VladRussian

While R&D at Google may be a geek's heaven, the Operations at Google is a hell, an ITIL hell, 200% Dilbert [the ITIL's blueprint is the Britain's state healthcare IT by IBM in the 1980ies]. No wonder that she's snapped.

>how would I get caught

lets hope that in post 9/11 world dosimeters are deployed at various important (i hope it includes "crowded with normal people") places.

>what would I be prosecuted with?

>walk around terrorizing people...

seems like you answered your own question.

>feel like it's not too difficult for someone today to build something like that

your old CRT ("cathode ray tube") TV/monitor :)

Despite being on land, Guantanamo is a nice preview of non-"libertarian" implementation of seasteading.

it is clear that author's emotions are out of control in both cases - during the described incident and when she writes the post. She fails by refusing to recognize that.

High-tech jobs are very stressful (after all, each of us is immensely smart and is surrounded by morons :) and managing and controlling the stress is a part of the job. Failure to do so is a professional failure, especially when it is support/operations type of the job. Instead of recognizing her problem and trying to deal with it, the author pulls the sexism card. Next time her boss and others may be not that fortunate, and it may cost them job, reputation and/or lawsuit.

>Gowalla will bring great engineers and with them a whole bunch of other innovative people to f-book ... "greatest fears" as voiced by their COO last week in NY at the BI Ignition conference (lack of innovation, lack of people

i worked at a big [ultimately failed] SV company and for many its final years the "innovation" was the top word of the CEO and other executives. When company executives start talking innovation it pretty much means that company got enough entrenched products, market position and internal balance of power that any significant internal innovation is killed immediately [by the same executives] to avoid any risk to the above mentioned products, existing revenue streams and internal power, etc... Once internal innovation is squashed and has vanished as a result, the executives start to whine that there is a "lack of innovation, lack of people"

>I don't think it takes millions and federal loans to make an EV. ... Enthusiasts have been converting small ICE cars ("internal combustion engine" cars) into electrics for many years.

Musk for example converted Lotus. I completely share your opinion that it should be easy and cheap. If i had a large enough garage space, i see how i myself could produce the car under 50K using mostly COTS. On the other side, looking at the real examples - like the Tesla case - it is extremely expensive and complicated.

>wouldn’t those laws apply equally to IM as to email? In other words, if the law requires that internal communication be logged they’d be screwed either way in your scenario.

then how about oral "instant messaging"?

the're being bought at 20x this year revenue and 15x of the next year one. It is a bit on the higher end of the range, yet nowhere close to the "hot air" based billion valuations everybody knows about.

the article is "Why Women Don't Negotiate" _with men_. Or do women also treat negotiating women badly?

Btw, i also don't negotiate. I just take best offer (last time i refused 2 before much better one came) and change job when i feel the market can offer a better one.

my theory is that slowly and measuredly leaking confirmations to the old, well established conspiracy theories, They create a managed well controlled sideshow ( if They wanted to take Wikileaks down - They would already have ) which takes attention, imagination and investigative effort off the new developments :)

>Moores law would suggest that todays users would buy 8 to 16GB of DRAM which just hasn't materialized.

my half year old 4Gb laptop i'd buy with 8Gb at least. Yet they all still come with 4Gb (and its happening for something like 2 years already)

>And data centers can make use of tons of RAM--the main constraint is its price.

price through several aspects. Among the main constraints is the number of memory slots (as we have mainly 4Gb and 8Gb RAM modules to work with). And 8Gb ECC (ECC/registered memory is the only way to utilize more than 4 slots per CPU) is only recently became reasonably priced (ie. close to 2x4GB). Once the slots are filled with 4GB modules - throw and replace with 8GB. Painful. Once filled with 8Gb modules - replace the motherboard+CPUs. With what? There is of course monsters around - http://www.provantage.com/supermicro-mbd-x8qb6-f~ASUPM3AU.ht... which require monster priced CPUs :)

So, thanks to manufacturers for the cheap 4Gb and 8Gb, yet if they built the large overcapacities for these modules instead of gearing up to 16Gb - that would explain their financial problems.

>I'm surprised that they didn't include a motion to declare the contract invalid on the grounds of duress.

success of such motion would destroy all the "pay for the service" system as you do agree to pay for the service before it is rendered - otherwise the doctor willn't provide the service. To my understanding the ER is the only place where medical care muct be rendered without any pre-condition of entering into any contract.

yep, toothache would make you sign anything on the spot (met the situation several years ago, though it wasn't copyright agreement situation).

>who don't want to have malware, a broken OS, their personal data stolen, etc.

who needs malware when all these locked devices already come with location logger, key typing logger, remote wipe and other stuff we yet to discover.

instead of 1 single core single cpu PC shared with my wife, we now have (counting only ours, not company issued laptop and 2 Mac desktops) 3 PCs (1 desktop type and 2 are server dual quad cores opterons (and 1 old dual dual core)), 2 laptops and 1 netbook, and 3 iOS devices. And i'm looking to get soon new SB 2[5|6|7]00K (or may be even indulge with 3930 - it is Christmas time :) + mobo + pile of DDR3 to upgrade the desktop. I'm a happy nerd as RAM/CPU/HDD and big LCDs are so cheap these days.

Edit: just today a new store opening nearby got several cargo pallets of new Dell's PC based hardware (POS and pure PC).

In the next few years 5+ billions of people will get their first computing device (and the rest 2 bilions - their first 2nd, 3rd, 4th ... computing device). The vast majority of this growth will not be a PC. That's clear. Yet this growth in mobile devices will "synergize" an unprecedented growth in PC/server hardware dwarfing whatever we've seen so far.

congratulations to everybody on abolishing of one more instance of legal discrimination on ethnic grounds.

While it may seem like a zero sum game (as number of visas is still the same) and thus i have no idea how, yet still lets hope that like in other cases of abolished discrimination everybody ultimately wins.

just a sidenote - if bittorrent software ensure that no peer-to-peer interaction exceeds 30 sec. for any given title, would MPAA/RIAA/etc... still be able to claim "illegal dowload"?

Seems like tin foil hats, jackets and pants are going to be in fashion

>we need leaders

it is hardly possible to describe the root cause of the problem in less words than that.

somebody smart said that it isn't that new ideas win, it is a new generation accepting the new ideas replaces the old generation. Couple generations later (i'll be in my 70-80ies :) when current teenagers will be the judges, DAs, ... the issue of IP just willn't be an issue anymore.

how it was managed before the Internet? Did they order to blacken specific phone number(s) in all instances of yellow books?

sounds like you have never been to the interview in the American Consulate abroad. If the company isn't well known, the amount of paparework you'd need to bring will be impressive, like tax, balance sheets, etc... reports for a nice number or previous quarters/years. And they seem to employ, at least in the Consulates in Russia, pretty smart nice people who like to ask very specific and targetted questions.

So while it isn't impossible and there are various arrangements out there along these lines, it isn't an easy exploitable scheme and once this particular worker is "caught" in such a scheme, his future visas/immigration chances become much more slimmer - this is even if the scheme is setup and operated by somebody else. As a result for hi-tech people the "white" ways like H1/L1 are much more preferrable. The H1 numbers for the last years even wasn't exhausted for example.

There are cheap pockets in Bay Area, like Oakland for example. There is a reason why nobody who can afford to not live there doesn't live there. Such pockets would definitely benefit from influx of educated enterpreneurial people.

>and the money is backed only by the faith and credit of the nation who issues it.

another view was that the demand for and value of the money is supported by the government collecting back the taxes in supposedly the money printed by the government. But such a view is pretty much out of the window in the modern world of unbalanced budgets, "discount windows" and multiples-of-GDP sovereign debts

sounds like another "most self-consciously high-minded" firm - Arthur Andersen.

>Has anyone here ever been the beneficiary of a concrete effect from a consultant's work, such as a tangible new idea that resulted in better profits/efficiencies, beyond what is merely CYA?

since 9/11 it's become very popular to hire security consultants whose reports would strongly recommend to fly executives on private jets instead of common carriers. Business continuity, etc... So, there definitely are beneficiaries out there. Profit/efficiencies is in the eyes of beholder.

know some people enjoying 110-120+ mi/hour on that route :)

>Invest in roads - presumably for cars to drive on powered by oil. Now that's a long term vision of the future!

roads are presumably for wheeled vehicles. Until you can show a good prospects for flying cars, we need roads.

Edit: Despite the lobby and being favored by the political system, the use of fossil fuels in cars is going away. Even today, the 30KW batteries weighting 500kg will get you 150mi range at the price $10-20K - about the price and weight of ICE engine + transmission. The avalanche is starting ... The argument that there is no infrastructure to fill-up the electric cars is BS - the electricity is everywhere, including existing gas stations. Some upgrades may be necessary though - this is exactly minor (compare to the rail system) investment that would provide huge return.