Of course, they have some catching up to do. All browsers try to have big version numbers because user look at it like "oh, this must be more advanced than this other browser". Silly, but true. It dates back to IE/Netscape days, when Netscape completely skipped over version 5.0 because IE was already at 6.0 and they wanted to be "up to par".
Video tag is such a mess currently that I'm not surprised if they didn't spend much of their energy on it. Also, if they did, it means they'll side with Apple and Google to H.264's side. This leaves Firefox and Opera alone with Theora. It's not that IE9 isn't up to par with video tag support, it's that video tag itself is far from ready. We will still be using Flash for a long time.
If I remember correctly, they do have canvas support and improved javascript performance though, and most importantly, they're going for standards compliance.
Meanwhile, why does google provide better tools? Simple. So you can have better control over your own data. Since when is that a bad thing?
Whoa, now hold on there. Better control over data? Have you forgotten that all of your data with Google is in the cloud? Is it really that wise to put everything there, everything available for Google? With desktop applications everything remains on your computer.
Also remember one thing. If Google happens to get subpoena or court order (and there's thousands of those filed every day without an actual good merit), they have to hand over all of that data. Your searches, your documents, your pictures, your emails, possible other datamined data. All because you rather saved them in the cloud instead of your own computer.
That's the usual trick. The privacy settings conveniently ignore any such issue and only concentrate on the client side things like "private tab" or cookie handling. Of course, if you don't want to go completely white-list based (and most users don't), there's no way to explicitly block certain domains like google-analytics.com.
Of course it's convenient for Google to call only that privacy and completely ignore the fact that every Chrome installation has identifier about where you downloaded it, when you installed it, an unique identifier, everything you type to browser bar is sent to Google, any domain you visit is sent to Google, and so on...
I wonder, why MS wouldn't just get over it and discontinue the development of its monstrous browser. They've lost the browser war, why wouldn't they put their resources elsewhere?
At least IE8 is better than its predecessors and IE9 looks even better, but still..
This is like saying:
"I wonder, why MS wouldn't just get over it and discontinue the development of Windows. They've lost the OS war to Linux, why wouldn't they put their resources elsewhere?
At least Vista is better than its predecessors and Windows 7 looks even better, but still.."
IE still has 62% marketshare. Would you really call that a lost war? Besides, if you read slashdot, some of the people working with IE9 have commented here about the standards compliance and bringing IE9 up to bar with other browsers in other areas too. They're at least taking it very seriously and it looks like times have been changing for a few years now. IE8 is still the only browser with sandboxing too, all Firefox, Opera and Chrome are missing that.
This is especially true because these are highly targeted attacks. Unlike other malware, these don't go where the majority of users are - they go against what the target company is using and have a reason to spend the extra time on it.
Over the past few months Microsoft, too, has met with the DOJ and the European Commission. The subject of our meetings has been the competition law review, now completed, of the search partnership between Yahoo! and Microsoft. As you might expect, the competition officials asked us a lot of questions about competition with Google--since that is the focus of the partnership. We told them what we know about how Google is doing business.
What does Google's method of doing business have to do with their Yahoo! merger?
That's something you have to ask from DoJ. They probably wanted to make sure it doesn't create unfair competition against Google. Microsoft replied by saying Google has a huge advantage already as they have so large marketshare to datamine from. Note that they didn't complain as this story seems to suggest - they merely replied to DoJ's concerns about it.
The common rant on slashdot is how Microsoft is using their Windows marketshare to keep competitors off and to gain marketshare in unrelated areas like IE (which they were punished for by EU). Google is doing exactly the same here, but in addition to that they're also pushing competitors of the market by the sheer amount of data they can datamine. Search engines aren't just about algorithms anymore, they're about the datamined data too. This will eventually lead to 100% monopoly. You say if that's a good or bad thing.
Giving Google the monopoly now would be the worst thing to do.
Google's results were not so much superior amounts of hardware, but better algorithms. They simply did it better.
Aside from the huge amount of servers, data centers and proprietary back-end Google has, algorithms are just one thing.
Google datamines everywhere on the Internet. They gather as much as detailed data as they can on their search engine. They datamine what links people click on the results (via background javascript http request). This gives huge advantage for Google with less common search queries, as they see what results people think are relevant to their search. Their competitors don't get even closely the same amount of data. Google is leveraging their marketshare to gain even more of it for their search, docs, youtube and other services, just like Microsoft used to leverage Windows marketshare to gain marketshare for IE.
Google’s algorithms learn less common search terms better than others because many more people are conducting searches on these terms on Google.
I don't think that is how pagerank or keyword search works.
Search engines nor Google has relied solely on pagerank or keywords for many many years. They have hundreds of different algorithms that count, one of them seeing what links people click on the results most (this is really good data on the less common search terms as Google learns a lot on those)
It means Google can leverage the data they get from their market share to gain even more market share and finally destroying the competition totally and gaining 100% monopoly over search market.
A lot more people use Google so Google gets a lot more targeted search queries to datamine and see what people click and think are relevant results (you know, Google does a quick background javascript request whenever you click any of their search results to get that data). This leads to to the aforementioned situation.
antitrust concerns about search are not real because some of the complaints come from one of its last remaining search competitors.
Time to get the popcorn...
"antitrust concerns are not real" and "last remaining competitors" in the same sentence, whoa.
What competition there really is besides Google? Bing, Baidu and yandex.ru. All the other ones are basically using services from either Google or Bing. Giving Google the monopoly now would be the worst thing to do.
in meeting with government agencies to discuss its recently approved search deal with Yahoo, Microsoft officials explained how Google has tilted the mechanics of the search advertising business in its favor. “As you might expect, the competition officials asked us a lot of questions about competition with Google—since that is the focus of the partnership,”
The title and summary seems to give the assumption that MS went and complained to DoJ and EC, but it really seems to be different case. They were discussing about the deal with Yahoo and why it doesn't hurt the market or Google. It really makes sense too - Google gets many magnitudes more search query data than their rivals. Long-tail keyword phrases are invaluable data and give a huge advantage for Google to taylor their search results.
But everyone here seems to be make the suggestion that it's the Ubisoft like DRM and you can't play your games because you can't connect to PSN. That's not the case here as you can play them offline just fine, normally. It's just a bug in the system, not some draconian DRM refusing to let you play because you can't connect to PSN.
If it would be intentional, I would side with you. But all those games work normally even if you don't have an Internet connection, so it's obvious it's currently caused by the bug and not loss of connection to PSN network. Sometimes bugs happen.
There really wasn't anything like Portal before (expect for the students prototype game, but they were hired to do Portal so I don't think that counts). An year before Prey had fixed portal like things, but it wasn't the actual gameplay.
Even if everything isn't completely new, current generation of games have done and combined those things extremely well. There's really only so far original ideas you can have and many of them have been done already. It's combining them and using them in great ways that counts a lot now.
It's even simpler than that. The common mis-belief, and in the summary again, is that Activision bought Vivendi. It's the other way around, Vivendi bought Activision and now Vivendi owns Activision Blizzard. I don't see where their old licensing would had moved.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, they have some catching up to do. All browsers try to have big version numbers because user look at it like "oh, this must be more advanced than this other browser". Silly, but true. It dates back to IE/Netscape days, when Netscape completely skipped over version 5.0 because IE was already at 6.0 and they wanted to be "up to par".
Video tag is such a mess currently that I'm not surprised if they didn't spend much of their energy on it. Also, if they did, it means they'll side with Apple and Google to H.264's side. This leaves Firefox and Opera alone with Theora. It's not that IE9 isn't up to par with video tag support, it's that video tag itself is far from ready. We will still be using Flash for a long time.
If I remember correctly, they do have canvas support and improved javascript performance though, and most importantly, they're going for standards compliance.
Meanwhile, why does google provide better tools? Simple. So you can have better control over your own data. Since when is that a bad thing?
Whoa, now hold on there. Better control over data? Have you forgotten that all of your data with Google is in the cloud? Is it really that wise to put everything there, everything available for Google? With desktop applications everything remains on your computer.
Also remember one thing. If Google happens to get subpoena or court order (and there's thousands of those filed every day without an actual good merit), they have to hand over all of that data. Your searches, your documents, your pictures, your emails, possible other datamined data. All because you rather saved them in the cloud instead of your own computer.
That's the usual trick. The privacy settings conveniently ignore any such issue and only concentrate on the client side things like "private tab" or cookie handling. Of course, if you don't want to go completely white-list based (and most users don't), there's no way to explicitly block certain domains like google-analytics.com.
Of course it's convenient for Google to call only that privacy and completely ignore the fact that every Chrome installation has identifier about where you downloaded it, when you installed it, an unique identifier, everything you type to browser bar is sent to Google, any domain you visit is sent to Google, and so on...
I wonder, why MS wouldn't just get over it and discontinue the development of its monstrous browser. They've lost the browser war, why wouldn't they put their resources elsewhere?
At least IE8 is better than its predecessors and IE9 looks even better, but still..
This is like saying:
"I wonder, why MS wouldn't just get over it and discontinue the development of Windows. They've lost the OS war to Linux, why wouldn't they put their resources elsewhere?
At least Vista is better than its predecessors and Windows 7 looks even better, but still.."
IE still has 62% marketshare. Would you really call that a lost war? Besides, if you read slashdot, some of the people working with IE9 have commented here about the standards compliance and bringing IE9 up to bar with other browsers in other areas too. They're at least taking it very seriously and it looks like times have been changing for a few years now. IE8 is still the only browser with sandboxing too, all Firefox, Opera and Chrome are missing that.
This is especially true because these are highly targeted attacks. Unlike other malware, these don't go where the majority of users are - they go against what the target company is using and have a reason to spend the extra time on it.
Why would they need to solve it now? They'll save it when child is born and have it handy years later.
It's interesting how far people go to defend Google, just an another company, on slashdot. Their PR sure has worked good on geeks.
Boo-fuckin'-hoo.
Their complaint boils down to "It's not fair that Google is successful."
Again, boo-fuckin'-hoo. Make something useful and maybe people will use it.
Lets put that quote to another context.
Boo-fuckin'-hoo.
Linux users complains boils down to "It's not fair that Windows is successful."
Again, boo-fuckin'-hoo. Make something useful and maybe people will use it.
See how the image changes right away when you just switch places with something that /. users envy?
Over the past few months Microsoft, too, has met with the DOJ and the European Commission. The subject of our meetings has been the competition law review, now completed, of the search partnership between Yahoo! and Microsoft. As you might expect, the competition officials asked us a lot of questions about competition with Google--since that is the focus of the partnership. We told them what we know about how Google is doing business.
What does Google's method of doing business have to do with their Yahoo! merger?
That's something you have to ask from DoJ. They probably wanted to make sure it doesn't create unfair competition against Google. Microsoft replied by saying Google has a huge advantage already as they have so large marketshare to datamine from. Note that they didn't complain as this story seems to suggest - they merely replied to DoJ's concerns about it.
The common rant on slashdot is how Microsoft is using their Windows marketshare to keep competitors off and to gain marketshare in unrelated areas like IE (which they were punished for by EU). Google is doing exactly the same here, but in addition to that they're also pushing competitors of the market by the sheer amount of data they can datamine. Search engines aren't just about algorithms anymore, they're about the datamined data too. This will eventually lead to 100% monopoly. You say if that's a good or bad thing.
Giving Google the monopoly now would be the worst thing to do.
Google's results were not so much superior amounts of hardware, but better algorithms. They simply did it better.
Aside from the huge amount of servers, data centers and proprietary back-end Google has, algorithms are just one thing.
Google datamines everywhere on the Internet. They gather as much as detailed data as they can on their search engine. They datamine what links people click on the results (via background javascript http request). This gives huge advantage for Google with less common search queries, as they see what results people think are relevant to their search. Their competitors don't get even closely the same amount of data. Google is leveraging their marketshare to gain even more of it for their search, docs, youtube and other services, just like Microsoft used to leverage Windows marketshare to gain marketshare for IE.
Google’s algorithms learn less common search terms better than others because many more people are conducting searches on these terms on Google.
I don't think that is how pagerank or keyword search works.
Search engines nor Google has relied solely on pagerank or keywords for many many years. They have hundreds of different algorithms that count, one of them seeing what links people click on the results most (this is really good data on the less common search terms as Google learns a lot on those)
Microsoft didn't get their lawyers to whine about it, they just mentioned it in their discussion with DoJ and EC about the Bing-Yahoo deal.
It means Google can leverage the data they get from their market share to gain even more market share and finally destroying the competition totally and gaining 100% monopoly over search market.
A lot more people use Google so Google gets a lot more targeted search queries to datamine and see what people click and think are relevant results (you know, Google does a quick background javascript request whenever you click any of their search results to get that data). This leads to to the aforementioned situation.
antitrust concerns about search are not real because some of the complaints come from one of its last remaining search competitors.
Time to get the popcorn ...
"antitrust concerns are not real" and "last remaining competitors" in the same sentence, whoa.
What competition there really is besides Google? Bing, Baidu and yandex.ru. All the other ones are basically using services from either Google or Bing. Giving Google the monopoly now would be the worst thing to do.
From the article:
in meeting with government agencies to discuss its recently approved search deal with Yahoo, Microsoft officials explained how Google has tilted the mechanics of the search advertising business in its favor. “As you might expect, the competition officials asked us a lot of questions about competition with Google—since that is the focus of the partnership,”
The title and summary seems to give the assumption that MS went and complained to DoJ and EC, but it really seems to be different case. They were discussing about the deal with Yahoo and why it doesn't hurt the market or Google. It really makes sense too - Google gets many magnitudes more search query data than their rivals. Long-tail keyword phrases are invaluable data and give a huge advantage for Google to taylor their search results.
Still afaict this is a defect in original workmanship (not a wear-out and not a random failure) that renders the product largely unusable.
If sony doesn't sort this out quickly i'd expect lawsuits in the EU at least.
What? This is exactly that.
But everyone here seems to be make the suggestion that it's the Ubisoft like DRM and you can't play your games because you can't connect to PSN. That's not the case here as you can play them offline just fine, normally. It's just a bug in the system, not some draconian DRM refusing to let you play because you can't connect to PSN.
You really think they won't fix this issue and just leave millions of PS3's hanging around useless?
But this case has nothing to do with DRM. All those games work just fine even if you don't have an Internet connection.
If it would be intentional, I would side with you. But all those games work normally even if you don't have an Internet connection, so it's obvious it's currently caused by the bug and not loss of connection to PSN network. Sometimes bugs happen.
There really wasn't anything like Portal before (expect for the students prototype game, but they were hired to do Portal so I don't think that counts). An year before Prey had fixed portal like things, but it wasn't the actual gameplay.
Even if everything isn't completely new, current generation of games have done and combined those things extremely well. There's really only so far original ideas you can have and many of them have been done already. It's combining them and using them in great ways that counts a lot now.
It's even simpler than that. The common mis-belief, and in the summary again, is that Activision bought Vivendi. It's the other way around, Vivendi bought Activision and now Vivendi owns Activision Blizzard. I don't see where their old licensing would had moved.
Yeah, that's why I said with the bluray games. Downloaded games obviously use a little bit different system.
It's a bug. And it's not because of any kind of DRM system with the bluray games. It's because of the trophy system:
It's the same story for other games that feature dynamic trophy support.