I agree that we have no evidence that Google is currently modifying it search results to suit themselves.
(My argument is that they are modifying the results page to suit themselves, and to a lot of users they are the same thing)
That said, I think your argument is flawed. You seem to be taking it as a given that if Google were manipulating the results then their image search would be number 1. That's an untested (and, I believe, untrue) assumption. Perhaps they're only manipulating some search terms. Perhaps the google image search page actually deservers to be on page 10, and they're slowly pushing it up the results to make it look less obvious.
Searching for photo organiser brings Picasa as the top result. (In fact the first three results are related to Picasa). Maybe that's a manipulation. Maybe picasa should be futher down the page, or on the 2nd page. Who knows?
Now, I'm not saying they have manipulated the results. I think picasa probably deserves to be in the number 1 spot. It's quite a good photo organiser, it has a lot of stuff linking to it, and it's on a popular domain - it should have a pretty high page rank. But the simple truth is, we don't know.
You can't make the argument that because some of google's services don't come up in the first page of results then that means they're not manipulating the results. If they were manipulating the results, then I expect that they would be a bit more subtle about it.
And for good measure, I'll repeat again: I don't have any reason to believe that Google is manipulating their search results.
I do think that the quality of their results page has gone down because of these "tips". I also think that about the sponsored links, but I can't see any better way for Google to make money, so I'm not complaining about it.
They just want the information that is most useful to them at the time they enter their search query.
And why do they do to Google to get that?
I think it's fair to suppose that the overwhelming majority of users don't submit their searches to multiple search engines. They pick one search engine and they stick with it until they learn that there's a better one.
That's trust. (It's also brand loyalty to a significant extent, but it's primarily trust).
Users believe that the results that Google is giving them are the best results the internet has to offer. If they find out that isn't true, they'll leave.
This isn't the "Oh wow, Google is so nice, so dependable, so honest" kind of trust, it's the "repeatable, reliable, consistent" kind of trust.
Assume for a moment that Flickr is better than Picasa for photo sharing. (Pagerank certainly believes it to be)
If Sally searches for "photo sharing" (to use Blake's example) and the first half page of results are for Picasa, then she'll end up sharing their photos via Picasa.
Now, imagine Peter used an alternative search engine which has Flickr as the top result(s). He will use Flickr to share his photos.
Later on Peter and Sally send each other links to their photo albums and Sally will see that Peter's album is much better then hers. She'll ask Peter "Wow, that's a nice photo site, how did you find that?", Peter will say "It was the top link on XYZ search". Sally will say "Hmm... Google just brought up links to this picasa place. Why are Google's results so bad?"
That's a trust issue.
Google builds brand loyalty and trust by providing the best user experience - i.e. the best search results. They have an algorithm for that - it's called pagerank. If they start bypassing that algorithm and try and direct users to their own sites, then they damage that user experience, and weaken the level of brand loyalty and trust.
With Vista around the corner, Google needs to maintain its brand loyalty. If users start to think that Google isn't so great - that its search results aren't the best around - then they'll notice that IE takes them to Live search instead, and just accept that as "good enough".
Why shouldn't Google put their own products first?
Because ultimately it may not be in their best interests.
Google relies on trust. I enter my search criteria, and Google returns the "best" results it can find.
If users start to think that Google is manipulating those results for their own gain, then they will stop trusting the results and start looking at other search engines.
Is this "hints" section a sign that Google has crossed the line? Maybe - that's for each person to decide - but there is a line there, and Google needs to walk it very carefully if they want to maintain that trust relationship.
What I want to know, is why is it that we are not spot checking ALL system across the nation?
I'm curious as to why a town of 80 people needs to be using electronic voting? It wouldn't be a particularly onerous task to hand count <= 80 paper votes.
I did take a leadership role in some projects/committees, but so did several others.
So use that on your resume.
When I'm recruiting (and I am right now) I don't care what your official title was at your last company. I care about what you did. So if you were mentoring junior staff, then right that down. If you were "responsible for the design and implementation of the FooBaz component" then put that down. It really doesn't matter what the company called you.
We will ask you about it in the interview, and if you bullsh!t us, then don't expect to have it work out, but you don't need permission from your employer to take on responsibility. Be proactive. Use a little initiative.
And if you're looking for jobs in Sydney (Australia) then you can send your resume to me. (If you're really worth hiring you'll work out how to contact me, and you'll probably also be able to work out what company I work for)
They never suggest that it should be nothing at all instead of proprietary
Maybe.
I read RMS's comment:
It is always a mistake to remove freedom for some other goal. In the long term, you regret it.
to be saying exactly that.
That, if it was not possible to do the OLPC project without sacrificing particular freedoms then it should not be done.
With respect to that comment, I disagree with him on 2 points:
He presents a subjective view as an objective one. He may consider it a mistake, but I don't see how such a view can be presented as an objective statement of fact.
I don't share his opinion that freedom is always the number 1 goal. Particularly software freedom. There are plenty of things that matter more to me than software freedom, and I will grudgingly sacrifice that freedom if it allows me to acheive those goals.
As a parent, I cannot begin to say how important the Megan's Law website has been for me. I was shocked to see about 20 convicted child molesters live in my area.
However, if you moved to an area where the number was lower - even zero - would you feel safer? Would you allow your child to play in the part alone at night?
I'm sure you wouldn't. (On the latter, perhaps you would on the former)
I'm curious then (not being a parent) as to what actual impact this information makes? Presumably parents don't lock their children up and never let them outside just because there is a known sex offender living 3 blocks away, and similarly they don't let their children run free when there are no known sex offenders living nearby.
I can see that the stats ("20 known sex offenders nearby") can help to demonstrate the reality of the risk, but you don't need to see their photos to take that message.
So other than making parents feel more scared, does Megan's Law actually change anything?
Shutting down Google Brazil will just stop google from running a commercial arm in Brazil - it won't stop Brazillians from accessing google.com
Google has clearly decided it is in their commercial interests to open an office in Brazil, they may be about to find out that they were wrong.
But what about other astronomical objects?
Will it make a difference under jupiter?
What about if we get really close to the sun - like Mercury - will it make a difference there?
What is this facination with the sun? It's just another orbit that has some natural space satellites orbiting around it.
You assume that Steorn expected to be taken seriously.
If that's true, then Slashdot's skeptisism is an appropriate reaction.
However, it's also possible that Steorn expect intelligent people to mock them and publicly ridicule them, thereby creating more attention, and somehow encouraging stupid people to give them money.
If that's there plan, then Slashdot fell right into it.
It's also a pretty strange plan, but it seems that those plans often work. Stupid people do stupid things.
the deliberate GPL incompatibility of the CDDL makes me wary
Do you say the same about Mozilla?
The CDDL is just the MPL rewritten to be more of a boilerplate license, rather than needing to be changed for each project. It may not be the best license around, but if you believe SUN is being disingenuous by using then CDDL, I think you need to hold all users of the MPL to the same standard.
Before Babylon 5, Christian was best known for her feature film roles as a stripper possessed by an alien serial killer in The Hidden (1987) and as model Hexina in Hexed (1993). She has also posed for Playboy Magazine In October of 1999.
The bigger issue (for Sybase, but not for some other DBs) is handling lists.
Sybase doesn't allow you to pass an array/list/collection (whatever you want to call it) to your proc, so queries like "type IN (1,2,3)" are much easier to do with dynamic SQL than with procs.
The Liberals (just a name, they're not really liberal)
Depends on whether you use American or European terminology.
Historically Americans focused on social policy and Europeans focused on economic policy.
Traditionally right wing governments tend to have strict social policies and free market policies while left wing governments have loose social policies and interventionalist market policies.
So in an economic sense right wing governments are liberal (let the corporations do whatever they like and leave the market to sort out the checks and balances).
Slashdot Mirror
Wow! That's fast. /. and they're already hiring someone to fix it.
The bug only just got published to
That said, I think your argument is flawed. You seem to be taking it as a given that if Google were manipulating the results then their image search would be number 1. That's an untested (and, I believe, untrue) assumption. Perhaps they're only manipulating some search terms. Perhaps the google image search page actually deservers to be on page 10, and they're slowly pushing it up the results to make it look less obvious.
Searching for photo organiser brings Picasa as the top result. (In fact the first three results are related to Picasa). Maybe that's a manipulation. Maybe picasa should be futher down the page, or on the 2nd page. Who knows?
Now, I'm not saying they have manipulated the results. I think picasa probably deserves to be in the number 1 spot. It's quite a good photo organiser, it has a lot of stuff linking to it, and it's on a popular domain - it should have a pretty high page rank. But the simple truth is, we don't know.
You can't make the argument that because some of google's services don't come up in the first page of results then that means they're not manipulating the results. If they were manipulating the results, then I expect that they would be a bit more subtle about it.
And for good measure, I'll repeat again: I don't have any reason to believe that Google is manipulating their search results.
I do think that the quality of their results page has gone down because of these "tips". I also think that about the sponsored links, but I can't see any better way for Google to make money, so I'm not complaining about it.
I think it's fair to suppose that the overwhelming majority of users don't submit their searches to multiple search engines. They pick one search engine and they stick with it until they learn that there's a better one.
That's trust. (It's also brand loyalty to a significant extent, but it's primarily trust).
Users believe that the results that Google is giving them are the best results the internet has to offer. If they find out that isn't true, they'll leave.
This isn't the "Oh wow, Google is so nice, so dependable, so honest" kind of trust, it's the "repeatable, reliable, consistent" kind of trust.
Assume for a moment that Flickr is better than Picasa for photo sharing. (Pagerank certainly believes it to be)
If Sally searches for "photo sharing" (to use Blake's example) and the first half page of results are for Picasa, then she'll end up sharing their photos via Picasa.
Now, imagine Peter used an alternative search engine which has Flickr as the top result(s). He will use Flickr to share his photos.
Later on Peter and Sally send each other links to their photo albums and Sally will see that Peter's album is much better then hers. She'll ask Peter "Wow, that's a nice photo site, how did you find that?", Peter will say "It was the top link on XYZ search". Sally will say "Hmm... Google just brought up links to this picasa place. Why are Google's results so bad?"
That's a trust issue.
Google builds brand loyalty and trust by providing the best user experience - i.e. the best search results. They have an algorithm for that - it's called pagerank. If they start bypassing that algorithm and try and direct users to their own sites, then they damage that user experience, and weaken the level of brand loyalty and trust.
With Vista around the corner, Google needs to maintain its brand loyalty. If users start to think that Google isn't so great - that its search results aren't the best around - then they'll notice that IE takes them to Live search instead, and just accept that as "good enough".
Google relies on trust. I enter my search criteria, and Google returns the "best" results it can find.
If users start to think that Google is manipulating those results for their own gain, then they will stop trusting the results and start looking at other search engines.
Is this "hints" section a sign that Google has crossed the line? Maybe - that's for each person to decide - but there is a line there, and Google needs to walk it very carefully if they want to maintain that trust relationship.
Given that Blake is no longer the lead developer for Firefox, I don't think it particularly matters what you want him to do.
It isn't in Australia (NSW)
When I'm recruiting (and I am right now) I don't care what your official title was at your last company. I care about what you did. So if you were mentoring junior staff, then right that down. If you were "responsible for the design and implementation of the FooBaz component" then put that down. It really doesn't matter what the company called you.
We will ask you about it in the interview, and if you bullsh!t us, then don't expect to have it work out, but you don't need permission from your employer to take on responsibility. Be proactive. Use a little initiative.
And if you're looking for jobs in Sydney (Australia) then you can send your resume to me.
(If you're really worth hiring you'll work out how to contact me, and you'll probably also be able to work out what company I work for)
But if that's the case, why are they taking so long to release it?
I read RMS's comment: to be saying exactly that.
That, if it was not possible to do the OLPC project without sacrificing particular freedoms then it should not be done.
With respect to that comment, I disagree with him on 2 points:
As was: typedef enum {
B_BEBOX_PLATFORM = 0, B_MAC_PLATFORM, B_AT_CLONE_PLATFORM,
B_ENIAC_PLATFORM, B_APPLE_II_PLATFORM, B_CRAY_PLATFORM, B_LISA_PLATFORM,
B_TI_994A_PLATFORM, B_TIMEX_SINCLAIR_PLATFORM, B_ORAC_1_PLATFORM, B_HAL_PLATFORM
} platform_type;
It's not professional to build a system and then tell the users "But don't touch this, or it will all crash".
Lucky for them I have a secret way of finding content on the internet.
- Computerworld
- National Federantion of the Blind (one of the plaintiffs)
- Disability Rights Advocates (the plaintiffs' lawyers
Target doesn't appear to have issue a press release.Hey Rob, can I get my editor's fee now?
I'm sure you wouldn't. (On the latter, perhaps you would on the former)
I'm curious then (not being a parent) as to what actual impact this information makes? Presumably parents don't lock their children up and never let them outside just because there is a known sex offender living 3 blocks away, and similarly they don't let their children run free when there are no known sex offenders living nearby.
I can see that the stats ("20 known sex offenders nearby") can help to demonstrate the reality of the risk, but you don't need to see their photos to take that message.
So other than making parents feel more scared, does Megan's Law actually change anything?
Shutting down Google Brazil will just stop google from running a commercial arm in Brazil - it won't stop Brazillians from accessing google.com
Google has clearly decided it is in their commercial interests to open an office in Brazil, they may be about to find out that they were wrong.
But what about other astronomical objects?
Will it make a difference under jupiter?
What about if we get really close to the sun - like Mercury - will it make a difference there?
What is this facination with the sun? It's just another orbit that has some natural space satellites orbiting around it.
If that's true, then Slashdot's skeptisism is an appropriate reaction.
However, it's also possible that Steorn expect intelligent people to mock them and publicly ridicule them, thereby creating more attention, and somehow encouraging stupid people to give them money.
If that's there plan, then Slashdot fell right into it.
It's also a pretty strange plan, but it seems that those plans often work. Stupid people do stupid things.
Do you say the same about Mozilla?
The CDDL is just the MPL rewritten to be more of a boilerplate license, rather than needing to be changed for each project. It may not be the best license around, but if you believe SUN is being disingenuous by using then CDDL, I think you need to hold all users of the MPL to the same standard.
I'm sure he's right - they'll have replaced with with worse bugs by then.
Sybase doesn't allow you to pass an array/list/collection (whatever you want to call it) to your proc, so queries like "type IN (1,2,3)" are much easier to do with dynamic SQL than with procs.
Historically Americans focused on social policy and Europeans focused on economic policy.
Traditionally right wing governments tend to have strict social policies and free market policies while left wing governments have loose social policies and interventionalist market policies.
So in an economic sense right wing governments are liberal (let the corporations do whatever they like and leave the market to sort out the checks and balances).