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."
Indeed. I was just browsing and this seems especially useful: http://www.scipy.org/. It's a mathematical library addon for python (turning it into a sort of matlab).
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
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.
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
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.
I think she didn't quite get the right comment. Further down in the thread generated by that comment is this one, that's much more likely from the MSN guy:
2 29038
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157898&cid=13
... 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 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.
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
Just for fun, I put the phrase "A penny saved is a penny earned" through Babelfish to translate to German and back (not my idea), and got the following:
"A penny, which is stored, is an acquired penny."
"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.