i dont frankly care about the market for google's services. i care about providing the service to the people of the world, and focusing on what is involved technically and funding wise.
i'm looking for a way to _specifically remove_ market forces from the implementation of the service. right?
painting in such broad strokes is dangerous though. i think you have to balance quality and cost. i live in texas and i think the roads here are awesome. are you saying that there is another organization which should be receiving federal highway dollars to implement roads? if so, who?
i look forward to the day when something comes along to replace google. what if its implemented by microsoft? does that scare you more or less then google being run by a government agency or (as some posters have noted) as a not-for-profit?
lol. well, i guess my lack of capitalization except in certain situations when i want to add THAT _kind_ --of-- **emphasis** is an area where i'm vulnerable to criticism.
call me wacky, but i see some parallels in the following, do you?:
-- i'm pretty convinced that i never want to work in an evironment where certifications matter. i'm looking for a meritocracy where i'm judged on what i know.
-- i'd hope the content of my posts is what gets attention, not my spelling or lack of capitalization.
-- i spent 8 years in college, but dont hold any degrees.
besides, managing carpal tunnel is a serious problem for me, and i'm all about minimizing key strokes. aren't you? what would e.e. cummings say?
you are right about how my posts were originally perceived. the first post called me a douchebag. maybe he was referring to my inferior grammar or lack of appropriate punctuation?:)
the government already has my housekey. they can walk into my apartment complex and say, we need into #424. i'm not sure they will be able to access my encrypted filesystems though.
or maybe they can. heck, in industry i'm regarded as a ReallySmartGuy. that doesn't mean the govt doesn't already have a way to make road runner let them see all my unencrypted internet traffic.
i get upset about invasions of privacy just as much as the next guy, but come on people--the loss of privacy in today's contexts is happening. its getting to the point where the only thing thats private is that which is encrypted on my hard drive with the strongest algorithms, and current sized keys, etc.
do you guys really think the US Gov doesn't already have the ability to go get usage information from google? i think they do. if i were the US Gov (with their agenda) i'd have direct query access to their databases, and reporting engines... but i'm a control/security freak. even if they dont, its not hard to imagine them getting this kind of access.
if people are really scared of a government which can keep close tabs on them, they should be especially scared of a situation where other organizations are developing this ability while the organization we have the biggest say in sits idly by as technology races ahead.
its not hard for me to imagine citibank knowing more about individuals on this forum than they'd prefer.
i dont really feel compelled by a straw man argument holding up one public good--our specific implementation of social security--as a reason to avoid govt provided/maintained public goods.
i happen to like things like highways, clean air, police protection *cough*damntheman*cough* etc.
heck, in the spirit of the works powers act, i could see a ton of techies get employed as the entrepeneurs at google take flight to their next venture,leaving the engineers to run the service.
regarding your question--i'm no legal/legislative/constitutional expert, but it seems to me that if someone figured out a way to--say, kill all the people on the planet with a satchel based invention made of commodity parts, the govt would step in, thru whatever means necessary to take control of this new invention for the "public good".
so my answer is that i'm not so convinced that the constition shouldn't be amended such that it starts to provide for things like the right to compute in an uncensored way. i know the govt isn't the best group to bring me innovation, but damn if i dont want microsoft doing it either.
at some level, there will eventually be a government computer. the information we get out of the.gov sites is just a precursor to that. google is a little farther along the evolution. at some point, some minimum level of computational availability just might should be provided for in the constition. just like i look to them to certify that my air is clean enough, and roads safe enough.
i dont know if the US Govt really needs to buy the company Google, but i sure think it should attempt to preserve the service underlying the company. i'll leave the implementation to people who can figure out how to get us there from here politically and legislatively.
what do you think about dividing google into two entities... a not for profit to run the engine/service and the company to sell the right-side realestate?
i dont agree with your comments, just because if those factions really wanted what you claim, the legislation would already be written and the current google would already be complying, and we would already be up in arms about it.
as far as i know, the only neg on google so far is selling ranking, not censorship.
heh, thanks. i'm on slashdot every day as anonymous coward, but for some strange reason decided to post as me. funny how the first two posts were a. 'douchebag,' then b. 'i wish i had mod points for you'
its not hard for me to imagine such an organization.
-- self funded. advertising dollars in their current form could go a long way towards (or completely) paying for pipe and power
-- free expertise. the expertise to run the system already exists in the open source community.
-- free software. it already runs on linux so there aren't any licensing issues that i know of except for continued use of google's magic algorithm.
-- great engine for employing some people who should be employed. its not hard to imagine 1/4 to full time employees who are also maintaining the linux kernel, writing apache, maintaining postgres, or keeping the optimized network drivers smoking.
as an ancillary note, i've thought for awhile that the US Gov should perform some "directed welfare" whereby they offer some paltry salary to a group of (see list above... kernel/apache/etc.) whereby their salary would be rediculously low by even todays market standards, and the developers would be incredibly happy a. not to have to work for a traditional company and b. to be making _any_ money doing what they love.
the recent rampant failures of the power grid makes me wonder the same thing about a similar model being applied to that system. surely there are ReallySmartPeople who have the design/architectural expertise who aren't driven by money and are interested in working on the hard problems. i know a few people who are at the forefront of their industry. one in particular is a biomedical engineer who would keep working on the same problems whether they were in the context of running a business or being involved with a not for profit. i see the same thing in the open source community.
getting back to my earlier comments about getting rid of companies in their current form--- i'm just not convinced they are the best engine for continued technological advancement. especially in the code areas where the hard parts are so cheap.
and as i'm beginning to see in the development of the "World Intelligent Network" (as google is a very early form of) a company in the traditional sense isn't the best vehicle for that either.
well, the govt wouldn't _necessarily_ ruin it. its not hard to imagine a google where the engine is run/maintained by engineers, and some right-side text-only realestate is given to the ad-agency-media-broker team, which... i dont know what... i dont know about ad's, agencies, media, or brokers, so someone else could comment on that.
i think the supreme court has ruled that whats naughty is left to the community to decide. the internet community is fairly liberal, so if we're left to decide we'll just choose "no censorship, period"
i'm not saying redhat isn't giving away gratis distros, i'm just saying i can't use them. i need security updates for the duration of the of my use of the os. debian fits me alot better in this regard. i commend the work redhat is doing, its just that they cut me off as a user by having to make "business decisions"
i tend to disagree with you on the "world would not end" comment... it would be ReallyBad, and thats enough of a motivation to do something about it. if smtp stopped working tomorrow the community would work around it, eventually, but gosh wouldn't it suck?
admittedly i have some strange ideas about our economic/social systems. i'm a fan of debian and spend time every day trying to figure out how to get rid of corporations as legal entities with no real personal liability.
caveats aside, i really think the US Gov should buy google. maybe i'm just a mindless stallman bot, but i regard the google service as a public good. in fact, if google were to go away tomorrow, i'd become immediately unemployable. i've heard the same thing from other techies, non-techies, and even anti-techies.
just the thought/hoax of microsoft buying google would ruin me, and i'd have to make good on my promise after hearing bush won the election and actually leave the country.
i've seen too often on slashdot similar "i can't live without google" commentary so i know i'm not alone.
i'm not here to tell you that the US Gov should entertain buying companies lightly, or that there isn't a good chance that they would ruin google on their own. as i understand it, google isn't really offering itself for sale anyway, buy why screw around? what i am saying is that google has bought itself alot of time with such a great service. however, it will eventually fall prey to abuse on the street if they go that route, or some other bad economic time.
i'm not the only person who was disappointed at redhat's decision to end-of-life their free products after only months (12? i'm sure some slashdotter will correct me). it was the motivator for me to convert hundreds of machines i supported from redhat to debian. i understand the decision by redhat, the _company_, to earn and maintain a profit. if they go away eventually sobeit. if we lose sun, no problem, it will happen anyway.
i'm not so cavalier about google. its a public good and we need to protect it.
i kept outlines, notes, phone numbers, all kinds of things in there. plus the obvious uses for math/chemistry/physics.
and what awesome buttons. ruined me for life on telephones, keyboards, you name it.
that unit was so awesome for so many different things, i can't imagine buying another hp calculator as long as i live... which i guess is part of why they're shutting down?
what an odd business model: make it so good they'll never need another one.
my personal feeling is that all the work alan has put in on the kernel project _specifically entitles_ him to highlight some issue _directly relevant_ to continued linux development.
my policy-perspective, assuming a mythical world where linux is a company and i own it, is that political viewpoints should be expressly disallowed in the any part of the source tree, to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. in this case, his efforts are on-topic and don't qualify so much as an expression company-politics (like backstabbing and jibber jabber) or social-politics (like gun control or christianity) but deal specifically with intellectual-property-politics.
end of story.
as he is one of the helmsman of the linux community i applaud his efforts. that i can run entire companies and isp's, securely, with near 100% uptime without using a single windows server due to his (and the many others) efforts encourages me to listen when he speaks... not jump up and down about gun control.
besides, come on people!!! if you can't get an uncensored copy of the changelog with nothing more than a web/ftp client then you're in the wrong business!
Slashdot Mirror
i dont frankly care about the market for google's services. i care about providing the service to the people of the world, and focusing on what is involved technically and funding wise.
i'm looking for a way to _specifically remove_ market forces from the implementation of the service. right?
painting in such broad strokes is dangerous though. i think you have to balance quality and cost. i live in texas and i think the roads here are awesome. are you saying that there is another organization which should be receiving federal highway dollars to implement roads? if so, who?
i look forward to the day when something comes along to replace google. what if its implemented by microsoft? does that scare you more or less then google being run by a government agency or (as some posters have noted) as a not-for-profit?
lol. well, i guess my lack of capitalization except in certain situations when i want to add THAT _kind_ --of-- **emphasis** is an area where i'm vulnerable to criticism.
:)
call me wacky, but i see some parallels in the following, do you?:
-- i'm pretty convinced that i never want to work in an evironment where certifications matter. i'm looking for a meritocracy where i'm judged on what i know.
-- i'd hope the content of my posts is what gets attention, not my spelling or lack of capitalization.
-- i spent 8 years in college, but dont hold any degrees.
besides, managing carpal tunnel is a serious problem for me, and i'm all about minimizing key strokes. aren't you? what would e.e. cummings say?
you are right about how my posts were originally perceived. the first post called me a douchebag. maybe he was referring to my inferior grammar or lack of appropriate punctuation?
the government already has my housekey. they can walk into my apartment complex and say, we need into #424. i'm not sure they will be able to access my encrypted filesystems though.
or maybe they can. heck, in industry i'm regarded as a ReallySmartGuy. that doesn't mean the govt doesn't already have a way to make road runner let them see all my unencrypted internet traffic.
i get upset about invasions of privacy just as much as the next guy, but come on people--the loss of privacy in today's contexts is happening. its getting to the point where the only thing thats private is that which is encrypted on my hard drive with the strongest algorithms, and current sized keys, etc.
do you guys really think the US Gov doesn't already have the ability to go get usage information from google? i think they do. if i were the US Gov (with their agenda) i'd have direct query access to their databases, and reporting engines... but i'm a control/security freak. even if they dont, its not hard to imagine them getting this kind of access.
if people are really scared of a government which can keep close tabs on them, they should be especially scared of a situation where other organizations are developing this ability while the organization we have the biggest say in sits idly by as technology races ahead.
its not hard for me to imagine citibank knowing more about individuals on this forum than they'd prefer.
i dont really feel compelled by a straw man argument holding up one public good--our specific implementation of social security--as a reason to avoid govt provided/maintained public goods.
,leaving the engineers to run the service.
.gov sites is just a precursor to that. google is a little farther along the evolution. at some point, some minimum level of computational availability just might should be provided for in the constition. just like i look to them to certify that my air is clean enough, and roads safe enough.
i happen to like things like highways, clean air, police protection *cough*damntheman*cough* etc.
heck, in the spirit of the works powers act, i could see a ton of techies get employed as the entrepeneurs at google take flight to their next venture
regarding your question--i'm no legal/legislative/constitutional expert, but it seems to me that if someone figured out a way to--say, kill all the people on the planet with a satchel based invention made of commodity parts, the govt would step in, thru whatever means necessary to take control of this new invention for the "public good".
so my answer is that i'm not so convinced that the constition shouldn't be amended such that it starts to provide for things like the right to compute in an uncensored way. i know the govt isn't the best group to bring me innovation, but damn if i dont want microsoft doing it either.
at some level, there will eventually be a government computer. the information we get out of the
i dont know if the US Govt really needs to buy the company Google, but i sure think it should attempt to preserve the service underlying the company. i'll leave the implementation to people who can figure out how to get us there from here politically and legislatively.
what do you think about dividing google into two entities... a not for profit to run the engine/service and the company to sell the right-side realestate?
i dont agree with your comments, just because if those factions really wanted what you claim, the legislation would already be written and the current google would already be complying, and we would already be up in arms about it.
as far as i know, the only neg on google so far is selling ranking, not censorship.
cmon. i'm shorting sco stock, aren't you?
heh, thanks. i'm on slashdot every day as anonymous coward, but for some strange reason decided to post as me. funny how the first two posts were a. 'douchebag,' then b. 'i wish i had mod points for you'
its not hard for me to imagine such an organization.
-- self funded. advertising dollars in their current form could go a long way towards (or completely) paying for pipe and power
-- free expertise. the expertise to run the system already exists in the open source community.
-- free software. it already runs on linux so there aren't any licensing issues that i know of except for continued use of google's magic algorithm.
-- great engine for employing some people who should be employed. its not hard to imagine 1/4 to full time employees who are also maintaining the linux kernel, writing apache, maintaining postgres, or keeping the optimized network drivers smoking.
as an ancillary note, i've thought for awhile that the US Gov should perform some "directed welfare" whereby they offer some paltry salary to a group of (see list above... kernel/apache/etc.) whereby their salary would be rediculously low by even todays market standards, and the developers would be incredibly happy a. not to have to work for a traditional company and b. to be making _any_ money doing what they love.
the recent rampant failures of the power grid makes me wonder the same thing about a similar model being applied to that system. surely there are ReallySmartPeople who have the design/architectural expertise who aren't driven by money and are interested in working on the hard problems. i know a few people who are at the forefront of their industry. one in particular is a biomedical engineer who would keep working on the same problems whether they were in the context of running a business or being involved with a not for profit. i see the same thing in the open source community.
getting back to my earlier comments about getting rid of companies in their current form--- i'm just not convinced they are the best engine for continued technological advancement. especially in the code areas where the hard parts are so cheap.
and as i'm beginning to see in the development of the "World Intelligent Network" (as google is a very early form of) a company in the traditional sense isn't the best vehicle for that either.
well, the govt wouldn't _necessarily_ ruin it. its not hard to imagine a google where the engine is run /maintained by engineers, and some right-side text-only realestate is given to the ad-agency-media-broker team, which... i dont know what... i dont know about ad's, agencies, media, or brokers, so someone else could comment on that.
i think the supreme court has ruled that whats naughty is left to the community to decide. the internet community is fairly liberal, so if we're left to decide we'll just choose "no censorship, period"
i'm not saying redhat isn't giving away gratis distros, i'm just saying i can't use them. i need security updates for the duration of the of my use of the os. debian fits me alot better in this regard. i commend the work redhat is doing, its just that they cut me off as a user by having to make "business decisions"
i tend to disagree with you on the "world would not end" comment... it would be ReallyBad, and thats enough of a motivation to do something about it. if smtp stopped working tomorrow the community would work around it, eventually, but gosh wouldn't it suck?
admittedly i have some strange ideas about our economic/social systems. i'm a fan of debian and spend time every day trying to figure out how to get rid of corporations as legal entities with no real personal liability.
caveats aside, i really think the US Gov should buy google. maybe i'm just a mindless stallman bot, but i regard the google service as a public good. in fact, if google were to go away tomorrow, i'd become immediately unemployable. i've heard the same thing from other techies, non-techies, and even anti-techies.
just the thought/hoax of microsoft buying google would ruin me, and i'd have to make good on my promise after hearing bush won the election and actually leave the country.
i've seen too often on slashdot similar "i can't live without google" commentary so i know i'm not alone.
i'm not here to tell you that the US Gov should entertain buying companies lightly, or that there isn't a good chance that they would ruin google on their own. as i understand it, google isn't really offering itself for sale anyway, buy why screw around? what i am saying is that google has bought itself alot of time with such a great service. however, it will eventually fall prey to abuse on the street if they go that route, or some other bad economic time.
i'm not the only person who was disappointed at redhat's decision to end-of-life their free products after only months (12? i'm sure some slashdotter will correct me). it was the motivator for me to convert hundreds of machines i supported from redhat to debian. i understand the decision by redhat, the _company_, to earn and maintain a profit. if they go away eventually sobeit. if we lose sun, no problem, it will happen anyway.
i'm not so cavalier about google. its a public good and we need to protect it.
thoughts?
back in '93-ish my 48Gx was my first laptop/pda.
i kept outlines, notes, phone numbers, all kinds of things in there. plus the obvious uses for math/chemistry/physics.
and what awesome buttons. ruined me for life on telephones, keyboards, you name it.
that unit was so awesome for so many different things, i can't imagine buying another hp calculator as long as i live... which i guess is part of why they're shutting down?
what an odd business model: make it so good they'll never need another one.
, i'm just rambling now,
i totally agree.
my personal feeling is that all the work alan has put in on the kernel project _specifically entitles_ him to highlight some issue _directly relevant_ to continued linux development.
my policy-perspective, assuming a mythical world where linux is a company and i own it, is that political viewpoints should be expressly disallowed in the any part of the source tree, to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. in this case, his efforts are on-topic and don't qualify so much as an expression company-politics (like backstabbing and jibber jabber) or social-politics (like gun control or christianity) but deal specifically with intellectual-property-politics.
end of story.
as he is one of the helmsman of the linux community i applaud his efforts. that i can run entire companies and isp's, securely, with near 100% uptime without using a single windows server due to his (and the many others) efforts encourages me to listen when he speaks... not jump up and down about gun control.
besides, come on people!!! if you can't get an uncensored copy of the changelog with nothing more than a web/ftp client then you're in the wrong business!