I'm just left stunned. What's the concern here? These were "intrusive" pictures? Of the front of someone's yard? I can tell you quite definitively that my front yard has nothing to hide, and if it did, I'd deserve to be called an idiot by the legions of Slashdot posters who would be all to willing to do so. I understand quite well the dangers of the "if you have nothing to hide," argument, but this really and truly is a case where you should have nothing to hide, be you stock broker, drug dealer or CEO of Google (whose street is, I'm sure, on Google Street View).
Google wants there to be a database of pictures of everyone's street (except those who choose to have them removed) on the Web so that navigation can be made simpler and easier. Are we so bored that we have to complain about that (and the obvious slip-ups that will happen when you send out legions of cameras to do the actual implementation work)? Are we confused by the concept of "just ask and they'll remove the picture?" What's the problem, here?
I'm tired of having to point out these simple sorts of issues on articles about Google. I know that Slashdot seems to have discovered a gold-mine of readership in posting stories that try to paint Google as somehow violating the public trust, but I don't think the fact that a van turned around in someone's driveway and accidentally posted the pictures of doing so really counts on that score.
* Claim of suffering due to image of house on Web * Claim of property value loss due to image of house on Web * Use of courts to resolve issue that one fax could have taken care of
we kept hearing about how it would take thousands or millions of years to crack just one PGP message. What were you reading?! Everything I ever read stressed the fact that there was something on the order of a 10-50 year expectation of privacy on anything you protected with current encryption mechanisms. That has pretty much been proven out, given that we're now on year 20 since I started using public key crypto.
As for quantum computing: don't get your hopes up. There's no proof of concept that shows that QC will ever scale up to practicality. Every 6 months someone announces a "breakthrough" and gains plenty of funding, but in the final analysis, nothing ever comes of it. I'm convince that there are some fundamental things that we don't understand here, and that all we're going to get out of QC is a better understanding of how to scale down existing computational engineering models (which is a good thing, but not the promise of QC).
Given that the entire world is already divided between people who believe the conspiracy theories circulating about Google and people who love Google unconditionally, I wonder how I and just about everyone I know ended up not being in either of those camps....
Google has three things going for them:
1. They have technically sophisticated folks (not just someone who has worked with computers for a few years) in executive management.
2. They made a point of scooping up the best and the brightest at a time that they could afford it.
3. They have the phrase "do no evil," and a clear, financial explanation of what that means in their S1.
Most people think that point number 3 is just PR. It's not. What it is is lawsuit insurance. Every other public company in the world is required to do everything that they can possibly describe as "not quite illegal" to enhance shareholder value. Google's shareholders, on the other hand were warned up-front and in SEC filings that they can't expect that, and that shields Google from reprisals when they don't do something because they don't like where it's going (e.g. when the DoJ asks them to turn over search records and say, "but Yahoo! and MSN were only too happy to comply!")
It doesn't mean that they're not evil. It just means that, unlike everyone else, they're not required to be.
I don't love Google. However, I don't see any reason to fear-monger over them, which is what I see on Slashdot all too often.
Well, that's not shocking. They've bought a company whose core technology and services are not only very like their own, but in general are vastly inferior. For the most part, they bought the customer base, not the people.
Wow, the music industry decides fighting the inevitable isn't a viable business strategy, and only a decade too late! No... the music industry hired someone who already knew that. This does not mean that the music industry has learned their lesson. They just knew that hiring someone with Google on their resume was a PR win.
The good news is that this guy was hired to be their CIO. The only time you hire a CIO and send him on a press tour is if you plan to introduce new tech to solve your problems. We'll see what they come up with, and perhaps it won't suck.
Then again, I doubt he's going to be allowed to turn EMI into YouTube.
Well, you have the same problem if you look at podcasting in the same mix. I think the fundamental shift is not that podcasting and Slashdot have become less popular, but that the influx of Web users who are consumers has ramped WAY up over the past 3 years, and the influx of producers has remained fairly steady. I love podcasting. It's how I get most of my news, entertainment and information that I used to get from cable TV, but most people who are searching for "podcasting," or "Slashdot" for that matter, are not just consumers of information, they're producing some themselves, or at least thinking about doing so. People who search for twitter or social networking are looking for new and more interesting ways to consume.
Interesting point BTW: note that podcasting and Slashdot searches decline from mid-2005 on almost EXACTLY the same slope, and with many of the same anomalies. Interesting correlation....
They've allowed filtering as required by local laws, which is the entrance criteria. However, they also offer a fully uncensored site to those who know how to get to it (and yes, many Chinese know how to get to real services). That's compliance with China, full stop. Yes. And complying with China's laws is not what the OP claimed. They claimed that Google helped to build the GFoC, which they did not in any shape way or means.
Even a claim of censorship is spurious, as it's self-censorship and that's a different class of animal entirely. Google does nothing to prevent you from using a search tool (including THEIR OWN) which does not filter. The fact that China DOES prevent that *is* censorship. Google is about as complicit with that as I am with getting a speeding ticket.
The problem is that the system is still fundamentally flawed for patents that ARE valid.
They really need to radically shorten patent duration based on industry to the typical life-cycle of a product times 3 with current patent durations as an upper limit. For software, this would mean a patent duration of 1.5-3 years depending on how you measure. For most technology related to computer hardware, about 6-9 years.
There's no value at all in the patent system except to the applicant if the patents outlast the usefulness of the technologies involved. The goal is to reward applicants with a limited monopoly as a head-start, while releasing the technology to the industries that will use it in due course. In the 1700s and 1800s durations on the order of 15-20 years didn't sound so bad because product life cycles were at least 20-30 years long. Now, however, the software you used 20 years ago will have nearly zero value. There are better algorithms, better formats, better technologies that you really do need to use, so the patent holder is locking up the technology until there's no point in having a patent. That's not what the laws intended.
Now, if we take it a step further, I'd actually suggest that only a limited, fixed number of valid patent applications be granted, and that those grants be based on peer-review of the submitted patents based on innovativeness. I'd also like to see those patents be the exclusive property of the 1 primary applicant, and have zero transferability to that persons employer.
what they're saying is that the only way Google makes hard cash is by selling advertising space. False.
It's true that this is the bulk of their revenue, but given that they have other for-pay services, and I've worked for companies that are customers of those services, so I'm going to have to disagree with you.
Think about the help they've given to china in the great firewall, You have your facts confused. China had deals with MSN and Yahoo! that were outright and undeniably evil (Yahoo! having gotten some bad press over turning over records on dissidents who were then jailed).
Google WAS UNAVAILABLE IN CHINA. In order to be available, they had to provide a site that was filtered. They did so. Having done so, they didn't improve or harm the state of the Great Firewall, nor could they have in any way. They had exactly two options: appear alongside their competition in China in a government-approved form or don't. They could also have started turning over search and email records to the Chinese government, but given that Google has risked the wrath of the US Justice Dept. over exactly the same thing, it's not very likely that they will do so for China.
and all the assistance they give to censoring. They've allowed filtering as required by local laws, which is the entrance criteria. However, they also offer a fully uncensored site to those who know how to get to it (and yes, many Chinese know how to get to real services).
It shows that they're complying with the government ideas of good and evil, Except that they openly refuse to comply.
You're clearly confused about the work that Google is doing for you and your privacy.
While I agree with Jim's sentiments being an Open Source advocate and all, I think Red Hat has no right to attempt to coax or coerce companies into giving away code. They, like any company, has every right to try to change the industry. I'd even go so far as to say that it's every company's duty to attempt to change their industry in ways that are consistent with their business model. If your company isn't doing that, then it's just treading water, and will eventually be replaced.
Having a whine that companies in the Old Establishment should be putting free money into his playpen Ah, but that's just the mistake that most folks outside of open source make, and to hear it on Slashdot is just sad... Most large companies spend buckets of money every year writing millions of lines of code that all of their other companies in their business (and in many cases, outside of their business) have already written over and over again. Why can't they just share that code? Mostly because they don't have a deep enough understanding of the costs, benefits and risks involved. They assume that there's just too much cost and too much risk, and they aren't sure what the benefits would be.
If a company like Red Hat could provide them with a way to easily assess what it would take to open up their code, and when and where it made sense, then everyone could be a Google, sharing in the benefits of open source while retaining that code which represents true business advantage. This is not the Debian / Stallman-esque view of a world where everyone opens up all of their code because it's The Right Thing To Do, but the Red Hat / Mozilla view of a world where code is shared and communally developed where it makes sense to do so in order to cut costs and avoid making the same mistakes time and time again.
Get your biggest competitor for bandwidth to spend all of their money on the spectrum you don't want by executing a feint in that direction, and then taking over the spectrum you really wanted. No, I think this is a fallback. Google would have preferred to have outright purchased spectrum for cheap with open access requirements, but since that didn't work out, this is a close second (and it's an old idea, which the FCC has has yet been unwilling to move on).
Maybe it's just me, but Google seems to be this huge juggernaut of mediocrity and rehashed advertising. And a provider of search.
And a provider of email services.
And a provider of chat services.
And a provider of shared calendaring services.
And a provider of domain-wide hosting of the above.
And a provider of web-based mapping tools.
And a supporter of numerous Open Source software projects.
And one of the movers and shakers in the press for green technology.
And the only search giant to refuse a federal request for all search records.
And... is any of this sinking in?
When people say, "Google just does advertising," what they're really saying is, "what has Google done for me this week that I didn't know about last week." It's an attention span problem.
That damned HIG has been responsible for ruining more GNOME functionality (galeon!) than any single document ever... I despise anyone or anything that assumes I don't need customization or preferences. NO, your stupid registry editor doesn't make it better. Well, I agree with the, "don't save the user from complexity," sentiment, but the HIG is huge, and most of it is very useful. Some of it was experimental, and did need to be refined. Some of it was addressing concerns that people correctly held about complexity, but went too far. I think if you look at what the HIG and GNOME are today, it was worth the trouble.
To be fair, the spoilers only have to do with the previous season, and the revelatory episode in question aired almost exactly a year ago. It's not always reasonable to assume that you'll get spoiler warnings a year later. If you're avoiding information about a series for that long, why are you clicking on a link for news of the upcoming season...?
At least in linguistics, there's a few scholars who just keep submitting the same research to journal after journal and collection after collection, just rewriting the article each time. If that's tolerated, why isn't putting the information on Wikipedia? Interestingly, though, it's not tolerated by Wikipedia. Journal articles are typically only used to cite the existence of research or the fact that a paper made a claim. Secondary sources that discuss the topic more broadly are considered required for anything more.
It won't matter. If Obama wins the democratic nomination, then both presidential candidates will be pro-net-neutrality. There just isn't a popular platform for "yes, let's cripple the Internet so that corporations can profit more," and for once politicians have realized it.
All the FTP usage is probably under a couple of percent. Torrents surpassed 50% of the total internet traffic some time ago. Yes, but when you look at specific kinds of distribution, FTP is still a major player. Specifically, it's the primary business-to-business data distribution protocol (at least in every industry I've ever worked in).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm just left stunned. What's the concern here? These were "intrusive" pictures? Of the front of someone's yard? I can tell you quite definitively that my front yard has nothing to hide, and if it did, I'd deserve to be called an idiot by the legions of Slashdot posters who would be all to willing to do so. I understand quite well the dangers of the "if you have nothing to hide," argument, but this really and truly is a case where you should have nothing to hide, be you stock broker, drug dealer or CEO of Google (whose street is, I'm sure, on Google Street View).
Google wants there to be a database of pictures of everyone's street (except those who choose to have them removed) on the Web so that navigation can be made simpler and easier. Are we so bored that we have to complain about that (and the obvious slip-ups that will happen when you send out legions of cameras to do the actual implementation work)? Are we confused by the concept of "just ask and they'll remove the picture?" What's the problem, here?
I'm tired of having to point out these simple sorts of issues on articles about Google. I know that Slashdot seems to have discovered a gold-mine of readership in posting stories that try to paint Google as somehow violating the public trust, but I don't think the fact that a van turned around in someone's driveway and accidentally posted the pictures of doing so really counts on that score.
What makes this case different:
* Claim of suffering due to image of house on Web
* Claim of property value loss due to image of house on Web
* Use of courts to resolve issue that one fax could have taken care of
Beyond that, this seems to be same-old, same-old.
Next!
As for quantum computing: don't get your hopes up. There's no proof of concept that shows that QC will ever scale up to practicality. Every 6 months someone announces a "breakthrough" and gains plenty of funding, but in the final analysis, nothing ever comes of it. I'm convince that there are some fundamental things that we don't understand here, and that all we're going to get out of QC is a better understanding of how to scale down existing computational engineering models (which is a good thing, but not the promise of QC).
Google has three things going for them:
1. They have technically sophisticated folks (not just someone who has worked with computers for a few years) in executive management.
2. They made a point of scooping up the best and the brightest at a time that they could afford it.
3. They have the phrase "do no evil," and a clear, financial explanation of what that means in their S1.
Most people think that point number 3 is just PR. It's not. What it is is lawsuit insurance. Every other public company in the world is required to do everything that they can possibly describe as "not quite illegal" to enhance shareholder value. Google's shareholders, on the other hand were warned up-front and in SEC filings that they can't expect that, and that shields Google from reprisals when they don't do something because they don't like where it's going (e.g. when the DoJ asks them to turn over search records and say, "but Yahoo! and MSN were only too happy to comply!")
It doesn't mean that they're not evil. It just means that, unlike everyone else, they're not required to be.
I don't love Google. However, I don't see any reason to fear-monger over them, which is what I see on Slashdot all too often.
Well, that's not shocking. They've bought a company whose core technology and services are not only very like their own, but in general are vastly inferior. For the most part, they bought the customer base, not the people.
The good news is that this guy was hired to be their CIO. The only time you hire a CIO and send him on a press tour is if you plan to introduce new tech to solve your problems. We'll see what they come up with, and perhaps it won't suck.
Then again, I doubt he's going to be allowed to turn EMI into YouTube.
Well, you have the same problem if you look at podcasting in the same mix. I think the fundamental shift is not that podcasting and Slashdot have become less popular, but that the influx of Web users who are consumers has ramped WAY up over the past 3 years, and the influx of producers has remained fairly steady. I love podcasting. It's how I get most of my news, entertainment and information that I used to get from cable TV, but most people who are searching for "podcasting," or "Slashdot" for that matter, are not just consumers of information, they're producing some themselves, or at least thinking about doing so. People who search for twitter or social networking are looking for new and more interesting ways to consume.
Interesting point BTW: note that podcasting and Slashdot searches decline from mid-2005 on almost EXACTLY the same slope, and with many of the same anomalies. Interesting correlation....
I don't see anything clandestine about a software/hardware company providing software/hardware solutions to the Federal government
Just so. In fact, Google has an easy-to-use URL for this service which is available to anyone: http://www.google.com/enterprise/Even a claim of censorship is spurious, as it's self-censorship and that's a different class of animal entirely. Google does nothing to prevent you from using a search tool (including THEIR OWN) which does not filter. The fact that China DOES prevent that *is* censorship. Google is about as complicit with that as I am with getting a speeding ticket.
The problem is that the system is still fundamentally flawed for patents that ARE valid.
They really need to radically shorten patent duration based on industry to the typical life-cycle of a product times 3 with current patent durations as an upper limit. For software, this would mean a patent duration of 1.5-3 years depending on how you measure. For most technology related to computer hardware, about 6-9 years.
There's no value at all in the patent system except to the applicant if the patents outlast the usefulness of the technologies involved. The goal is to reward applicants with a limited monopoly as a head-start, while releasing the technology to the industries that will use it in due course. In the 1700s and 1800s durations on the order of 15-20 years didn't sound so bad because product life cycles were at least 20-30 years long. Now, however, the software you used 20 years ago will have nearly zero value. There are better algorithms, better formats, better technologies that you really do need to use, so the patent holder is locking up the technology until there's no point in having a patent. That's not what the laws intended.
Now, if we take it a step further, I'd actually suggest that only a limited, fixed number of valid patent applications be granted, and that those grants be based on peer-review of the submitted patents based on innovativeness. I'd also like to see those patents be the exclusive property of the 1 primary applicant, and have zero transferability to that persons employer.
It's true that this is the bulk of their revenue, but given that they have other for-pay services, and I've worked for companies that are customers of those services, so I'm going to have to disagree with you.
Google WAS UNAVAILABLE IN CHINA. In order to be available, they had to provide a site that was filtered. They did so. Having done so, they didn't improve or harm the state of the Great Firewall, nor could they have in any way. They had exactly two options: appear alongside their competition in China in a government-approved form or don't. They could also have started turning over search and email records to the Chinese government, but given that Google has risked the wrath of the US Justice Dept. over exactly the same thing, it's not very likely that they will do so for China. and all the assistance they give to censoring. They've allowed filtering as required by local laws, which is the entrance criteria. However, they also offer a fully uncensored site to those who know how to get to it (and yes, many Chinese know how to get to real services). It shows that they're complying with the government ideas of good and evil, Except that they openly refuse to comply.
You're clearly confused about the work that Google is doing for you and your privacy.
If a company like Red Hat could provide them with a way to easily assess what it would take to open up their code, and when and where it made sense, then everyone could be a Google, sharing in the benefits of open source while retaining that code which represents true business advantage. This is not the Debian / Stallman-esque view of a world where everyone opens up all of their code because it's The Right Thing To Do, but the Red Hat / Mozilla view of a world where code is shared and communally developed where it makes sense to do so in order to cut costs and avoid making the same mistakes time and time again.
And a provider of email services.
And a provider of chat services.
And a provider of shared calendaring services.
And a provider of domain-wide hosting of the above.
And a provider of web-based mapping tools.
And a supporter of numerous Open Source software projects.
And one of the movers and shakers in the press for green technology.
And the only search giant to refuse a federal request for all search records.
And
When people say, "Google just does advertising," what they're really saying is, "what has Google done for me this week that I didn't know about last week." It's an attention span problem.
A desktop is everything from the libraries to the UI specs to the systems gui tools, etc. Some of the most important features of Gnome, for example:
The Universe is, in fact, at least 156 billion light years wide:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040524.html
To be fair, the spoilers only have to do with the previous season, and the revelatory episode in question aired almost exactly a year ago. It's not always reasonable to assume that you'll get spoiler warnings a year later. If you're avoiding information about a series for that long, why are you clicking on a link for news of the upcoming season...?
It won't matter. If Obama wins the democratic nomination, then both presidential candidates will be pro-net-neutrality. There just isn't a popular platform for "yes, let's cripple the Internet so that corporations can profit more," and for once politicians have realized it.
And yet, they didn't actually say any of this, and dodged the question instead. Hence my comment that it was a shame.