Twitter and Wave are communication tools. In the hands of someone who has something meaningful to say, they're powerful. In the hands of someone who has nothing to say, they're no more or less a waste of time than any other communications tool.
This is not a work around. He will comply with Google's wishes and most everyone will be more or less happy.
Yeah, it seemed odd. The Slashdot headline struck me as something I'd expect from The Onion... "Area man defiantly complies with Google's wishes. Search giant left with confusing feeling of satisfaction."
Anyway, it was a rather silly story to start with. He violated Google's copyright. Google asked (in as nice a way as C&Ds allow) for him to stop. He did. This really wasn't worth anyone's time.
... you could argue that the folks at Google are kinda being dicks about the whole thing, but to be fair, they hardly have any choice in the matter.
I'm still not sure I'm seeing it. They have closed source apps on top of an open source OS. You are free to blow away the whole lot or write replacements for the closed source bits or re-write the open source bits or do whatever you like as long as you don't violate copyright law by re-packaging those closed source apps without a license. Someone did just that and Google asked them to stop.
I'm getting kind of sick of this kind of response on Slashdot. If you RTFA, you'll see that this is a WSJ article that's distilling a scientific paper for the general public. You're essentially constructing a strawman in that you're claiming a lack of scientific rigor in the non-scientific article about a scientific paper.
Essentially, this boils down you not seeking out the source material (granted, WSJ isn't doing you any favors in that department). In case Google failed you, this appears to be the paper in question:
Yeah, I have little doubt that there is a real effect here, but I hate when things like this are sensationalized. There may well be an effect, but it is a small one.
I think you're missing the point. We've known for a long time that there is a small effect, here. The discovery of the small disadvantage that winter babies have is not news. What's news is that we've found a correlating cause, not the existence of the phenomenon.
What part of I don't want it on *my* computer do you not understand?
Well, you're welcome to not want it, but I was trying to figure out what the rationale was. It's a firefox plugin like any other, and with the gmail-for-mailto feature, sidewiki and a few other nice features, it's certainly got some good reasons to install it.
Since you were willing to explain that you didn't want it, I thought you'd be willing to explain WHY....
And what about traffic stenography? I imagine that lots of data smugglers just encode their data as alternating black (0) and white (1) cars crossing the border. All you need to receive the data is a guy with binoculars, and no one ever has to meet. Bandwidth is a bit low, but tracking the transfer of data is nearly impossible.
Now, if only there were data that was worth smuggling that hasn't already been posted to Usenet....
It's pretty clear that Google goes way out of its way to provide APIs and guidance on using its stuff as a third party, so I suspect that there's specifics in this C&D that aren't just "you used our service." Specifically, if they were re-packaging Google's logos or the like, then there's real copyright concerns there.
And I'm glad. You see, this information comes from Edmonton. To get it to Slashdot, brave Canadian Voyageurs and their faithful Eskimo sidekicks must trek through millions of miles of frozen wastelands filled with polar bears, undead elk that thirst for dwarven blood, and the occasional crazed Frenchman. It is only the far and distant beacon of crack smoke billowing from the obsidian tower of Slashdot HQ that prevents them from getting lost in the soul-destroying wilds and eaten by madding tundra, a close cousin to the dread gazebo.
This is, quite possibly, the funniest thing I've seen posted to Slashdot in the forever that I've been reading posts, here. The gazebo reference is the part that pushed it over the line for me.
Why haul 500 pounds of books from place to place (plus associated bookcases, etc) when you can have all of that and more in a single tiny ebook reader that you can scan, "thumb-through" and search with ease?
1.... from my cold, dead hands. 2. Because my books are part of my home 3. Because I like to browse books passively without picking up a device. I'm often reminded of something simply by walking into a room that has a bookshelf. 4. Because no UI has ever matched the utility of flipping through a book. 5. Because there's value in simply being reminded of the books you're started but not finished whenever you walk into your home. 6. Because I don't need to worry about power or upgrades or versions.
Don't get me wrong. I'm no Luddite. I'm happy to use an e-reader, I just have no desire to give up my library, nor will I suddenly develop one.
Not really, because they attempt to make a comparison between unlike elements. IE+Chrome is less secure than IE, but the astute reader will note that IE-Javascript is not secure. In fact IE's vulnerabilities are mostly associated with its deep permissiveness with respect to OS integration. So no, adding Chrome Javascript interpretation to IE doesn't double the attack space. In fact, I'd argue that it increases the attack space so trivially that it should not be a primary consideration. Assuming that Chrome updates are relatively reliable (which we won't know until it's stable and out of beta), there's simply no measurable impact on IE security from Chrome.
Despite the name, Sidewiki is not a wiki such that people can edit, prune, and synthesize information, nor is it moderated in any way.
As you will note if you turn on Sidewiki for this page, you're incorrect. Users are (what seems to be like randomly) selected to moderate comments in a "useful/not useful" fashion.
Yes, because that might... wait, what might that do? Give you additional, optional UI elements (all of which can be trivially turned off) and give you the (again, optional) ability to feed back stats to Google for use in user-specific features such as Web history and generic features such as feeding in to PageRank. Where's the problem, exactly?
As far as it being full of noise, it's moderated by a user-managed system much like Slashdot, so in the same way that highly rated comments on Slashdot tend to be a notch or two above the background noise, I would expect a similar level of value from Sidewiki.
The problem is that Google, and only Google, puts libraries online. Other parties have tried to get in on the deal, and have been told to get lost.
If there are such other parties (and I haven't heard any specifics yet about there being any such cases), then they have every right to bring an anti-trust suit against the publishers. Google doesn't really have any way to force the publishers to change their stance on this, nor are they responsible for such.
dead-tree books are eventually going to be "quaint collector's items"
I don't buy that. Why would this change? Sure, consumption may drop as things like physical reference books may die out a bit. But, I just don't see myself going with an electronic version of most of my books. I could today. I have the Kindle app on my iPhone and I have several computers. I can read PDFs or browse the web. But, sometimes I want a BOOK. I want something that's I can spill coffee on and lose exactly one book. I want something that I can take to bed and not worry about breaking it.
The only thing that could replace a physical book completely for me would be a cheap, nearly disposable, device that could connect to a wall-display showing me all of my "books". The technology is no where near that.
if Google gets their way a "book" will be a quaint collector's item
I'm sorry, I'm just not seeing it. You'll have to explain it to me. Why will I no longer want my books?
everyone else gets their books from Google.
Or whoever else makes a deal with the publishers. Remember that the publishers don't have their hands tied. They can make licensing deals with anyone they want.
The idea of a "used book" will become about as popular as a "used kleenex" primarily because of the actions of a single corporation. Isn't this something that we, as a society, might want to think about a little bit before doing it?
Why would used books go away? I buy used books. I would continue to buy used books. What changes?
And if the publisher lobby could have its way, copyright would be re-applied to those older works because every download of a public domain book is, in a certain light, a reduction in publisher profit.
I know that that's absurd, but that's exactly why they want to stop Google from offering OOP books.
What makes me sad is that most of the Slashdot crowd is convinced that when they want to share music, that's fine, but when Google wants to put libraries online, there's something in it that will cause their milk to sour and their cat to die. Sad, really.
... how can you trust these guys to write your DNS software? They're the very guys who were contracted to write Bind9, the foremost open source domain name server, which they're now complaining about.
The other question is if they are now using elements of the Bind9 source in their closed source system and are not properly disclosing it.
There's no disclosure requirement. Welcome to the joys of BSD licensing.
(personally, I respect people who want to give away all control of their work, but you can't then complain that someone lied about where they got it)
The newspeak term for that now is "global climate change". A re-education officer will be along shortly to your location.
Actually, that term was widely held in contempt by the scientific community until it was noted that the term "global warming" actually confuses the issue because climate change doesn't evenly modify the temperature of our climate. In fact, some areas of the globe have cooled of late, but that has little bearing on the global mean temperatures, nor on the localized warming in key areas such as the Arctic. So, much as you may not like the political origins of the term, there's a reason that the media AND the scientific community is using it so widely, now.
Um, no. God created all the plants and animals [...] Genetic engineering, on the other hand, is an unnatural aberration. It appears to be some sort of witchcraft, and it should be banned. [...] will probably turn people into zombies somehow.
-Average retarded US citizen.
OK, so first off, here's some books for you to read:
When you finish with that, you can get away with casually dissing the masses for their ignorance on the topic. Until you do, I will continue to lump you in with the same idiots you're associating with your opponents in this debate.
Notice that this response doesn't explain my position on the issue (see other posts for that). I would hope that everyone, regardless of their stand of GM crops, would recognize your post as the lowest form of debate.
Do we really have the confidence in our understanding of genetic mechanisms to rule out harmful side-effects?
Turn that question around: What are the side effects of non-GMO crops?
Almost all of this debate misses the fundamental point of introducing alien species (and that's what GMO crops are... we've just refined the granularity of introduction to genetic fragments rather than a whole creature). Toads would not have been a problem in Australia or pigs in Hawaii, had they evolved there, naturally. They problem is that it takes centuries for an ecosystem to adapt to even the smallest change in an existing species and millennia or much longer to adapt to major changes.
In short, it's not the evolution of the crops that's in question, but of the environment around them and how it will respond.
We're currently at the "what could possibly go wrong" stage, and companies like Mosanto correctly point out that they'll go out of business if they need to wait for 100 years to see what the results of their tinkering might be, but are we protecting a company at the cost of our future health and well being? We literally have no idea.
Here's a better comparison. Google takes my ice-cream, and lots of other peoples' ice creams, and sells them for 5 cents. We sue in a class action suit, but the result is that Google can continue selling anyone's ice creams for 5 cents and give us 3 cents, unless we opt out. Now the other ice-cream sellers are all put out of business because they aren't allowed to take anyone else's ice-creams and sell them for 5 cents because no-one sued them for trying to. Now I know that ice-creams (physical property) are a bad analogy, but you sometimes have to work with what you've got.
Yep, that's pretty much exactly not how the law works.
Google cut a deal. It's a passably good deal for Google (it's actually a bad deal for libraries who really did want to see the point made that providing their collections online was for the public good, and embodied in fair use doctrine). There's no reason that the deal should not be allowed, of course, just like any other deal that publishers make.
What you're trying to claim, here, is that organizations that make good deals with publishers should be faulted for doing so, rather than publishers being faulted if they, in the future, fail to offer similar good deals to the competition. That doesn't hold water.
Google now has the right to publish my dad's book, do they have to sue my dad as well in order to be allowed to compete with google? He was recently diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease, I don't think he's up for a court battle with Microsoft, or any of their "shills".
[...] and give Google their own private version of copyright law.
I've addressed the other points elsewhere, but this one needs careful examination.
Contracts between a copyright holder and a publisher (or between a publisher and a secondary publisher, which is what the Google deal is) exist for one reason and one reason only: to grant rights to the publisher which the copyright holder otherwise retains under copyright law.
That is, providing "their own private version of copyright law," is what copyright contracts do. In fact, it's what the GPL does as well. It's the creation of a new set of terms, outside of copyright law, but which exist because of the restrictions of copyright law.
Google's deal isn't shocking in that respect, as it resembles contracts that publishers draw up with secondary publishers every day of the year. The only thing that would be problematic is the publisher then turning around and saying to a third party, "I won't cut you the same deal." Right now, we don't know that they won't, but given a certain healthy and informed cynicism, we can assume that that's likely. At the point at which they do so, I would imagine the lawsuit pretty much writes itself, and notably Google only appears on that suit as a secondary party. There's no reason for them to be directly involved as they do not have the power to issue the same terms to others.
Slashdot Mirror
Twitter and Wave are communication tools. In the hands of someone who has something meaningful to say, they're powerful. In the hands of someone who has nothing to say, they're no more or less a waste of time than any other communications tool.
This is not a work around. He will comply with Google's wishes and most everyone will be more or less happy.
Yeah, it seemed odd. The Slashdot headline struck me as something I'd expect from The Onion... "Area man defiantly complies with Google's wishes. Search giant left with confusing feeling of satisfaction."
Anyway, it was a rather silly story to start with. He violated Google's copyright. Google asked (in as nice a way as C&Ds allow) for him to stop. He did. This really wasn't worth anyone's time.
... you could argue that the folks at Google are kinda being dicks about the whole thing, but to be fair, they hardly have any choice in the matter.
I'm still not sure I'm seeing it. They have closed source apps on top of an open source OS. You are free to blow away the whole lot or write replacements for the closed source bits or re-write the open source bits or do whatever you like as long as you don't violate copyright law by re-packaging those closed source apps without a license. Someone did just that and Google asked them to stop.
Much more important is the lack of error bars
I'm getting kind of sick of this kind of response on Slashdot. If you RTFA, you'll see that this is a WSJ article that's distilling a scientific paper for the general public. You're essentially constructing a strawman in that you're claiming a lack of scientific rigor in the non-scientific article about a scientific paper.
Essentially, this boils down you not seeking out the source material (granted, WSJ isn't doing you any favors in that department). In case Google failed you, this appears to be the paper in question:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1320799
It'll cost you $5 from that site, which was the only one Google Scholar came up with, but feel free to find another source.
Yeah, I have little doubt that there is a real effect here, but I hate when things like this are sensationalized. There may well be an effect, but it is a small one.
I think you're missing the point. We've known for a long time that there is a small effect, here. The discovery of the small disadvantage that winter babies have is not news. What's news is that we've found a correlating cause, not the existence of the phenomenon.
What part of I don't want it on *my* computer do you not understand?
Well, you're welcome to not want it, but I was trying to figure out what the rationale was. It's a firefox plugin like any other, and with the gmail-for-mailto feature, sidewiki and a few other nice features, it's certainly got some good reasons to install it.
Since you were willing to explain that you didn't want it, I thought you'd be willing to explain WHY....
And what about traffic stenography? I imagine that lots of data smugglers just encode their data as alternating black (0) and white (1) cars crossing the border. All you need to receive the data is a guy with binoculars, and no one ever has to meet. Bandwidth is a bit low, but tracking the transfer of data is nearly impossible.
Now, if only there were data that was worth smuggling that hasn't already been posted to Usenet....
It's pretty clear that Google goes way out of its way to provide APIs and guidance on using its stuff as a third party, so I suspect that there's specifics in this C&D that aren't just "you used our service." Specifically, if they were re-packaging Google's logos or the like, then there's real copyright concerns there.
And I'm glad. You see, this information comes from Edmonton. To get it to Slashdot, brave Canadian Voyageurs and their faithful Eskimo sidekicks must trek through millions of miles of frozen wastelands filled with polar bears, undead elk that thirst for dwarven blood, and the occasional crazed Frenchman. It is only the far and distant beacon of crack smoke billowing from the obsidian tower of Slashdot HQ that prevents them from getting lost in the soul-destroying wilds and eaten by madding tundra, a close cousin to the dread gazebo.
This is, quite possibly, the funniest thing I've seen posted to Slashdot in the forever that I've been reading posts, here. The gazebo reference is the part that pushed it over the line for me.
Why haul 500 pounds of books from place to place (plus associated bookcases, etc) when you can have all of that and more in a single tiny ebook reader that you can scan, "thumb-through" and search with ease?
1. ... from my cold, dead hands.
2. Because my books are part of my home
3. Because I like to browse books passively without picking up a device. I'm often reminded of something simply by walking into a room that has a bookshelf.
4. Because no UI has ever matched the utility of flipping through a book.
5. Because there's value in simply being reminded of the books you're started but not finished whenever you walk into your home.
6. Because I don't need to worry about power or upgrades or versions.
Don't get me wrong. I'm no Luddite. I'm happy to use an e-reader, I just have no desire to give up my library, nor will I suddenly develop one.
For www.google.com the validator says:
I think it's kind of unfair to cite statistics without being clear about the limitations of the tools used.
They make a valid point.
Not really, because they attempt to make a comparison between unlike elements. IE+Chrome is less secure than IE, but the astute reader will note that IE-Javascript is not secure. In fact IE's vulnerabilities are mostly associated with its deep permissiveness with respect to OS integration. So no, adding Chrome Javascript interpretation to IE doesn't double the attack space. In fact, I'd argue that it increases the attack space so trivially that it should not be a primary consideration. Assuming that Chrome updates are relatively reliable (which we won't know until it's stable and out of beta), there's simply no measurable impact on IE security from Chrome.
Despite the name, Sidewiki is not a wiki such that people can edit, prune, and synthesize information, nor is it moderated in any way.
As you will note if you turn on Sidewiki for this page, you're incorrect. Users are (what seems to be like randomly) selected to moderate comments in a "useful/not useful" fashion.
Slashdot: the strawman construction engine.
Yes, because that might... wait, what might that do? Give you additional, optional UI elements (all of which can be trivially turned off) and give you the (again, optional) ability to feed back stats to Google for use in user-specific features such as Web history and generic features such as feeding in to PageRank. Where's the problem, exactly?
As far as it being full of noise, it's moderated by a user-managed system much like Slashdot, so in the same way that highly rated comments on Slashdot tend to be a notch or two above the background noise, I would expect a similar level of value from Sidewiki.
The problem is that Google, and only Google, puts libraries online. Other parties have tried to get in on the deal, and have been told to get lost.
If there are such other parties (and I haven't heard any specifics yet about there being any such cases), then they have every right to bring an anti-trust suit against the publishers. Google doesn't really have any way to force the publishers to change their stance on this, nor are they responsible for such.
dead-tree books are eventually going to be "quaint collector's items"
I don't buy that. Why would this change? Sure, consumption may drop as things like physical reference books may die out a bit. But, I just don't see myself going with an electronic version of most of my books. I could today. I have the Kindle app on my iPhone and I have several computers. I can read PDFs or browse the web. But, sometimes I want a BOOK. I want something that's I can spill coffee on and lose exactly one book. I want something that I can take to bed and not worry about breaking it.
The only thing that could replace a physical book completely for me would be a cheap, nearly disposable, device that could connect to a wall-display showing me all of my "books". The technology is no where near that.
perhaps I'm wrong about this, but using dead trees isn't really a problem in terms of carbon consumption.
Planting, harvesting, grinding, processing, shipping and printing on that tree, however....
if Google gets their way a "book" will be a quaint collector's item
I'm sorry, I'm just not seeing it. You'll have to explain it to me. Why will I no longer want my books?
everyone else gets their books from Google.
Or whoever else makes a deal with the publishers. Remember that the publishers don't have their hands tied. They can make licensing deals with anyone they want.
The idea of a "used book" will become about as popular as a "used kleenex" primarily because of the actions of a single corporation. Isn't this something that we, as a society, might want to think about a little bit before doing it?
Why would used books go away? I buy used books. I would continue to buy used books. What changes?
And if the publisher lobby could have its way, copyright would be re-applied to those older works because every download of a public domain book is, in a certain light, a reduction in publisher profit.
I know that that's absurd, but that's exactly why they want to stop Google from offering OOP books.
What makes me sad is that most of the Slashdot crowd is convinced that when they want to share music, that's fine, but when Google wants to put libraries online, there's something in it that will cause their milk to sour and their cat to die. Sad, really.
... how can you trust these guys to write your DNS software? They're the very guys who were contracted to write Bind9, the foremost open source domain name server, which they're now complaining about.
The other question is if they are now using elements of the Bind9 source in their closed source system and are not properly disclosing it.
There's no disclosure requirement. Welcome to the joys of BSD licensing.
(personally, I respect people who want to give away all control of their work, but you can't then complain that someone lied about where they got it)
The newspeak term for that now is "global climate change".
A re-education officer will be along shortly to your location.
Actually, that term was widely held in contempt by the scientific community until it was noted that the term "global warming" actually confuses the issue because climate change doesn't evenly modify the temperature of our climate. In fact, some areas of the globe have cooled of late, but that has little bearing on the global mean temperatures, nor on the localized warming in key areas such as the Arctic. So, much as you may not like the political origins of the term, there's a reason that the media AND the scientific community is using it so widely, now.
Um, no. God created all the plants and animals [...] Genetic engineering, on the other hand, is an unnatural aberration. It appears to be some sort of witchcraft, and it should be banned. [...] will probably turn people into zombies somehow.
-Average retarded US citizen.
OK, so first off, here's some books for you to read:
When you finish with that, you can get away with casually dissing the masses for their ignorance on the topic. Until you do, I will continue to lump you in with the same idiots you're associating with your opponents in this debate.
Notice that this response doesn't explain my position on the issue (see other posts for that). I would hope that everyone, regardless of their stand of GM crops, would recognize your post as the lowest form of debate.
Do we really have the confidence in our understanding of genetic mechanisms to rule out harmful side-effects?
Turn that question around: What are the side effects of non-GMO crops?
Almost all of this debate misses the fundamental point of introducing alien species (and that's what GMO crops are... we've just refined the granularity of introduction to genetic fragments rather than a whole creature). Toads would not have been a problem in Australia or pigs in Hawaii, had they evolved there, naturally. They problem is that it takes centuries for an ecosystem to adapt to even the smallest change in an existing species and millennia or much longer to adapt to major changes.
In short, it's not the evolution of the crops that's in question, but of the environment around them and how it will respond.
We're currently at the "what could possibly go wrong" stage, and companies like Mosanto correctly point out that they'll go out of business if they need to wait for 100 years to see what the results of their tinkering might be, but are we protecting a company at the cost of our future health and well being? We literally have no idea.
Here's a better comparison. Google takes my ice-cream, and lots of other peoples' ice creams, and sells them for 5 cents. We sue in a class action suit, but the result is that Google can continue selling anyone's ice creams for 5 cents and give us 3 cents, unless we opt out. Now the other ice-cream sellers are all put out of business because they aren't allowed to take anyone else's ice-creams and sell them for 5 cents because no-one sued them for trying to. Now I know that ice-creams (physical property) are a bad analogy, but you sometimes have to work with what you've got.
Yep, that's pretty much exactly not how the law works.
Google cut a deal. It's a passably good deal for Google (it's actually a bad deal for libraries who really did want to see the point made that providing their collections online was for the public good, and embodied in fair use doctrine). There's no reason that the deal should not be allowed, of course, just like any other deal that publishers make.
What you're trying to claim, here, is that organizations that make good deals with publishers should be faulted for doing so, rather than publishers being faulted if they, in the future, fail to offer similar good deals to the competition. That doesn't hold water.
Google now has the right to publish my dad's book, do they have to sue my dad as well in order to be allowed to compete with google? He was recently diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease, I don't think he's up for a court battle with Microsoft, or any of their "shills".
Best strawman ever! Thanks.
[...] and give Google their own private version of copyright law.
I've addressed the other points elsewhere, but this one needs careful examination.
Contracts between a copyright holder and a publisher (or between a publisher and a secondary publisher, which is what the Google deal is) exist for one reason and one reason only: to grant rights to the publisher which the copyright holder otherwise retains under copyright law.
That is, providing "their own private version of copyright law," is what copyright contracts do. In fact, it's what the GPL does as well. It's the creation of a new set of terms, outside of copyright law, but which exist because of the restrictions of copyright law.
Google's deal isn't shocking in that respect, as it resembles contracts that publishers draw up with secondary publishers every day of the year. The only thing that would be problematic is the publisher then turning around and saying to a third party, "I won't cut you the same deal." Right now, we don't know that they won't, but given a certain healthy and informed cynicism, we can assume that that's likely. At the point at which they do so, I would imagine the lawsuit pretty much writes itself, and notably Google only appears on that suit as a secondary party. There's no reason for them to be directly involved as they do not have the power to issue the same terms to others.