Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Start, Trash, Explain
Slashback tonight with more on the Microsoft start page project vis-a-vis Google's similar one, a wee $40 million slap on the wrist for Amazon over shopping-cart patent infrigement, new animals for the CodeZoo, and a strong denial that WikiPedia has announced a more stringent editorial policy. Details on these stories and more, below.
What's done is done, and in a certain order. MSN.com general manager Hadi Partovi writes:
Always clean out the trashcan. dotpavan writes "The Register and Cnet have this report about Kai-Fu Lee not cleaning his recycle bin at his previous workplace and now MS has stumbled upon some interesting document, which shows that Google anticipated the MS move, and had planned top put him on a leave of absence or have him as a consultant to thwart any attempt of MS getting him back."
Amazon Settles Patent Suit For $40M theodp writes "In today's SEC filing, Amazon.com disclosed it will pay $40 million to settle an e-commerce patent infringement lawsuit that was reported earlier on Slashdot. The terms of the settlement also provide for dismissal of all claims and counterclaims and grant Amazon a nonexclusive license to Soverain's patent portfolio."
29+36 more = 65 vector drawing apps. Anonymous Coward writes "There were many useful comments made for 29 Vector Drawing Programs. After incorporating most of them, the revised column has 65 Vector Drawing Programs."
And each after its own kind. chromatic writes "As seen on the O'Reilly Radar and announced at OSCON 2005, CodeZoo now lists Python and Ruby components. CodeZoo is a human-edited directory of useful, well-maintained, and redistributable software components in various languages. (Slashdot previously covered CodeZoo's launch.)"
The chair recognizes Mr. Wales for a point of clarification. brajesh writes "There has been news on Slashdot and others about Wikipedia announcing tighter editorial control. It seems that everyone jumped the gun. Jimmy Wales, a founder of Wikipedia, has clarified his stance on the idea of freezing stable content on Wikipedia. Apparently, [Jimbo writes] 'I spoke in English, and this was translated to German. Then the German was translated back to English, and then translated again into the Slashdot story.' Also, 'There was no "announcement." We are constantly reviewing our policies and looking for ways to improve, but we have not "announced" anything. We don't even really work that way ... if you know how Wikipedia works, it's through a long process of community discussion and consensus building, not through a process of top-down announcements.' This has also been covered on Ars Technica."
Google Earth not a security risk after all. mister_tim writes "In a follow-up to yesterday's story about ANSTO's request that Google censor images of Australia's only nuclear reactor, the Australian government has now come out and said that Google Earth poses no security risk. Australia's Attorney General has come to the view, also noted by many /. readers, that the Google images have been available for several years from other sources and add nothing to the existing publicly available data. Chalk this one up as a victory for common sense."
What's done is done, and in a certain order. MSN.com general manager Hadi Partovi writes:
"A few days ago I read your Slashdot post about start.com.Thanks for the note!
Thank you for the promotion :-). Meanwhile, I wanted to make sure you know that the work we've been doing on the start.com project actually predates the Google personalized page. I manage a tiny incubation team that has been building start.com since November, and it was first live on the Web in February, 3 months before Google released their personalized page. Of course we are missing some capabilities that Google has, and vice versa. It's a tight competition. But I'm emailing you because our team takes a lot of pride in its innovation. You may point out at a lot of place where Microsoft is following competitors, but if you track the functionality and UI changes that the companies have made over the past 6 months, this has clearly been a place where Google has been following Microsoft's lead.
(Our main engineer on the project has written a bit more about this to respond to your post.)
Anyway, I'm not sending this to be defensive. Heck, I have a lot of work to do to bring an innovation culture to the MSN organization and in many areas we have our work cut out for us. But I guess I want my small incubation team to get credit for being the leading innovators on this one small product :-)"
Always clean out the trashcan. dotpavan writes "The Register and Cnet have this report about Kai-Fu Lee not cleaning his recycle bin at his previous workplace and now MS has stumbled upon some interesting document, which shows that Google anticipated the MS move, and had planned top put him on a leave of absence or have him as a consultant to thwart any attempt of MS getting him back."
Amazon Settles Patent Suit For $40M theodp writes "In today's SEC filing, Amazon.com disclosed it will pay $40 million to settle an e-commerce patent infringement lawsuit that was reported earlier on Slashdot. The terms of the settlement also provide for dismissal of all claims and counterclaims and grant Amazon a nonexclusive license to Soverain's patent portfolio."
29+36 more = 65 vector drawing apps. Anonymous Coward writes "There were many useful comments made for 29 Vector Drawing Programs. After incorporating most of them, the revised column has 65 Vector Drawing Programs."
And each after its own kind. chromatic writes "As seen on the O'Reilly Radar and announced at OSCON 2005, CodeZoo now lists Python and Ruby components. CodeZoo is a human-edited directory of useful, well-maintained, and redistributable software components in various languages. (Slashdot previously covered CodeZoo's launch.)"
The chair recognizes Mr. Wales for a point of clarification. brajesh writes "There has been news on Slashdot and others about Wikipedia announcing tighter editorial control. It seems that everyone jumped the gun. Jimmy Wales, a founder of Wikipedia, has clarified his stance on the idea of freezing stable content on Wikipedia. Apparently, [Jimbo writes] 'I spoke in English, and this was translated to German. Then the German was translated back to English, and then translated again into the Slashdot story.' Also, 'There was no "announcement." We are constantly reviewing our policies and looking for ways to improve, but we have not "announced" anything. We don't even really work that way ... if you know how Wikipedia works, it's through a long process of community discussion and consensus building, not through a process of top-down announcements.' This has also been covered on Ars Technica."
Google Earth not a security risk after all. mister_tim writes "In a follow-up to yesterday's story about ANSTO's request that Google censor images of Australia's only nuclear reactor, the Australian government has now come out and said that Google Earth poses no security risk. Australia's Attorney General has come to the view, also noted by many /. readers, that the Google images have been available for several years from other sources and add nothing to the existing publicly available data. Chalk this one up as a victory for common sense."
I highly recommend all the coders out there check out CodeZoo. Just browsing around I found some extremely nifty little programs that I know I'll be using in the near future. Since I missed the first article, thanks for pointing me to it Slashback.
It's cool to know that MSN actually came up with that interface before Google. I mean, I hate MS and love Google just as much as the next /.'er, but tight competition like this is awesome for everyone involved.
Now if only we could get some nice eye candy from the Yahoo! folks.
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
Apart from the fact that the one at my work has a "donations for hearing aid fund" on it (put on there by the guy who sits right next to it).
They're great: they turn whole pieces of paper into lots of tiny things this big -->.<--
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, however, there is.
Sweet, Start.com isn't actually that bad, and they trumped Google too! Now all they need is to have an email service which doesn't piss off everyone who uses it, a homepage which isn't cluttered and full of shite and doesn't install cookies on your PC when all you want to do is download Firefox on a new Windows install, a Messenger service which doesn't have wanky "nudge" features built in which are expressly designed to cater for those with the intelligence spans of a flea, a media player that works with ShoutCast streams and doesn't clash horribly with every other app out there in terms of UI, a web browser that isn't 5 years behind Firefox in terms of EVERYTHING and a fucking always on top button on Windows, and they're getting somewhere!
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
If Wikipedia wants more credibility, then they need to start freezing some articles. At least the most controversial ones, which as you know are terrorized by vandals and agenda-pushers.
Amazon Settles Patent Suit For $40M theodp writes "In today's SEC filing, Amazon.com disclosed it will pay $40 million to settle an e-commerce patent infringement lawsuit that was reported earlier on Slashdot. The terms of the settlement also provide for dismissal of all claims and counterclaims and grant Amazon a nonexclusive license to Soverain's patent portfolio."
Those who live by the sword die by the sword.
I spoke in English, and this was translated to German. Then the German was translated back to English, and then translated again into the Slashdot story.
So what you're trying to say here is that the problem was with going from English to German, or German back to English?
This slashdot-related signature is a stub. You can help kihjin by expanding it.
The comment that Hadi Partovi points us to as a comment by his main engineer doesn't seem to be the right one. The one he linked to is by http://slashdot.org/~yagu and says the following:
for me, the last line on the page:
©2005 Microsoft  
kind of says it all... In their hurry to rip off the competition, they even forgot a semicolon ... Tsk-tsk!
That criticizing clearly doesn't seem to be coming from an MSN guy. Who really is the informed MSN engineer posting/clarifying on /. and what really did he say?
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Amazon Settles Patent Suit For $40M theodp writes "In today's SEC filing, Amazon.com disclosed it will pay $40 million to settle an e-commerce patent infringement lawsuit that was reported earlier on Slashdot. The terms of the settlement also provide for dismissal of all claims and counterclaims and grant Amazon a nonexclusive license to Soverain's patent portfolio."
t le+patent+dispute/2100-1030_3-5829193.html
Wow, I depressed, $40M will only further strengthen the incentive on this patent behavior - I wish amazon stuck it out. Not that I care about amazon that much, but it only raises the barrier of entry for the little guys - especially on stupid shopping cart technology.
FYI Soverain held patents on "shopping cart" technology.
Here's another article on it:
http://news.com.com/Amazon+pays+40+million+to+set
We have clearance, Clarence.
English to Slashdot.
Merde, il pleut encore!
Since half of those amount to retractions, does that mean there will be a reduction in dupes for awhile?
/It's a joke. I'm not that new here.
Kai-Fu Lee may have been very smart but didn't have the common sense God gave a turnip.
>> Practice Safe Hex
It seems like Amazon is up to something sneaky by paying for this frivolous pantent portfolio, when Amazon surely has the legal clout to fight this kind of thing.
Big companies like Amazon can afford to pay for these patents, but small companies cannot. They are losing money by paying for these things, but if they raise the cost of doing buisness beyond a certain point (if everyone has to pay millions to use patented technology in order to run an eccommerce site), they can knock out a lot of competition. There will be no chance for the mom and pop store selling used books can hope to compete with Amazon, because they won't be able to afford the startup cost or liability.
I think a lot of big companies are encouraging this abuse of patent laws in order to squash competition from smaller companies who don't have a few million to spare.
"The Register and Cnet have this report about Kai-Fu Lee not cleaning his recycle bin at his previous workplace and now MS has stumbled upon some interesting document, which shows that Google anticipated the MS move, and had planned top put him on a leave of absence or have him as a consultant to thwart any attempt of MS getting him back."
Now I know I've tossed out my share of Microsoft 'merchanise', but I never, not once, considered that they could actually be IN my trash bucket.
One could say that this is a new 'low' for Microsoft.
This slashdot-related signature is a stub. You can help kihjin by expanding it.
How many features could they possibly have missed? I mean all that really makes up a so-called personalized page, is your name and some local news and weather. The end.
... that's amateur! I mean heck, I was just interviewing for an entry level job and they wanted me to give them an email address that wasn't work related to communicate with. I mean, come on, if entry level employers are that sensitive, what is your million dollar arse doing talking to Google on a Microsoft computer?
....Idiot!
(Obligatory Napolean Dynamite quote)
-everphilski-
If you read the story, it was not a physical recycle bin, but the "Recycle Bin" on one of Lee's computers. Which makes it even more stupid that he would have such a document. If you're going to negotiate employment with a competitor, especially a potentially hostile/actionable move like this, for god's sake don't use your employer's computers to do it. Had Lee never heard of backup tapes or email scanning/archival? Amazing.
... but still... you dont bring sh*t like that into your current employers place of business. Nailed his coffin shut.
-everphilski-
"but if you track the functionality and UI changes that the companies have made over the past 6 months, this has clearly been a place where Google has been following Microsoft's lead."
Maybe, but if you look at the original start.com.. http://www.start.com/1/ its just a simple search bar. The second rev http://www.start.com/2/ adds some dhtml functionality, but only the third rev, http://www.start.com/3/ adds the identical dhtml section moving feature google has... probably after google came out with theirs.
Not surprised that Austrialia backdown from the Google security claims. It sounded a lot to me like they were using that stance for political reasons, given the PR nature of the release (instead of a quiet request to google).
okay you guys released the first version 3 months before google. Why isn't the portal not ready for prime time yet?
I'm sorry the Microsoft stories both are hearsay, it's good to show both sides in their light, but I expect you ask Google for an opinion on the start page if you can. (and was Yahoo before both or what?, or who had the first discussion of it)
./ish. :) Kudos to him for a great explination.
In addition the story on the Recycle Bin sounds like an attempt to get suspicious news out to the public to poison the pool of jurors or such, However it's nontheless interesting, but again I'm waiting to hear the other side of the story.
However this is nice, because it gives recaps to EVERY story I really was interested in this time.
But I still think the best is the English to german to english to
Yet Google Earth and Maps still censor the Capitol building and congressional office buildings. What else is obfuscated on Google Earth?
Now some patent lawsuit company has $40M to go after other companies, and Amazon has even more incentive to enforce its own stupid patents. More swords will be put into play. This is not good.
Infuriate left and right
Heh well first, I actualy like the start.com page, but not as much as google. To me it doesn't matter much who comes out with it first, as it is who makes it better. The entire industry is about copying and improving on things, and I fault neither google nor microsoft for that.
As for the Wiki stuff, it reminds me of playing games with the babelfish Where you pick a phrase (any common saying works nicely) and start translating to see how many steps you need to make it illegible. Bonus points for getting a translation that means the opposite of the original. I used to waste a ton of time on that.See?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Dia runs just fine under Linux.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
This is one of the funniest posts I've seen in a while, redundant or not
Ok I am still in shock about the choices (less so on python) of languages to add here.
I have been having a hard enough time getting people I work with to understand Ruby isn't some weird language. Until I show them Ruby code with equivalent Perl code.
I just found their reasons reaffirming. Ruby is an excellent sys-admin glue language.
I discount every blurb from a microsoftie when it has two or more instances of the word "innovation" contained therein.
This particular one has three.
Why does everything spoken by anyone associated in any way with microsoft have to have so many copies of the word "innovation" in it? I submit to you that their use of the english language is as "innovative" as they are, simple rehashes and reusing the same old tired components, perhaps rearranged in a different way, with nothing actually new.
Microsofties: quit using the word "innovation", it just makes you look like a drone in the collective.
but if you track the functionality and UI changes that the companies have made over the past 6 months, this has clearly been a place where Google has been following Microsoft's lead.
The first version of start.com looks like Google has looked for years. Later versions look like what My Yahoo has offered for years. And start.com added drag-and-drop after seeing it on Google. I'm sorry, but where exactly does he think that Microsoft has been leading?
It seems that Start.com has stopped... it has only a simple gif served from the front page. ./ed?
Did you see the pool? They flipped the bitch!
Slashdot has Google Page Rank 9. :)
I think only Google itself has 10.
Google is popular because, quite simply, it works, and works well.
The company appears to be a benevolent giant, full of geeks and geek friendly.
And they are a very important player on the Internet.
I probably average 2 dozen Google queries a day or so - it is an extremely useful website which makes the Internet as a whole a lot more useful.
Also, the story of Google is the story of some very smart people becoming rich because of their knowlege and innovation (real innovation), not because of inheritence, popularity, social standing, etc.
It is a geek success story of the first order.
So it is only natural there are a lot of Google stories here.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
But microsoft has my.msn.com WAY before google, which had all sorts of column dragging stuff in it. It was kind of buggy though, and didn't work in firefox.
Don't get me wrong, I like Google as much as the next guy, but Microsoft had this drag and drop business going with my.msn.com way before Google did, although it only works with IE. These were early applications of the new web parts framework in ASP.NET 2.0.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
MSN doesn't have an innovation culture?! I'm deeply shocked.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
I tried this already - I called it a Baseline Revisions. It never really took off, though it would never have impacted on Wikipedia (the baseline is just a subpage that hangs off the main article and points to an article revision selected for reliability, readibility, verifiability, number of citation - to stop it from going against the no original research policy - and neutrality).
I basically made it to try to satisfy the criticism that Wikipedia is too unstable. For some reason, those critics don't realise you can select a stable revision that never changes... standard citation techiques for webpages currently state that the retrived date of the webpage should be included. This ONLY allows the marker/reviewer of the document to see if the content has changed. Wikipedia actually shows all changes made to the page. Can't get much more reliable than that!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
"The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak."
English->Russian->English
"The vodka is great but the meat is rotten."
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Well, I can't help myself. Living in a county where direct translations into English are a constant amusment, where it's common to see things like "four season tiger soup" or even "crow-dragon tea" on menus, I can't resist...If you babelfish "A penny saved is a penny earned." into Chinese and back again, you get:
"The penny is the penny is won by the preservation"
I'm a gnu world man.
'I spoke in English, and this was translated to German. Then the German was translated back to English, and then translated again into the Slashdot story.' SOMEONE SET US UP THE JOURNALISTIC UH OH.
and did the little girls who lacked daisies seem very morose...
I tried the same thing with Systran and Japanese, and got:
"As for the penny which is rescued it is the penny which is obtained."
Generally, it seems to be far more entertaining with Asian languages. Anyone remember the episode of Newsradio where Mr. James had his book translated into Japanese and then back into English? @.~
Do you seriously believe that Jews had no responsibility for apartheid??? You better check your facts.
Hating MS is like people from non-US countries hating Americans. Sure, MS has its share of both decent/normal people and asshats... it's generally the higher-ups that have a tendency towards public assholery (*cough* Developers... developers... developers *cough*). The same applies to the US in general, lots of decent normal people, a certain population of asshats, and lots of assholes in the government/administration.
Shit floats to the top where it is more visible... go figure!
That would address the issue of volatility, but not the fundamental problem of groupthink. What's the difference whether a well-reasoned article taking a minority position (on /.) gets
a bunch of (-1, Flamebait) mods and a small
number of (+1, Insightful) posts, or a bunch of
scores that average out to (Flamebait=-1)?