I've been using both MySQL and PostgreSQL for 7 years now... I've never felt a need for "developer support". Or if that phrase means "documentation + message boards" I've never felt a lack from postgresql. I also really don't get the PostgreSQL is hard to use argument. In every linux distro I've used in the last 7 years (redhat, centos, suse, fedora core, ubuntu) they are exactly the same... IE apt-get, yum, whatever, install postgresql-server/mysql-server. Then $startupscriptdir/postgresql start....
Do people really get that hung up on using postgres as the initial user instead of root?!? That is the ONLY difference that I can see.
Now I can agree that maybe postgresql doesn't really "target" an audience, but that is also because they are a true open source project. They don't have a commercial version. I really don't think Linus sits around saying "Ok, we need to add this feature so that more fortune 500's will adopt linux". Or "we need to add feature xyz so this will appeal to small businesses". MySQL has a "target" audience because they are selling something. If you aren't selling anything, by definition you don't have a target.
I really don't understand this argument. I've used PostgreSQL and MySQL pretty much interchangeably for the last 7 years. I have never felt a lack of dev tools or documentation/help from postgresql. Maybe I'm just smarter than the average joe, but setting up and running postgresql is not that much more difficult than mysql.
For the features it provides I much prefer postgresql. sure, clustering is harder, but for the "easy" things that mysql is supposed to be good at, you don't need clustering either. Once you're getting into "Oh, I need 5 DB servers to handle this load" then you're talking about serious DBA work no matter what platform you're using. I'd rather by default have referential integrity. Sure MySQL has it now, but only if you get InnoDB working, which is at least as hard (I think harder) than getting a default PostgreSQL running.
What developer tools is postgresql missing? I have no problems creating, maintaining, editing, or viewing databases in PostgreSQL. There are drivers for every language I've ever used (java, python, ruby, c++, php), what exactly is missing? Why should they "market" they aren't like MySQL they don't have a commercial version for which they get paid.
Already done, the FCC ruled 2 years ago that all fiber services (video, telephone, data) are not subject to common carrier regulations. They aren't required to lease their lines. Verizon, SBC (at&t), et al when confronted by the FCC about "why are we so far behind these other countries in broadband" the carriers argued that it was because they couldn't invest in fiber because of the requirement to lease the lines. They said they wouldn't be able to recoup their investment. So the FCC said "Ok, if you install fiber, its yours you don't have to allow access to it"
Wrong. Fiber is a whole new animal. If you roll out fiber, the FCC turns a blind eye, there is no regulation. In fact, the FCC ruled that you don't have to allow competitors access to fiber that you roll out. Fiber for the telcos is just like cable networks which people have requested access to multiple times, and the FCC has consistently ruled that the cable cos don't have to allow access.
no they are not required to lease the fiber, and they are not leasing it. The FCC ruled a couple years ago that if you as a provider invest in fiber roll outs, you no longer are subject to the required leasing agreements of the past. So as verizon cuts the fiber, they are creating 100% monopoly service areas.
As far as 911 they are still required by the FCC to comply with the power outage requirements, which state something like 6-8 hours of uptime in the event of a power outage. They install a battery backup at the customer prem to satisfy this requirement. This is all copper infrastructure has too. Sure at some COs they have generation equipment, but most of the locations where telco's are muxing out fiber to copper lines are running on batteries with 6-8 hours of uptime.
Actually its worse than that. The FCC ruled that if you roll out fiber you are exempt from competition. Verizon is not leasing their fiber to anyone, and they aren't required to. They are cutting the copper because as they do that, the are creating 100% monopoly service areas.
Verizon, at&t, and any other Fiber service provider owns a 100% monopoly as long as there is no copper. Verizon is not required, and has no natural incentive to lease their fiber to competitors at any price. If they were to allow a competitor to "lease" the fiber, I guarantee they would say "Ok, well our retail rate is $49/mo, so we'll let you use the connection for $45/mo" or some other really impossible to compete with price. The competitor would still have to provide all of the connection termination equipment, and the bandwidth, and would probably have to sell the service at ~100/mo just to cover costs. So obviously no one would sign up for that.
Verizon isn't doing that though, as they cut the copper they are removing competitors and creating 100% monopoly service areas where customers have absolutely zero choice.
I'm sure this guys "machine" can't be built for nothing either. That isn't the "free" either person is talking about. Now, 99.9999% this is a hoax, if I could buy puts on the company I would.
As to selectively enforcing patents, yes you can. Look at NTP vs RIMM. They didn't sue everyone at once, they left Nokia and Palm to go implement wireless email while they fought with RIMM, now that they won against them, now they are going after the others.
Also, the companies he mentions probably (read definitely) have patent cross license deals with MS. Sun does for sure (a result of the whole java settlement), and MS owns something like 15% of Apple, bailed them out in the 90s. I'm sure they both have cross license deals.
sure, my phone has mp3, internet and camera on it... The number 1 thing I would like about the iphone is the full internet browser. I can't stand the stupid "mobile" versions of websites that I get on my phone, they are impossible to navigate, and 99% of the time don't even have 10% of the content of the real site.
It's a complete pain. Hence my phone browsing is limited to a) stock quotes, b) movie times, c) sports scores
Anything more than that, and my phone is useless.
Also, my phone has 128MB of storage for MP3's and pictures combined.... that's about 10-15 songs and maybe 20-30 pictures... as a "media" device it is useless. And there isn't a single phone out there that you can store and play back an entire movie except the iPhone.
So there are 2 brand new things: 1) Full complete internet browser 2) storage and playback of complete movies
I absolutely hate AT&T. I have tmobile, and honestly of all the phone companies I've ever had land line or cell, they have been the best. I know people have had problems with them, they aren't perfect. But I don't know ANYONE who has had AT&T service and not had problems. I even called tmobile once because a certain strech of highway I drive on suddenly didn't have service anymore, they looked it up, found the problem and said they'd send techs out to fix it. Something had happened with some antennas in a snow storm, and it was kinda remote, but I drove past there at least 2-3 times a week, and I would drop my call right there and not have service for ~5 miles all of a sudden. 2 days after I called, back up and working. I called back and they were open and explained everything that had happened, and thanks for calling to report the problem cause they might not have found it without my call... It was nice. AT&T's response would be something like "FU, pay your bill, we never said it would work there"
I don't know why Apple chose AT&t for this thing, that is the stupidest move they could have made. It'd be like taking a Ferarri out to baja. (IE, really fast car, completely unsuitable roads). AT&T has the worst of everything, crappy slow non-3g network, crappy customer service, horrible attitude towards customers.
They at least could have partnered with someone with a decent network (verizon) or decent customer service (tmobile). This whole 5 years exclusive deal with AT&T is (for me) and should be (for everyone) the death of the iPhone.
If they didn't want it public, then why did they put it on a PUBLIC forum such as their PUBLIC wiki?
I'm sure the wine devs could have set up a private, internal wiki page just to track this. Heck they could have set up a whole separate bugzilla install, locked it down, and tracked the progress there...
If you put something like this on a completely public wiki, when you are a large open source project, you have to know that slashdot is going to pick it up.
I didn't put in "your map app" I put in the single word "maps", not "google maps", just "MAPS". I'm making the search less specific, not more so, and it is less specific searches that are used more often by less technological people.
and I'm not saying anything about the ONLY way people search for online maps, I'm talking about the most logical way though I think. I wouldn't even search for "online maps" I would search for maps (I don't like to type, and I'm looking for maps), maybe I would search for directions, or driving directions...
Anyway, I don't know why you got so upset that I "changed the rules" by simply searching for a different generic term.
It completely depends on your goals. If you just want to get a job and work then don't repeat. I've never had a single employer (I've had 4 now over 8 years) ask about grades. I've worked at a large company (5000+ employees worldwide, ok not huge but larger) a small company (about 30 employees), and 2 start ups. I personally love working at startups, exciting, edge of your seat, and you're generally making new stuff not maintaining some 15 year old app that is completely broken, but the company won't foot the bill to hire 3 decent programmers for 6 months to re-write it. YMMV, its just my personal feeling. Anyway, point being I've never had a single person ask about grades. In fact I've never had a single person ask me anything at all about school. Once you've got experience on your resume, that is pretty much all anyone looks at, I don't even have my schooling on my resume anymore, took it off last year, still got a new job in 2 days early this year. BTW, all my job changes were completely voluntary, never been laid off or fired (not even in 2000). And I've never been on a "job search" for more than 2 weeks.
If you want to go to grad school and do anything in academia, then you need those grades. That's all academics look at, its all they care about, well that and the GRE. I don't have any experience here... I disliked school, I got out as soon as I could, I'm not looking back.
ok, search for maps, I would say grandma or my mom would be about 5000 times more likely to type maps than "online maps". Google maps shows up 1st there...
And its not necessarily about "today" that worries me, or most people about google. It is in the future,3-5 years from now or even 5-10 years from now, when they've cemented themselves atop the internet heap. When they can willy nilly decide, "Hmmm, we're releasing product xyz next month, disable search for all of our competitors!". Sure that would be evil, but do you really think Sergey and Larry will still be around in 10? 15? 20 years? no. They will be off flying their 50 million dollar party 757 they bought after the IPO.
Eventually google WILL go the way of all other large companies. They will be controlled by a regular board of directors, a regular wall street CEO, and shareholders and huge money market fund managers who will demand increased revenue and profit growth every quarter. There comes a time when the demands of the street create the problem of "well, to keep all these investor people happy, we have to be evil". And google will be evil. If we cede control to them without a fight, we are idiots, just like we were in the early 90's with MS.
I remember in the early to mid 90's no one could get enough of MS's stuff, the latest office release, the latest version of windows, the latest version of visual studio, I never heard anyone complain about it because it was so much better than dealing with the fragmented unix vendors and it was so much easier to set up and run than netware, and it was so much cheaper and way faster than anything coming out of cupertino. Businesses loved it, technologists loved it. MS had permissive EULAs that let you install the product multiple times (at work and on a home computer). Their products were inexpensive (extremely inexpensive) compared to all the competition. They seemed to play nice. Then it all changed (sometime around windows 98). Google will hit that point as well. We would be idiots to just blindly trust them. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice... you know the rest.
personally, I've never had google maps actually find an address I've looked for, mapquest and yahoo maps do a much better job than google maps.
However, it isn't about the "quality" of existing products. If I write a new online map program integrated with satelite video, that shows you in 3d how to navigate to your destination, and then has a really nice map you can print out, and it works on a mobile phone, and it has an excellent fuzzy logic engine which can decipher any address you enter. Say I create this end all be all of map products. How is anyone going to find it? Google maps will always appear above my superior map program no matter how many people link to it, or how many people use it, I will always be "second" at best.
Google is the great gatekeeper of the internet. If Google doesn't like you, you are out of business in the online world. That is the problem the parent is talking about.
As others have stated this thing is really inefficient. My question is, they are using these boilers to drive a turbine. Isn't this how coal fired power plants operate as well? coal heats boiler, steam drives turbine? Nuclear plants as well, just a different fuel. What about natural gas plants? I don't know, do they drive the turbine directly with a natural gas ICE? or do they heat a boiler as well?
My point is, are all steam driven turbines this inefficient? And if so, wouldn't increasing the efficiency or recouping some of that waste heat go a long way to decreasing greenhouse gas emissions from coal? IE, if we lose that much power in the conversion from boiler to turbine, if we could reuse that waste heat, even if the waste heat recoup was only 10-15% efficient, that would double the power output for the same coal burned (since this appears to be about 15% efficient)? I'm probably wrong, but it seems to me coal and nuclear power both drive turbines with steam, and if its really that inefficient, we could double our output without increasing waste at all (nuclear waste or CO2).
sure the pay might not be great, but the benefits more than make up for it.
My friend's dad works for the department of health or some such thing.. yeah he only makes like 35k, but he works mon-wed, half day thursday, gets 4 weeks of paid vacation/yr, and when his wife was diagnosed with cancer they gave him 3 months paid leave, and the insurance paid for 100% of the medical bills. He didn't pay a dime (more than 90k in med bills, under a traditional 80/20 plan that most private employers provide, he would have been paying 18k).
So, sure I make twice what he makes, but I get 2 weeks of unpaid vacation/yr, I have a traditional 80/20 plan that basically means if anything serious happens I still get to declare bankruptcy, I work mon-fri 8-6, and some saturdays when under a deadline, and if my wife got cancer, I'd lose my job or not be able to be there for her, nice choice. I dunno, sometimes I question whether its worth it.
Problem number 1: Central repository. If there is a central repository or even a central directory where these files are being stored, then Zap2It has every legal right to sue that central repository into the ground.
Problem number 2: Why are all these people going to give away their subscriptions for free? I see it evolving one of 2 ways, either a) the free service is very spotty, maybe you can get the cable channels, but no one with dish network has started giving their data away, so people sign up for the pay for feed anyway. or b) you get people to share their data they paid for, and this central repository gets flooded with requests and zap2it shuts down the pay service and the whole thing goes under.
Problem number 3: This free repository is going to need quite a bit of bandwidth, even if this person isn't buying 200 accounts, he's going to have to have at least a good $600-700 colo account, with a lot of spare bandwidth, and when it really catches on, he'll be paying upwards of 3-5000/mo. (My suspicion is this is the reason zap2it is dropping the service). Even if you're not paying for the data you gotta pay the telcos.
well, sure, but lets say you want to provide this "free" service, to even be marginally popular/useful, you would need at least the 50 largest markets, and the top 3 providers in those 50 markets, so you're going to have to cover at least OTA/local, incumbent cable, dish, and directv. So that is 4 accounts for 1 market, times 50. That is 200 accounts. You really think there are tons of people out there just dieing to pay $400/month to give away free tv guide data? I really don't think so. At first I thought the original reply was spot on with the criticism of the idea of trying to make money from this, but your parent made me rethink it. The market is entirely too fragmented, different localities, different channels, different providers. Plus for sports you've got market blackouts, stuff that is available in Nevada might not be available in California...
There is no way to efficiently pirate this data. It only makes sense for a centralized provider to charge a small fee and distribute the information directly from there.
He stated clearly he was buying a laptop not a server, so this story has nothing to do with what dell thinks about ubuntu on a "server" class machine.
Further, I think you mis-understand the definition of FUD. Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt... Well, he tried to buy an ubuntu laptop for his business and was told in no uncertain terms "No". That seems pretty certain, I bet if you call right now and try to order an ubuntu laptop for your business they'll tell you the same thing. He isn't spreading FUD here, he is simply stating a fact that if you try to purchase an ubuntu laptop in a tax advantaged way through Dell, you will be denied.
Maybe this situation will change in the future, maybe the business department will start supporting them in the future. For now, it is a completely accurate statement to say "Dell does not sell ubuntu laptops to businesses". That is accurate, truthful, and very much not FUD.
Seems like every company that wants a website has to do the following anymore: a) create a subsidiary for the website b) incorporate subsidiary in non-software patent country c) host website and everything related to it in said country
These are just the patents I know about, but they pretty much preclude anyone from making an ecommerce website: a) 1 click patent b) CC payment over the internet is patented c) "find nearest location" is patented
So if you want to accept money, allow customers to find your physical locations, or conveniently store customer information for repeat purchases (all normal, rather obvious things) then you have to pay licensing fees for each of these features (if licensing fees are available). The owner of these patents could just as easily say "No you can't license it, you have to pay me $100,000 to develop your website with this feature". Or, "No I'm the only one that can have a website with these features".
Basically, if software patents aren't done away with soon, all progress in the US will halt. The writing is on the wall.
For those of you stating that this is "non-obvious" in 1996, have you ever heard of the yellow pages?! This is a patent on online yellow pages. I'm 100% certain that the yellow pages companies have been storing their directories in DATABASES and accessing them across a NETWORK for decades. I'm also sure that whatever function they use internally to convert the digital yellow pages into a physical printed yellow pages book would violate this patent, running an SQL query on a database across a network would constitute a search engine on a database based on location and topic.
Creating an online web based interface to an existing database of listings which can be searched by location and topic is not novel, its not even an idea. It's been done for decades, just because its online doesn't make it any different.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been using both MySQL and PostgreSQL for 7 years now... I've never felt a need for "developer support". Or if that phrase means "documentation + message boards" I've never felt a lack from postgresql. I also really don't get the PostgreSQL is hard to use argument. In every linux distro I've used in the last 7 years (redhat, centos, suse, fedora core, ubuntu) they are exactly the same... IE apt-get, yum, whatever, install postgresql-server/mysql-server. Then $startupscriptdir/postgresql start....
Do people really get that hung up on using postgres as the initial user instead of root?!? That is the ONLY difference that I can see.
Now I can agree that maybe postgresql doesn't really "target" an audience, but that is also because they are a true open source project. They don't have a commercial version. I really don't think Linus sits around saying "Ok, we need to add this feature so that more fortune 500's will adopt linux". Or "we need to add feature xyz so this will appeal to small businesses". MySQL has a "target" audience because they are selling something. If you aren't selling anything, by definition you don't have a target.
I really don't understand this argument. I've used PostgreSQL and MySQL pretty much interchangeably for the last 7 years. I have never felt a lack of dev tools or documentation/help from postgresql. Maybe I'm just smarter than the average joe, but setting up and running postgresql is not that much more difficult than mysql.
For the features it provides I much prefer postgresql. sure, clustering is harder, but for the "easy" things that mysql is supposed to be good at, you don't need clustering either. Once you're getting into "Oh, I need 5 DB servers to handle this load" then you're talking about serious DBA work no matter what platform you're using. I'd rather by default have referential integrity. Sure MySQL has it now, but only if you get InnoDB working, which is at least as hard (I think harder) than getting a default PostgreSQL running.
What developer tools is postgresql missing? I have no problems creating, maintaining, editing, or viewing databases in PostgreSQL. There are drivers for every language I've ever used (java, python, ruby, c++, php), what exactly is missing? Why should they "market" they aren't like MySQL they don't have a commercial version for which they get paid.
"Dolphin" also conveys "fun play thing" to me...
I'd prefer the elephant that never forgets.
Already done, the FCC ruled 2 years ago that all fiber services (video, telephone, data) are not subject to common carrier regulations. They aren't required to lease their lines. Verizon, SBC (at&t), et al when confronted by the FCC about "why are we so far behind these other countries in broadband" the carriers argued that it was because they couldn't invest in fiber because of the requirement to lease the lines. They said they wouldn't be able to recoup their investment. So the FCC said "Ok, if you install fiber, its yours you don't have to allow access to it"
Wrong. Fiber is a whole new animal. If you roll out fiber, the FCC turns a blind eye, there is no regulation. In fact, the FCC ruled that you don't have to allow competitors access to fiber that you roll out. Fiber for the telcos is just like cable networks which people have requested access to multiple times, and the FCC has consistently ruled that the cable cos don't have to allow access.
no they are not required to lease the fiber, and they are not leasing it. The FCC ruled a couple years ago that if you as a provider invest in fiber roll outs, you no longer are subject to the required leasing agreements of the past. So as verizon cuts the fiber, they are creating 100% monopoly service areas.
As far as 911 they are still required by the FCC to comply with the power outage requirements, which state something like 6-8 hours of uptime in the event of a power outage. They install a battery backup at the customer prem to satisfy this requirement. This is all copper infrastructure has too. Sure at some COs they have generation equipment, but most of the locations where telco's are muxing out fiber to copper lines are running on batteries with 6-8 hours of uptime.
Actually its worse than that. The FCC ruled that if you roll out fiber you are exempt from competition. Verizon is not leasing their fiber to anyone, and they aren't required to. They are cutting the copper because as they do that, the are creating 100% monopoly service areas.
Verizon, at&t, and any other Fiber service provider owns a 100% monopoly as long as there is no copper. Verizon is not required, and has no natural incentive to lease their fiber to competitors at any price. If they were to allow a competitor to "lease" the fiber, I guarantee they would say "Ok, well our retail rate is $49/mo, so we'll let you use the connection for $45/mo" or some other really impossible to compete with price. The competitor would still have to provide all of the connection termination equipment, and the bandwidth, and would probably have to sell the service at ~100/mo just to cover costs. So obviously no one would sign up for that.
Verizon isn't doing that though, as they cut the copper they are removing competitors and creating 100% monopoly service areas where customers have absolutely zero choice.
I'm sure this guys "machine" can't be built for nothing either. That isn't the "free" either person is talking about. Now, 99.9999% this is a hoax, if I could buy puts on the company I would.
You seriously think that hundreds of years ago (say the 1800's) people said "Watch out for pirates!" and meant "People copying CDs"?!?
That is the funniest thing I've ever heard.
As to selectively enforcing patents, yes you can. Look at NTP vs RIMM. They didn't sue everyone at once, they left Nokia and Palm to go implement wireless email while they fought with RIMM, now that they won against them, now they are going after the others.
Also, the companies he mentions probably (read definitely) have patent cross license deals with MS. Sun does for sure (a result of the whole java settlement), and MS owns something like 15% of Apple, bailed them out in the 90s. I'm sure they both have cross license deals.
sure, my phone has mp3, internet and camera on it...
The number 1 thing I would like about the iphone is the full internet browser. I can't stand the stupid "mobile" versions of websites that I get on my phone, they are impossible to navigate, and 99% of the time don't even have 10% of the content of the real site.
It's a complete pain. Hence my phone browsing is limited to a) stock quotes, b) movie times, c) sports scores
Anything more than that, and my phone is useless.
Also, my phone has 128MB of storage for MP3's and pictures combined.... that's about 10-15 songs and maybe 20-30 pictures... as a "media" device it is useless. And there isn't a single phone out there that you can store and play back an entire movie except the iPhone.
So there are 2 brand new things:
1) Full complete internet browser
2) storage and playback of complete movies
I absolutely hate AT&T. I have tmobile, and honestly of all the phone companies I've ever had land line or cell, they have been the best. I know people have had problems with them, they aren't perfect. But I don't know ANYONE who has had AT&T service and not had problems. I even called tmobile once because a certain strech of highway I drive on suddenly didn't have service anymore, they looked it up, found the problem and said they'd send techs out to fix it. Something had happened with some antennas in a snow storm, and it was kinda remote, but I drove past there at least 2-3 times a week, and I would drop my call right there and not have service for ~5 miles all of a sudden. 2 days after I called, back up and working. I called back and they were open and explained everything that had happened, and thanks for calling to report the problem cause they might not have found it without my call... It was nice. AT&T's response would be something like "FU, pay your bill, we never said it would work there"
I don't know why Apple chose AT&t for this thing, that is the stupidest move they could have made. It'd be like taking a Ferarri out to baja. (IE, really fast car, completely unsuitable roads). AT&T has the worst of everything, crappy slow non-3g network, crappy customer service, horrible attitude towards customers.
They at least could have partnered with someone with a decent network (verizon) or decent customer service (tmobile). This whole 5 years exclusive deal with AT&T is (for me) and should be (for everyone) the death of the iPhone.
If they didn't want it public, then why did they put it on a PUBLIC forum such as their PUBLIC wiki?
I'm sure the wine devs could have set up a private, internal wiki page just to track this. Heck they could have set up a whole separate bugzilla install, locked it down, and tracked the progress there...
If you put something like this on a completely public wiki, when you are a large open source project, you have to know that slashdot is going to pick it up.
I didn't put in "your map app" I put in the single word "maps", not "google maps", just "MAPS". I'm making the search less specific, not more so, and it is less specific searches that are used more often by less technological people.
and I'm not saying anything about the ONLY way people search for online maps, I'm talking about the most logical way though I think. I wouldn't even search for "online maps" I would search for maps (I don't like to type, and I'm looking for maps), maybe I would search for directions, or driving directions...
Anyway, I don't know why you got so upset that I "changed the rules" by simply searching for a different generic term.
It completely depends on your goals. If you just want to get a job and work then don't repeat. I've never had a single employer (I've had 4 now over 8 years) ask about grades. I've worked at a large company (5000+ employees worldwide, ok not huge but larger) a small company (about 30 employees), and 2 start ups. I personally love working at startups, exciting, edge of your seat, and you're generally making new stuff not maintaining some 15 year old app that is completely broken, but the company won't foot the bill to hire 3 decent programmers for 6 months to re-write it. YMMV, its just my personal feeling. Anyway, point being I've never had a single person ask about grades. In fact I've never had a single person ask me anything at all about school. Once you've got experience on your resume, that is pretty much all anyone looks at, I don't even have my schooling on my resume anymore, took it off last year, still got a new job in 2 days early this year. BTW, all my job changes were completely voluntary, never been laid off or fired (not even in 2000). And I've never been on a "job search" for more than 2 weeks.
If you want to go to grad school and do anything in academia, then you need those grades. That's all academics look at, its all they care about, well that and the GRE. I don't have any experience here... I disliked school, I got out as soon as I could, I'm not looking back.
ok, search for maps, I would say grandma or my mom would be about 5000 times more likely to type maps than "online maps". Google maps shows up 1st there...
And its not necessarily about "today" that worries me, or most people about google. It is in the future,3-5 years from now or even 5-10 years from now, when they've cemented themselves atop the internet heap. When they can willy nilly decide, "Hmmm, we're releasing product xyz next month, disable search for all of our competitors!". Sure that would be evil, but do you really think Sergey and Larry will still be around in 10? 15? 20 years? no. They will be off flying their 50 million dollar party 757 they bought after the IPO.
Eventually google WILL go the way of all other large companies. They will be controlled by a regular board of directors, a regular wall street CEO, and shareholders and huge money market fund managers who will demand increased revenue and profit growth every quarter. There comes a time when the demands of the street create the problem of "well, to keep all these investor people happy, we have to be evil". And google will be evil. If we cede control to them without a fight, we are idiots, just like we were in the early 90's with MS.
I remember in the early to mid 90's no one could get enough of MS's stuff, the latest office release, the latest version of windows, the latest version of visual studio, I never heard anyone complain about it because it was so much better than dealing with the fragmented unix vendors and it was so much easier to set up and run than netware, and it was so much cheaper and way faster than anything coming out of cupertino. Businesses loved it, technologists loved it. MS had permissive EULAs that let you install the product multiple times (at work and on a home computer). Their products were inexpensive (extremely inexpensive) compared to all the competition. They seemed to play nice. Then it all changed (sometime around windows 98). Google will hit that point as well. We would be idiots to just blindly trust them. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice... you know the rest.
Nice monopoly reference, and I agree, those little purples have won me more games of monopoly than any other set :)
I love taking people's 200 for passing go as well, nothing feels better.
personally, I've never had google maps actually find an address I've looked for, mapquest and yahoo maps do a much better job than google maps.
However, it isn't about the "quality" of existing products. If I write a new online map program integrated with satelite video, that shows you in 3d how to navigate to your destination, and then has a really nice map you can print out, and it works on a mobile phone, and it has an excellent fuzzy logic engine which can decipher any address you enter. Say I create this end all be all of map products. How is anyone going to find it? Google maps will always appear above my superior map program no matter how many people link to it, or how many people use it, I will always be "second" at best.
Google is the great gatekeeper of the internet. If Google doesn't like you, you are out of business in the online world. That is the problem the parent is talking about.
As others have stated this thing is really inefficient. My question is, they are using these boilers to drive a turbine. Isn't this how coal fired power plants operate as well? coal heats boiler, steam drives turbine? Nuclear plants as well, just a different fuel. What about natural gas plants? I don't know, do they drive the turbine directly with a natural gas ICE? or do they heat a boiler as well?
My point is, are all steam driven turbines this inefficient? And if so, wouldn't increasing the efficiency or recouping some of that waste heat go a long way to decreasing greenhouse gas emissions from coal? IE, if we lose that much power in the conversion from boiler to turbine, if we could reuse that waste heat, even if the waste heat recoup was only 10-15% efficient, that would double the power output for the same coal burned (since this appears to be about 15% efficient)? I'm probably wrong, but it seems to me coal and nuclear power both drive turbines with steam, and if its really that inefficient, we could double our output without increasing waste at all (nuclear waste or CO2).
sure the pay might not be great, but the benefits more than make up for it.
My friend's dad works for the department of health or some such thing.. yeah he only makes like 35k, but he works mon-wed, half day thursday, gets 4 weeks of paid vacation/yr, and when his wife was diagnosed with cancer they gave him 3 months paid leave, and the insurance paid for 100% of the medical bills. He didn't pay a dime (more than 90k in med bills, under a traditional 80/20 plan that most private employers provide, he would have been paying 18k).
So, sure I make twice what he makes, but I get 2 weeks of unpaid vacation/yr, I have a traditional 80/20 plan that basically means if anything serious happens I still get to declare bankruptcy, I work mon-fri 8-6, and some saturdays when under a deadline, and if my wife got cancer, I'd lose my job or not be able to be there for her, nice choice. I dunno, sometimes I question whether its worth it.
Problem number 1:
Central repository. If there is a central repository or even a central directory where these files are being stored, then Zap2It has every legal right to sue that central repository into the ground.
Problem number 2:
Why are all these people going to give away their subscriptions for free? I see it evolving one of 2 ways, either a) the free service is very spotty, maybe you can get the cable channels, but no one with dish network has started giving their data away, so people sign up for the pay for feed anyway. or b) you get people to share their data they paid for, and this central repository gets flooded with requests and zap2it shuts down the pay service and the whole thing goes under.
Problem number 3:
This free repository is going to need quite a bit of bandwidth, even if this person isn't buying 200 accounts, he's going to have to have at least a good $600-700 colo account, with a lot of spare bandwidth, and when it really catches on, he'll be paying upwards of 3-5000/mo. (My suspicion is this is the reason zap2it is dropping the service). Even if you're not paying for the data you gotta pay the telcos.
well, sure, but lets say you want to provide this "free" service, to even be marginally popular/useful, you would need at least the 50 largest markets, and the top 3 providers in those 50 markets, so you're going to have to cover at least OTA/local, incumbent cable, dish, and directv. So that is 4 accounts for 1 market, times 50. That is 200 accounts. You really think there are tons of people out there just dieing to pay $400/month to give away free tv guide data? I really don't think so. At first I thought the original reply was spot on with the criticism of the idea of trying to make money from this, but your parent made me rethink it. The market is entirely too fragmented, different localities, different channels, different providers. Plus for sports you've got market blackouts, stuff that is available in Nevada might not be available in California...
There is no way to efficiently pirate this data. It only makes sense for a centralized provider to charge a small fee and distribute the information directly from there.
He stated clearly he was buying a laptop not a server, so this story has nothing to do with what dell thinks about ubuntu on a "server" class machine.
Further, I think you mis-understand the definition of FUD. Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt... Well, he tried to buy an ubuntu laptop for his business and was told in no uncertain terms "No". That seems pretty certain, I bet if you call right now and try to order an ubuntu laptop for your business they'll tell you the same thing. He isn't spreading FUD here, he is simply stating a fact that if you try to purchase an ubuntu laptop in a tax advantaged way through Dell, you will be denied.
Maybe this situation will change in the future, maybe the business department will start supporting them in the future. For now, it is a completely accurate statement to say "Dell does not sell ubuntu laptops to businesses". That is accurate, truthful, and very much not FUD.
Seems like every company that wants a website has to do the following anymore:
a) create a subsidiary for the website
b) incorporate subsidiary in non-software patent country
c) host website and everything related to it in said country
These are just the patents I know about, but they pretty much preclude anyone from making an ecommerce website:
a) 1 click patent
b) CC payment over the internet is patented
c) "find nearest location" is patented
So if you want to accept money, allow customers to find your physical locations, or conveniently store customer information for repeat purchases (all normal, rather obvious things) then you have to pay licensing fees for each of these features (if licensing fees are available). The owner of these patents could just as easily say "No you can't license it, you have to pay me $100,000 to develop your website with this feature". Or, "No I'm the only one that can have a website with these features".
Basically, if software patents aren't done away with soon, all progress in the US will halt. The writing is on the wall.
For those of you stating that this is "non-obvious" in 1996, have you ever heard of the yellow pages?! This is a patent on online yellow pages. I'm 100% certain that the yellow pages companies have been storing their directories in DATABASES and accessing them across a NETWORK for decades. I'm also sure that whatever function they use internally to convert the digital yellow pages into a physical printed yellow pages book would violate this patent, running an SQL query on a database across a network would constitute a search engine on a database based on location and topic.
Creating an online web based interface to an existing database of listings which can be searched by location and topic is not novel, its not even an idea. It's been done for decades, just because its online doesn't make it any different.
The guys who knocked of RIMM last year for 500 million.