We escaped the Software Patent madness by a hair in the EU, but we escaped. Do it before August 2nd tho, or at least change your dollars to euros before that, or you will have to live under a bridge;-)
This is true, however not so in Belgium as far as I know. But even so, you have to balance the costs of your enforcement against the costs of loosing exposure at all. Clearly they underestimated that cost and now they are paying the rather steep price. I won't shed a single tear for them, and it will make other think before they act!
Couldn't agree more. The problem with people owning copyright is that they seem to have this craving for controlling that copyright in every aspect, even the aspects where it doesn't really matter. Believe me, it matters NOT where your content is archived if you already publish it to the world as long the proper source citing is done, which is always the case with Google. You only get more visitors in the end, which is entirely what you want. If you are too stupid to grasp this, you should get a lesson, and that is what happened here.
I think it is entirely logical from Google's side to pull this into the extreme. Before you know it they will be in court every day fighting off clueless managers of newspapers, publishers and what else. This is clearly a message: If you want to sue to defend your 'rights', you can do so, but if you win, you lose in the worst way you can imagine. If they Google wins the ensuing case (which will come) and is able to keep the Belgian publishers out of their databases, they nipped this one neatly in the bud I should say....
Sigh... ok... let's go there one more time, since I obviously overestimated some of you. I expected at least some historical background:
First: There has been no global warming in the last decade (if there ever was). There is ample proof of that, and I am not even going to link to it. Second: Climate 'alarmists', which are sometimes also scientists, have been very puzzled by this, trying everything in their power to dispute this fact and when this no longer worked, 'explaining' it away. Third: Now they finally come up with something which looks suspiciously like a mistake made before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
Coupled with climategate this whole situation looks laughable to me. Also it makes me look at these scientists with some degree of disdain, hence 'scientists'.
I have an university degree myself and I am well versed in statistics and model building. More so than most, I must add. I read a lot of what these people produce and never have I seen a well-validated (using historical data) model for these claimed manmade warming effects. I _do_ see a lot of data fitting and data massaging going on and it smells bad, I will tell you. A respected scientist once said something along these lines: "If you torture your data long enough, it will finally confess". That seems to be what is going on here. You can mod me down all you want, but that won't help a thing. It only makes you look more foolish...
About 2 years ago I spoke to a friend that works at Microsoft. He told me that internally, they use a special search page. In this page, every employee types his or her query and is presented with the results from both Bing and Google in one overview. Microsoft employees are expected to report it if they find that the Google results are better. The search results would then be 'corrected' by the Bing team. From this I conclude that a concerted effort to copy the Google algorithms was already underway at that time.
It would not be so far fetched to assume that they have somehow automated this process in the meantime. I think Google's claims hold merit when seen in this light...
Couldn't agree more. Actually, just a bit of topic, but I see some remarkably similarities with the Manmade Global Warming situation. People keep demanding proof that it _isn't_ true while there is nothing to prove;-) *ducks*
And it becomes really, really scary when you realize that this is the level of calculus applied to life-saving techniques in medical science. It can probably explain a lot of medical failures made every year...
Solutions like this provide: - Encryption - Anonymity - Credible deniability - Darknets
These kind of solutions do not work very fast at the moment because of the limited number of users. There was never really the need. Now there is and people will flock to it in big numbers. As the number of users start to rise, it will become very big, very fast.
Two years from now they will be in exactly the same spot, except they will not even be able to track the problem anymore. A bit of ironic justice I guess...
Well... If it melts at an alarming rate, should they not have had MORE water to drive those powerplants with? This proves nothing! If it proves anything at all, it is that there is less melting going on...
The first in mid-winter? The second high-summer? We don't know. And that is exactly the problem. Every time some alarmist 'scientist' comes with this kind of 'evidence' they leave something out. We just cannot trust these guys anymore...
1) There shouldn't be a possibility for software to change the registry directly, period. 2) IF there are such ways, who is to say it is malware? Some stupidly programmed regular software could do the trick too. 3) IF this as possible, your system should at least be able to recover from a corrupted registry.
It's all well and good to shift the blame to others, but the problem is still in the OS.
Yeah... therefore, what we do at our company is to buy extra drives and put them on the shelf. For the money you save you can easily put a replacement drive (or even two or three, but this is overkill) on the shelf for every drive you put in the array. You will still be saving _massive_ amounts of money...
Actually, I know this guy who works at Microsoft. I talk to him sometimes. He is not entirely brainwashed yet, but getting close, so I decided to kick his dreams from under him. He was bragging about the fact that internally they have a search engine at M$ that gives you both the Google results and the M$ result side by side and that employees are urged to report instances in which Google provides better answers. He was claiming that this way they were making rapid improvements.
Since he obviously didnt get the point, I sat him down behind a computer and asked him to type "downgrade Vista XP" in the searchbox on both engines and look at the answers. Actually, looking at his face I could tell that he could smell the trouble in advance. Of course he had to agree with me that getting two pages worth of results discussing the advantages and disadvantages of such a move before getting a decent howto on Bing was obviously quite a bit less useful than getting a howto in the first result as is the case at Google.
Now I asked him: Do you think this will change if you report it? He didn't think it would change. So I told him: This is why you will never win this war. Bing is so obviously biased that anybody in his right mind can see it.
To my surprise he agreed... And confided in me a bit that many within M$ think the same way. Mostly lower management and engineers tho. So my question is: Is the higher management layer at M$ so blind they cannot see the problem or are they thinking this problem will go away for some reason?
He couldn't say... We had another beer and left it at that...
Actually, it all makes sense when you look at what companies like Shell depend upon:
1) Oil. Contrary to what many people think, it will never run out. At least not in our lifetime. We may run out of 'easily accessible' oil but as technology progresses, we will be able to extract more at difficult places. 2) Refining: Refineries are large and expensive apparatuses. Shell has invested heavily in them. It has the knowledge, the sites, the infrastructure. It would be very convenient for Shell if alternative energy sources would need big refinery-like installations since they are already good at that. It would give them a huge advantage. 3) Distribution: Shell is owner of a large distribution network, as do other oil producing companies. It is this distribution network that allows them to ultimately dictate the consumer price.
So, what happens when you take 1) away from them. Say everyone "wants" alternative energy although there is still oil aplenty? The current craziness around the carbondioxide-hoax may actually initiate this, at least for some time to come.
With biofuels they get to keep 2) and 3). And this is what it is all about; Shell probably realizes by now that most other alternative energy sources are quite viable without a distribution network or large centralized refinement. People will just generate the energy in the same place where they need it. Solar panels on the roof would give you free energy and a battery or hydrogen powered car could be fueled on your front lawn, with your self-generated electricity or hydrogen.
So by pushing the bio-fuel option they keep themselves in business. And any smart company does just that of course;-)
I agree wholeheartedly on Genesis. Played it while I was at the University around 1992-1995 or something. Got to an age of 35 days, which makes me rather young by comparison. Can't believe there are still people playing this:-P. *starts looking for a MUD client*
Slashdot Mirror
We escaped the Software Patent madness by a hair in the EU, but we escaped. Do it before August 2nd tho, or at least change your dollars to euros before that, or you will have to live under a bridge ;-)
This is true, however not so in Belgium as far as I know. But even so, you have to balance the costs of your enforcement against the costs of loosing exposure at all. Clearly they underestimated that cost and now they are paying the rather steep price. I won't shed a single tear for them, and it will make other think before they act!
Couldn't agree more. The problem with people owning copyright is that they seem to have this craving for controlling that copyright in every aspect, even the aspects where it doesn't really matter. Believe me, it matters NOT where your content is archived if you already publish it to the world as long the proper source citing is done, which is always the case with Google. You only get more visitors in the end, which is entirely what you want. If you are too stupid to grasp this, you should get a lesson, and that is what happened here.
I think it is entirely logical from Google's side to pull this into the extreme. Before you know it they will be in court every day fighting off clueless managers of newspapers, publishers and what else. This is clearly a message: If you want to sue to defend your 'rights', you can do so, but if you win, you lose in the worst way you can imagine. If they Google wins the ensuing case (which will come) and is able to keep the Belgian publishers out of their databases, they nipped this one neatly in the bud I should say....
Way to go Google!
Sigh... ok... let's go there one more time, since I obviously overestimated some of you. I expected at least some historical background:
First: There has been no global warming in the last decade (if there ever was). There is ample proof of that, and I am not even going to link to it.
Second: Climate 'alarmists', which are sometimes also scientists, have been very puzzled by this, trying everything in their power to dispute this fact and when this no longer worked, 'explaining' it away.
Third: Now they finally come up with something which looks suspiciously like a mistake made before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
Coupled with climategate this whole situation looks laughable to me. Also it makes me look at these scientists with some degree of disdain, hence 'scientists'.
I have an university degree myself and I am well versed in statistics and model building. More so than most, I must add. I read a lot of what these people produce and never have I seen a well-validated (using historical data) model for these claimed manmade warming effects. I _do_ see a lot of data fitting and data massaging going on and it smells bad, I will tell you. A respected scientist once said something along these lines: "If you torture your data long enough, it will finally confess". That seems to be what is going on here. You can mod me down all you want, but that won't help a thing. It only makes you look more foolish...
Lol...
University degree in physics, if you must know... Then again, I jerk off once in a while... don't you? ;-)
Lets go the way of global cooling again ;-)
These 'scientists' really make me laugh...
Might be they arrested one of the seven proxies? ;-)
It was called OtherOS. Never again...
Science keeps amazing me!
For manager types you need to include "Your computer is safe" somewhere along the line ;-)
As the article states, the reasons given are implausible. More likely, the move is politically motivated.
Some of the accusations from Google may be true.
About 2 years ago I spoke to a friend that works at Microsoft. He told me that internally, they use a special search page. In this page, every employee types his or her query and is presented with the results from both Bing and Google in one overview. Microsoft employees are expected to report it if they find that the Google results are better. The search results would then be 'corrected' by the Bing team. From this I conclude that a concerted effort to copy the Google algorithms was already underway at that time.
It would not be so far fetched to assume that they have somehow automated this process in the meantime. I think Google's claims hold merit when seen in this light...
Just my 5 cents...
Couldn't agree more. Actually, just a bit of topic, but I see some remarkably similarities with the Manmade Global Warming situation. People keep demanding proof that it _isn't_ true while there is nothing to prove ;-) *ducks*
And it becomes really, really scary when you realize that this is the level of calculus applied to life-saving techniques in medical science. It can probably explain a lot of medical failures made every year...
Projects like http://freenetproject.org/ will be very very popular soon in France I guess.
Solutions like this provide:
- Encryption
- Anonymity
- Credible deniability
- Darknets
These kind of solutions do not work very fast at the moment because of the limited number of users. There was never really the need. Now there is and people will flock to it in big numbers. As the number of users start to rise, it will become very big, very fast.
Two years from now they will be in exactly the same spot, except they will not even be able to track the problem anymore. A bit of ironic justice I guess...
Well... If it melts at an alarming rate, should they not have had MORE water to drive those powerplants with? This proves nothing! If it proves anything at all, it is that there is less melting going on...
The first in mid-winter? The second high-summer? We don't know. And that is exactly the problem. Every time some alarmist 'scientist' comes with this kind of 'evidence' they leave something out. We just cannot trust these guys anymore...
A few points that have to be made here:
1) There shouldn't be a possibility for software to change the registry directly, period.
2) IF there are such ways, who is to say it is malware? Some stupidly programmed regular software could do the trick too.
3) IF this as possible, your system should at least be able to recover from a corrupted registry.
It's all well and good to shift the blame to others, but the problem is still in the OS.
Yeah... therefore, what we do at our company is to buy extra drives and put them on the shelf. For the money you save you can easily put a replacement drive (or even two or three, but this is overkill) on the shelf for every drive you put in the array. You will still be saving _massive_ amounts of money...
Nothing new here... nothing to see...
Actually, I know this guy who works at Microsoft. I talk to him sometimes. He is not entirely brainwashed yet, but getting close, so I decided to kick his dreams from under him. He was bragging about the fact that internally they have a search engine at M$ that gives you both the Google results and the M$ result side by side and that employees are urged to report instances in which Google provides better answers. He was claiming that this way they were making rapid improvements.
Since he obviously didnt get the point, I sat him down behind a computer and asked him to type "downgrade Vista XP" in the searchbox on both engines and look at the answers. Actually, looking at his face I could tell that he could smell the trouble in advance. Of course he had to agree with me that getting two pages worth of results discussing the advantages and disadvantages of such a move before getting a decent howto on Bing was obviously quite a bit less useful than getting a howto in the first result as is the case at Google.
Now I asked him: Do you think this will change if you report it? He didn't think it would change. So I told him: This is why you will never win this war. Bing is so obviously biased that anybody in his right mind can see it.
To my surprise he agreed... And confided in me a bit that many within M$ think the same way. Mostly lower management and engineers tho. So my question is: Is the higher management layer at M$ so blind they cannot see the problem or are they thinking this problem will go away for some reason?
He couldn't say... We had another beer and left it at that...
Of *course* not. Just broadcast from say eh...every other country in the world and you will be left alone (for the moment)
Actually, it all makes sense when you look at what companies like Shell depend upon:
1) Oil. Contrary to what many people think, it will never run out. At least not in our lifetime. We may run out of 'easily accessible' oil but as technology progresses, we will be able to extract more at difficult places.
2) Refining: Refineries are large and expensive apparatuses. Shell has invested heavily in them. It has the knowledge, the sites, the infrastructure. It would be very convenient for Shell if alternative energy sources would need big refinery-like installations since they are already good at that. It would give them a huge advantage.
3) Distribution: Shell is owner of a large distribution network, as do other oil producing companies. It is this distribution network that allows them to ultimately dictate the consumer price.
So, what happens when you take 1) away from them. Say everyone "wants" alternative energy although there is still oil aplenty? The current craziness around the carbondioxide-hoax may actually initiate this, at least for some time to come.
With biofuels they get to keep 2) and 3). And this is what it is all about; Shell probably realizes by now that most other alternative energy sources are quite viable without a distribution network or large centralized refinement. People will just generate the energy in the same place where they need it. Solar panels on the roof would give you free energy and a battery or hydrogen powered car could be fueled on your front lawn, with your self-generated electricity or hydrogen.
So by pushing the bio-fuel option they keep themselves in business. And any smart company does just that of course ;-)
Well, at least we had the good sense to assassinate Henneicke ourselves before he got away... But I get your point :-P
For a country that "Will bring Democracy to the World" the US has a lot of "beam-removing" to do from their own eyes if you ask me...
I agree wholeheartedly on Genesis. Played it while I was at the University around 1992-1995 or something. Got to an age of 35 days, which makes me rather young by comparison. Can't believe there are still people playing this :-P. *starts looking for a MUD client*