spon

Well said. Let's not live in our cubicles any longer than we have to.

I love the fact that this guy feels there is a huge gaping hole out there, and that he intensely wants to do something about it. For me, that counts for more than fitting in as a company man.

Here's an interesting passage from the article:

"But what does it mean, really, to be happier? For 30 years, Denmark has topped international happiness surveys. But Danes are hardly a sanguine bunch. Ask an American how it’s going, and you will usually hear 'Really good.' Ask a Dane, and you will hear 'Det kunne være værre (It could be worse).'

"'Danes have consistently low (and indubitably realistic) expectations for the year to come,' a team of Danish scholars concluded. 'Year after year they are pleasantly surprised to find that not everything is getting more rotten in the state of Denmark.'"

"Of course, happiness scientists have come up with all kinds of straightforward, and actionable, findings: that money does little to make us happier once our basic needs are met; that marriage and faith lead to happiness (or it could be that happy people are more likely to be married and spiritual); that temperamental “set points” for happiness—a predisposition to stay at a certain level of happiness—account for a large, but not overwhelming, percentage of our well-being. (Fifty percent, says Sonja Lyubomirsky in The How of Happiness. Circumstances account for 10 percent, and the other 40 percent is within our control.) But why do countries with the highest self-reports of subjective well-being also yield the most suicides? How is it that children are often found to be a source of “negative affect” (sadness, anger)—yet people identify children as their greatest source of pleasure?"

I'm a former Republican, and I used to say two things: (1) it's none of our business whether a private citizen is earning $10 or $10,000,000; (2) supply and demand produces, over the long run, an optimal distribution of resources, because a society's needs (i.e. for goods and services) and abilities (i.e. the ability to provide those goods and services) need to be matched in a way that reflects the actual priorities of that society.

It's hard -- probably impossible -- to justify Wall Street compensation packages on supply-and-demand grounds. In the 70s, CEOs earned about 30 times the earnings of their workers. By 2007, they earned 344 times the average pay of their workers.

CEOs do not provide 10 times the value they produced in the 70s. They are not 10 times more scarce. Corporations are not 10 times more profitable. They are not 10 times more prosperous by any measure -- if they were, they would offer 10 times more compensation, on average, to everyone at their company.

So if I were still a Republican, I'd probably say something like this: banks like Bear Stearns were irrational, and they should pay the consequences. The fewer bad banks we have, the better it is for all of us in the long run.

I don't know how many Republicans would agree with that last bit. Truth be told, most of them aren't even pro-free-trade. They're just anti-socialist. Anything that sounds like socialism sends them running for the hills. "Supply and demand" are useful to them only as a cudgel with which to attack the socialist view.

And this sort of justification is trumpeted only by the educated, Wall-Street-Journal-reading elite of the Republican party. Their popular support base in rural areas couldn't care less about economic issues.

When I see articles that attribute far-reaching health consequences to specific chemicals like anti-oxidants -- which are rarely tested in isolation from other compounds -- I'm reminded of a quote from Gary Taubes:

"If public health research functioned like some of the harder sciences -- high energy physics being the one I know best -- then researchers would be ridiculed and perhaps even run out of the field for over-interpreting their evidence or publicly presenting the results of sloppy experiments or basing claims on premature evidence and none of this would have happened."

From Wikipedia:

"Although the United Arab Emirates is becoming less dependent on natural resources as a source of revenue, petroleum and natural gas exports still play an important role in the economy, especially in Abu Dhabi. A massive construction boom, an expanding manufacturing base, and a thriving services sector are helping the UAE diversify its economy. Nationwide, there is currently $350 billion worth of active construction projects."

According to the Terms, Google has the right to "publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute," your book.

They also have the right to "make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships."

Licensing by any other name.

Google allows you to retain copyright over your content. That's great. So if you send a copy of your manuscript to your publisher using Chrome, you technically will always be "the owner." You can still earn royalties from your content, and enter into contracts with publishers or other parties that want to license your content.

But Google will still have a "perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through" the browser.

Usually, when we own rights to something, it gives us the power to do all those things without being bothered by someone else.

So in layman's terms, this essentially makes them "co-owner" of your content. They can license it to others, collect revenues (albeit not technically "royalties") from its sale, copy it at will, alter it at will. They don't have to have your permission to do any of this.

And that's just the intellectual property side. Forget about privacy with regard to your personal life or with regard to trade secrets.

From what I can tell, there's a way around this nonsense: use Chromium instead of chrome. It's licensed under the BSD license.

http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html

On the other hand, two-dozen third party software packages are distributed with Chromium, and all are released under some license.

Check out the "Google Chrome Terms of Service": anything you post or transmit with Chrome can be used by Google in any way it wants, for all time. They can display your writings in public, modify it, or both.

This applies to everything you transmit using Chrome, no matter how private it may seem, no matter if it's encrypted, no matter if you're sending it to friends, family, lovers, business partners, employers, financial services planners...

What was that slogan? "Don't be evil"?

"11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

"11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services."

Every unsupported claim you read makes you 1% dumber.