I found your comment intriguing. It appears to be genuine.
I respect your opinion but completely disagree with it. I feel that a world without copyright would result in vastly greater creativity. I think what you are describing is entertainment. Entertainment is fine but we seem to have sacrificed everything on its altar.
BTW I was a great fan of Tolkien as an adolescent (The Silmarillion remains my favourite) but I didn't go anywhere near the LoTR movies. I know I would have detested them. So maybe that's indicative of where our personalities/world views differ.
In reply to the query about who is Philip Adams and can he be trusted in calls for investment.
Philip Adams is a well known personality in intellectual culture in Australia. He has a radio program on the national broadcaster, the ABC, which has been running for at least ten years. The show runs 4 nights a week and on it Philip interviews prominent people from around the world. He is very successful in getting very highly regarded people to speak because 1) he is a very good interviewer 2) his audience in Australia is very substantial and 3) because the level of discussion usually goes much deeper than is usual in the media.
I think you do not need to be very suspicious of his motivations because his reputation is his most precious asset and he would be very wary of supporting things that look at all dodgy. Also, he has been independently wealthy for a long time (made his fortune in advertising in his younger days) and has shown little motivation to increase his wealth since those early days.
The software discussed in the article is released under the GPL so perhaps you could respect the users and creators of that license and refer to Free Software rather than Open Source as you have in your comment.
But for user awareness I'd like to point out that F-Spot is developed using Mono. You of course, can make your own decision about whether you are comfortable with this dependency.
Nice comment. Insightful (+1) and funny (+1) at the same time.
It was obviously a stupid move on Novell's part and is already backfiring badly for them but an interesting idea that by trying another of their dirty tricks it might end up being bad for MS as well by making their patent strategy plain.
I didn't say that. What I said was that usually Yahoo lists a wikipedia page higher in their results than Google does. This may mean that Yahoo is happy to actively promote Wikipedia results (as I think they have stated) rather than that Google actively demotes them. And I don't think Google would demote them. Just not be particularly interested in promoting them.
But I apologise because I stated what I said as a fact when it is of course just my impression or even prejudice. I just did my own little un-scientific test using more obscure search topics than you as I expected this is where the difference would be more noticeable. The results were: Surya - Google 2, Yahoo 2 || Tarjei Vesaas - Google 4(norwegian), 9(english), Yahoo 2(english) || mirror neuron - Google 3, Yahoo 1 || LiMux - Google 4(german), 6(english), Yahoo 4 || giraffe - Google 3, Yahoo 1. These were the first five things I thought to search on and Yahoo ranked Wikipedia equally or higher on all five including two 1st place rankings. Not a huge difference but I would say a significant difference (in of course a very unscientific test).
I return to my original comment that Wikipedia is increasingly becoming a better way to directly 'look up' (rather than search for) something on the net than Google. Google thus risks losing some of it's middle-man role. I surmise that the strategists in Google now realise this and so have decided not to actively boost Wikpedia's results ranking or support them more concretely through hosting. Part of my thinking that is because nothing has come of that old announcement. But of course it's all only speculation and was always intended as such.
I'm aware of that announcement. However you will notice there has been no follow up notice and more than 12 months has passed. In that time Wikipedia has grown enormously in importance and recognition. I think Google will have been rethinking their support based on the argument in my original comment.
Yahoo *has* provided concrete support in the form of servers. I believe that Yahoo rightly perceives Google as less of a threat because a) search is not their main revenue base and b) their being a humint (human intelligence) company is synergetic with Wikipedia. Google is a sigint (signals intelligence) company and consequently while they do get some benefit from the increase of material to index, the different paradigm is also showing potential to be a direct threat to their long term business success in this arena (bringing up information on general search topics).
As evidence of the positions I have outlined above and that the two companies recognise where they stand and how Wikipedia matches in with their strategy, I would submit the fact that Wikipedia material usually appears much higher in Yahoo search results compared to Google. Yahoo is happy to support Wikipedia's growth. I believe Google is becoming increasingly less happy.
These are just my thoughts. Take them how you find them.
I think this is a very interesting topic and one that I have been thinking about over the last few months. I suspect that Google has identified Wikipedia as a key competitor for the following reason. Wikipedia has the advantage over Google in terms of convenience. When most people want to know about something they usually just want a basic collection of descriptive facts so they can form a general impression. Wikipedia is very good for this. With Google however they have to sort through a collection of search results and perhaps visit two or more sites before they get an answer. This lowers the convenience level several steps. Convenience is very often most important to the typical user.
I'm sure that Google would be monitoring the click-through rate to Wikipedia. For more data they might also be measuring the increase in people typing a search query and then adding the word 'wikipedia' after it to make sure that they get the wikipedia page coming up first in the results list. If the users are clued-up they can just submit the request by hitting 'I feel lucky' and go straight there.
More interestingly, when using Firefox users can have the search box set to wikipedia and can then very conveniently type the name of a person or country or a general concept into this box and go directly to the wikipedia page. Using this method no search site is used at all.
Google is still very useful when one knows how to search for things using particular strings of words or combinations of search terms but this is not something that most people are very proficient at. Wikipedia is a better lowest common denominator and I mean this not as an insult but rather as a compliment.
If I were the premier of China, I'd make a secret deal with SK to put a military sqeeeze on the place, since NK would probably be overwhelmed by a Chinese invasion. The Chinese could really come out looking like good guys if they then turned it over to SK for re-unification ala Germany.
North Korea exists today precisely because of China's backing. NK is a useful tool for China to unsettle the East Asian region for their own ends. It's their own tame joker. Your contention about what China could do and how this would make them look like 'the good guys' is very naive. The feelings of the ordinary soldiers of a nation (the disgust in the article you mention) do not have much relevance to the realpolitik games that the power-holders of that nation play.
In the original slashdot story I posted a link to an article on newsforge which gives better background context to this decision by the Kerala government. The article has some flaws i.e. "open source guru Richard Stallman", but still makes interesting reading.
Thanks for your total spending figures. I find these two interesting:
Australia 3,893,928,499.34 Taiwan 1,035,284,044.48
I am Australian and have lived in Taiwan for a year. The two countries have similar total populations (Taiwan a few million more than Australia's 20m) and similar standards of living. Yet Taiwan spends nearly a quarter what Australia does.
While there have been some very erudite comments made in response to this article it seems to me you are all missing the major new concept the author proposes. Let me quote:
...but instead are likely to seem them in niece markets employed for solving a very limited set of special-purpose tasks.
Yes! Niece markets. A concept almost entirely unconceptualised before. And isn't that surprising? - surely people have looked for a place to buy and sell nieces before. Where to buy a nice niece? Where to offload a baker's niece (so irritating it seems like there's 13 of them). Step right down to Aunt Martha's Niece Market. "You'll love our nieces to pieces!"
Actually now I think about it - a niece market - a better example of a niche market you are not likely to seem.
If you don't read the whole article it's worth noting that there is mention made of, and a link to an interesting page on the cultural differences between the English and German wikipedias.
Haha! Hollywood thinks they can get people to pay $30 for a movie which is selling for $15 on DVD at Wal Mart because it's been out for 12 months? DREAM ON!
p.s. you're getting the Dekstop version here. Described thus on the download page:
The desktop CD allows you to try Ubuntu without changing your computer at all, and at your option to install it permanently later. This type of CD is what most people will want to use. You will need at least 192MB of RAM to install from this CD.
One advantage of the new controller is that it not only is fun, it looks fun. When you play with an old-style controller, you look like a loser, a blank-eyed joystick fondler. But when you're jumping around and shaking your hulamaker, everybody's having a good time.
I think this quote is key particularly where it relates to the uptake of game-playing by girls. To generalise, boys will be concerned with how their actions look on the video screen while girls will be concerned with how they look physically playing the game. If this new controller translates into allowing players to show style, elegance and playfulness in their physical direction of the game than it could be revolutionary.
In fairness, the Greek was pronounced something closer to "oorenos" (with a long "o" at the end). The problem comes with putting a "y" before the "ou" vowel; that's an artifact of Latin.
Exactly.
Uranus is the Latinized form of Ouranos, Greek name of the sky. The 'yu' pronunciation is an example of an iotated vowel. The derivation from the Greek shows that the 'yu' sound is an artifact. I am not aware if it came in with the Ancient Roman pronunciation of the latinised version or whether it has come in only recently with the English pronunciation of the latinised spelling. I suspect the latter. Some English speakers seem to like to iotate 'u' sounds, an example being 'nyuclear'.
Most dictionaries give the un-iotated version as a possible pronunciation and I certainly find it a less compromising pronunciation to use.
Slashdot Mirror
I found your comment intriguing. It appears to be genuine.
I respect your opinion but completely disagree with it. I feel that a world without copyright would result in vastly greater creativity. I think what you are describing is entertainment. Entertainment is fine but we seem to have sacrificed everything on its altar.
BTW I was a great fan of Tolkien as an adolescent (The Silmarillion remains my favourite) but I didn't go anywhere near the LoTR movies. I know I would have detested them. So maybe that's indicative of where our personalities/world views differ.
In reply to the query about who is Philip Adams and can he be trusted in calls for investment.
Philip Adams is a well known personality in intellectual culture in Australia. He has a radio program on the national broadcaster, the ABC, which has been running for at least ten years. The show runs 4 nights a week and on it Philip interviews prominent people from around the world. He is very successful in getting very highly regarded people to speak because 1) he is a very good interviewer 2) his audience in Australia is very substantial and 3) because the level of discussion usually goes much deeper than is usual in the media.
I think you do not need to be very suspicious of his motivations because his reputation is his most precious asset and he would be very wary of supporting things that look at all dodgy. Also, he has been independently wealthy for a long time (made his fortune in advertising in his younger days) and has shown little motivation to increase his wealth since those early days.
The software discussed in the article is released under the GPL so perhaps you could respect the users and creators of that license and refer to Free Software rather than Open Source as you have in your comment.
Lovely story, thanks.
I've read good things about F-Spot too.
But for user awareness I'd like to point out that F-Spot is developed using Mono. You of course, can make your own decision about whether you are comfortable with this dependency.
Nice comment. Insightful (+1) and funny (+1) at the same time.
It was obviously a stupid move on Novell's part and is already backfiring badly for them but an interesting idea that by trying another of their dirty tricks it might end up being bad for MS as well by making their patent strategy plain.
I didn't say that. What I said was that usually Yahoo lists a wikipedia page higher in their results than Google does. This may mean that Yahoo is happy to actively promote Wikipedia results (as I think they have stated) rather than that Google actively demotes them. And I don't think Google would demote them. Just not be particularly interested in promoting them.
But I apologise because I stated what I said as a fact when it is of course just my impression or even prejudice. I just did my own little un-scientific test using more obscure search topics than you as I expected this is where the difference would be more noticeable. The results were: Surya - Google 2, Yahoo 2 || Tarjei Vesaas - Google 4(norwegian), 9(english), Yahoo 2(english) || mirror neuron - Google 3, Yahoo 1 || LiMux - Google 4(german), 6(english), Yahoo 4 || giraffe - Google 3, Yahoo 1. These were the first five things I thought to search on and Yahoo ranked Wikipedia equally or higher on all five including two 1st place rankings. Not a huge difference but I would say a significant difference (in of course a very unscientific test).
I return to my original comment that Wikipedia is increasingly becoming a better way to directly 'look up' (rather than search for) something on the net than Google. Google thus risks losing some of it's middle-man role. I surmise that the strategists in Google now realise this and so have decided not to actively boost Wikpedia's results ranking or support them more concretely through hosting. Part of my thinking that is because nothing has come of that old announcement. But of course it's all only speculation and was always intended as such.
I'm aware of that announcement. However you will notice there has been no follow up notice and more than 12 months has passed. In that time Wikipedia has grown enormously in importance and recognition. I think Google will have been rethinking their support based on the argument in my original comment.
Yahoo *has* provided concrete support in the form of servers. I believe that Yahoo rightly perceives Google as less of a threat because a) search is not their main revenue base and b) their being a humint (human intelligence) company is synergetic with Wikipedia. Google is a sigint (signals intelligence) company and consequently while they do get some benefit from the increase of material to index, the different paradigm is also showing potential to be a direct threat to their long term business success in this arena (bringing up information on general search topics).
As evidence of the positions I have outlined above and that the two companies recognise where they stand and how Wikipedia matches in with their strategy, I would submit the fact that Wikipedia material usually appears much higher in Yahoo search results compared to Google. Yahoo is happy to support Wikipedia's growth. I believe Google is becoming increasingly less happy.
These are just my thoughts. Take them how you find them.
I think this is a very interesting topic and one that I have been thinking about over the last few months. I suspect that Google has identified Wikipedia as a key competitor for the following reason. Wikipedia has the advantage over Google in terms of convenience. When most people want to know about something they usually just want a basic collection of descriptive facts so they can form a general impression. Wikipedia is very good for this. With Google however they have to sort through a collection of search results and perhaps visit two or more sites before they get an answer. This lowers the convenience level several steps. Convenience is very often most important to the typical user.
I'm sure that Google would be monitoring the click-through rate to Wikipedia. For more data they might also be measuring the increase in people typing a search query and then adding the word 'wikipedia' after it to make sure that they get the wikipedia page coming up first in the results list. If the users are clued-up they can just submit the request by hitting 'I feel lucky' and go straight there.
More interestingly, when using Firefox users can have the search box set to wikipedia and can then very conveniently type the name of a person or country or a general concept into this box and go directly to the wikipedia page. Using this method no search site is used at all.
Google is still very useful when one knows how to search for things using particular strings of words or combinations of search terms but this is not something that most people are very proficient at. Wikipedia is a better lowest common denominator and I mean this not as an insult but rather as a compliment.
North Korea exists today precisely because of China's backing. NK is a useful tool for China to unsettle the East Asian region for their own ends. It's their own tame joker. Your contention about what China could do and how this would make them look like 'the good guys' is very naive. The feelings of the ordinary soldiers of a nation (the disgust in the article you mention) do not have much relevance to the realpolitik games that the power-holders of that nation play.
Start with hamsters, end up with goats.
OK, good to know what the progression is.
One more reason not to visit the US of A.
One more reason not to hold a conference in the US of A.
A much more comprehensive article about this decision and its background context is on Newsforge.
Thanks for your total spending figures.
I find these two interesting:
Australia 3,893,928,499.34
Taiwan 1,035,284,044.48
I am Australian and have lived in Taiwan for a year. The two countries have similar total populations (Taiwan a few million more than Australia's 20m) and similar standards of living. Yet Taiwan spends nearly a quarter what Australia does.
While there have been some very erudite comments made in response to this article it seems to me you are all missing the major new concept the author proposes. Let me quote:
Yes! Niece markets. A concept almost entirely unconceptualised before. And isn't that surprising? - surely people have looked for a place to buy and sell nieces before. Where to buy a nice niece? Where to offload a baker's niece (so irritating it seems like there's 13 of them). Step right down to Aunt Martha's Niece Market. "You'll love our nieces to pieces!"
Actually now I think about it - a niece market - a better example of a niche market you are not likely to seem.
If you don't read the whole article it's worth noting that there is mention made of, and a link to an interesting page on the cultural differences between the English and German wikipedias.
DReaM on indeed.
i386
amd64
powerpc
p.s. you're getting the Dekstop version here. Described thus on the download page:
Nicely written comment.
I think this quote is key particularly where it relates to the uptake of game-playing by girls. To generalise, boys will be concerned with how their actions look on the video screen while girls will be concerned with how they look physically playing the game. If this new controller translates into allowing players to show style, elegance and playfulness in their physical direction of the game than it could be revolutionary.
Interestingly, not an uncommon typo. Or should that be a freudian slip of the fingers? Google reports about 504,000 for "pubic healthcare". Here's their first search result for example:
In the old days of newspaper typesetting, you'd suspect the compositors of having a bit of fun.
Yes, it is a diacritic. More specifically it is also a diaresis.
Exactly.
Uranus is the Latinized form of Ouranos, Greek name of the sky. The 'yu' pronunciation is an example of an iotated vowel. The derivation from the Greek shows that the 'yu' sound is an artifact. I am not aware if it came in with the Ancient Roman pronunciation of the latinised version or whether it has come in only recently with the English pronunciation of the latinised spelling. I suspect the latter. Some English speakers seem to like to iotate 'u' sounds, an example being 'nyuclear'.
Most dictionaries give the un-iotated version as a possible pronunciation and I certainly find it a less compromising pronunciation to use.