The Data/Phone overlap problem has two grim issues: Route navigation while on the phone and referencing email. Both could be improved with some local caching.
Email is cached locally, but only if you've opened the message before. I don't know the exact setup.
Maps: nothing local, which is a pain. I'm not sure why Google Maps can't stash some map tiles on my phone and update them periodicly. It's not like it doesn't know where I spend most of my time [insert own basement/Bear Party joke here].
The Kindle user experience is a data point against the "lower quality product" argument. It's certainly locked down, but the delivery path is pretty damn good. I've seen both DRM and pirated books, and buying a Kindle ebook is a better experience. Period. It just costs more.
This is very different from music and movies, where pirates perfected digital downloading long before a commercial option was available. Amazon, not stupid about these things, is hammering down ebook prices to get people on their platform before competitors can get off the ground - legal and illegal. Would I prefer to move books from my Kindle to my Nook, and buy books for Kindle from the store of my choice? Sure. But if quality user experience is the only argument against DRM you can muster, then it's a very DRM future in the ebook world, my friends.
The only explanation for the valuation is the belief that Facebook will be more valuable over the long term than it is now. Unless you think Facebook will still be a wise investment in 15 years, the valuation is a little bonkers. In the technology space, this seems to contradict observed experiences -- a decade is a very, very long time.
This is particularly so with something as ephemeral as a community-powered product. Diaspora was a disappointment, true. But do you really think no credible Facebook alternative will come along in ten years? And once that crowd leaves, exactly what is Facebook's value? Some PHP? Server farms? Yeah, ok.
Yeah, here's what I know: the keyboard just says "Personal Computer" on it and has a DIN cable. Circa 1984. It's the one that shipped with the original IBM PC. My father was an IBMer and there's the word "IBM" written under the keyboard in permanent marker, which makes me think maybe Dad nicked it for home use.
First computer I ever used, and I'd love to keep it running. I'm giving up on the CPU as a practical tool, but the keyboard should be, in theory, fine for daily use.
Other than a lack of F11 and F12 keys, it should be serviceable. This was apparently a known issue, because there is a sticker on the F1 and F2 keys that say "Shift = F11", "Shift = F12".
It sounds like it'll take some work on the software side, but I guess we'll just have to plug in the cables and see what happens.
We have to "educate them before the debate can really be held"? No, you morons. THIS IS THE DEBATE. IT'S THE THING HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.
Here's a better idea: Put the pro-Net Neutrality megaphone solidly in the hands of Google*, and the rest of the Valley. Then get out the way. Yes, Rush, will jump at this and make it a Google vs. Me debate, because Rush is a fanatical self promoter, and would love to be as important as Google. But the thing is... people USE Google. They LIKE Google. They TRUST Google. So Google needs to get out there and make this about innovation and jobs, and make the opponent position that Comcast can jack up rates whenever they like. Limbaugh can get shoved next to Comcast, which just happens to be the most hated company in the world. Just sayin'.
If it's business vs. fanatics, the businesses will always win. Ain't America great? So we fanatics need to get businesses that support neutrality -- and data portability and open standards and all the other aspects of Open Stewardship -- at the front of the room for a while.
* I recognize the problems with the Google/Verizon statement, but we work with what we have.
Dear whoever made Stuxnet: I don't care who you are. I don't want to know. But please mess these guys up. Overspin some centerfuges. Junk up some technical schematics. Generally make them miserable and ineffective.
...and when Apple decides to compete with your new product, they will simply stop licensing to your company to shut you down. Remember Lala.com? Me neither.
Testing the boundaries of the cage is among the OS tests I care most about. Already, we know it's superior in this respect to, say, an iPad, which isn't dual booting a damn thing.
Following fairly simple instructions posted on the official chromium site is now hacking?
If by hacking, you mean adapting a technology to the needs of the users, rather than the stated purposes of the creator, then yes, that's in the finest hacking tradition.
Fair point. I'm not unfamiliar with how foundations spend out resources: Gates, Hewlett, Skoll and Omidyar foundations come to mind as similarly sized, and I've been involved with some of them on projects of this size.
My ire at Google is partially based on the naivate and ego with which they approached the whole operation. They strongly implied that their Google approach will be faster, better, smarter than the existing foundation methods, and then, after much fucking around (I'm sorry, innovation), finally realize that there are very good reasons for the way foundations do things, and that this stuff is actually kind of difficult to do correctly. At the end of the day, they end up with a solution that looks exactly like what they would have done if they'd just sat down with a handful of people who have done this before and asked for advice.
And there is no excuse whatsoever for blowing your deadline by several months and not mentioning it publicly.
I stand corrected, and missed the news. But, seriously, 2 years to pick five projects, along with many months of non-responsiveness in between doesn't exactly inspire confidence in their execution or attention span.
Broadband didn't kill the small and medium ISPs. Regulatory changes requested by the telecoms killed the small and medium ISPs. Ask anyone who worked at one of those ISPs, they'll tell you exactly which rule changes shut them down.
Remember that time Google promised to hand out 10 million dollars, based on poorly conceptualized public participation, and then ran the participation part of it, got huge press for it, and then, SO SORRY! didn't follow through at all?
That was, gosh, exactly like this.
I call bullshit on this and all future Google projects that involve a charitable act and massive public input. They get the good press, and then, SO SORRY, they hope everyone forgets about it.
This will never happen because BOTH amazon and wikipedia make money off the deal. Simply put, shit people say in wikipedia matters less to Amazon than Amazon selling books. Capitalism is real reliable that way.
Link every footnote to a book to a "buy now" button.
This would have unfortunate consequences for citation spamming.
But overall I really like the idea. I think you have to charge for the links, as well as take a cut via Amazon. Wikipedia creates a paid placement box on every article, full disclosure, with a max of three books in it, and auction the locations at runtime, adwords style. Desirable articles (Argentina tourism) would have an arms race to keep Lonely Planet on top, while the rest will take smaller cuts across the VERY long tail of Wikipedia traffic.
Let users opt in to advertising, as a conscious choice to support Wikipedia..
Hell, let them choose which ad network(s) to serve. Do it by IP address, no authentication necessary, but make the choice persistent. In exchange, the Jimmy Wales appeal goes away. An upgrade, seriously, and one which neatly avoids many ethical issues, as it's at the whim of the users, not the Foundation or editors, which products get advertised. As a result, it's harder to see how the advertisers would have leverage on the content creators.
Yeah, but they still can't get HTTPS on their own damn cloud products. Here's a quick look at Google's security beyond the local device:
I turn on my laptop, turn on my VPN, surf. In the process I got owned by my buddy running Firesheep. Here's how:
Laptop has tabs open. Wifi connects before VPN kicks in. Chrome tries to refresh a tab containing a PUBLIC Google Doc where I was not logged in, and Chrome sends out my authentication without HTTPS on it. Firesheep grabbed the Google account, which is my Reset password account for everything else. Owned.
Later we learned that Chrome's sync bookmarks tool also sends your Google account authentication without HTTPS. All the time.
So if you're on an open network, Google is spamming your authentication to anyone who's listening, because they can't get their shit together to use HTTPS when they authenticate.
No no no, here's the deal. The increase in traffic from Level3 is not TRANSITING Comcast's network, it is TERMINATING on Comcast's network. That is a big, big difference. Because it means that the more subscribers Comcast has, the more traffic Level3 has to send them. Comcast is already getting paid for the increase in traffic at a rate of $50 a month times a lot of people.
And this is only not a net neutrality issue in the technical sense that they aren't discriminating against packets. But a huge ISP that happens to own a huge cable TV business threatening to stop serving their own customers the website of a cable TV competitor certainly seems to capture the essence of the net neutrality fight: Would you like to access the Verizon/Google Internet or the Comcast/Disney Internet? Uh, neither?
Slashdot Mirror
The Data/Phone overlap problem has two grim issues: Route navigation while on the phone and referencing email. Both could be improved with some local caching.
Email is cached locally, but only if you've opened the message before. I don't know the exact setup.
Maps: nothing local, which is a pain. I'm not sure why Google Maps can't stash some map tiles on my phone and update them periodicly. It's not like it doesn't know where I spend most of my time [insert own basement/Bear Party joke here].
The Kindle user experience is a data point against the "lower quality product" argument. It's certainly locked down, but the delivery path is pretty damn good. I've seen both DRM and pirated books, and buying a Kindle ebook is a better experience. Period. It just costs more.
This is very different from music and movies, where pirates perfected digital downloading long before a commercial option was available. Amazon, not stupid about these things, is hammering down ebook prices to get people on their platform before competitors can get off the ground - legal and illegal. Would I prefer to move books from my Kindle to my Nook, and buy books for Kindle from the store of my choice? Sure. But if quality user experience is the only argument against DRM you can muster, then it's a very DRM future in the ebook world, my friends.
Facebook's actual customer base is thought to be 100 million. Lots of fake accounts.
Tell it to MySpace.
You're not the customer. You're the product.
The only explanation for the valuation is the belief that Facebook will be more valuable over the long term than it is now. Unless you think Facebook will still be a wise investment in 15 years, the valuation is a little bonkers. In the technology space, this seems to contradict observed experiences -- a decade is a very, very long time.
This is particularly so with something as ephemeral as a community-powered product. Diaspora was a disappointment, true. But do you really think no credible Facebook alternative will come along in ten years? And once that crowd leaves, exactly what is Facebook's value? Some PHP? Server farms? Yeah, ok.
Yeah, here's what I know: the keyboard just says "Personal Computer" on it and has a DIN cable. Circa 1984. It's the one that shipped with the original IBM PC. My father was an IBMer and there's the word "IBM" written under the keyboard in permanent marker, which makes me think maybe Dad nicked it for home use.
First computer I ever used, and I'd love to keep it running. I'm giving up on the CPU as a practical tool, but the keyboard should be, in theory, fine for daily use.
Other than a lack of F11 and F12 keys, it should be serviceable. This was apparently a known issue, because there is a sticker on the F1 and F2 keys that say "Shift = F11", "Shift = F12".
It sounds like it'll take some work on the software side, but I guess we'll just have to plug in the cables and see what happens.
Curious: How do you bridge from the old school 5 pin DIN to USB? Do you have to go to PS/2 then to USB? Or is there a more direct method?
I just dug out the keyboard from my IBM Personal Computer for this purpose, but haven't tinkered with it yet.
We have to "educate them before the debate can really be held"? No, you morons. THIS IS THE DEBATE. IT'S THE THING HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.
Here's a better idea: Put the pro-Net Neutrality megaphone solidly in the hands of Google*, and the rest of the Valley. Then get out the way. Yes, Rush, will jump at this and make it a Google vs. Me debate, because Rush is a fanatical self promoter, and would love to be as important as Google. But the thing is... people USE Google. They LIKE Google. They TRUST Google. So Google needs to get out there and make this about innovation and jobs, and make the opponent position that Comcast can jack up rates whenever they like. Limbaugh can get shoved next to Comcast, which just happens to be the most hated company in the world. Just sayin'.
If it's business vs. fanatics, the businesses will always win. Ain't America great? So we fanatics need to get businesses that support neutrality -- and data portability and open standards and all the other aspects of Open Stewardship -- at the front of the room for a while.
* I recognize the problems with the Google/Verizon statement, but we work with what we have.
Dear whoever made Stuxnet: I don't care who you are. I don't want to know. But please mess these guys up. Overspin some centerfuges. Junk up some technical schematics. Generally make them miserable and ineffective.
just license the patents.
...and when Apple decides to compete with your new product, they will simply stop licensing to your company to shut you down. Remember Lala.com? Me neither.
Testing the boundaries of the cage is among the OS tests I care most about. Already, we know it's superior in this respect to, say, an iPad, which isn't dual booting a damn thing.
Following fairly simple instructions posted on the official chromium site is now hacking?
If by hacking, you mean adapting a technology to the needs of the users, rather than the stated purposes of the creator, then yes, that's in the finest hacking tradition.
Fair point. I'm not unfamiliar with how foundations spend out resources: Gates, Hewlett, Skoll and Omidyar foundations come to mind as similarly sized, and I've been involved with some of them on projects of this size.
My ire at Google is partially based on the naivate and ego with which they approached the whole operation. They strongly implied that their Google approach will be faster, better, smarter than the existing foundation methods, and then, after much fucking around (I'm sorry, innovation), finally realize that there are very good reasons for the way foundations do things, and that this stuff is actually kind of difficult to do correctly. At the end of the day, they end up with a solution that looks exactly like what they would have done if they'd just sat down with a handful of people who have done this before and asked for advice.
And there is no excuse whatsoever for blowing your deadline by several months and not mentioning it publicly.
I stand corrected, and missed the news. But, seriously, 2 years to pick five projects, along with many months of non-responsiveness in between doesn't exactly inspire confidence in their execution or attention span.
Broadband didn't kill the small and medium ISPs. Regulatory changes requested by the telecoms killed the small and medium ISPs. Ask anyone who worked at one of those ISPs, they'll tell you exactly which rule changes shut them down.
Remember that time Google promised to hand out 10 million dollars, based on poorly conceptualized public participation, and then ran the participation part of it, got huge press for it, and then, SO SORRY! didn't follow through at all?
That was, gosh, exactly like this.
I call bullshit on this and all future Google projects that involve a charitable act and massive public input. They get the good press, and then, SO SORRY, they hope everyone forgets about it.
Better than a machine translation...
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.24/loppsi-2-french-law
No, but they will use this to make proxies illegal, in 3...2...1...
This will never happen because BOTH amazon and wikipedia make money off the deal. Simply put, shit people say in wikipedia matters less to Amazon than Amazon selling books. Capitalism is real reliable that way.
Link every footnote to a book to a "buy now" button.
This would have unfortunate consequences for citation spamming.
But overall I really like the idea. I think you have to charge for the links, as well as take a cut via Amazon. Wikipedia creates a paid placement box on every article, full disclosure, with a max of three books in it, and auction the locations at runtime, adwords style. Desirable articles (Argentina tourism) would have an arms race to keep Lonely Planet on top, while the rest will take smaller cuts across the VERY long tail of Wikipedia traffic.
Let users opt in to advertising, as a conscious choice to support Wikipedia..
Hell, let them choose which ad network(s) to serve. Do it by IP address, no authentication necessary, but make the choice persistent. In exchange, the Jimmy Wales appeal goes away. An upgrade, seriously, and one which neatly avoids many ethical issues, as it's at the whim of the users, not the Foundation or editors, which products get advertised. As a result, it's harder to see how the advertisers would have leverage on the content creators.
Yeah, but they still can't get HTTPS on their own damn cloud products. Here's a quick look at Google's security beyond the local device:
I turn on my laptop, turn on my VPN, surf. In the process I got owned by my buddy running Firesheep. Here's how:
Laptop has tabs open.
Wifi connects before VPN kicks in.
Chrome tries to refresh a tab containing a PUBLIC Google Doc where I was not logged in, and Chrome sends out my authentication without HTTPS on it.
Firesheep grabbed the Google account, which is my Reset password account for everything else. Owned.
Later we learned that Chrome's sync bookmarks tool also sends your Google account authentication without HTTPS. All the time.
So if you're on an open network, Google is spamming your authentication to anyone who's listening, because they can't get their shit together to use HTTPS when they authenticate.
So, yeah. Security. Good job.
No no no, here's the deal. The increase in traffic from Level3 is not TRANSITING Comcast's network, it is TERMINATING on Comcast's network. That is a big, big difference. Because it means that the more subscribers Comcast has, the more traffic Level3 has to send them. Comcast is already getting paid for the increase in traffic at a rate of $50 a month times a lot of people.
And this is only not a net neutrality issue in the technical sense that they aren't discriminating against packets. But a huge ISP that happens to own a huge cable TV business threatening to stop serving their own customers the website of a cable TV competitor certainly seems to capture the essence of the net neutrality fight: Would you like to access the Verizon/Google Internet or the Comcast/Disney Internet? Uh, neither?
I'm sorry, s/he meant to say "competitive" and "open" market. As we all know, "free" markets are totalitarian monopolies waiting to happen.