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First, the jobs move overseas and we get told it's a "good thing":
http://blog.douweosinga.com/2003/10/why-jobs-moving-overseas-isn-so-bad.html

Then, there is complaining that the industry can't find any programmers:
http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2011/05/23/tech-talent-shortage-one-of-this-years-major-storylines-illustrated-in-national-study-by-job-search-site-dice/

Next, the industry tries to figure out where all the programmers went:
http://www.google.com/search?q=shortage+of+programmers

Finally, they realize they've castrated themselves and simply claim it's a dead-end career. Nice.

Google is interesting. Douwe Osinga recently left Google and he has written about his experiences on the inside. Check out the "Google Thinks Big" section on this page.

He says this about Wave:

Wave started with some fairly easy to understand ideas about online collaboration and communication. But in order to make it more general and universal, more ideas were added until the entire thing could only be explained in a 90 minute mind blowing demo that left people speechless but a little later wondering what the hell this was for.

As many people have pointed out already, language is a very complex thing. I would suggest that it takes a large portion of our life to master our own language, and we continue to master it throughout our life - it is ever changing.

It seems almost unreasnoble to think that a computer could effectively translate using context, social values and the plethora of other elements which make up the world's languages.

I'm not sure if people here have experienced Douwe Osinga's Poetry in Translation, which uses the Google API to translate an english string of your choice into french, and then back into english. The results are frequently amusing and indeed only the most basic of sentences will be returned to the user in it's original form.

"The fast brown fox jumped on the putrefied dog."

There is already a word game with the same name. Copyright suit pending?

Reference : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Talk_(game)

Examples:

http://douweosinga.com/projects/googletalk
http://relet.net/gtr/

Although the wikipedia also has another definition for "Google Talk" recently added:

Google Talk is an instant messenging system that the search engine company Google is rumored to be developing. On 23 August 2005, the LA Times reported that Google will release an IM system on 24 of August. Other news reports have noted that Google has created a Google Talk subdomain, and that the company already has an active Jabber server.

cattle whose only purpose is to feed the socialist political machine
The socialist political machine are the people of the society. It's not like there are uber-powerful corporations like in the USA. The poorest 10% in the USA get $6,804 per capita share in GDP. The average GDP per capita is $37,800. In ALL European countries with the exception of Italy ($5,607) and Ireland ($5,920) the poorest 10% are richer than in the USA, despite having the GDP/capita that is about 70% of that in the US. Source.

Add to that better social security and other benefits of living in a welfare state, and you can easily see that people in Europe live better than Americans, with the exception of the rich guys. Yeah, it's easier to be filthy rich in the US than in Europe. I guess the European will have to somehow endure that.

The European governments are socialist because it's what the people wanted. The American government, on the other hand, now exists solely for itself, to perpetuate the political and economical status quo.

Google News Map

Of course, in my future, I would like some sort of computer that directly augments the brain by being like a coprocessor, so that when you reach back into your memory for who this person is or what is the capital of Lithuania, the computer will google for it and you will just know. But I'm not even sure that is a good idea...

Nor I. Look what Google has to say about:

[Alice in Wonderland was] the first feature length animated film. based on the story of the Volsungs AND NIBLUNGS Translated by Eirikr magnusson and William Morris.

[Martina Navratilova is] A nine- hole, course at the UNIVERSITY of Wisconsin...

erm... and
[Sex is not for] everyone, By any means. but it s not always easy to find what you Need in the Bluetooth Spec.

Google Talk:
http://douweosinga.com/projects/googletalk

I don't think it is very relevant how fast java can be in these kind of benchmarks for most applications. Usually the processor is not the bottleneck. What matters is the responsiveness of the userinterface. Java (Swing actually) still feels very sluggish even on faster computers. That is what is stopping the adoption of Java on clients, not the fact that triogonomy is slightly slower than when done in C++

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Sample my google hacks

You don't need Linux for this. Have a look at my balloon movies to see what happens if you just attached a camera to a balloon.

Every year or so, an article is published along this lines. Moores law is obsolete, no more bigger hard disks etcetera. The thing is that Moores law isn't a law as such, but the prediction that a series of revolution will increase computer power by a seemingly nice and constant line. Every time we get to the physical limits, we find other limits to go to.
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Sample my Google Hacks

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sample my google hacks

The article is typical example of the lump of labour fallacy, which usually goes something like this: we produce all this stuff to make society run. Now, if we find a way to make the same amount of stuff with less people (using computers), we'll end up with less employment.

If this was true, almost everybody would have been out of work by now. 2000 years ago the work of almost everybody was needed just to grow enough food for everybody. The truth is, that there is no limit to the amount of possible work. What matters is total production of society and how we divide it. Computes will raise total production of society, so it could make us all richer. If we succeed in distributing the wealth in any kind of just way, employment could rise. Or we could choose for a society where the rich have a lot and the poor are unemployed. But that choice does not have anything to do with the amount of efficiency improving computers do.

Network effects will bring one party to the top, as is already happening. Kazaa is not the best p2p app, but the most used and therefore most people use it. If legal changes make it possible again to have a central database, Kazaa is still in the best position to capitalize on that, because most people are still using Kazaa for downloading stuff.

Of course Google is bigger, but Google is bigger than eBay too and as the article states, eBay is the biggest auction site because of the same network effects. People go to eBay for auction searches and to Google for general searches, just as they go to Kazaa for music searches. If I type in the name of a song in Google, lots of results will appear, not just the mp3's.

It doesn't mean Google couldn't go after this market. If they would, they would stand a pretty good chance of winning, but so would Microsoft or Yahoo.

more from Douwe Osinga

Well, not really. They can charge different prices in the UK and Germany, but not different prices to people from the UK and Germany. Also, if they sell the PS2 in Germany for less than in Austria, they cannot stop anybody from cross importing the stuff.

I agree with comment and I think the draw the world map project is really great.

I very much doubt whether this is legal in the EU. With the internal market directive, you can't really sell something to people from one EU country and not to another (or even charge differently depending on the country).

Space just is not a very friendly environment for men. Machines are much more suitable and they don't require a return ticket. Instead of focussing on building machines to put people in space and take them, ESA should concentrate on developing robots to do the work and research.

Support a lawyer free internet top level domain
Sign the .ianal top level domain petition.

Second half of 2004 is still some time away. I see all kind of devices around me in the shape of SD Cards or Sony Memory Stick, from modems to GPS cards. Mini Memory Stick works in my phone. It wouldn't be the first new standard that didn't make it because there was already something else that did the job and had the marketshare.

On my website I implemented a genetic algorithm to choose the colorscheme. The number of pages people view determines the amount on influence on the general color scheme.

http://douweosinga.com/projects/colorscheme describes it in more detail.