I disagree. I think they are focusing on exactly that; abuse of the tax system.

They're not abusing it. You said yourself that individuals are expected to take deductions and such. Companies are expected to follow the rules as well and try to reduce their tax bill. I think he's being deliberate in the delivery of his message. Yes it's arrogant, yes it's unfair, but he doesn't come off as smug (IMHO). He's illustrating a point, and so long as the "fix" for the "problem" doesn't penalize Google specifically I think he'll be fine with it.

They're playing by the rules and illustrating the problem. But unlike the Warren Buffet approach, he's not advocating for change - 'cause you know when Buffet does that people say "well feel free to pay more taxes" which to simple minds makes him seem stupid. I applaud Google for being very upfront and honest about the problem.

despite the email sent out to the users asking them to review the changes and cast their vote, less than one percent of all users have done so.

If they sent that to the me @facebook.com, I'm not aware of how to read that - I don't consider it a valid email address. I don't recall ever seeing this alleged email. I suppose if it came to my correct address it would have been deleted like all the other crap they send me.

You know you can quote things right? There are other ways to help google find what you want.

So for the database they measure the line frequency by looking for zero crossings in the voltage waveform. They average this over many cycles, which sounds like a good idea but.... If you take 500 cycles over a minute in Europe, this averaging is still equivalent to taking the time between the first and last zero crossing. Or actually that would be the same as taking the average of the periods. Since the frequency is inversely proportional to the period, using the first and last zero crossings would be more accurate. Noise on the signal (or in the sampling) could shift a zero crossing, which would lengthen one period and shorten the next. That would have no effect on the average period (except the first or last in the batch) but would cause the average for the frequencies to be higher than the actual. This effect may be apparent in the data - the database has a consistent shift upward in frequency compared to the recording which we analyzed using FFT.

This sounds like a business opportunity.

usually it seems that it's the prosecutors trying to railroad the police... not into fabricating evidence, per se, but "looking real hard" for "anything they can come up with".

I always thought that's what happened with George Bush and the search for WMDs in Iraq. The intelligence guys tried really really hard to provide evidence for what he wanted them to find. After the invasion, all the evidence was deemed to be crap (or "faulty" or "less reliable than thought").

it appears that China is playing chess to our checkers

China is not playing chess, they are playing GO (wei chi in Chinese). They have the entire playing field in view and it's huge - both the real world and the board game in the analogy. In chess you have straight forward tactics and what amounts to simple strategies to achieve relatively short term goals - like isolate a pawn or pin down a piece (the king for a win). With GO the game is literally about controlling territory - vast regions or lots of small ones, it doesn't matter - quantity is the only thing that matters. It's a game of world domination.

Is that their goal? I don't know, it's just a better way to play the game.

This is the free market in action. Would you rather the White House block the sale?

It's a relatively free market here in the US. There is no such thing in China. There is no way a foreign company could buy a bankrupt company in China. They don't even let you do business there without a lot of concession which may involve allowing a Chinese competitor to make your product for their local market while you're allowed to export your shit out of the country. There's also the recent clamp down on export of some raw materials (rare earths) in order to bring their own manufacturers up to speed (Look at the price of NdFeB magnets over the last couple years). Also, the government over there is funding a lot of companies - this one may be partially state owned - I don't recall. Then there's the (lack of) regulatory environment over there which further tilts the playing field. So while it's a free market over here, it's anything but free over there. They view our openness with large grins.

If you view money as wealth you're an idiot. Warren Buffet views ones wealth as how much of the physical and economic world one "owns" - in that light the Chinese are gradually buying America with it's own money, while we have a bunch of dip-shits walking around saying "free market". Nothing good can come of this.

The only reason people like you think climate change is politically driven myth is because you weren't paying attention *before* it became a political issue.

Nope. The political angle has been apparent for quite some time - I figured it was an attempt to stop the developing world from advancing. Say to prevent China and India from becoming the dominant players on the world stage. But prior to the politicization there were the ever conflicting reports just like we see today:

sea levels to rise almost a meter more than present over the next century, but past dire warnings of stronger storms or more frequent droughts won't pan out.

Remember the record hurricane season that was going to be the new norm due to climate change? How about the collapse of the ice shelves in Antarctica that later later started growing - oh, melting will be at the north pole and MORE ice will form at the south. I recall in the 1970's when we were all headed to the next ice age - the computer models all kept falling into something called "white earth" and never warmed up again. At least that is more consistent with the ice cores (looks like we're due for glaciation to start within 1000 years). One of the reasons people are skeptical or even deniers is all this bullshit that they can't get the models and prediction straight. If you keep changing your story, people won't believe you. It's that simple.

Just b'cos Android is based on Linux doesn't mean that Android apps have to be GPLed.

Nobody said that. The point was that many of the most popular apps appear to be GPLed software without meeting the requirements of the GPL. It has nothing to do with android itself. I have not taken a look at the list, but that is my interpretation of the comment.

There was a question on stack overflow a while back where someone asked "what feature do you hate about your favorite language?" or something to that effect. Nice because it didn't ask to slam other languages, but to criticise a favorite. In the responses I learned some quirks of C and C++ (you know, 10[a] instead of a[10] type stuff), IIRC there wasn't much said about Python. But the endless stream of shit people said about PHP left me wondering how such an abomination ever came to be. I can't remember any of them but just concluded I was lucky to never use it.

I'm now having a vague memory about numeric types not existing or something utterly stupid like that, but I honestly don't remember and don't want to.

People who abuse time off should be fired, but I havent ever actually met one of these people.

That seems to be the root of the problem. Employers don't want to say how many sick days you're allowed because people will treat them as extra vacation days and use them as such. It's hard or impossible to make a hard and fast rule, so they often don't. That doesn't mean they want you coming in with the flu.

Aren't in the US sick leaves taken from your holiday ?

Not where I work. Not at my last job. Not at the one before that. Not at the one before that. We actually have a separate charge number for sick vs paid vacation. Check your own time tracking system to be sure. Don't just make assumptions and then complain about it.

By firing us if we don't show up to work.

That's a common misconception. I never hesitate to stay home if I'm really sick and feel that I may make others sick. I feel free to use the "sick" or just plain "absent" option in our time tracking system (that's why it's there - duh). I have never had anyone question my sick days at any employer. I only use that when I'm actually sick, and fortunately that's only been between 0 and say 6 days in a given year, but I have never had anyone question it. Sure, if someone is abusing it and claiming sickness when they're not, or taking a day of because of a minor cold, perhaps they should get fired. But don't confuse actual illness with being a bad employee, your boss wont - they don't want to catch that shit you've got either.

Is he suffering from withdraw from all those drugs he does?