Can somebody mod up the parent? The submitter's last article was also a PR stunt. As this comment summarises it, it's an article on how RSS is the future of business communication, hosted on a site that sells business RSS services, written by the site's owner, and submitted to Slashdot by the author.
Seriously, does anybody actually vet these articles?
I get the feeling that this is a practical joke/troll by Jonathan Avidan - the person who is editing this new specification, the person who maintains the website linked to, and who submitted this article to Slashdot.
Agreed. It's highly unusual that no blogs in the Technorati index (of apparently 15.4 million sites) link to it. If this was a real community effort, you would expect to find some discussion/rumours on the new "standard".
Perhaps it's just somebody trying to irritate Dave Winer or somebody suffering from severe "not invented here" syndrome. Either way, this is not the firsttime that a RSSv3 has been proposed.
As the article notes, Gracenote currently has 50 million tracks in their database, while current online offerings aspire to a mere 1.5 million songs. Clearly there is room for improvement.
However, one issue that the article doesn't address is how users might navigate the so-called "celestial jukebox". A large catalogue may be useful if one specifically knows the artist/album/song one is looking for, but browsing a catalogue such as Gracenote is impractical (especially since music can be relatively difficult to classify). I believe that personalisation will play a major role here - I'm still waiting for a comprehensive online service that provides recommendations on a par with those provided by Audioscrobbler. The iTunes store is very weak in this area, while Yahoo seems to have invested significant effort into this area (in terms of technology, it ties in nicely with their search personalisation). It will be interesting to see how important this aspect of the buying experience becomes as the depth of their respective catalogues increases.
Who the hell modded the parent anything other than Flamebait?
Perhaps you should tell Google that R&D is "old school". Seriously, while research spending was unrealistic during the dotcom days, how do you expect any future progress to be made in the industry? Companies like Google would not exist without the past research that provided the technologies upon which they rely. Similarily, future success stories are going to be largely dependent on current R&D.
Or do you honestly believe that we've reached the pinnacle of technology, and now we should "just get it done" without any further innovation? Companies like HP, who seem to be adopting your short-term attitude, are just going to stagnate and be surpassed by competitors who have a viable long-term strategy that includes both meeting today's demands and preparing for tomorrow.
Have to seriously disagree. The last series of Futurama was consistently good - which made the decision to axe it even more incongruous. Watch the last episode, The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings, as a prime example of the show's potential.
On the other hand, I'm glad that the show didn't descend into a parody of itself like the Simpsons.
I don't know if this is supposed to be funny or the author of the parent post was trying to be sarcastic, but it does actually work. Ever hear of "you are what you eat"? Try "you are what you hear". Seriously.
Perhaps some people react positively to criticism by attempting to prove the critic wrong. But for many people, abusing them as you advise will only serve to lower their self-esteem and destroy any motivation they may have. For most of us, support and encouragement from those around us is generally more helpful than discouraging words.
I seriously hope you don't treat your family or friends in that way, for their sake.
The attitude in Europe is a little disturbing, and they seem to lack the spirit of willing to push themselves to the edge, of going that extra mile, to succeed.
Do you perhaps think that people may actually have a life outside the work environment? As the owner of a startup, you have certain priorities. But you cannot expect everyone else to share your mentality. Personally speaking, spending time with my family and friends will always take precedence over work. Some of us would rather work to live, rather than live to work. To us, your attitude of placing work above all is else is a little disturbing. I sincerely hope that attitude does not become prevalent in Europe has it has done elsewhere.
I'd recommend Voodoopad Lite. It's not open-source, but it is free as in beer. You can always upgrade to the professional version of Voodoopad for $25 later on.
Circus Ponies NoteBook: A visually impressive note-taking app that looks like a real lab notebook.
Hog Bay Notebook: Similar to the above, but lightweight and with IMHO superior outlining facilities.
PersonalWiki : A desktop interface to the web-based ZWiki.
Devonthink: A note/snippet/document management system, which includes semi-supervised classification algorithms.
Perhaps it's due to the high use of Macs in education, but other platforms really seem to lag behind in this area. WikidPad is a Windows application that's similar in design to VoodooPad, while Tomboy is a very light-weight equivalent app for Linux. Unfortunately I have yet to discover an equivalent cross-platform note-taking tool.
If only they had American main characters, they might have made money in US theaters.
I think the grandparent post is referring to large-budget movies of an apocalyptic nature, which always seem to center around the US. "War of the Worlds" follows in the well-trodden footsteps of previous films such as "Independence Day", "The Day After Tomorrow", "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon". Judging by these films, aliens and Mother Nature clearly have an anti-American agenda.
Seriously, it's quite understandable that films such as these are US-centric as that is the dominant and most influential target market. While films such as "The Passion of the Christ" and "Titanic" may not have Americans filling all the lead roles, any non-American can see that they are primarily aimed at the US market. That's probably what irritates the original poster.
The Grauniad is a "loony left" paper in the UK with a political axe to grind (let's bash the Yankee moneymakers!) and little time for any SF, good or bad.
You are aware of their SF books section right? As far as I'm aware, they're the only major newspaper in the UK that devotes a column to the genre. Clearly you're not a frequent reader of the paper.
Besides, simply use the gtk-qt-engine and Gaim will use your KDE theme and fit right it.
Unfortunately, a theme engine that imitates widget appearance does not automatically result in desktop integration. In fact, having applications that appear on the surface to be similar, but actually behave differently, have different menu structures etc. is even more confusing for users (myself included) than applications that share no visual features.
As for using Windows as a benchmark for consistency, I think you're aiming rather low. Try applications on OSX (excluding Apple's recent Finder & Mail abominations) and you'll appreciate the value of consistency & integration.
Something interesting that I just noticed is Yahoo's command-line plugin which allows you to use shell-like commands (ls, cd, etc.) to browse their store.
It's really nice idea in theory, but unfortunately only works on an OS with minimal shell integration. Perhaps they'll support Linux and OSX soon, then again with their WMA-fetish, probably not.
Global job cuts at IBM will not significantly affect Irish operations, the IDA confirmed today. The development authority said most of the 3,700 Irish employees at the computer giant will be unaffected despite the expected 13,000 job cuts.
An IDA spokesman said: "We are in close contact with IBM as we are with all our client companies. We don't expect the downsizing to significantly affect the Irish operations."
The world's largest computer company earlier said most of the job losses would hit the group's European operations.
It seems like continental Europe will be more severly affected.
I'd be happier if he chose a "normal" religion instead of some long dead one that has gone retro for no clear reason.
You do realise that having an interest in the mythology and history of ancient civilisations is not tantamount to adopting the religious beliefs of that culture?
Perhaps parents should discourage their children from learning about the Romans so as to prevent the the little tykes feeding Christians to the lions?
I think he means that the number of potential users who could startup OSX and begin using the search functionality provided by spotlight is significantly larger than the number of people who can download, compile and install the latest version of Beagle and all its dependencies.
As a Linux user I can say from experience that Beagle is currently not ready to be used by anyone but geeks with plenty of time on their hands. I'm sure it'll improve, but Spotlight definitely got there first.
PDF was great when web pages were static, but web pages aren't static anymore and PDFs are boring these days.
Of course. Every form, research paper and e-book in PDF format is so boring. They would be far more useful if they had lots of swirling text and fade-out effects.
The next generation web is all about media, and that is where Flash comes into the picture.
Many people would regard the next generation web as being all about deriving useful knowledge from the vast amount of information available on the net. While Flash sites may look nice, the vast majority of them tend to prevent the user from accessing the information that they're looking for.
Seriously, Flash and PDF occupy two very different roles. PDF documents are very often used for reference or simply to provide an easily printable document that will be accessible on a variety of different documents.
I don't see PDF going anywhere anytime soon. However, if Adobe insist on adding swirling text...
Has it occurred to you that more than one person may be using the machine?
A family will typically have multiple accounts. So running rm -rf in your home directory will delete your stuff. Everbody else's files will be safe.
As for the OS being replaceable, your elderly aunt will probably have enough difficulty figuring out what went wrong, let alone performing a fresh Linux install.
The BBC has interesting list of possible replacements for the next series here.
If they're going for consistency, David Thewlis is probably as close as they'll get to Christopher Eccleston, though he's perhaps not quite in the same league.
I think your expectations are a little unrealistic.
CS research can often take 5+ years or more to attain mainstream adoption, so you can't expect to see results immediately. In addition, the majority of academic work that gets adopted leads to incremental changes. Just as every college drop-out does not goes on to found a Microsoft, not every PhD has the impact of the guys at Google.
You are joking, right? Perhaps he was a little off in suggesting that universities are trend-setters, but your comment is far more uninformed.
Clearly you're not aware that many of the technologies that you take for granted originate in CS research. For example, the work that Larry Page and Sergey Brin did at Stanford gave us Google. . I'm realibly informed that they have some influence in the industry these days, no?
Slashdot Mirror
Can somebody mod up the parent? The submitter's last article was also a PR stunt. As this comment summarises it, it's an article on how RSS is the future of business communication, hosted on a site that sells business RSS services, written by the site's owner, and submitted to Slashdot by the author.
Seriously, does anybody actually vet these articles?
I get the feeling that this is a practical joke/troll by Jonathan Avidan - the person who is editing this new specification, the person who maintains the website linked to, and who submitted this article to Slashdot.
Agreed. It's highly unusual that no blogs in the Technorati index (of apparently 15.4 million sites) link to it. If this was a real community effort, you would expect to find some discussion/rumours on the new "standard".
Perhaps it's just somebody trying to irritate Dave Winer or somebody suffering from severe "not invented here" syndrome. Either way, this is not the first time that a RSSv3 has been proposed.
Here's the free version.
As the article notes, Gracenote currently has 50 million tracks in their database, while current online offerings aspire to a mere 1.5 million songs. Clearly there is room for improvement.
However, one issue that the article doesn't address is how users might navigate the so-called "celestial jukebox". A large catalogue may be useful if one specifically knows the artist/album/song one is looking for, but browsing a catalogue such as Gracenote is impractical (especially since music can be relatively difficult to classify). I believe that personalisation will play a major role here - I'm still waiting for a comprehensive online service that provides recommendations on a par with those provided by Audioscrobbler. The iTunes store is very weak in this area, while Yahoo seems to have invested significant effort into this area (in terms of technology, it ties in nicely with their search personalisation). It will be interesting to see how important this aspect of the buying experience becomes as the depth of their respective catalogues increases.
R&D is old school
Who the hell modded the parent anything other than Flamebait?
Perhaps you should tell Google that R&D is "old school". Seriously, while research spending was unrealistic during the dotcom days, how do you expect any future progress to be made in the industry? Companies like Google would not exist without the past research that provided the technologies upon which they rely. Similarily, future success stories are going to be largely dependent on current R&D.
Or do you honestly believe that we've reached the pinnacle of technology, and now we should "just get it done" without any further innovation? Companies like HP, who seem to be adopting your short-term attitude, are just going to stagnate and be surpassed by competitors who have a viable long-term strategy that includes both meeting today's demands and preparing for tomorrow.
the show was starting to get bad around the end
Have to seriously disagree. The last series of Futurama was consistently good - which made the decision to axe it even more incongruous. Watch the last episode, The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings, as a prime example of the show's potential.
On the other hand, I'm glad that the show didn't descend into a parody of itself like the Simpsons.
Some people just need killing, and it is so much better and more humane for the world in the long run if we just hold our noses and do it.
Many people, including the terrorists responsible for the barbarism in London, have probably expressed those same sentiments before.
Unfortunately not everyone agrees on who "needs killing" and who gets to "hold their nose".
I don't know if this is supposed to be funny or the author of the parent post was trying to be sarcastic, but it does actually work. Ever hear of "you are what you eat"? Try "you are what you hear". Seriously.
Perhaps some people react positively to criticism by attempting to prove the critic wrong. But for many people, abusing them as you advise will only serve to lower their self-esteem and destroy any motivation they may have. For most of us, support and encouragement from those around us is generally more helpful than discouraging words.
I seriously hope you don't treat your family or friends in that way, for their sake.
The attitude in Europe is a little disturbing, and they seem to lack the spirit of willing to push themselves to the edge, of going that extra mile, to succeed.
Do you perhaps think that people may actually have a life outside the work environment? As the owner of a startup, you have certain priorities. But you cannot expect everyone else to share your mentality. Personally speaking, spending time with my family and friends will always take precedence over work. Some of us would rather work to live, rather than live to work. To us, your attitude of placing work above all is else is a little disturbing. I sincerely hope that attitude does not become prevalent in Europe has it has done elsewhere.
I'd recommend Voodoopad Lite. It's not open-source, but it is free as in beer. You can always upgrade to the professional version of Voodoopad for $25 later on.
Perhaps it's due to the high use of Macs in education, but other platforms really seem to lag behind in this area. WikidPad is a Windows application that's similar in design to VoodooPad, while Tomboy is a very light-weight equivalent app for Linux. Unfortunately I have yet to discover an equivalent cross-platform note-taking tool.
If only they had American main characters, they might have made money in US theaters.
I think the grandparent post is referring to large-budget movies of an apocalyptic nature, which always seem to center around the US. "War of the Worlds" follows in the well-trodden footsteps of previous films such as "Independence Day", "The Day After Tomorrow", "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon". Judging by these films, aliens and Mother Nature clearly have an anti-American agenda.
Seriously, it's quite understandable that films such as these are US-centric as that is the dominant and most influential target market. While films such as "The Passion of the Christ" and "Titanic" may not have Americans filling all the lead roles, any non-American can see that they are primarily aimed at the US market. That's probably what irritates the original poster.
Let me guess, the next Apple interface won't even have text
Apple are way ahead of you...
The Grauniad is a "loony left" paper in the UK with a political axe to grind (let's bash the Yankee moneymakers!) and little time for any SF, good or bad.
You are aware of their SF books section right? As far as I'm aware, they're the only major newspaper in the UK that devotes a column to the genre. Clearly you're not a frequent reader of the paper.
Besides, simply use the gtk-qt-engine and Gaim will use your KDE theme and fit right it.
Unfortunately, a theme engine that imitates widget appearance does not automatically result in desktop integration. In fact, having applications that appear on the surface to be similar, but actually behave differently, have different menu structures etc. is even more confusing for users (myself included) than applications that share no visual features.
As for using Windows as a benchmark for consistency, I think you're aiming rather low. Try applications on OSX (excluding Apple's recent Finder & Mail abominations) and you'll appreciate the value of consistency & integration.
Interestingly enough, as part of the BBC's new service, they've provided a tagging system (associated with delicious).
For example, the tags for Malcolm Glazer's takeover of Manchester United football club are currently given as:
"utd wanker wanker asshat asshat utd beard"
It's actually a great idea, but perhaps a little more tweaking may be in order.
Something interesting that I just noticed is Yahoo's command-line plugin which allows you to use shell-like commands (ls, cd, etc.) to browse their store.
It's really nice idea in theory, but unfortunately only works on an OS with minimal shell integration. Perhaps they'll support Linux and OSX soon, then again with their WMA-fetish, probably not.
From today's Irish Times (pay subscription):
It seems like continental Europe will be more severly affected.
I'd be happier if he chose a "normal" religion instead of some long dead one that has gone retro for no clear reason.
You do realise that having an interest in the mythology and history of ancient civilisations is not tantamount to adopting the religious beliefs of that culture?
Perhaps parents should discourage their children from learning about the Romans so as to prevent the the little tykes feeding Christians to the lions?
I think he means that the number of potential users who could startup OSX and begin using the search functionality provided by spotlight is significantly larger than the number of people who can download, compile and install the latest version of Beagle and all its dependencies.
As a Linux user I can say from experience that Beagle is currently not ready to be used by anyone but geeks with plenty of time on their hands. I'm sure it'll improve, but Spotlight definitely got there first.
PDF was great when web pages were static, but web pages aren't static anymore and PDFs are boring these days.
Of course. Every form, research paper and e-book in PDF format is so boring. They would be far more useful if they had lots of swirling text and fade-out effects.
The next generation web is all about media, and that is where Flash comes into the picture.
Many people would regard the next generation web as being all about deriving useful knowledge from the vast amount of information available on the net. While Flash sites may look nice, the vast majority of them tend to prevent the user from accessing the information that they're looking for.
Seriously, Flash and PDF occupy two very different roles. PDF documents are very often used for reference or simply to provide an easily printable document that will be accessible on a variety of different documents.
I don't see PDF going anywhere anytime soon. However, if Adobe insist on adding swirling text...
Has it occurred to you that more than one person may be using the machine?
A family will typically have multiple accounts. So running rm -rf in your home directory will delete your stuff. Everbody else's files will be safe.
As for the OS being replaceable, your elderly aunt will probably have enough difficulty figuring out what went wrong, let alone performing a fresh Linux install.
The BBC has interesting list of possible replacements for the next series here.
If they're going for consistency, David Thewlis is probably as close as they'll get to Christopher Eccleston, though he's perhaps not quite in the same league.
I think your expectations are a little unrealistic.
CS research can often take 5+ years or more to attain mainstream adoption, so you can't expect to see results immediately. In addition, the majority of academic work that gets adopted leads to incremental changes. Just as every college drop-out does not goes on to found a Microsoft, not every PhD has the impact of the guys at Google.
You are joking, right? Perhaps he was a little off in suggesting that universities are trend-setters, but your comment is far more uninformed.
Clearly you're not aware that many of the technologies that you take for granted originate in CS research. For example, the work that Larry Page and Sergey Brin did at Stanford gave us Google. . I'm realibly informed that they have some influence in the industry these days, no?
What exactly are you basing this on? It seems to me that usage of the term terrorist in the Western media is increasing on a daily basis.
If you don't believe me, perhaps you could take a look here or here or here?
Seriously, where do these people get these opinions from?