Google has been up front with where their loyalties lie in the search engine business: With the user. They got big and continue to be big because the give results that the search users are looking for. In general, this means the links they present are on the topic queried for and on the basis of links from other sites the content has been "rated" useful.
If a site is designed ( or screwed up ) such that it shows as a result to a query when inappropriate, delivers spam, or ranks higher than the content would warrant, and Google still presents it as a search result, then Google has failed their customer.
Webmasters are not their customers, individuals who are searching are. Ethics says that you give your customers what you promised them. Ethics says you live up to what your stockholders expect by doing what you told them you do: Delivering search results that keep your customers coming back ( and serving them up ads each time ).
So many people refer to Google as if it were a human looking at web sites and giving it the big thumbs up or down. As part of the indexing if the spider finds "violations" such as presenting a different page to spiders than to humans, it risks being dropped from the index. To expect a human response to why each site triggered the de-indexing is not reasonable.
In the webmaster's whining about Google, he complains about the request to be re-indexed containing:
*I believe this site has violated Googles quality guidelines in the past.
* This site no longer violates Googles quality guidelines.
He thinks these are "an admission of guilt", but they dont' say "I violated" they say "the site violated". So, if the site were hacked and did violate their indexing policy, fix it, say you've fixed it and move on. How many hits has he had over the years that came directly from Google? And did they come from Google due to all those people choosing Google to search for his site or it's topics? But now he whines about being delisted for the time it takes him to fix a site he should have kept unhacked in the first place.
If you could save 100 lives today, wouldn't that be better than saving 1 a year for 100 years? While it's not sure that spending all the money now gets you 100x the benefit, holding back money for the sake of keeping the foundation going isn't necessarily increasing the benefit.
A lot depends on what your target charities are. If you're funding protection for farmers who have bad seasons, then spending it all now isn't going to prevent future bad seasons and will only provide a temporary relief. If your target is a cure or immunization for AIDS then achieving that goal as quickly as possible with the funds available would warrant not holding back.
Putting the benefit you hope to achieve first, above the life of the foundation, seems to be more true to the goals of a foundation.
There's been a rash of scare-stories about the ephemeral nature of digital information, how it's less likely to survive 1,000s of years like a papyrus scroll sealed in a jar or inscribed clay tablets have. But most seem to also ignore the multitude of copies that now exist of most things. How many unique copies of valuable information have been lost over time despite being stored on in "permanent" media?
I wouldn't suggest that having 10 milion copies of LonelyGirl around is better for the future than a single copy on a YouTube server. But like the printing press the ability to freely make digital copies not only allow for wider disemination, but will likely result in copies of "unimportant" files surviving long enough to either become important, or at least interesting. 50-60 years from now some kids will find silly old home movies of grandpa on his iPod after he's died. It may be one of him playing with Menthos and Diet Coke, but I bet they'll be happy they found it.
The Garmin NavTalk had a phone that did this back in 99 in the US. It was an AMPS phone and sent the positions via quick burst of DTMF tones. It was a cute trick for an analog phone. You could see your position on the map display, the person you were talking to, and get navigation information to lead you to them. They did a GSM version, but if was European only and I never saw that one.
You had some control as to who could poll your position, or you could trigger a "send". A couple companies had web sites that would let you see the position of the phones on a map. They did it by decoding the DTMF tones the Garmin spit out.
Absolutely right! For every resonably complete article on Wikipedia you could find a dozen others that have mistakes or omissions. But If you notice these errors on the other pages you can't necessarily fix them.
Someone is no more foolish to rely on Wikipedia as a sole document than they would be on just another web page or encyclopedia article. Even if facts are correct, author's bias can be reflected in any article. Relying on a single document is foolish.
I'm closer and closer to using Wikipedia before Google when searching for information these days. Not that it necessarily gives the best or most complete information, but it's likely to give me additional information to make continuing research more fruitful. And, if I find that a snippet was incorrect in my additional research I can go back and fix it.
While it might not be as complete and error free as a dead tree edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, it is most certainly being improved and expanded at a greater rate than those books on the shelf are.
You've missed the point completely. If you have use a fake boarding pass to enter the "secure" area of the airport you're doing something wrong and unlikely anyone would buy that paper as free speech.
But the guy we're discussing created instructions for making your own. That's the free speech part, the instructions. A congressman wanting him arrested is just another example of clueless people in Washington killing time while sucking on the government tit. Since he made the news he'll be able to rake a little more money in "campaign contributions" now.
First, the difference in prices suck and the retailers should be happy they're not reallying being undercut. I get 2 audiobooks a month from Audible.com. Heavy on the DRM, but they work great for listening on the ipod. I pay $10 each for those two books. Retail, to buy the 10-15 CDs they are usually sold on cost $40-60 each. Big savings and the downloaded version is actually more convenient that the CDs.
If the retailers want to sell "the same thing" let them buy the pre-recorded DVDs on a spingle. No box, no sleeve, no art work. They're free to put up a fancy kiosk showing a preview and put cheap paper sleeves next to them for people to bag their own just like buying apples. I bet that could retail for $2 less.
DRM'd, lower quality movies that take a long time to download are no threat to DVD sales. People who have the computer and internet connection to download and watch these movies also have the bits necessary to rent a DVD for $1 and copy it on a $.50 blank disc. So people who want the absolute lowest price aren't downloading they're renting. So let them rant and rave, but they'll still sell DVDs. Even if it did undercut sales of people coming into the store to buy only the DVD, there are a lot of other people who buy something else while there, or just get the DVD as long as they were there for something else.
T-Mobile's beta trials of GSM plus UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) sounds a lot better option than "any old GSM SIM and any old SIP account" If you're going to do it all with one handset you'd probably prefer it didn't act like two different phones with no linkage.
It's nice and cool to have a single handset, address book and UI, but if you were dealing with 2 phone numbers and 2 voicemails it's not going to be as convenient. I think the options a carrier can provide to make it all look like a single phone would outweigh a small extra feature or two a roll-your-own package would give you. ( Like running Linux )
Is it poor security when a customer prints their PIN on a post-it an attaches it to the back of their ATM card?
If a bank is hacked and loses money, it's their fault. If they store the customer's personal info in a browser cookie than can be read and used that's their fault. But if a stranger says: "Hi, I'm your bank. We forgot all your account information and PIN number, please remind us" and the customer does, that's the bank's fault?
I've been joking for years that everyone with a pipe into the house will try to deliver broadband to you.
The problem with the water pipe one though is someone is liable to start a bittorrent session while you're in the in the shower and you'll get scalded.
Yeah, I remember when they announced it around CES time. There's enough people who read press releases (like the Y-E Data one ) and think "News!" that press releases are effective. Obviously the poster and the editor are both in that camp.
A simple search for "USB hub UWB" would have given them a clue. Of course, the Belkin link is just a press release also. "Available Early Spring" has been pushed to next month, so far.
Nothing like misleading/incomplete information in an article.
All the references for "recovered data" seems to come from "smart phones". They specifically mention a Treo and a Blackberry. These are basically handheld computers that happen to include a phone. They store large amounts of data in addition to phone records, so they'll also have measures to prevent accidental erasure that would lose more than just old caller ID records.
But the AP weanies who wrote the article are clueless and just calls them all "phones". Then the Slashdot summary just says "phones". These aren't phones, they're pocket computers designed to retain large amounts of information. The better they are at retaining the data, the harder it's naturally going to be to remove it all on purpose.
Now there will be more cheap Nokias and Motorolas going into landfills in pieces because no one told people the difference. No one will tell them about removing a SIM card from a GSM phone vs. a CDMA phone that doesn't have a SIM card.
And no money goes to the artists from used CD sales. The artists get screwed left and right. But you don't hear anyone arguing to ban those sales. ( Well, maybe the RIAA now and then )
Music from iTunes is already compressed a fair bit. Yes, you'll lose some fidelity, but the copy to CD and re-rip has always been there if you're not too picky but seriously DRM-phobic.
But other than single-track purchasing, the whole point of the ITMS is convenience. If you want music a single click away it's there. If you want it a click away, but are willing to go through hoops to remove the DRM you kinda lost the convenience part, so what's the point?
If you wanted cheap music, at least an ablbum at a time, borrowing or buying used CDs, ripping them yourself then returning ( or re-selling ) them is an option. If you look at the price of a used CD, minus the price you get selling it back the next day, it's going to be cost competitive with ITMS purchase. Heck, splitting the price of a new album with 2 friends and you all rip it before selling it is going to be a better price. Illegal, yes, but no more so than de-DRMing
So if that's an option, why would you buy from ITMS in the first place if you're going to go through pains to de-DRM it? Poor impulse control? If you can get it for the same price ( or cheaper ) by getting the CD and ripping yourself AND less hassle than removing DRM, why not do just that?
Which is why I think any DRM removal that is more than a single click just silly.
Just because you hadn't heard about it, or aren't forward thinking enough to do a search, doesn't mean it's not in the USA. Just because the article said "world's first" didn't make it so.
From the Daily Wireless page: "Indeed, T-Mobile is not the only telco pushing into at-home wireless services. Already, AT&T (T) expects to introduce two new at-home offerings in the coming months."
Look at the little row of tabs at the top of every Wikipedia page. See the one marked 'history'? Click on that. You are now looking at a complete history of edits to that page. The handle of everyone who edited it, the date and time it was edited and the commit comment they attached to it. Isn't that enough?
Yes, I saw those little tabs, including the history, probably why I mentioned them in my post.
There are people who do not read the history, probably the same Yahoos who thinking quoting Wikipedia as a source on the news as "research" is OK. But even Yahoos can usually get the gist of a movie rating 3 out of 10. Even an article that was frequently vandalized and repaired should be considered unstable since it's possible you got to it between repairs.
A formula for stability. More people reading the article over time, less people tweaking it, it's stable. Give it a number, a color, a border something that would encourge casual readers to click a little deeper, especially with an article that's been changed often.
When a Wikipedia page gets controversial and wild swings in the content are being made, there's usually a warning of disputes at the top of the page. Maybe an additional bit of information could be a stability index. How much of the page has changed, both recently, and over time. In the utopian Wikipedia world, a topic might go through several changes as the wording is refined, sources cited and then eventually settling down. A value or other indicator might be a handy thing. You could always read the page history, but many people wouldn't. They might if the topic was marked "in flux".
This would be handy even if the topic wasn't being disputed (yet) but substantial changes had recently been made and therefore had less review by others.
Despite major swings in the content of a story, Wikipedia is very useful when it gives you more information that can aid you in additional research. Even with a dead tree encyclopedia, relying on a single source when doing research would be bad. But with even a questionable source and an unfamiliar topic you may glean additional information needed to start new queries.
Slashdot Mirror
Google has been up front with where their loyalties lie in the search engine business: With the user. They got big and continue to be big because the give results that the search users are looking for. In general, this means the links they present are on the topic queried for and on the basis of links from other sites the content has been "rated" useful.
If a site is designed ( or screwed up ) such that it shows as a result to a query when inappropriate, delivers spam, or ranks higher than the content would warrant, and Google still presents it as a search result, then Google has failed their customer.
Webmasters are not their customers, individuals who are searching are. Ethics says that you give your customers what you promised them. Ethics says you live up to what your stockholders expect by doing what you told them you do: Delivering search results that keep your customers coming back ( and serving them up ads each time ).
So many people refer to Google as if it were a human looking at web sites and giving it the big thumbs up or down. As part of the indexing if the spider finds "violations" such as presenting a different page to spiders than to humans, it risks being dropped from the index. To expect a human response to why each site triggered the de-indexing is not reasonable.
In the webmaster's whining about Google, he complains about the request to be re-indexed containing:
*I believe this site has violated Googles quality guidelines in the past.
* This site no longer violates Googles quality guidelines.
He thinks these are "an admission of guilt", but they dont' say "I violated" they say "the site violated". So, if the site were hacked and did violate their indexing policy, fix it, say you've fixed it and move on. How many hits has he had over the years that came directly from Google? And did they come from Google due to all those people choosing Google to search for his site or it's topics? But now he whines about being delisted for the time it takes him to fix a site he should have kept unhacked in the first place.
If you could save 100 lives today, wouldn't that be better than saving 1 a year for 100 years? While it's not sure that spending all the money now gets you 100x the benefit, holding back money for the sake of keeping the foundation going isn't necessarily increasing the benefit.
A lot depends on what your target charities are. If you're funding protection for farmers who have bad seasons, then spending it all now isn't going to prevent future bad seasons and will only provide a temporary relief. If your target is a cure or immunization for AIDS then achieving that goal as quickly as possible with the funds available would warrant not holding back.
Putting the benefit you hope to achieve first, above the life of the foundation, seems to be more true to the goals of a foundation.
I guess you're right, he's one of the few who can really claim build credit.
There's been a rash of scare-stories about the ephemeral nature of digital information, how it's less likely to survive 1,000s of years like a papyrus scroll sealed in a jar or inscribed clay tablets have. But most seem to also ignore the multitude of copies that now exist of most things. How many unique copies of valuable information have been lost over time despite being stored on in "permanent" media?
I wouldn't suggest that having 10 milion copies of LonelyGirl around is better for the future than a single copy on a YouTube server. But like the printing press the ability to freely make digital copies not only allow for wider disemination, but will likely result in copies of "unimportant" files surviving long enough to either become important, or at least interesting. 50-60 years from now some kids will find silly old home movies of grandpa on his iPod after he's died. It may be one of him playing with Menthos and Diet Coke, but I bet they'll be happy they found it.
I'm getting tired of big companies and "scientific papers" motivated by purely corporate gain.
No global warming: Oil Companies
Pirate DVDs fund terrorists: MPAA
Now we have the Salk Institute, not 5 minutes drive from a Hooters, searching the endless source of chicken wings.
Shameful.
The Garmin NavTalk had a phone that did this back in 99 in the US. It was an AMPS phone and sent the positions via quick burst of DTMF tones. It was a cute trick for an analog phone. You could see your position on the map display, the person you were talking to, and get navigation information to lead you to them. They did a GSM version, but if was European only and I never saw that one.
You had some control as to who could poll your position, or you could trigger a "send". A couple companies had web sites that would let you see the position of the phones on a map. They did it by decoding the DTMF tones the Garmin spit out.
http://www.garmin.com/products/navTalk/
Absolutely right! For every resonably complete article on Wikipedia you could find a dozen others that have mistakes or omissions. But If you notice these errors on the other pages you can't necessarily fix them.
Someone is no more foolish to rely on Wikipedia as a sole document than they would be on just another web page or encyclopedia article. Even if facts are correct, author's bias can be reflected in any article. Relying on a single document is foolish.
I'm closer and closer to using Wikipedia before Google when searching for information these days. Not that it necessarily gives the best or most complete information, but it's likely to give me additional information to make continuing research more fruitful. And, if I find that a snippet was incorrect in my additional research I can go back and fix it.
While it might not be as complete and error free as a dead tree edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, it is most certainly being improved and expanded at a greater rate than those books on the shelf are.
You've missed the point completely. If you have use a fake boarding pass to enter the "secure" area of the airport you're doing something wrong and unlikely anyone would buy that paper as free speech.
But the guy we're discussing created instructions for making your own. That's the free speech part, the instructions. A congressman wanting him arrested is just another example of clueless people in Washington killing time while sucking on the government tit. Since he made the news he'll be able to rake a little more money in "campaign contributions" now.
First, the difference in prices suck and the retailers should be happy they're not reallying being undercut. I get 2 audiobooks a month from Audible.com. Heavy on the DRM, but they work great for listening on the ipod. I pay $10 each for those two books. Retail, to buy the 10-15 CDs they are usually sold on cost $40-60 each. Big savings and the downloaded version is actually more convenient that the CDs.
If the retailers want to sell "the same thing" let them buy the pre-recorded DVDs on a spingle. No box, no sleeve, no art work. They're free to put up a fancy kiosk showing a preview and put cheap paper sleeves next to them for people to bag their own just like buying apples. I bet that could retail for $2 less.
DRM'd, lower quality movies that take a long time to download are no threat to DVD sales. People who have the computer and internet connection to download and watch these movies also have the bits necessary to rent a DVD for $1 and copy it on a $.50 blank disc. So people who want the absolute lowest price aren't downloading they're renting. So let them rant and rave, but they'll still sell DVDs. Even if it did undercut sales of people coming into the store to buy only the DVD, there are a lot of other people who buy something else while there, or just get the DVD as long as they were there for something else.
T-Mobile's beta trials of GSM plus UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) sounds a lot better option than "any old GSM SIM and any old SIP account" If you're going to do it all with one handset you'd probably prefer it didn't act like two different phones with no linkage.
It's nice and cool to have a single handset, address book and UI, but if you were dealing with 2 phone numbers and 2 voicemails it's not going to be as convenient. I think the options a carrier can provide to make it all look like a single phone would outweigh a small extra feature or two a roll-your-own package would give you. ( Like running Linux )
This will work:
.ca
.ca but did mention it was a Canadian reseller.
Tranax Mini-Bank "Transaction Setup"
All from the article, they even put the quotes around "transation setup" for you. Didn't see
Is it poor security when a customer prints their PIN on a post-it an attaches it to the back of their ATM card?
If a bank is hacked and loses money, it's their fault. If they store the customer's personal info in a browser cookie than can be read and used that's their fault. But if a stranger says: "Hi, I'm your bank. We forgot all your account information and PIN number, please remind us" and the customer does, that's the bank's fault?
Ummmm, you aren't paying attention. It's the customer who's stupid and should eat the loss. MUCH better than my bank footing the bill.
Actually, I'm surprised to learn that the customer doesn't eat it for being foolish all along.
The link is to a site who's main purpose it to regurgitate a few other site's text and surround it with ads ( yeah, like a lot of sites ). The original page: http://flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/topcameras.php has more details, week-to-week changes. The list is part of a larger collection of Fickr toys: http://flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/
I've been joking for years that everyone with a pipe into the house will try to deliver broadband to you.
The problem with the water pipe one though is someone is liable to start a bittorrent session while you're in the in the shower and you'll get scalded.
Yeah, I remember when they announced it around CES time. There's enough people who read press releases (like the Y-E Data one ) and think "News!" that press releases are effective. Obviously the poster and the editor are both in that camp.
A simple search for "USB hub UWB" would have given them a clue. Of course, the Belkin link is just a press release also. "Available Early Spring" has been pushed to next month, so far.
Nothing like misleading/incomplete information in an article.
All the references for "recovered data" seems to come from "smart phones". They specifically mention a Treo and a Blackberry. These are basically handheld computers that happen to include a phone. They store large amounts of data in addition to phone records, so they'll also have measures to prevent accidental erasure that would lose more than just old caller ID records.
But the AP weanies who wrote the article are clueless and just calls them all "phones". Then the Slashdot summary just says "phones". These aren't phones, they're pocket computers designed to retain large amounts of information. The better they are at retaining the data, the harder it's naturally going to be to remove it all on purpose.
Now there will be more cheap Nokias and Motorolas going into landfills in pieces because no one told people the difference. No one will tell them about removing a SIM card from a GSM phone vs. a CDMA phone that doesn't have a SIM card.
And no money goes to the artists from used CD sales. The artists get screwed left and right. But you don't hear anyone arguing to ban those sales. ( Well, maybe the RIAA now and then )
Legality, honesty, morality. These are three separate things.
You may disagree with honesty or morality, but that's different than arguing about legality.
That's the part that makes it worthless.
Music from iTunes is already compressed a fair bit. Yes, you'll lose some fidelity, but the copy to CD and re-rip has always been there if you're not too picky but seriously DRM-phobic.
But other than single-track purchasing, the whole point of the ITMS is convenience. If you want music a single click away it's there. If you want it a click away, but are willing to go through hoops to remove the DRM you kinda lost the convenience part, so what's the point?
If you wanted cheap music, at least an ablbum at a time, borrowing or buying used CDs, ripping them yourself then returning ( or re-selling ) them is an option. If you look at the price of a used CD, minus the price you get selling it back the next day, it's going to be cost competitive with ITMS purchase. Heck, splitting the price of a new album with 2 friends and you all rip it before selling it is going to be a better price. Illegal, yes, but no more so than de-DRMing
So if that's an option, why would you buy from ITMS in the first place if you're going to go through pains to de-DRM it? Poor impulse control? If you can get it for the same price ( or cheaper ) by getting the CD and ripping yourself AND less hassle than removing DRM, why not do just that?
Which is why I think any DRM removal that is more than a single click just silly.
Just because you hadn't heard about it, or aren't forward thinking enough to do a search, doesn't mean it's not in the USA. Just because the article said "world's first" didn't make it so.
g 2006/tc20060814_285305.htm
4 6
s &file=article&sid=5708
0 6-7-28-Nokia-Takes-Dual.html
Business Week:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/au
Wi-Fi Planet
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/36287
Daily Wireless:
http://www.dailywireless.org/modules.php?name=New
From the Daily Wireless page:
"Indeed, T-Mobile is not the only telco pushing into at-home wireless services. Already, AT&T (T) expects to introduce two new at-home offerings in the coming months."
This page:
http://www.blackberrytoday.com/articles/2006/7/20
Says there's reportadly 20 UMA trials going on right now.
Funny, the only thing I remembered about Anaconda was a dripping wet Jennifer Lopez, not the fake snakes or Jon Voight
Look at the little row of tabs at the top of every Wikipedia page. See the one marked 'history'? Click on that. You are now looking at a complete history of edits to that page. The handle of everyone who edited it, the date and time it was edited and the commit comment they attached to it. Isn't that enough?
Yes, I saw those little tabs, including the history, probably why I mentioned them in my post.
There are people who do not read the history, probably the same Yahoos who thinking quoting Wikipedia as a source on the news as "research" is OK. But even Yahoos can usually get the gist of a movie rating 3 out of 10. Even an article that was frequently vandalized and repaired should be considered unstable since it's possible you got to it between repairs.
A formula for stability. More people reading the article over time, less people tweaking it, it's stable. Give it a number, a color, a border something that would encourge casual readers to click a little deeper, especially with an article that's been changed often.
When a Wikipedia page gets controversial and wild swings in the content are being made, there's usually a warning of disputes at the top of the page. Maybe an additional bit of information could be a stability index. How much of the page has changed, both recently, and over time. In the utopian Wikipedia world, a topic might go through several changes as the wording is refined, sources cited and then eventually settling down. A value or other indicator might be a handy thing. You could always read the page history, but many people wouldn't. They might if the topic was marked "in flux".
This would be handy even if the topic wasn't being disputed (yet) but substantial changes had recently been made and therefore had less review by others.
Despite major swings in the content of a story, Wikipedia is very useful when it gives you more information that can aid you in additional research. Even with a dead tree encyclopedia, relying on a single source when doing research would be bad. But with even a questionable source and an unfamiliar topic you may glean additional information needed to start new queries.