My family recently got an Epson scanner (I don't remember the model, sorry) and the thing I love about it is that it has a top-loader. What it does is it enables you to put a stack off physical pictures (under a certain size) and it will load and scan the pictures for you. This has been an awesome feature that works most of the time (if the picture is bent or curved the loader may have problems). I find this to be a killer feature because we have so many old pictures that we're trying to digitize. I can't imagine what we'd do without it. (Overall the scanner is decent. I have some hardware complaints. The scan quality is mostly good with some pictures being grainy and some pictures coming out fantastic.)
I read through the comments and I'm surprised there was no conjecture on what they could/are do(ing) with this hire (at least I didn't see any).
Here's a fun idea: they use Cerf's large visionary ideas on how internets work and how data travels across the internet but implement all this using all that dark fiber they've been buying up like mad? Is it too radical to think that Google would re-invent the internet as we know it? Maybe now.. but in 10 years time??
Or a less visionary thought: they're acquiring more resources with respect to internet infrastructure (fiber lines, guy who knows protocols, etc.) to do who knows what.
I have a Motorola E398 and I have to say that I'm pretty disappointed in Apple.
Don't get me wrong. I like my phone. It's decent and gets the job done. It plays some mp3s, video and has a wee-little camera. Yippee.
But it's nothing like I expected from Apple. There's no way this is on par with the release of the iPod. The motorola interface is a bit sluggish, and the mp3 playing interface is even more so. Unless they're also putting huge flash memory in this (i haven't read the specs), the memory will be very disappointing to. And, on top of it all, it doesn't have hte lovely, clean interface that makes hte ipod so popular.
I'm hoping this is the first of many steps. Motorola needs to team up with teh design firm Apple uses to design their ipods to get a really slick look. And then they gota work on teh software AND the hardware and redo the whole damn interface so it's nice and slick like the ipod. Until then, I'd recommend holding out on ROKKR0RR.
Taking everything to be relative is a very dangerous path. I think many of us here oppose both China's action and US's actions when it has been cavalier in detaining "terrorists."
Yes, they did the "logical" thing. What bothers me, however, is that they are a company founded in the US with the majority of its company being here. Shit man.. even Jerry Yang is a Chinese-American who owes at least some of his success to an American education system (Stanford).
This bothers me because of the cross between politics and business. I understand "obeying the laws of the land" but there's a problem when it fundamentally conflicts with your own beliefs. For instance, in some cases it's illegal to kill your wife if she "dishonors" you/her/the family according to religious laws. If you were there, would you simply say, "hey, it's logical"?
I'm sure these are the risks of doing business in China, but it still bothers me. We shouldn't be bolstering governments that fundamentally go against values we built this country on, like freedom of the press. To simply say, "hey. it's a huge market, we can't avoid it" is pure negligence.
True, there are certainly differences. I guess I was just saying that generally if people find a good game people get wrapped up in them so much that it detracts them from other games.
I disagree that the real problem is the failure to evacuate. Instead of simply responding to disaster after the fact, we should've prepared for this beforehand. If we addressed this before it became an issue, we wouldn't have had flooding in the first place (or much less likely). There is no excuse for this given that a flooding in New Orleans due to a hurricane was already identified as a likely disaster by FEMA many years ago.
You can't blame Bush for something that should've been done many years ago, but you can blame him for the utterly poor response to the situation. He does not take ALL blame but he sure takes a large part of it. Why did it take so long for a coherent, federal response?
Checkout the main article in the latest issue of Time. 1 things I want to mention: the 72 hours AFTER an event like this are the most crucial in saving lives.. unfortunately it took longer than 3 days for a decent response.
That's the paradox behind all gaming, isn't it? My gaming friends always have a "queue" of games they need to get to but there's never enough time.
I'm not much of a gamer these days (I don't even bother with xbox of ps2 except on occassion) but even when I was playing Counterstrike back in the day, all i really needed was one good, addictive game to take up all my free time. I can't imagine having TWO good, addictive games.. there's just not enough time for that.
I think this existed somewhat before MMO games. MMO probably makes it more scary because of the long term commitment to it. But, like any other game, people will get bored and want something new. That's jsut part of the evolution of the gaming industry that's inherently due to changing hardware, software and technology.
I'm not an MMO geek so if anybody out there has better stats on this feel free to chime in. The article said:
""For many years the gaming industry has been struggling to find a way to get Internet gaming into the mainstream," said Jeff Green, editor in chief of Computer Gaming World, one of the top computer game magazines.These kinds of games have had hundreds of thousands of players, which are not small numbers, but until World of Warcraft came along no one has been able to get the kind of mainstream numbers that everyone has wanted, which is millions of players."
And yet I checked on Wikipedia for Lineage (a game my friend raves about) and it says:
As of 2004, developers consider Lineage to be the most commercially successful MMORPG ever. NCsoft has reported that Lineage has more than four million subscribers, most of them in Korea. To compare, EverQuest (1999) has not even reached 500,000 subscriptions
Could it be that this person is a bit too much US centric? Actually the article did mention that WoW had over 1.5 million subscribers in China. Perhaps this is just an oversight they made.
I'm a bit skeptical to accept that child pornography was basically "dead" before the internet. Sure, the internet serves as an enabling tool, but stuff like this always exists in the woodworks. It's just that law enforcement never knew about it. I would presume that those who enjoy child pornography found other means of satiating that evil desire through some other way. It's not like these were "normal" people who suddenly came across some kiddie porn site and suddenly found themselves interesting in it. (Ugh.. at least I hope not.)
Secondly, I'd chalk this up to the open society and superempowered humans of today (terms borrowed by Thomas Friedman, NY Times Columnist and author). We live in an age where tools can be used for great good (indexing/searching knowledge, flattening the world, collaboration, etc) and it can be used for great evil (kiddie porn, learning how to make bombs, communication network for terrorists). Unfortunately, this is always the case for open societies.
If you're lucky, Linux installs with a snap. But, in my experience, usually you're NOT lucky. I think everytime I've installed Linux something has gone "wrong."
Typically, it's some sort of hardware/network support that doesn't work right off the bat. This is one thing that Windows is decent (not good, not great) at. My experience has been that most devices work with Windows. If not, you know you'll have a driver for Windows available. Unfortunately that's not the case for Linux and sometimes you really have to dig for those drivers (not Linux's fault of course, but making a point about the support my third parties).
Getting audio to work on Linux sucks. Another time Linux had a problem with my keyboard on my laptop. I've had to fudge with X for resolution/refresh reasons. The list goes on and on.
It's definitely gotten a lot better. The stuff above is stuff I can deal with so they aren't deal breakers. But Windows is still WAYYYYYY easier to install than Linux no matter what anyone tells me. (Admittedly, the last distro I installed was the Fedora Core 2 which was probably like a year ago.)
I haven't read all the specs but it looks very similar to my Motorola E398 which also has mp3 player function.
It's really quite pointless compared to my iPod. It has an SD card which comes with 64 MB. I suppose you could upgrade that, but it's still not much space. The quality sounds really nice but I don't think they've really matured as of yet. One reason why I think so is that the processor that these cell phones use are too slow for the software. My user experience is that there's a significant wait time for the loading of mp3 player applications.
Reading the ideas and the brief synopsis about them, I find myself in agreement with you. That list was very, very boring.
Re:If, so this would be a huge boon for slashdot..
on
Has Google Peaked?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Personally, I don't think it's the hatred of other companies that drives Google fanboyism (I'm a fanboy myself, I'll admit it).
What makes it exciting for me is that they are the one company, at this point in time, that seems to have that innovative drive along with the resources to fund those ideas. I don't have Microsoft or Yahoo... they just appear to have lost their drive. They improve their products, but they always seem to be in lockstep behind Google. (Some examples: Yahoo releases Search. Google releases search plus Page Rank. Now Yahoo does their own version of Page Rank.)
What makes us nerds excited is true innovation. What makes us more excited is innovation that WORKS. Google seems to be committed to this vision. Who knows? Maybe they'll go the way of Yahoo when it transitioned from innovator to large, corporate company.
On a final note, I don't think people here are blindly devoted to Google. I think it's that western sort of competition that drives us to like the innovator, the little guy, the people who make it and keep it exciting. If Google becomes stale, if they become a more settled company with little innovation, then we will be looking for The Next Big Thing.
As a fanboy, I'd say that some of it is warranted. It is one of the few tech companies that have done exciting things over the past 6 years.
Some of the things they've put out/purchased that I like: froogle, google groups, picasa/hello, and google news. I suppose one could "throw out" groups and picasa since the former already existed as usenet and picasa was a purchase. That leaves froogle and news. Froogle is decent but I don't use it as often as Groups (everyday).
With that said, I suppose you're right about the imprinted fanboyism. I think back to 1999/2000 when I first started job searching. I recall seeing the Google booth at a job fair where they were the only ones to have two hot blondes. I actually had a bad impression because these chicks, while good to look at, knew nothing about the company and just handed out t-shirts. 5 years later they are the "next thread to Microshaft."
I think a large part of the excitement is the image. Brin and Page are certainly no Bill Gates. They aren't this beheamoth like Yahoo and going nowhere (yet). Yahoo used to have a lot of luster, imo, when it was seen as an inventor (which Google is still seen as). Now Yahoo has converged on your corporate style company (read the plethora of articles available on this about 3-4 years ago).
Who else is there? Apple's exciting because they've put out ipod, itunes, mac machines for cheap. One notable from Yahoo is Flickr but that was a purchase too.
This was the next logical question. I had 3 chats last night. 2 of them were local (all within Silicon Valley which is where I'm roughly located). The last call was made to LA. It's still the same state but roughly 400 miles away and still working awesome. I want to try it across the nation next and then try it globally.
Why don't you say the same about SAP? SAP is pure corporate evil. They are attempting to crush everyone in the business applications market and make one NEED SAP. Here in America there is a strong feeling that SAP is a European cultural danger to America...blah blah blah.
I'm not the one in best touch with VC culture but I would think that if you had a good idea and the means to do it, VCs would not necessarily be turned off despite Google's presence. Like the article said, many of these start-ups are being consumed by Google. That's not necessarily a bad thing for VCs with respect to the return they can make on investment.
EXACTLY!! This is what really bothered me about the article:
"Google is doing more damage to innovation in the Valley right now than Microsoft ever did," said Reid Hoffman, the founder of two Internet ventures,... "It's largely that they're hiring up so many talented people,...."
Google, Mr. Hoffman said, has caused "across the board a 25 to 50 percent salary inflation for engineers in Silicon Valley" - or at least those in a position to weigh competing offers.
What a freaking load. He's basically saying that Google is paying good engineers well and they can't compete because they don't want to pay well. Welcome to capitalism! You know.. it's that whole supply and demand thing. These guys want to have their cake and eat it too.
We're the same engineers that experienced a high drop in salary after the dot-com bust when there was a large glut of engineers. This guy makes it sound like its Google's responsibility to keep wages low and not hire the best talent they can.
I think therein lies one of the core problems about this article. They both look similar in terms of their extreme growth, hiring of top talent, and any other characteristic that's similar of companies going through this. I do see some KEY differences that were NOT mentioned that I hope stay as differences as Google grows:
1) Don't be evil. While it may seem like a childlish statement, there's a lot to be said about this. Microsoft got its start by using an OS they purchased from someone else, "stole" key features from other competitors and, as the years have progressed, tried to place a choke-hold on the industry through it's monopolistic practices w.r.t. Windows, IE, non-standards compliance and litigation. This is very different from Google who has: used completely open source products, supported the open source community and developers of open source products (linux, firefox, jabber etc.) and has said, right from the start: don't be evil.
Who knows? That may change in time. I do know that Microsoft never had such a mentality. I hope Google doesn't converge in that direction. Given their constant support of open source, I find myself a bit more optimistic.
Slashdot Mirror
My family recently got an Epson scanner (I don't remember the model, sorry) and the thing I love about it is that it has a top-loader. What it does is it enables you to put a stack off physical pictures (under a certain size) and it will load and scan the pictures for you. This has been an awesome feature that works most of the time (if the picture is bent or curved the loader may have problems). I find this to be a killer feature because we have so many old pictures that we're trying to digitize. I can't imagine what we'd do without it. (Overall the scanner is decent. I have some hardware complaints. The scan quality is mostly good with some pictures being grainy and some pictures coming out fantastic.)
Me thinks some of the people here suffer from a sort of Napoleon syndrome, in the figurative sense.
.. but why not?
I read through the comments and I'm surprised there was no conjecture on what they could/are do(ing) with this hire (at least I didn't see any).
Here's a fun idea: they use Cerf's large visionary ideas on how internets work and how data travels across the internet but implement all this using all that dark fiber they've been buying up like mad? Is it too radical to think that Google would re-invent the internet as we know it? Maybe now.. but in 10 years time??
Or a less visionary thought: they're acquiring more resources with respect to internet infrastructure (fiber lines, guy who knows protocols, etc.) to do who knows what.
hahhahahah mod this baby up!
I have a Motorola E398 and I have to say that I'm pretty disappointed in Apple.
Don't get me wrong. I like my phone. It's decent and gets the job done. It plays some mp3s, video and has a wee-little camera. Yippee.
But it's nothing like I expected from Apple. There's no way this is on par with the release of the iPod. The motorola interface is a bit sluggish, and the mp3 playing interface is even more so. Unless they're also putting huge flash memory in this (i haven't read the specs), the memory will be very disappointing to. And, on top of it all, it doesn't have hte lovely, clean interface that makes hte ipod so popular.
I'm hoping this is the first of many steps. Motorola needs to team up with teh design firm Apple uses to design their ipods to get a really slick look. And then they gota work on teh software AND the hardware and redo the whole damn interface so it's nice and slick like the ipod. Until then, I'd recommend holding out on ROKKR0RR.
Taking everything to be relative is a very dangerous path. I think many of us here oppose both China's action and US's actions when it has been cavalier in detaining "terrorists."
Yes, they did the "logical" thing. What bothers me, however, is that they are a company founded in the US with the majority of its company being here. Shit man.. even Jerry Yang is a Chinese-American who owes at least some of his success to an American education system (Stanford).
This bothers me because of the cross between politics and business. I understand "obeying the laws of the land" but there's a problem when it fundamentally conflicts with your own beliefs. For instance, in some cases it's illegal to kill your wife if she "dishonors" you/her/the family according to religious laws. If you were there, would you simply say, "hey, it's logical"?
I'm sure these are the risks of doing business in China, but it still bothers me. We shouldn't be bolstering governments that fundamentally go against values we built this country on, like freedom of the press. To simply say, "hey. it's a huge market, we can't avoid it" is pure negligence.
True, there are certainly differences. I guess I was just saying that generally if people find a good game people get wrapped up in them so much that it detracts them from other games.
I disagree that the real problem is the failure to evacuate. Instead of simply responding to disaster after the fact, we should've prepared for this beforehand. If we addressed this before it became an issue, we wouldn't have had flooding in the first place (or much less likely). There is no excuse for this given that a flooding in New Orleans due to a hurricane was already identified as a likely disaster by FEMA many years ago.
You can't blame Bush for something that should've been done many years ago, but you can blame him for the utterly poor response to the situation. He does not take ALL blame but he sure takes a large part of it. Why did it take so long for a coherent, federal response?
Checkout the main article in the latest issue of Time. 1 things I want to mention: the 72 hours AFTER an event like this are the most crucial in saving lives.. unfortunately it took longer than 3 days for a decent response.
Lesson #2: Don't distribute your viruses via Creative mp3 players.
That's the paradox behind all gaming, isn't it? My gaming friends always have a "queue" of games they need to get to but there's never enough time.
I'm not much of a gamer these days (I don't even bother with xbox of ps2 except on occassion) but even when I was playing Counterstrike back in the day, all i really needed was one good, addictive game to take up all my free time. I can't imagine having TWO good, addictive games.. there's just not enough time for that.
I think this existed somewhat before MMO games. MMO probably makes it more scary because of the long term commitment to it. But, like any other game, people will get bored and want something new. That's jsut part of the evolution of the gaming industry that's inherently due to changing hardware, software and technology.
Correction. I just got to page 2 of the article. ;)
And yet I checked on Wikipedia for Lineage (a game my friend raves about) and it says:
Could it be that this person is a bit too much US centric? Actually the article did mention that WoW had over 1.5 million subscribers in China. Perhaps this is just an oversight they made.
This is re: the comments about child pornography.
I'm a bit skeptical to accept that child pornography was basically "dead" before the internet. Sure, the internet serves as an enabling tool, but stuff like this always exists in the woodworks. It's just that law enforcement never knew about it. I would presume that those who enjoy child pornography found other means of satiating that evil desire through some other way. It's not like these were "normal" people who suddenly came across some kiddie porn site and suddenly found themselves interesting in it. (Ugh.. at least I hope not.)
Secondly, I'd chalk this up to the open society and superempowered humans of today (terms borrowed by Thomas Friedman, NY Times Columnist and author). We live in an age where tools can be used for great good (indexing/searching knowledge, flattening the world, collaboration, etc) and it can be used for great evil (kiddie porn, learning how to make bombs, communication network for terrorists). Unfortunately, this is always the case for open societies.
If you're lucky, Linux installs with a snap. But, in my experience, usually you're NOT lucky. I think everytime I've installed Linux something has gone "wrong."
Typically, it's some sort of hardware/network support that doesn't work right off the bat. This is one thing that Windows is decent (not good, not great) at. My experience has been that most devices work with Windows. If not, you know you'll have a driver for Windows available. Unfortunately that's not the case for Linux and sometimes you really have to dig for those drivers (not Linux's fault of course, but making a point about the support my third parties).
Getting audio to work on Linux sucks. Another time Linux had a problem with my keyboard on my laptop. I've had to fudge with X for resolution/refresh reasons. The list goes on and on.
It's definitely gotten a lot better. The stuff above is stuff I can deal with so they aren't deal breakers. But Windows is still WAYYYYYY easier to install than Linux no matter what anyone tells me. (Admittedly, the last distro I installed was the Fedora Core 2 which was probably like a year ago.)
I haven't read all the specs but it looks very similar to my Motorola E398 which also has mp3 player function.
It's really quite pointless compared to my iPod. It has an SD card which comes with 64 MB. I suppose you could upgrade that, but it's still not much space. The quality sounds really nice but I don't think they've really matured as of yet. One reason why I think so is that the processor that these cell phones use are too slow for the software. My user experience is that there's a significant wait time for the loading of mp3 player applications.
Reading the ideas and the brief synopsis about them, I find myself in agreement with you. That list was very, very boring.
Personally, I don't think it's the hatred of other companies that drives Google fanboyism (I'm a fanboy myself, I'll admit it).
What makes it exciting for me is that they are the one company, at this point in time, that seems to have that innovative drive along with the resources to fund those ideas. I don't have Microsoft or Yahoo... they just appear to have lost their drive. They improve their products, but they always seem to be in lockstep behind Google. (Some examples: Yahoo releases Search. Google releases search plus Page Rank. Now Yahoo does their own version of Page Rank.)
What makes us nerds excited is true innovation. What makes us more excited is innovation that WORKS. Google seems to be committed to this vision. Who knows? Maybe they'll go the way of Yahoo when it transitioned from innovator to large, corporate company.
On a final note, I don't think people here are blindly devoted to Google. I think it's that western sort of competition that drives us to like the innovator, the little guy, the people who make it and keep it exciting. If Google becomes stale, if they become a more settled company with little innovation, then we will be looking for The Next Big Thing.
As a fanboy, I'd say that some of it is warranted. It is one of the few tech companies that have done exciting things over the past 6 years.
Some of the things they've put out/purchased that I like: froogle, google groups, picasa/hello, and google news. I suppose one could "throw out" groups and picasa since the former already existed as usenet and picasa was a purchase. That leaves froogle and news. Froogle is decent but I don't use it as often as Groups (everyday).
With that said, I suppose you're right about the imprinted fanboyism. I think back to 1999/2000 when I first started job searching. I recall seeing the Google booth at a job fair where they were the only ones to have two hot blondes. I actually had a bad impression because these chicks, while good to look at, knew nothing about the company and just handed out t-shirts. 5 years later they are the "next thread to Microshaft."
I think a large part of the excitement is the image. Brin and Page are certainly no Bill Gates. They aren't this beheamoth like Yahoo and going nowhere (yet). Yahoo used to have a lot of luster, imo, when it was seen as an inventor (which Google is still seen as). Now Yahoo has converged on your corporate style company (read the plethora of articles available on this about 3-4 years ago).
Who else is there? Apple's exciting because they've put out ipod, itunes, mac machines for cheap. One notable from Yahoo is Flickr but that was a purchase too.
hahaha true.
But if you use that definition of "have" doesn't my statement say the same thing irregardless of the order?
"These guys want to have their cake and eat it too. "
This was the next logical question. I had 3 chats last night. 2 of them were local (all within Silicon Valley which is where I'm roughly located). The last call was made to LA. It's still the same state but roughly 400 miles away and still working awesome. I want to try it across the nation next and then try it globally.
hahahhaa.. frogs. j/k ;)
Why don't you say the same about SAP? SAP is pure corporate evil. They are attempting to crush everyone in the business applications market and make one NEED SAP. Here in America there is a strong feeling that SAP is a European cultural danger to America...blah blah blah.
FUD.
I'm not the one in best touch with VC culture but I would think that if you had a good idea and the means to do it, VCs would not necessarily be turned off despite Google's presence. Like the article said, many of these start-ups are being consumed by Google. That's not necessarily a bad thing for VCs with respect to the return they can make on investment.
What a freaking load. He's basically saying that Google is paying good engineers well and they can't compete because they don't want to pay well. Welcome to capitalism! You know.. it's that whole supply and demand thing. These guys want to have their cake and eat it too.
We're the same engineers that experienced a high drop in salary after the dot-com bust when there was a large glut of engineers. This guy makes it sound like its Google's responsibility to keep wages low and not hire the best talent they can.
I think therein lies one of the core problems about this article. They both look similar in terms of their extreme growth, hiring of top talent, and any other characteristic that's similar of companies going through this. I do see some KEY differences that were NOT mentioned that I hope stay as differences as Google grows:
1) Don't be evil. While it may seem like a childlish statement, there's a lot to be said about this. Microsoft got its start by using an OS they purchased from someone else, "stole" key features from other competitors and, as the years have progressed, tried to place a choke-hold on the industry through it's monopolistic practices w.r.t. Windows, IE, non-standards compliance and litigation. This is very different from Google who has: used completely open source products, supported the open source community and developers of open source products (linux, firefox, jabber etc.) and has said, right from the start: don't be evil.
Who knows? That may change in time. I do know that Microsoft never had such a mentality. I hope Google doesn't converge in that direction. Given their constant support of open source, I find myself a bit more optimistic.