Quoth: "one doesn't "buy" Oracle (or IBM or BT) products, one carries them like an STD."
What a truly superb quote. Kudos.
So when I'm looking at photos of a loved ones' visit to the Taj Mahal, Google says that they're going to push *lots* of other people's photos of the Taj Mahal at me.
Because I really want to look at the Taj Mahal. Endlessly.
No you dipshits! I want to look at my loved ones enjoying their holiday! I don't give a flying f*** through a rolling donut about the holiday snaps of strangers, no matter how good, how artsy, how quirky, or how many there are with vaguely amusing pictures of sodding cats!
Bet all you want Google.
That doesn't change the company's guilt one iota because it was a post-hoc ("after this") act.
What the company's post-act actions do is allows a more lenient sentencing so that the judge can let them off with a slapped wrist for being naughty boys or imposing a lighter fine.
Hawking is fairly conservative with his tech. As another post said, working is the primary requirement, even if slow. Remember, a FUBARd system is no use no matter how cool or fast it worked in the lab.
Besides, Hawking has a nice media career going for himself: http://youtu.be/tOimeRod4TY (yes, it really Hawking help sell financial products!).
I have!
Seriously. I reviewed an article for the British Medical Journal some years back (some time between 2005 and 2008), and I got paid either £20 or £50 for it. I think it was an experiment they tried for a short time before dropping the idea.
It's the only time I've ever been paid for reviewing papers; and the only journal I've ever heard of doing it.
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination -- but the combination is locked up in the safe. -- Peter DeVries