The Register®

Biting the hand that feeds IT

Comments on: NASA gives jet-setting Googlers the presidential treatment

Page and Brin have "unusually-large Boeings"? 

Posted Friday 14th September 2007 01:50 GMT

Really? Why? Do they have unusually small penises?

i hold telephone conferences from England to USA every day. Is the USA phone system so bad they have to put in a physical appearance? Perhaps they think their 'presence' is of such magnitude that nobody should be deprived of it. Are they so important to the world that they're allowed to destroy it?

To quote Vilos Cohaagen, "F*** 'em". From now on i use Yahoo.

Ah! Hang on ...

eats shoots and leaves 

Posted Friday 14th September 2007 04:14 GMT

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.

It's not it's, it's its. Its, I tell you, its!

re: Page and Brin 

Posted Friday 14th September 2007 04:56 GMT

"Are they so important to the world that they're allowed to destroy it?"

In a word, yes, according to most people. Most people think Google is god and Google can do no wrong. If Google wants to do something, we must let them because they know better than the rest of us. If you disagree with these people, they repeat the same mantra over and over "Google says do no evil, so they're not evil". These people will defend Google to their death. They're worse than Apple fanbois. I'm just amused that all of these people love Google, and yet Google's primary (only?) source of revenue is advertising, which most people hate (and which most people block when possible).

Most people say Google is the greatest company ever. I say they want to take over the world, Pinky and the Brain style.

@Chris 

Posted Friday 14th September 2007 05:10 GMT

I curse them every day but I also use the search engine because the others well you know they suck Yahoo still sucks I can't stand it I don't know how they manage to suck so bad but they do. I like Yahoo! email better but thats just because I am old fashioned.

Would have thought this X-prize may be a contributing factor 

Posted Friday 14th September 2007 06:50 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6993373.stm

Thats all....

"unusually-large Boeings"? 

Posted Friday 14th September 2007 09:54 GMT

Surely that's BOUS - Boeings Of Unusual Size.

I don't think they exist - aaargh!

but... 

Posted Friday 14th September 2007 10:02 GMT

Google gets a lot of mileage from me because of Google Earth. Perhaps this story explains why GE has a hidden flight sim feature built into the latest version.

Boeings 

Posted Friday 14th September 2007 16:59 GMT

At last! Now El Reg hacks can refer to "boeing-enhancement" advertisements.

privacy policies 

Posted Saturday 15th September 2007 01:24 GMT

Dose anyone else relish the fact the nasa will be able to amass large amounts of information about google's personal habits by archiving the data collected during these flights? Maybe nasa wanted to one up the master. (I'd like to compare the privacy policies of the two organizations.)

p.s. Loved the "boeing-enhancemnet" bit

re: privacy policies 

Posted Saturday 15th September 2007 02:36 GMT

Good call, Ryan. And since NASA is part of the USAF (U.S. Air Force), they *should* be subject to FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) requests...

@Chris 

Posted Sunday 16th September 2007 02:19 GMT

No, NASA is not part of the USAF. They are a private agency that gets to play with USAF toys.

And Moffett is prettymuch open for business to anyone that can give NASA a bit of publicity and teach somebody something about something. Hence why the farking Mythbusters spend so much time there.

NASA is commoditizing a scarce resource (a no-questions-asked controlled airfield that isn't busy as hell) for their own benefit. Google gets to park their planes near "home base", under very secure conditions, in a place that's easily usable (no takeoff and landing queues). Good for the Googlians. NASA gets to strap some sensor packs to the wings of some toys that they can't afford and they can't borrow from the military (because the military doesn't own many unmodified 767's - they're all tankers or AWACs birds, and they only own a handful of Gulfstreams to move around politicians and generals).

And to top it off, they get cash. It's not like they're using the capacity. It's not like they're selling a parking space for the space shuttle or something.

Don’t Miss

Warning: roadworksNetbooks and Mini-Laptops

Buyer's Guide They're little and we love 'em. But which ones are best?

How the fate of the US economy rests on a Dell workstation

Quick, someone send Bernanke a supercomputer

Hard DriveHow many terabytes can you fit on a 2.5-inch hard drive?

Fun with areal densities

Flag ChinaChina's nonstop music machine

Exclusive Baidu versus business