You've got to be kidding. One of the pages (it's/.ed now or I would give you the link) says they have about 2000 RSS entries sitting in their database.
Functional? I didn't see any highlighting. Did you try any basic boolean searches? Any clustering of results? 2000 entries is not enough to even test for that.
These guys are meant to be seasoned pros in product management, project managemement and marketing, but they don't see a problem with what they have done??
If I was a client of theirs, I would be rather worried.
Now, if they do have a half a clue, isn't this a great way to get some eyeballs?
Google reminded them all that the most important thing in a search engine isn't how fast it runs (though that's important), but that it returns the most relevant results first.
...the Information Retrieval (IR) geeks reckon there's 2 major factors. You are correct that one of those is relevance, which is known as precision. And the other is recall. Think of recall as getting all the relevant results.
One of the tricks that can be used to cull irrelevant results is to cut down the total number of results. The IR dudes quickly started playing the numbers. Showing the best 20 results is better than showing the top 100 with 60 of those being irrelevant.
I like to think of these as accuracy and completeness.
I used to occasionally browse through TREC. Seems like they have locked up the past results nowadays...
They're in desperate need of help in terms of more developers....
Mmmm....perhaps the 'free market of developers' is telling them something?
for the 25 best patch submissions...
So they want help for patches, but not for the actual design, building of new features etc? What, no one wants to clean up the messy stuff?
No offense intended, I just thought it was interesting that no one had commented on the community aspects of this story.
We thoroughly support this proposal. We believe that it is very fair. It will ensure that technologies such as DRM are enforced by law and are adopted by such radical left wing technologies as Linux.
Oh, and PS. We'll make sure that the laws are NOT retrospective and in 27.5 years, we'll lobby to have the copyright moved up to 1000 years.
I like the concept of diversity in various things.KDE/Gnome etc.
But what I really worry about is the history of Unix. Would MS have ever arrived if there wasn't so much division.
Mmmm Division, like "Divide and Conquer". And this is where I am torn. Despite the advantages of diversity in innovation and the like, if everyone joins together, they are much more powerful than when they are acting and pulling in different directions.
So, IMHO: - if you want to beat MS, then put away any petty differences -and, eg, to a user a layout manager is petty-, be prepared to swallow your pride, and just work together. - if you want Linux as an innovation warehouse, then fine, diversify even more. - they *will be* mutually exclusive.
Let's face it. MS' best strategy is to splinter Linux.
If you're like me, you've probably got a TV, VCR or other appliance you bought over 5 years ago which is still going strong....
I bought a S*ny portable CD player 6 years ago for about $220. Yes, I still use it and it works. At that time I was paying for the new/cool factor. Financially, it makes no sense when you compare it to the price and features available now.
==>Factor 1: If you want to spend minimal money over time, then don't buy the 'latest and greatest' stuff.
Are you better off buying a $49 DVD player on the expectation that it will only last a year or so -- or do lay out two or three times that amount something made by a big-name manufacturer in the (possibly vain) hope it will provide superior performance and last longer?"
Well, my $220 may have seemed like a lot in todays terms (it is actually ~$183 in todays dollars assuming inflation rate of 3%). But over the course of 6 years, the equivalent annual rate
is under $35 a year. So, in my case, I'm happy.
==>Factor 2: Paying more up front and keeping things longer does save money. The time value of money is the same thing that all your long term investments rely on. It works with purchases too.
Remember that next time you hear about 'new pricing models' for software being on an annual subscription basis.
Look, none of this is rocket science. You can set up a quick spreadsheet to work out how much longer you need to keep stuff vs cheaper stuff. Look at the warranty. Can you get an extended one for the more expensive model? Can you live without having the latest fad or feature which you can get the next year at a lower price?
And let's be realistic. If it's not my pacemaker and I don't rely on it to earn my money, I don't give a fsck about quality. I can work around it very easily - and doing some research on the net and googling around will stop you buying a lemon to start with.
I stumbled across Sun's Mainframe rehosting the other day and thought it was interesting. Runs CICS programs on SPARC/Solaris, and seems like it's pretty real.
Sure, may not do everything a mainframe can, but could be an interesting way to transition to open platforms.
Look, I'll probably upgrade just to save the Moz people worrying about one more user on an older version.
But I have to say that this is the first time that I have seen a Moz release that I don't need or want any of the new features.
BTW re Type ahead find: I feel particularly sorry for the Afrotheria specialists. I get the feeling that trying to type ahead for aardvark won't be that easy.
Here goes:
From what I recall, and yes, I'm too lazy to go look it up. Please mod up whoever corrects me.
The revenue:cost ration that MS had for Windows/Office was about $7:$1, ie spend a dollar on development, make $7 in revenue. Now this may or may not have covered sales and marketing, and almost certainly did not cover execs like Bill's overhe^H^H^H^H^H^H wages. In fairness, these can be substantial, and can be worthwile .
50% discount? Congratulations you will only pay a 350% markup. Gouge them at cost price, and it's about 13% that you should pay, or 87% discount. Of course, this only has an effect if everyone gets that same discount.
Now, I'm probably about to go off topic. And I am not proclaiming to be absolutely right, or that this is *the secret to making money* and I am not some sort of left wing/right wing/nazi (no offence to those who are) but there's a lot of businesses that practice these principles - maybe even you. The 'ancient art of war' for making money goes like this:
for your costs, make them fixed costs, not variable costs. If they're variable, minimize the variability so they become fixed costs. This is why companies like paying salaries. No overtime. No variability. Companies can predict exactly how much you cost. And how much they can save by not paying you, ie layoff.
for your revenue, make it a fixed revenue stream. Now, this in effect makes it a recurring stream.One offs bad. Repetition good. Now this also plays into salaries. You get a certain amount of income that you can depend upon. Don't you think that companies would like the same thing? A la the new Microsoft license?
Why do this? Well, if all your costs are fixed, and you make $1 extra in revenue, then that is pure profit.
Think of your employer as a customer for a while. The equivalent, from your perspective, to what most software companies currently do (sell upfront, support @15%) would be to take $150K upfront and get $7.5K per year to work for 3 years - assuming a salary of $50K. Now, I would take that in a second for the same reason I buy lottery tickets for cash value. The time value of money. With a few choice equivalents to the EULA;-)
But for software companies, they expect -and want- people to come back and buy again. The equivalent for you is that you *want* that company to 'hire you/pay you multiple times' during that 3 years and then at the end of the 3 years. IE, you could earn multiple salaries during the period and get hired all over again at the end of the 3 years. But of course, from the company's perspective, in the meantime, the sales people have b/s'ed the customer to get their commission, the professional services people have screwed things up and the product group doesn't deliver. What do you do in a similar situation? The analogy to the company again? You get fired. And you can bet that you can't keep that money as *you* weren't 'fit for purpose'. The company is going to hire someone else.
Now, there's a fair bit I didn't spell out here clearly, because it makes me sick that the easiest way for MS to bulletproof strategy is to post something on/.
But if you can turn MS' fixed costs into variable costs...
Well, there's the obvious open source movement wrt software - the well known Linux, etc.
Adoption for mainstream in this context could also be defined as those that are creating software. Yes, there is good evidence of this, eg shops such as IBM and Sun have dontated -and use- considerably to the open source movement.
But 'open' and 'mainstream' imho, is more than just software.
Well, I guess you need an open protocol to start with. Mmmm. Maybe like http?
Then you need an open data format. Well, with all it's faults of mixing formatting with data, html could fit that bill.
So arguably, if you say that the web is mainstream, then you've satisfied much of the above.There are definitely open source implementations of these.
But why stop there? What about data that that software manipulates? Yes, there is evidence for that being 'open' as well, eg dmoz.org provides the categorized information used by (last time I looked) Google, AOL, etc. It's a dump with a fairly 'open' license on re-use. In the information retrieval and knowledge management world, there are such things as WordNet
, again a collaboration amongst many people with a fairly open license
(Please no hate mail on the fact these are not GPL
equivalents - it is merely to demonstrate a point)
The value of a piece of software is not just the programming - in some cases added value by data is even more valuable.
As lawyers are likely required to review the privact policy, I believe that the spec is impossible to implement, specifically: - the spec refers to 'compact' policy. I have not seen an example of a contract or agreement that would meet 'compact' by any stretch of the imagination. - the spec refers to non-ambiguity.I have not seen an example of a contract or agreement that is not purposely ambiguous. - statements are positive. What, no 'except', 'subject to', 'contrary to above' ?? - finally, xml is well formed.
I've been involved in licensing deals, and it is not as simple as the above implies.
You can come to an understanding. And then you bring in the lawyers. It pays for the licensor to drag things out to play hardball and backtrack on terms that you had agreed to.
These guys showed *a LOT* of guts not to just drop something on the market and then abandon it.
Ahh the Matrix on a matrix of monitors...
on
Making A Videowall
·
· Score: 2, Funny
As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Khattak. It seems that you've been living two lives. In one life, you're Zeeshan Ali Khattak, program writer for a respectable software company, you have a social security number, you pay your taxes, and you help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias Zak147 and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for.
One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not. I'm going to be as forthcoming as I can be, Mr. Anderson. You're here because we need your help.
We know that you've been contacted by a certain individual, a man who calls himself umer_pk. Now whatever you think you know about this man is irrelevant. He is considered by many authorities to be the most dangerous man alive. My colleagues believe that I am wasting my time with you but I believe that you wish to do the right thing. We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start and all that we're asking in return is THAT YOU CLEAN THIS FRIGGIN MESS UP AND BUY A BIG SCREEN TV!
Slashdot Mirror
Wait until everyone's using it.
Then GPL it.
That'll learn 'em.
...a real computer for my Humvee!
You've got to be kidding. One of the pages (it's /.ed now or I would give you the link) says they have about 2000 RSS entries sitting in their database.
Functional? I didn't see any highlighting. Did you try any basic boolean searches? Any clustering of results? 2000 entries is not enough to even test for that.
These guys are meant to be seasoned pros in product management, project managemement and marketing, but they don't see a problem with what they have done??
If I was a client of theirs, I would be rather worried.
Now, if they do have a half a clue, isn't this a great way to get some eyeballs?
You don't happen to work there, do you?
"By your command."
...the Information Retrieval (IR) geeks reckon there's 2 major factors. You are correct that one of those is relevance, which is known as precision. And the other is recall. Think of recall as getting all the relevant results.
One of the tricks that can be used to cull irrelevant results is to cut down the total number of results. The IR dudes quickly started playing the numbers. Showing the best 20 results is better than showing the top 100 with 60 of those being irrelevant.
I like to think of these as accuracy and completeness.
I used to occasionally browse through TREC. Seems like they have locked up the past results nowadays...
Mmmm....perhaps the 'free market of developers' is telling them something?
for the 25 best patch submissions...
So they want help for patches, but not for the actual design, building of new features etc? What, no one wants to clean up the messy stuff?
No offense intended, I just thought it was interesting that no one had commented on the community aspects of this story.
I've got $40 per month that says this never comes to anything ;-)
I loathe those who are sesquipedalian
A few words from the 'content industries':
Dear Sir/Madam
We thoroughly support this proposal. We believe that it is very fair. It will ensure that technologies such as DRM are enforced by law and are adopted by such radical left wing technologies as Linux.
Oh, and PS. We'll make sure that the laws are NOT retrospective and in 27.5 years, we'll lobby to have the copyright moved up to 1000 years.
Yours
The 'content' industries
:-o
I like the concept of diversity in various things.KDE/Gnome etc.
But what I really worry about is the history of Unix. Would MS have ever arrived if there wasn't so much division.
Mmmm Division, like "Divide and Conquer". And this is where I am torn. Despite the advantages of diversity in innovation and the like, if everyone joins together, they are much more powerful than when they are acting and pulling in different directions.
So, IMHO:
- if you want to beat MS, then put away any petty differences -and, eg, to a user a layout manager is petty-, be prepared to swallow your pride, and just work together.
- if you want Linux as an innovation warehouse, then fine, diversify even more.
- they *will be* mutually exclusive.
Let's face it. MS' best strategy is to splinter Linux.
I bought a S*ny portable CD player 6 years ago for about $220. Yes, I still use it and it works. At that time I was paying for the new/cool factor. Financially, it makes no sense when you compare it to the price and features available now.
==>Factor 1: If you want to spend minimal money over time, then don't buy the 'latest and greatest' stuff.
Are you better off buying a $49 DVD player on the expectation that it will only last a year or so -- or do lay out two or three times that amount something made by a big-name manufacturer in the (possibly vain) hope it will provide superior performance and last longer?"
Well, my $220 may have seemed like a lot in todays terms (it is actually ~$183 in todays dollars assuming inflation rate of 3%). But over the course of 6 years, the equivalent annual rate is under $35 a year. So, in my case, I'm happy.
==>Factor 2: Paying more up front and keeping things longer does save money. The time value of money is the same thing that all your long term investments rely on. It works with purchases too.
Remember that next time you hear about 'new pricing models' for software being on an annual subscription basis.
Look, none of this is rocket science. You can set up a quick spreadsheet to work out how much longer you need to keep stuff vs cheaper stuff. Look at the warranty. Can you get an extended one for the more expensive model? Can you live without having the latest fad or feature which you can get the next year at a lower price?
And let's be realistic. If it's not my pacemaker and I don't rely on it to earn my money, I don't give a fsck about quality. I can work around it very easily - and doing some research on the net and googling around will stop you buying a lemon to start with.
Oh, hang on. That was crapdusters...
Nevermind...
I stumbled across Sun's Mainframe rehosting the other day and thought it was interesting. Runs CICS programs on SPARC/Solaris, and seems like it's pretty real.
Sure, may not do everything a mainframe can, but could be an interesting way to transition to open platforms.
Look, I'll probably upgrade just to save the Moz people worrying about one more user on an older version.
But I have to say that this is the first time that I have seen a Moz release that I don't need or want any of the new features.
BTW re Type ahead find: I feel particularly sorry for the Afrotheria specialists. I get the feeling that trying to type ahead for aardvark won't be that easy.
Maybe I'm getting too old for this ish..
50% discount? Congratulations you will only pay a 350% markup. Gouge them at cost price, and it's about 13% that you should pay, or 87% discount. Of course, this only has an effect if everyone gets that same discount.
Now, I'm probably about to go off topic. And I am not proclaiming to be absolutely right, or that this is *the secret to making money* and I am not some sort of left wing/right wing/nazi (no offence to those who are) but there's a lot of businesses that practice these principles - maybe even you. The 'ancient art of war' for making money goes like this:
Why do this? Well, if all your costs are fixed, and you make $1 extra in revenue, then that is pure profit.
Think of your employer as a customer for a while. The equivalent, from your perspective, to what most software companies currently do (sell upfront, support @15%) would be to take $150K upfront and get $7.5K per year to work for 3 years - assuming a salary of $50K. Now, I would take that in a second for the same reason I buy lottery tickets for cash value. The time value of money. With a few choice equivalents to the EULA ;-)
But for software companies, they expect -and want- people to come back and buy again. The equivalent for you is that you *want* that company to 'hire you/pay you multiple times' during that 3 years and then at the end of the 3 years. IE, you could earn multiple salaries during the period and get hired all over again at the end of the 3 years. But of course, from the company's perspective, in the meantime, the sales people have b/s'ed the customer to get their commission, the professional services people have screwed things up and the product group doesn't deliver. What do you do in a similar situation? The analogy to the company again? You get fired. And you can bet that you can't keep that money as *you* weren't 'fit for purpose'. The company is going to hire someone else.
Now, there's a fair bit I didn't spell out here clearly, because it makes me sick that the easiest way for MS to bulletproof strategy is to post something on /.
But if you can turn MS' fixed costs into variable costs...
this.end_of_rant();
author.do_beer_refresh();
Adoption for mainstream in this context could also be defined as those that are creating software. Yes, there is good evidence of this, eg shops such as IBM and Sun have dontated -and use- considerably to the open source movement.
But 'open' and 'mainstream' imho, is more than just software.
Well, I guess you need an open protocol to start with. Mmmm. Maybe like http?
Then you need an open data format. Well, with all it's faults of mixing formatting with data, html could fit that bill.
So arguably, if you say that the web is mainstream, then you've satisfied much of the above.There are definitely open source implementations of these.
But why stop there? What about data that that software manipulates? Yes, there is evidence for that being 'open' as well, eg dmoz.org provides the categorized information used by (last time I looked) Google, AOL, etc. It's a dump with a fairly 'open' license on re-use. In the information retrieval and knowledge management world, there are such things as WordNet , again a collaboration amongst many people with a fairly open license
(Please no hate mail on the fact these are not GPL equivalents - it is merely to demonstrate a point)
The value of a piece of software is not just the programming - in some cases added value by data is even more valuable.
Spammers:
1) Download spam archives
2) Download tools to fight spam
3) Generate new spam that doesn't get caught by tools in 2)
4) Profit
Seeing as only 3847295 of the 4000000 pieces fell, this means that they have an error rate of about 3.92%.
Releasing this product without testing cycles or a beta period is unacceptable.
for the predator BTW, I wonder if anyone's attached an Hellfire to a kite?
As lawyers are likely required to review the privact policy, I believe that the spec is impossible to implement, specifically:
- the spec refers to 'compact' policy. I have not seen an example of a contract or agreement that would meet 'compact' by any stretch of the imagination.
- the spec refers to non-ambiguity.I have not seen an example of a contract or agreement that is not purposely ambiguous.
- statements are positive. What, no 'except', 'subject to', 'contrary to above' ??
- finally, xml is well formed.
I've been involved in licensing deals, and it is not as simple as the above implies.
You can come to an understanding. And then you bring in the lawyers. It pays for the licensor to drag things out to play hardball and backtrack on terms that you had agreed to.
These guys showed *a LOT* of guts not to just drop something on the market and then abandon it.
As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Khattak. It seems that you've been living two lives. In one life, you're Zeeshan Ali Khattak, program writer for a respectable software company, you have a social security number, you pay your taxes, and you help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias Zak147 and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for.
One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not. I'm going to be as forthcoming as I can be, Mr. Anderson. You're here because we need your help.
We know that you've been contacted by a certain individual, a man who calls himself umer_pk. Now whatever you think you know about this man is irrelevant. He is considered by many authorities to be the most dangerous man alive. My colleagues believe that I am wasting my time with you but I believe that you wish to do the right thing. We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start and all that we're asking in return is THAT YOU CLEAN THIS FRIGGIN MESS UP AND BUY A BIG SCREEN TV!