I agree with the annoyance part, but I also find that it's far easier to glance at a watch than pull my phone out. While I don't wear this particular watch, I wear one like it. An additional benefit is that I can be sitting at a table and glance down at my watch more stealthily than looking at my wrist.

If Apple sells an iWatch, I hope it has a detachable band so I can swap the watch into a belt clip like the one shown.

On the other hand replacing private cars with corporate shuttle busses probably reduces general road congestion which also costs the city money.

SF is supposed to be a transit-first city. The goal is to make public transit an attractive-enough option to persuade people to use it rather than private autos. Therefore, anything that hinders public transit is bad.

The congestion in SF would also be less if those who worked in Mountain View also lived in Mountain View (or at least within a 10-mile radius).

Perhaps I have trouble relating because the bus system in my home town has an hour headway.

Headways for popular lines in San Francisco are in the sub-ten-minute range.

Google using a community resource in this way has the side effect of making it convenient for Googlers who would otherwise choose not to live in the city. That bolsters its tax base while contributing to a reduction of traffic and vehicle emissions during the daily rush hours.

Some would say that therefore not having the resource would mean they would leave the city. If they moved closer to work (and Google ran local shuttles) that would also reduce emissions.

How does Google employees waiting at bus stops cost the city money?

On the one hand, they generally don't cost the city money; but it does give tech shuttles a free pass at using city bus stops that, if you or I stopped at (and were caught), we'd have to pay a fine.

On the other hand, they do cost the city money in that that can (and do) delay the actual city busses from stopping at the stops and, as the adage goes, time is money. (The slower a bus goes, the more potential overtime the city will have to pay and the more busses the city will need to use for a given route to maintain the same headway.)

It's generally not a good idea to commemorate a living person because they still have the potential to end up in a scandal or do something embarrassing.

I plugged my iPad into the USB charger in the plane ...

What planes/airlines have built-in USB ports? That aside, it's interesting that it's more than just a dumb USB-shaped port (akin to the wall dongles that merely convert a wall-outlet into a USB port). The fact that you got that message implies there's actually a computer on the other end in addition to just power.

I guess it's good to know that I can respect a well-crafted response, even when it comes from a source I don't respect.

That should have been obvious. Occasionally, people I generally strongly disagree with say or write something I do agree with -- just like a broken clock is right twice a day.

More likely that Google would build an office in SF (raising land prices even higher). Some tech companies have done that already.

They've already done that but it's nowhere near as big as the Googleplex in Mountain View. That aside, at least then they're paying SF city taxes. Also, I don't know if they have employee shuttles for their SF office or if their employees just take Muni like everybody else.

It would be ironic if a Google employee waiting for a Muni bus on his way to the SF office was delayed by a Google bus blocking the bus stop while picking up for a trip to Mountain View.

It easily beats having those people all driving themselves.

True, but what I think the protesters are thinking is that if companies eliminated the shuttles (or shrank their radius so that SF was outside of it), then most workers, rather than endure a multi-hour commute each day, would simply move closer to work (and, more specifically, outside of SF city limits). It might increase traffic in/around Mountain View, but the companies could run local shuttles with a 10-mile (instead of 35-mile) radius to alleviate that problem. But it would no longer be SF's problem.

It is legal for their buses to use the bus stops.

No it's not. It's not legal for any vehicle other than a city bus to use a city bus stop. At least that's the way it's been up until very recently. Now, the bus operators will have to pay to use the stops.

This program, 215, has the ability to stop the next 9/11 and if you added emails in there it would make it even more effective.

So terrorists will simply use snail mail. I don't think they're in that much of a hurry.

The article is really about a "Panic" button, not a 911 call.

I'm aware of that. I was simply responding to the parent poster who did post about 911.

And then maybe get a better circle of friends.

You'd be surprised to learn that there's even dumber reasons people call ...

Why don't they tack on a $100 "911 call charge" to the caller's phone bill for every call? That ought to make the idiots learn pretty quickly.

The charge would be waived if any emergency personnel are actually dispatched.