...I read this article and the bits of the book with a certain bemusement. There's certainly lots to criticize about Google - I'm not very fond of corporatism in general and feel it's leading us in a very wrong direction - yet as companies go, Google's pretty decent, and more important, Stross' criticisms just aren't the right ones.

If you have the slightest interest in data processing at all, the idea of having all the world's books sitting there to run your programs over is incredibly heady.

If you are at all logical about risk taking, then most of the projects you start will fail - your task is to fail early so you can go to the next one.

As for the AI concept, that's a diversion. Google's own Craig Silverstein has said that it will be 150 years to "true" AI - I think that's a little pessimistic but it's going to be a long time. Working with huge clusters of machines doing parallel processing, I really can't even see a path from there to here.

People knew the principles that would get them to the Moon as far back as Newton, but it took them centuries to get there; the industrial revolution had already reached steady-state before the first real rockets appeared.

We don't even know the basics of how intelligence works; we don't even have any sort of proof that AI is possible, I might believe it is but that's purely a guess.

There are all sorts of fascinating models - my favorite is Jeff Hawkins' in On Intelligence (see my signature for a link) - but they're all in the realm of science fiction right now.

Information processing is where it's at, for the foreseeable future. Someone had to come along and take command of that market; I at least am glad that it was a company where moral and ethical issues are always part of every business discussion.

[Note that everything above is of course my own opinion and relies not at all on any privileged information I have about the company...]

Repeating the same thing and expecting different results is never a good idea...

I've always pointed out that within a month of the start of the Afghan War, the US had already killed more civilians than had died in the World Trade Center.

And nothing's gotten better.

The West has shit on Afghanistan for well over a century. Nothing changes.

I've been interested in this field for a long time and it's very clear that not all the sightings are just hoaxes or idiots - there are videos, there are sightings by pilots, Presidents and preachers.

On the other hand, the idea that humanoid aliens are wandering around in our skies in some sort of technological vehicle seems a bit silly, does it not? If they were advanced enough to get here, either we'd never see them or they'd be on the White House lawn.

The "government is hiding a conspiracy for over 50 years" also seems a bit silly. You simply can't keep such a juicy secret so long.

Clearly at least some UFOs are in fact military vehicles of some sort or another. In the 80s, people started to report triangular UFOs; within the decade, the triangular stealth bomber appeared.

But there are certainly other sightings that aren't military. There has been some excellent work done, showing a strong correlation between geomagnetism and these sightings, as well as other "paranormal" phenomena, and many researchers in the field believe that this is a geomagnetic phenomenon that interacts with the human temporal lobe. (And that doesn't necessarily imply that there isn't some sort of intelligence involved, though it's not clear that that is necessary...)

I think there's going to be riots in the streets before this is all done.

Even better, invite him to dinner at your place (send the wife away), perhaps a little alcohol if you don't think that's part of the problem, coddle the poor man a little, and then get him to spill it.

Or take him to a nice tasty quiet restaurant on a Monday night (tonight!)

I had a close friend kill himself. What I've since discovered is that suicide is an action of the moment - if you manage to avoid the crisis, the chances are much smaller you'll do it later.

So pamper the guy a little and encourage him to talk, if he wants. You can't make people do things - or not do things - but you can certainly help him make the right decision and even if he decides to check out you can say to yourself not just "I tried" but "I showed him a good time".