I've been piloting for more than 10 years and I'm a UAV enthusiast but, I'm sorry: Globalhawk is piloted by humans, it has the same autopilot that any good airplane has, including a (similar) ILS-CAT-III and inertial system. (in fact, they use EXACTLY the same honeywell/rockwell autopilot than most modern planes) Yes, it can land and take-off on it's own (in specific circumstances), just like ANY Airbus and Boeing NG does. Autopilots do not fly airplanes, they just move control surfaces based on angles and speeds, it's just a script/formula. It does not learn how to react to unexpected situations, and it does not accumulates experience: required to "override" information read by instruments. Making a car that follows marks on ground is not driving. It took decades to make cars actually drive them by themselves, yet, they cheat by using radars.

Just add those wings to the conventional maglevs, it would reduce it's weight in high speeds and it's energy consumption.

I have an application handling 32 transactions/second without any problems in RoR. (financial industry). Thing is, newbies don't have a clue about handling high demanding applications. This application was migrated from Java/Struts + JSF, we had no problems at all. 90%+ of our hardware is used by Oracle 11g, not RoR.
Processing a .html.erb is way faster than a Spring MVC view, full of XML crap that takes forever to parse. Add EJB3 to that, full of RTTI and reflection...

Textmate, aptana, viM. I've seen some heroes using emacs also. Rubymine is just a piece of bloated junk, created by java-minded people.

The header bar contains a basic design flaw, when you drop a shadow on a header like that, you need to start the shadow at least 1 pixel after the bar, otherwise it will looks like the bar is larger than the content. (which is happening). You guys should hire a designer.

But somehow I got redirected to the daily beast.

I have a friend who works at google and is looking for a new job. He calls google a blood sucker and that his always forced to create new stuff and bring new ideias to the table, complete impossible tasks, and learn complex new things in a matter of days. I would not work in a place like that. Inspiration and motivation are not constant. I guess that's because I'm old :(

I completely agree with you when it comes to google's failures, but make no mistake, Eric is not the culprit there. He is a CEO, almost everything you said was not in his hands. His job is basically deal with day-to-day tasks, talk to stockholders and grow profit. You can't beat people at their own game, Android is trying to do just that. Can you imagine if Apple creates a nice google-like search engine? Google not be doomed, but their stocks will feel the heat.

Considering technology, yes it did. Google had to catch-up to it. Autofill, site-preview, dynamic image search, custom background, and many other features were first introduced by Bing. Not saying Bing posed any commercial danger to google's position, but it showed that google search dominance is not about the product anymore. Tech has become pretty much like the clothing, it's not about the product - they are all the same - it's about how cool people think you are. Microsoft brand it rot as a brand can get (that's why bing is a failure) That will happen to google sooner than later.

Google: Is struggling to offer profitable new products and is suffering of bit rot. Is stuck at 00's. Bing was the first product that got google by surprise and they had to catch-up to it. Also too slow on making changes. (see Gmail) Wastes too much energy on issues that are meaningless to it's average users. Needs to take some fresh air.

This recipe is used by some people that I work with. Take Ritalin or follow this: - Avoid caffeine and sweet drinks. - Avoid: milk, sugar, meat, carbs and alcohol, caffeine, lettuce, any food that might have yeast in it. - 10 minutes of cardio workout after work - Sleep in the coldest temp you can without waking up in the middle of the night - Take a cold shower in the middle of the shift. (if possible)

A version of 386ex is used by Honeywell and Garmin in many products. They do have a kill switch as required by DO-254 standart. A dead processor is better than a crazy one.

Last June I became CIO at a company that was CMMI level 2. I took a great risk and I quit that crap, fired every single selfish unproductive butt-covered developer and built a new team with 1/3 of developer we had before. Developers that couldn't do anything besides software got fired also (not one SJCP/OCP/MSC kept his job). Results? Productivity skyrocketed, happiness too, developers are also stakeholders now. Problems? Developers take at least 3 months to learn their business. I work for a credit card company. CMMI == bureaucratizing the chaos. BTW, they are not even called developers anymore, some of them even found new careers. I feel great when I know a competitor is using CMMI. We deliver, they just brag.

there aren't cool glasses (X00X) in new year's eve. I'll use my modded 2009+1.

I don't live in the US but H1-B's are a subject that always put me into thinking.
I've been to the US from training (boeing/airbus) and for some months as a H1-B many years ago. I just wanted to learn english (which I barely do) and have some experience outside my country. Anyways, the wages paid were lower than the ones paid in my homecountry and the costs were about the same. The reason I got the H1-B was, beleive of not, because it was easier than a getting regular student visa by that time, and I needed some kind of interaction with americans to really learn something, the student visa wouldn't get me that, I would be in a group of foreigners. Everybody know there is no such thing as shortage of workers, companies are just using that to pay lower wages and be more competitive.
My point is, the US should just end the H1-B program, it is hurting not only american workers but also foreigners that are trying to have a better life in the US. But also, it should create some kind of short term, easy to get, "internship" for foreigners, just like other countries do. In my country, there are plenty of americans that come here just for a short period of time. Not for making money, it's just a knowledge enterprise.