WHERE'S the Coast Guards COMMON SENSE? Where's there is smoke there is Google!

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best stage, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.

Mystery Barge, Treasure Island, Coast Guard, Huck Finn?

update  saturday nov. 9 2013

This past week, Google brass voiced a bit of byte displeasure at revelations coming from the "Bugs Bunny" of the surveillance state—intelligence provocateur general Edward Snowden—that the NSA has been going into the fiber optic cables deep under the ocean to tap data being ferried byGoogle and Yahoo!. Meanwhile, a mystery ship (barge actually) turned up in San Francisco Bay and has been attributed to Google's far flung (and often curious) ventures. Could the barge be a solution to interference from the NSA, allowing Google to ferry data across the world's oceans by a team of gondaliers with GPS-enabled Google Glass out of the reach of the government?

Is the mystery ship a floating home for Snowden to keep him free of government prisons—who was rumored this past week to be in line for a job at a tech giant (OK, a tech giant in Russia), or merely one more way to find real estate for Google servers, with data centers soon to eclipse the Queen of England, Donald Trump and Ted Turner as real estate's biggest landowner? In the 1970s, the major U.S. utilities had a plan to put nuclear power plants on the seas, so why not data centers, especially for Google, which is already involved in an ambitious plan to lay an electric grid backbone deep under the ocean for energy generated by offshore wind farms.

Or, is Google preparing for the end of the world? After all, these are apocalyptic times. The new book on the cold war management of nuclear stores from Eric Schlosser shows just how close, and how often, the Soviet Union and U.S., came to mistakenly initiating the launch code. So you never know ...


The mystery surrounding the barge under construction near Treasure Island took another turn Friday when television station KPIX, quoting unnamed sources familiar with the project, claimed the box-like structure will house luxury showrooms and a party deck for tech giant Google to market Google Glass and other gadgets to invitation-only clients.

The station’s sources claim it’s part of a fleet of fancy floating showrooms being built around the country in an attempt by Google to upstage Apple and its popular retail outlets. The project has been planned for over a year and is coming out of Google X, the company’s innovation clearinghouse, these sources said.

High-end showrooms for wealthy clients marks the latest sure-why-not theory to float around media circles since last Friday, when word of the strange four-story barge made of shipping containers first spread across the Internet. The L.A. Times reported Friday that the barge, thought to be registered to Google shell company By and Large LLC, is actually registered to a firm in Spokane, Wash., that produces special events for corporations and other clients. According to the lease, the purpose was “fabrication of a special event structure and art exhibit only and for no other purpose” — which would seem to verify the need for a party deck.

So far everyone directly involved with the project has been sworn to secrecy — including the Coast Guard — which only adds to the mystery. Previous speculation had centered on a floating data center powered by waves, which Google filed a patent for several years ago. A similar barge is under construction in Portland, Maine, and no one up there seems to know what it’s all about either.

Google, as been its habit, continues to decline comment. So stay tuned. This is all sure to unravel at some point.

Google Glass $$$

Reports are speculating that Google Inc. is behind a facility being built on a barge docked at Treasure Island, and that it could be a floating data center or a Google Glass store.
CNET reported Friday that Google was likely the entity building the structure, though the company would not comment.
Reports say a similar structure is being built in Portland, Maine, on a barge owned by the same company as the one in San Francisco Bay.
Further reports have speculated that Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) may be following up on efforts to build offshore data centers, or is working on a novel type of store for its Google Glass

ARRESTED?

CECILIA ABADIE has set a dubious precedent. She's become the first person to be fined for driving a vehicle while wearing Google Glass.

Abadie was pulled over by a California Highway Patrol officer on Tuesday evening as she drove home from work in San Diego. The 'Google Explorer' - so called because she is one of a group of early adopters who have been given pre-release copies of the internet-enabled eyewear - was told initially she had been stopped for speeding. But when the officer noticed she was wearing Glass, he gave her a ticket that said she had violated California Vehicle Code 27602a.

The statute makes it illegal for a motorist to "drive a motor vehicle if a television receiver, a video monitor, or a television or video screen, or any other similar means of visually displaying a television broadcast or video signal that produces entertainment or business applications, is operating".

Google Glass, when it is activated, displays information and images in a virtual display projected at the edge of the user's field of vision. Abadie, who posted a copy of her traffic ticket on her Google+ page, says she is considering fighting the citation in court because her Google Glass was not switched on at the time of the incident.

"I was wearing it because I do wear it all day, but I was not using it," she told San Diego TV station 10 news. "A lot of people don't understand how the device works... and the fact that you're wearing it even if the device is turned on doesn't mean that you're watching it or using it actively."

Abadie's Google+ post attracted more than 500 responses, many of which called on her to pursue the matter.

"Please, please, please fight this in court," wrote a Google+ user called Matt Abdou. "We need to get a ruling on this. I'm sure we can get a good collection together to pay for a proper attorney." ·