You didn't say exactly how, so I'm going to guess that you were talking about one part FUD, with one part rewarding ignorance.

Wrong analogy. A better one would've been the coach for a losing team. Say, the Toronto Maple Leafs, for example. Jim Balsillie should've completely stepped aside *at least* a year ago, and not doing so was a reckless move that cost the shareholders millions of dollars, and cost the company to miss a critical window to "get back in the game". Things don't look good for RIM right now, and from the outside, that appears to be largely due to this man's arrogance and pride. Maybe he had the "captain of the ship" analogy in his mind as well; who knows? Whatever the explanation, his resignation is long overdue and quite possibly too late.

This is a pretty sad story for me. As a Canadian IT worker, it will definitely impact my career; as someone who holds insurance and pays into the government's retirement fund, I know I've lost money even though I'm not technically a shareholder. I have friends who've worked for them and co-oped for them while getting their CS degrees at U of Waterloo. It's pretty sad to watch such a blazingly spectacular failure unfold from a company that had *everything* going for it.

A scientist (or any academic) can always produce an interesting study with an interesting result, when they get to frame the question. This article summary starts out:

'The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea. But...

There's your problem right there. The democratic process does not exist to choose the "best" candidate or policy. Democracy is advocated on the belief that all individuals have an inalienable right to a degree of self-determination; to participate in the maintanance of the system that governs them. It is about being fundamentally free, not correct.

If this is "Do no evil," I shudder to think about the damage Google could do if they decided one day to deliberately engage in evil.

cf. Hank Scorpio, Globex Corporation.

It's so easy to turn the Internet into whatever you want it to be, when you're the largest advertiser, largest service provider, largest search engine, largest content provider, software maker, hardware-platform-vendor, and even an ISP.

Have we reached the point where google's "too big to fail"?

Brilliant.

I think you fail to understand what the term "abstract" means. My mind's conception of a circle may have a physical manifestation in my brain, but my mind's conception of that circle is not the abstract circle.

Before you start quoting Descartes, perhaps you need to revisit your Plato.

If you can't cook toast, then you probably shouldn't be bringing your phone in the shower with you, either.

I would mod you up if I could, if only because that was such an incredibly clumsily worded sentence. Still, you have an interesting point. Even during drills, we should all remain Vigilant Guardians. With all due respect, and admitting that I'm being totally pedantic (but hopefully helpful!) here, please let me illustrate how you could break down what you've said to make it easier to follow:

Do you really think a few minutes' delay will matter? After all, in the last few years these terrorists haven't managed to set off the bombs they've brought onto planes and into NYC.

> Why did we need to invent twitter, web fora, and IM when we had Listserv, USENET, and IRC?

Because corporate firewalls blocked everything except port 80. So, everything moved onto port 80.

As an aside, ten years ago I predicted to my colleague that one day we'd see DNS over HTTP, and probably even TCP over HTTP. I've recently seen *both* of those come to pass via /. stories, although I don't have the links handy atm.

I'm going to leave the rest of your comment aside (my opinion is pretty much the opposite, but we're all entitled to our own), and answer this one:

for years now I get ads and coupons in my monthly CC statement, usually targeted to stuff I buy, how is it different from what the summary mentions?

The difference is that, in the case you mention, the advertiser hands over their ad copy, along with a profile of their target demographic, and says to Visa, find the 200,000 of your customers (or whatever #) that most closely match *this* profile, and send them this ad. But, this new plan sounds more to me (although the details aren't precisely discussed in the articles) that Visa will run a service that lets advertisers sign up and repeatedly query "does this customer match this profile?"

In the first case, Visa is giving you the advertiser's info; in the second case, Visa is giving the advertiser your info.

Yes, but .... at least we've moved the conversation forward, if only by a few inches. First down in 2020.

I was going to side with you on the loyalty argument, until I read that your employer outsources (some of) their programming. What does that say about their commitment to loyalty? On the one hand, it helps to maintain a good network of industry contacts for the long-term good of your career. On the other hand, it *is* possible to maintain a good relationship with your old co-workers, while simultaneously "looking out for number one".

  Is you leaving going to be *difficult*, or will it break their entire business? That is, you can rest easy if you cause a bit of inconvenience, but just try not to screw them too badly: ask your new employer if you can have a couple of weeks before you officially start; or a "transition period" where you can remain on-call (e.g. a half-day a week when needed) to the old team.

Actually, Canonical is registered in the Isle of Man, a Crown Dependency off the British coast. It's a tax and legal haven from the civilized world, although its head of state is still the Queen of England. This has always been one of the things that's bugged me most about Shuttleworth's operation.

I don't think it's tenuous at all. Lots of projects by lots of companies use Java; this is nothing new. Sun could praise any number of them, but it just so happens that Android / Java is high profile, so they chose to praise that one particular project. That doesn't mean they were aware and sanctioned copyright infringement on any particular piece of code. Java comes with a license, and it's not unreasonable to think that Schwartz would make a public statement of support under the assumption that Google was adhering to the terms of that license.