The kinds of wireless networks the article was talking about were not WiFi (or fiber) technologies.

So, Google wanted their place that was free of government regulation to experiment and try new things out. It sounds like, in many ways, they have found it. They can get their feet wet and learn the ropes of wireless networks. Maybe in time, they'll come back to the US and play against the big boys.

[citation needed]

The two major updates so far this week: Google Chrome, which now renders faster, and flickr, which has significantly more complex and larger graphics. As things get able to and display process more, more is asked of them. We aren't targeting 580px wide simple HTML, no CSS and 15 color gifs. Nor are we targeting a single platform and the simple display of information. Even if you're just displaying stuff, if you're doing it right, you're divorcing content from presentation and sending a handful of files for each page: each a solution to a problem that was at one time annoying. Or "solved" poorly with the likes of early Frontpage or Dreamweaver.

You're confusing the carbon that's already in the carbon cycle and the carbon that humans are adding to the carbon cycle by digging up coal and drilling oil and burning them. Humans are responsible for nearly all of the excess carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere in the past 200 years. We don't want to stop the carbon cycle -- that would destroy life as we know it. We just need to slow the pace at which we add carbon to the carbon cycle so the system can have time to absorb and deal with the excess. We're not only causing warming, but also acidifying the oceans.

I explain this below and another poster says the same thing. What Hansen actually said and what you're claiming he said are two completely different things. He is referring to a possibility, and you're acting like he's saying it's a certainty.

If you look carefully, there is an IF in the sentence. IF we burn all fossil fuel [it would lead to] a runaway greenhouse effect that would destroy all life on the planet, perhaps permanently" Similarly, IF I put a loaded gun to my head and pull the trigger I will die. That doesn't mean I'm saying it will happen. It would be quite difficult to burn ALL the fossil fuel, and I don't think we'd keep doing it after the effects became undeniable to the most ardent "skeptic".

I haven't heard of any solid data suggesting what the actual cost and benefits are, beyond the "sky is falling" arguments

I don't think you've been listening hard if you haven't heard of the Sterm Review. It's 700 pages long and doesn't refer to the sky falling at all. I keep seeing references to "sky is falling" arguments, but I haven't heard of any. Could you point me to one?

That absolutely is a classic denier position, because it sounds sensible on the surface (just give me some more proof), but in practice the goalposts move, so that there is never enough proof. The whole argument is set up that way -- science can never "prove it irrefutably" because that wouldn't be science.

But we've been burning fossil fuels on a massive scale for less than 200 years. Why not look at about 200 years of data to see if doing so caused warming? The consensus is that it has. If you disagree, I'd like to see some evidence.

Let's start with Arrhenius over 100 years ago. The falsifiable claim is that burning fossil fuels will raise the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and cause warming. We have observed the warming. Had we not, it would have falsified the hypothesis. Surely you've been following this over the years and this is all old news.

Right, you can never validate a hypothesis in science. You can only fail to falsify it. In other words, no one can seem to come up with another good explanation for the warming we've observed, so we've failed to falsify the idea that it's due to carbon dioxide emissions, a hypothesis first proposed in 1896. That doesn't mean it's the truth, but I sure know which way I'd bet!

“Computer science has a marketing problem." That's what Larry said. And his presentation was about marketing more than anything. He was trying to sell the world view that works great for his company, and he certainly put his sour grapes on the table.

He talks of "resistance to technological change", which is code for Google Glasses and the glasshole syndrome. He talks of how people should should be more relaxed with their medical records, which is code for Google Health. They had a clear plan how they were going to make money with Google Health (selling user data). The problem was that, on the user side, they had a solution that was in search of an actual need. But Google has made it clear that they're not going to learn that lesson.

You know, I kind of like his idea of a mirror universe where more avant-garde ideas can be tested out, in small scale, in the real-world. He wanted a Burning Man type of environment for new technology. Actually, Eureka (the town from the TV show of the same name) might have been a closer fit (although the reference would have been lesser-known, and is almost synonymous with disaster). Being able to try things out (on the small scale and a limited geography) and work out the problems there is great for allowing a company to iterate on a product without the marketing backlash for failures.

In theory, I'd love to live in that Eureka town. But only if it was about the product and about the science. The only thing Google Health did for me was to convince me that Google's products and services aren't about what they deliver (search, ubiquitous health records). They are about Google's real customers (advertisers, health care industry) and Google's real problem is finding a way to get everyone to jump on board so they can make money. That's what he is saying, in code, when he says "computer science has a marketing problem".

I suppose you could say that about anything that happened over 120 years ago.

I'm not confusing patents and copyrights. A computer can process computer code, literature, or a photograph. They are all copyrightable, not patentable. Interestingly enough, a computer can also process a patent, which certainly is patentable. The idea that anything a computer can process is not patentable is obviously absurd.