Don't worry guys, if the government wants to seize your house all you have to do is lie down in front of the bulldozers! Preferably in your pajamas. They almost certainly won't run you over.
You're right that more is better, for the most part. But the problem people are seeing is that the infrastructure for searching and evaluating blogs is behind.
When the Internet first started growing, but before Google was becoming big, people probably thought there were too many webpages on the Net. Hard to find the good ones if you don't have a good search engine.
Now we have good ways of searching the Net, but we don't have good ways of searching for blogs. We don't have good ways of getting an estimate of a blog's reputability, or it's popularity (in most cases). When we have that, it will be much easier to filter out all the junk from the "blogosphere". (man, that word is annoying!).
"so it's not "better or worse", it's "being used to or not""
Well, I think we philosophically disagree. I don't think it's a matter of being used to it. I've been using Gimp for 4 years, and it still takes much more time to get anything done. Plus, there are objective measures of why the Gimp has poor UI.
Time how long it takes someone to open the Levels control in Photoshop vs Gimp. In photoshop you just hit Cntl-L. In gimp you have to right click, go to Tools -> Color Tools -> Levels.
"IMO, nearly all these rants about ugly yet functional interfaces versus pretty but reduced functionality but pretty shiney interface fall under the categories above."
That's part of the problem though. It's not as simplistic as that; software users don't fall neatly into two black+white categories anymore.
Plus, the bigger problem is that some programmers make UI that isn't good for *either* group!
Take The Gimp for example. It's UI is 100 times worse than Photoshop. Functions are placed in random, illogical places in deeply nested menus. It takes much longer to do basic tasks because the UI is so inefficient. Further I've heard that the developers don't care that people think the UI is bad because they still think it's not.
That's a perfect example of smart people defending bad ideas. Their ego is too high to let themselves scrap the UI and start over.
Slashdoters say this everytime, but I wonder do you realize the catch-22 you construct?
If Microsoft had not copied Google, you would have criticized their search interface for being slower and uglier than Google's. At this time, everyone who knows what the internet is knows that a minimalist and fast-loading search interface is by far preferred.
So if someone has already come up with a great design, would you change your design and make it *worse* simply to avoid copying them? If your co-worker came up with a fast algorithm for the function you're trying to code, would you write a slower algorithm simply to avoid stealing his idea?
If you're going to criticize, at least come up with a legitimate argument.
>> What OS does Google use in development, nevermind the actual search servers?
They mainly use linux. Some windows of course, obviously including the teams that develop the windows products, but linux is preferred by most I think.
So that raises the point - google doesn't just have thousands of linux servers, they have a couple thousand linux desktops too! So why don't they make a Google file search for linux? updatedb/locate certainly isn't perfect, so the google app could be better.
No, you misunderstood the problem. The point of fuzzy database queries is to get queries that return faster or give early partial results. It doesn't even make sense for you to suggest SAS. We're talking about getting faster query results on data that is *already* in databases. And I don't think you can put a terabyte of data into SAS efficiently.
This is a real-world problem, not just something he made up. Today we have enormous terabyte databases that can take forever to do a query, so finding ways to get faster, but approximate, answers is something I know many people are researching currently.
Google is opening offices in lots of places. Maybe we should have a slashdot story for each one!
This Oregon facility will only appeal to a niche market (and will only be 50-100 jobs they say). Outdoors activities are great, but people will go to the Redmond office if they want that.
Young people like to live in, or near, major cities. It's exciting, there are more things to do. Since Google is mostly young people (median age under 30 I think), they won't have droves going to work in Oregon, even given the lower cost of living. Those types of things appeal to older employees with families.
That said, since in 10 years Google will have a lot more older employees with families, having this office may help later.
It's not as hard to switch as you think. (on an individual basis; yes, a whole organization would be hard, and stupid).
I learned dvorak over the summer a few years ago, and was up to 30-40 wpm after a week, and at 60-70 within a month (and that's more than enough to do your work efficiently). After a couple more months I was back at ~80-90.
I don't know if qwerty vs dvorak has a speed difference, and it really doesn't matter. I switched to dvorak because my fingers travel noticeably less, and this seems to have helped reduce cramping and tendonitis that I used to get.
As both a runner and a biker, I think I can answer that. I no longer run because of a hip problem, but I can tell you that without a doubt there a times when I would rather run than bike.
Main reason: pure exercise efficiency. Running is more efficient in that it forces you to expend massive amounts of energy in a short period of time. I find it much harder to do that with biking. I don't get out of breath or get tired legs unless I reach very high speeds (that are often unsafe in a city) or am going up hills (and hills are not always all over the place).
So yes, biking is easier on your joints, but it is not always better. In a city, bikes get crowded by reckless drivers, and are often not even allowed in certain parks. Running you can do anywhere.
I misread the title of this post as "Want to Get My Geek for Valentine's Day?" and thought, oh great, now people are auctioning off their geeks? What is this world coming to? Hey, maybe ThinkGeek could sell geeks.
That's not true. Although personal websites may have a disadvantage with pagerank, they don't have a disadvantage with relevancy. Google uses relevancy, or the correlation of your webpage with the search terms, as one of the factors to determine your site's placement.
So, my personal site, which is linked to from only 3 or 4 locations still comes up as the top result in a Google search for my name. It also comes up as the top link for installing linux on a sony r505. Not because it's linked to from many places, but because I have a page on exactly that topic - hence, high relevancy.
Re:When are they going to make driving robots
on
RoboCup 2003
·
· Score: 1
And as an update to the original post, the American Open concluded about an hour ago, with the CMU AIBO team winning the finals in competition against Cornell.
Since this is related to the RIAA, could anyone tell me why their site has been down for like 3 days? That's a long time!
I need to get their email address so I can send them a link to my article on why they're stupid:) It's about how their business model is way out-of-date, and they're approaching this problem from the wrong direction.
They're trying to legislate their way out of the piracy problem, and are attacking their customers in the process. When what they should be doing is developing constructive solutions like setting up a well-designed and complete online music purchase system.
Perhaps this will act as a wake up call to the lock manufacturers. Key locks are always insecure. Because people lose keys, or they can be stolen. It's much more different to steal a combination from someone's mind.
We need to use combo locks instead. (not Masterlock padlocks, I'm talking regular locks - like deadbolts - but with a combo mechanism instead). If a person accidentally tells someone the combo, the lock could be easily reset to a new combo.
Then there's no inherent risk of key duplication, etc. The "master key" in this case would be to just have the combo on file with the landlords. If the file was compromised, the lock could be set to a new combo, rather than having to install new locks in all the doors.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't worry guys, if the government wants to seize your house all you have to do is lie down in front of the bulldozers! Preferably in your pajamas.
They almost certainly won't run you over.
[I can't believe no one posted this yet!]
You're right that more is better, for the most part.
But the problem people are seeing is that the infrastructure for searching and evaluating blogs is behind.
When the Internet first started growing, but before Google was becoming big, people probably thought there were too many webpages on the Net. Hard to find the good ones if you don't have a good search engine.
Now we have good ways of searching the Net, but we don't have good ways of searching for blogs. We don't have good ways of getting an estimate of a blog's reputability, or it's popularity (in most cases). When we have that, it will be much easier to filter out all the junk from the "blogosphere". (man, that word is annoying!).
"so it's not "better or worse", it's "being used to or not""
Well, I think we philosophically disagree. I don't think it's a matter of being used to it. I've been using Gimp for 4 years, and it still takes much more time to get anything done. Plus, there are objective measures of why the Gimp has poor UI.
Time how long it takes someone to open the Levels control in Photoshop vs Gimp. In photoshop you just hit Cntl-L. In gimp you have to right click, go to Tools -> Color Tools -> Levels.
"IMO, nearly all these rants about ugly yet functional interfaces versus pretty but reduced functionality but pretty shiney interface fall under the categories above."
That's part of the problem though. It's not as simplistic as that; software users don't fall neatly into two black+white categories anymore.
Plus, the bigger problem is that some programmers make UI that isn't good for *either* group!
Take The Gimp for example. It's UI is 100 times worse than Photoshop. Functions are placed in random, illogical places in deeply nested menus. It takes much longer to do basic tasks because the UI is so inefficient. Further I've heard that the developers don't care that people think the UI is bad because they still think it's not.
That's a perfect example of smart people defending bad ideas. Their ego is too high to let themselves scrap the UI and start over.
I knew it was only a matter of time before websites became sentient!
No. Not when it's a stupid idea.
Slashdoters say this everytime, but I wonder do you realize the catch-22 you construct?
If Microsoft had not copied Google, you would have criticized their search interface for being slower and uglier than Google's.
At this time, everyone who knows what the internet is knows that a minimalist and fast-loading search interface is by far preferred.
So if someone has already come up with a great design, would you change your design and make it *worse* simply to avoid copying them?
If your co-worker came up with a fast algorithm for the function you're trying to code, would you write a slower algorithm simply to avoid stealing his idea?
If you're going to criticize, at least come up with a legitimate argument.
>> What OS does Google use in development, nevermind the actual search servers?
They mainly use linux. Some windows of course, obviously including the teams that develop the windows products, but linux is preferred by most I think.
So that raises the point - google doesn't just have thousands of linux servers, they have a couple thousand linux desktops too! So why don't they make a Google file search for linux? updatedb/locate certainly isn't perfect, so the google app could be better.
[mod parent down]....
No, you misunderstood the problem. The point of fuzzy database queries is to get queries that return faster or give early partial results. It doesn't even make sense for you to suggest SAS. We're talking about getting faster query results on data that is *already* in databases. And I don't think you can put a terabyte of data into SAS efficiently.
This is a real-world problem, not just something he made up. Today we have enormous terabyte databases that can take forever to do a query, so finding ways to get faster, but approximate, answers is something I know many people are researching currently.
You don't want a browser, media player, and email client to be a default part of the OS??
I certainly do, and most people I know would as well.
Those three basic applications are already default parts of most Linux distributions, and Mac OS X.
OS does not == kernel. I think you meant to say you don't want the browser integrated with the kernel or core OS services.
Google is opening offices in lots of places. Maybe we should have a slashdot story for each one!
This Oregon facility will only appeal to a niche market (and will only be 50-100 jobs they say).
Outdoors activities are great, but people will go to the Redmond office if they want that.
Young people like to live in, or near, major cities. It's exciting, there are more things to do. Since Google is mostly young people (median age under 30 I think), they won't have droves going to work in Oregon, even given the lower cost of living. Those types of things appeal to older employees with families.
That said, since in 10 years Google will have a lot more older employees with families, having this office may help later.
It's not as hard to switch as you think. (on an individual basis; yes, a whole organization would be hard, and stupid).
I learned dvorak over the summer a few years ago, and was up to 30-40 wpm after a week, and at 60-70 within a month (and that's more than enough to do your work efficiently). After a couple more months I was back at ~80-90.
I don't know if qwerty vs dvorak has a speed difference, and it really doesn't matter. I switched to dvorak because my fingers travel noticeably less, and this seems to have helped reduce cramping and tendonitis that I used to get.
Not you obviously.
As both a runner and a biker, I think I can answer that. I no longer run because of a hip problem, but I can tell you that without a doubt there a times when I would rather run than bike.
Main reason: pure exercise efficiency. Running is more efficient in that it forces you to expend massive amounts of energy in a short period of time. I find it much harder to do that with biking. I don't get out of breath or get tired legs unless I reach very high speeds (that are often unsafe in a city) or am going up hills (and hills are not always all over the place).
So yes, biking is easier on your joints, but it is not always better. In a city, bikes get crowded by reckless drivers, and are often not even allowed in certain parks. Running you can do anywhere.
April Fools.
wait, this was already done! Last time I used Outlook to send an email, my computer churned for 10 seconds and then said "Illegal exception."
I guess this "math puzzle" [oh, so *that's* what they're calling it now] was too hard for Outlook.
I misread the title of this post as "Want to Get My Geek for Valentine's Day?" and thought, oh great, now people are auctioning off their geeks?
What is this world coming to?
Hey, maybe ThinkGeek could sell geeks.
Hey, if it's that new ad from Pepsi with Britney Spears, Pink, and Beyonce dressed as gladiators, I don't mind!
Well, DUH. What else did you expect in a "management bible"??
That's not true. Although personal websites may have a disadvantage with pagerank, they don't have a disadvantage with relevancy. Google uses relevancy, or the correlation of your webpage with the search terms, as one of the factors to determine your site's placement.
More info on google's algorithm
So, my personal site, which is linked to from only 3 or 4 locations still comes up as the top result in a Google search for my name. It also comes up as the top link for installing linux on a sony r505. Not because it's linked to from many places, but because I have a page on exactly that topic - hence, high relevancy.
Yep, and CMU is doing that too:
Red Whittaker has entered in the DARPA challenge
Correction to my post:
The CMU AIBO team won against *Georgia Tech*, not Cornell. Our small-sized team won against Cornell.
For those interested, I'm on the CMU Simulation league team, and I have about 30 photos from the American Open:
Photos
And as an update to the original post, the American Open concluded about an hour ago, with the CMU AIBO team winning the finals in competition against Cornell.
Since this is related to the RIAA, could anyone tell me why their site has been down for like 3 days? That's a long time!
:) It's about how their business model is way out-of-date, and they're approaching this problem from the wrong direction.
I need to get their email address so I can send them a link to my article on why they're stupid
They're trying to legislate their way out of the piracy problem, and are attacking their customers in the process. When what they should be doing is developing constructive solutions like setting up a well-designed and complete online music purchase system.
Perhaps this will act as a wake up call to the lock manufacturers. Key locks are always insecure. Because people lose keys, or they can be stolen. It's much more different to steal a combination from someone's mind.
We need to use combo locks instead. (not Masterlock padlocks, I'm talking regular locks - like deadbolts - but with a combo mechanism instead). If a person accidentally tells someone the combo, the lock could be easily reset to a new combo.
Then there's no inherent risk of key duplication, etc. The "master key" in this case would be to just have the combo on file with the landlords. If the file was compromised, the lock could be set to a new combo, rather than having to install new locks in all the doors.