investing in a company" - except for a minority of cases, that's utter hogwash. If I buy a share of GOOG today the money doesn't go to Google, it goes to the last guy who owned that share. If the money doesn't go to Google, then how am I investing in them? The answer - I'm not. I'm making a bet with myself that the share will go up in value.
 
  It's all gambling.
 
The only exceptions are IPOs and when a company releases some treasury stock onto the market.

I guess I've come to believe that life will evolve to meet just about any condition, and an energy source seems to be about all it needs.

AIUI, it's not quite that simple.
 
On Earth, the extremophiles are believed to arisen in more benign environments, and evolved to colonize the extreme environments. It's not clear that Mars ever had the necessary benign environment for long enough for life to arise in the first place, let alone for it to evolve and begin to colonize the extreme margins. (Which, at the time, would have been far less extreme than currently.)

It's worth pointing out that central air conditioning began to be common in new construction homes in the early 60's...

So, you just made some shit up and tried to pin it on him? And that got +4 Interesting? WTF we are just making shit up now?

What makes you think he's making it up? What he (the OP describes) is known damm well by anyone whose actually studied history, particularly 20th century US history, instead of trying to romanticize it. I grew up 20 years after the grandparent, and thought much like he did of the past... until I actually grew up and started studying.
 
Even so, I managed to convince myself for years that all that happened in the rest of the US - my neighborhood and my family were different. Then, about ten years ago I was in my forties, my mom came to visit for a week... and she started sharing all the family secrets. The uncle who was actually a cousin (adopted by our mutual grandparents to spare my aunt, his mother, the shame of having a child while being unwed), the long time boarder with another uncle and aunt who was actually my uncle's gay lover. The one that really got me was my female cousin L____ who lived with another female (G___) for decades... Even though by then I knew about homosexuals, had friends who were gay, supported gay rights, etc... The conditioning from my childhood ran so deep it never occurred to me that my cousin L____ was a lesbian.

If you'd tried to describe why the Kardashians would be celebrities back when I was a kid, people would simply not understand -- and I have to admit, I still don't get it.

You must have been pretty isolated as a kid - and somehow managed to remain ignorant your whole life. (Or you've got a seriously thick pair of rose colored glasses and a selective memory editor that's morphed your past into a lost golden age.) Any follower of celebrity culture from any era would instantly grok why the Kardashians are celebrities. Scandals, and people hooking onto the rich and famous to advance themselves, and fame for being outrageous, etc... etc... are as old as the hills and have been grist for the media's mill and objects of popular following since mass media was born in the 1800's.

Rookie error #1 - pedantic posting about stuff he doesn't understand.

Stars move slowly, and radio transmissions (even relatively tight beamed ones) spread out the farther they get from the source - and 18LY is a very long way away.

Not to mention the dangers of assuming too much from a very simple statement - like exactly where the antenna will be pointing.

This. Servers you control, communicating using strong encryption set up by yourself alone.

And never used for any purpose but converting electricity to heat... because once you hook them up to the wider world (even just to a monitor), you're compromised. (Traffic analysis, emissions analysis, etc... which most 'geeks' seem blithely unaware of, being at least as useful as actually reading the data.*) Seriously, it's a trade off - protecting data that nobody but you gives a fuck about anyhow, or actually using that data to accomplish something useful.

* Cryptography is fashionable among geeks, it's a cheap way to tighten the tinfoil, but it's only one small corner of information security. Go ahead and feel protected because your head is under the bed - but you should be aware that your ass is hanging out.

In some strange universe where people did nothing with their machines but watch Youtube videos and glorified typewriters... you'd have a point. (Especially since, in that strange universe, apparently computers are the only outlet for creativity.)

But we, or at least I, don't live in such a universe.

Seriously, you're very disconnected from reality.

Yes, but I'm also saddened for a generation of kids who grow up interacting w/ computers to only consume media, not to create.

That would be... pretty much every generation that's grown up with computers. Seriously, creators are a tiny, tiny minority. Always have been, always will be.

Now your cost just went through the roof because you want to take the route of additional downtime versus fixing the problem outright.

Because "fixing the problem outright" never involves additional downtime, cost, and a host of potential new problems... Seriously, your world may be wonderfully simple and black-and-white, but the real world isn't.

You seriously don't find it objectionable when people announce their intent to take over the governance of another people - regardless of those people's views on the matter?

That's about as ignorant as... well, words fail me.

The ability of a long time residents to continue to have their desired form of local government is not included in this group's definition of 'liberty'.

This has to be the most insightful thing in the discussion so far. I've always felt there was something fishy about the "Free" State Project, and this nails it.