Wow! Tried out the voice chat and it's really awesome. So far it's been very responsive with very minimal packet loss and very low (imperceptible) latency.
I have to respectfully disagree. While I feel you're right in almost all aspects, I don't see Google providing this feature.
Having the ability to connect to other companies' IM protocols has proved to be messy at best. So far, Trillian successfully does this but, even then, there was a very messy period often involving updates, service packs, downtime, etc. There's just no pretty way to do it w/o hacking and reverse engineering.
Also, Google hasn't been the best integrator into services provided by competitors like Yahoo, AOL and MSN. Their vision seems to be to bring something to market that completely blows the competition away, so integration is not needed. I don't see that changing.
Perhaps we should contrast the CEOs/shareholder's vision to Page/Brin's vision. The former's vision is to get as many people to click on their ads (true). The latter's vision is to index all of the world's information. Does this fit into that latter's vision? I'm not so sure it does. Given that GDS was recently released and is something surprisingly more consumer-oriented, perhaps what I've said can be thrown out the window.
A humble supposition: If it integrates into the sidebar then the functionality would already be in there (assuming that the IM client will be release soon (tomorrow)). I don't see Google being sloppy (e.g., releasing GDS yesterday and then two days later releasing Google Talk and then asking everyone to download the latest plugin... worst way to bring it to market).
I don't think Google Talk is for real. If it is, then I don't see automatic integration into sidebar for now. I would LIKE to see the two combined somehow.. maybe that just makes both applications bloated.
This is true for the geek/slashdot community. This is not true for the majority of the public. I still know non-technical people who won't move away from hotmail to gmail because they are so used to the interface and have all their email there. It's really quite sad.
Apples and oranges, my friend.You have to look at each situation independently before claiming it fact.
In the case of hotmail/gmail, the functionality and interface was far superior. Less intrusive ads, better spam filtering, more responsive interface, unique style of categorization.
MSN/ICQ. This is actually something I didn't notice. When MSN came out, I still used ICQ. At that time I probably migrated to AIM as my primary IM provider simply because most of my friends were on AIM. Even today my IM users breakdown to: 90% AIM, 8% YIM and 2% MSN. I don't even bother connecting to MSN anymore since those users are only other IM services. So as far as this huge exodus goes, I haven't seen it.
Lastly, I think Google will need more than brand name in order to get a large influx of users. I've never seen Google half-ass anything hoping users will flock. They will need some killer, ground-breaking features in order to get users to migrate. I just can't see what that will be.
We have clients like Trillian and GAIM because people are spread out across different IM services. Unless the supposed Google Talk can provide some groundbreaking features/functionality, I don't see people migrating to Google Talk.
Secondly, I don't see Google putting out a client that supports other services (Yahoo, MSN, AOL). It just hasn't been their style on their previous products, imo.
I've installed it and from my initial impressions it looks like a response to Yahoo's recent purchase of Konfabulator which does very similar things (brings a variety of different information directed towards the consumer to the desktop in one piece). Perhaps "response" is not the right word, but it's interesting to note how the two companies are converging in this direction. I'm not aware of a Microsoft application that's very similar. Maybe there is one.. if not, then expect one very soon.
The other thing that really, really bothered me is that I can't get the Google Desktop to work for firewall reasons (blame work). I couldn't find any proxy settings to muck with so now I'm dead in the water. (I'll try it at home, later.) Konfabulator, though, does work. Just something to note.
Thus, for the purposes of this study, we were forced to restrict our searches to those queries that returned less than 1,000 results on both Yahoo! and Google.
In order to create a large number of queries that returned less than 1,000 results, we took the commonly available English Ispell Wordlist.. and wrote a PERL script to randomly select two words at a time from that list.
Is it just me or does this study not sound convincing enough? There are too many holes in the way the study was conducted, IMHO. First of all, they restricted queries that return less than 1000 results? They're already limitied the sort of queries they're executing by choosing those that return significantly less results that other "popular" queries.
Secondly, they chose random words to create a query. This doesn't give me the confidence that this belongs to the same space of queries that people execute on the average. It would've been great if they sampled their queries from those that people actually execute instead of just crawling the english dictionary.
Nevertheless, bigger is not always better. The reason why Google became such a phenomenon was because of the quality of their search results. Duh.
Work two jobs. It's worth it in the long run. You can't compare experience in a research lab to the experience of flipping burgers with respect to what sort of jobs it can get you in the future. Plus, unless you plan on flipping burgers your whole life, research experience in your area of study will help you identify if that's what you want to do as a career.
If you have the luck of going to a university with a reputable computer science department, I would recommend you look to do some research under a CS professor.
In general, it's a good opportunity to find a project that you're interested in. At this point in your life there will probably be many projects that interest you. Find one! Find a couple! Contact the professors and ask to do a summer internship. Offer to help out with ANYTHING for FREE. Typically the experience itself will pay off.
The reason why it's such a great experience is that you'll work on interesting projects and the latest stuff. It's also a good opportunity to build contacts within your CS department should you need recommendations, etc. After you've contributed for a couple months, typically professors will find a way to get you some money as a part of work-study.
Personally, my summer internship turned into part-time research year around. It's probably the most interesting work I've ever done since you're actually doing research. It was an opportunity to do something really challenging. The goals are typically more groundbreaking.
Plus, this experience will help if you either 1) are looking for a job or 2) apply to grad school. It also helps you figure out what you want to do later on for a career or further CS studies.
While CNET's claim was that they were banned for displaying personal info, it seems like they were probably banned due to the tone of the article. If you read the original article that started all this, it's complete FUD w.r.t. Google. Read the original article for yourself.
I'd have to disagree. Radio tends to play 1-2 major hit tracks from an artist's CD. When I was a kid, this might've been enough for me to buy it. But in this day and age, given that I'm older and digital content, I never do this anymore.
I might buy a CD if 1) I enjoy at least half the tracks very much and 2) I want to support the artist. Why would I do this over p2p? Not everything is available over p2p. Ironically, the most available stuff is the most marketed stuff (most of which is crap). CDs sound better in my car then ripped mp3s (frequency range).
It wasn't until the advent of Napster did I really explore the different types of music out there. You can sample music at places like Amazon, but I, personally, can't really come to enjoy a song by only listening to a 30 second clip of it. Nor am I encouraged to buy the CD while still having this half-blindfold.
My guess is that you're describing a personal anecdotal experience that does not hold true for everyone.
You're omitting things like the cost of living, the cost of healthcare, inflation, the lack of pension packages, rising cost of education etc.
I quote the article:
"Now that manual labor can be done in developing countries for $2 a day, skills and education have become more essential than ever.
This has helped produce the extraordinary jump in income inequality. The after-tax income of the top 1 percent of American households jumped 139 percent, to more than $700,000, from 1979 to 2001, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which adjusted its numbers to account for inflation. The income of the middle fifth rose by just 17 percent, to $43,700, and the income of the poorest fifth rose only 9 percent.
For most workers, the only time in the last three decades when the rise in hourly pay beat inflation was during the speculative bubble of the 90's. Reduced pensions have made retirement less secure."
If you're truly interested in social (in)equality read the article. Many studies have been done on including those that can be found here:
In general, I'd agree with this contention that a middle class is needed for a democracy. Otherwise what sort of society are you left with? An aristocracy? We're certainly NOT headed towards communism/socialism.. in fact you could say we're headed in the opposite direction.
So if we had an aristocracy, I can certainly see "democracy" evaporating. More and more power will be wielded by the rich until one day the poor can take it no longer and they revolt. Isn't this the basic premise behind all the revolutions (Russian, French, etc) during the turn of the century?
Fortunately, I have a bit more faith in our little experiment. I have faith that our citizens won't be stupid enough to allow the unbalance of power to go too far.
I'm certainly no expert, but I'm calling you out. The divide between the rich and the poor is ever increasing. The gap between the haves and havenots gets bigger each year. If you read current literature, all signs point to this.
If you want to read more about how the poor are doing worse and how the super-rich are doing better than ever (and how the middle class is falling away) see it here:
I know how you feel. I've been there too. I've been screwed. It doesn't feel good to be bent over. I think the key is to watch who you trust, but not come to a state where you trust no one.
Perhaps I came off as too strong. I meant to imply that they seem to foster a sense of culture of optimism. Their motto seems to indicate that you can run a business without being "evil." I wouldn't call you evil, but you have to admit that you have a sense of pessimism (I'm sure you feel that it's just "realism"). I apologize if you thought I was calling you evil. I'm not. In fact I have a good friend (also a CS major) who is very much like you. You quoted me out of context but I think the rest of my post indicated this.
So I'm a bit late to the game and I didn't read every word between Paradox and ajs, but I have to say this: I think you both should save your breath. Here's why.
I think you're both examples of people who are cut from different cloths. Paradox is your typical misanthrope and pessimist: people are out to get you, money/greed is the basic motivator of all, keep your friends close but enemies closer. Ajs is the counter to that: people are generally good, there is such a thing as being unselfish, etc.
First of all, I had to admit I'm a bit biased in ajs direction. Why? Because back in school (in the CS dept at UC Berkeley) most of my classmates thought along the lines of ajs and what sounds like Brin and Page do. Perhaps that's a bit idealistic, but I think most CS types from the good institutions think the same. Perhaps I'M being too idealistic. But, if you've been there then you know what I'm talking about.
Frankly, I'd like to give Google the benefit of the doubt. Working on your project (without knowing too many of the deatils) is beneficial in both directions. You are both correct. 1) It's a fantastic outlet for employees and 2) It can provide software for the future. I'd rather have both than none.
Given that Paradox's position seems to be softening from his original post, I think part of him would agree with that. It's obvious, though, that Paradox is probably NOT the type to ever work at Google. I don't mean to sound judgmental but their motto IS "don't be evil" and Paradox's personality borders upon it. That sort of skepticism could be poison in a culture of dreamers.
I know some people who work at Google too. All of them are the most talented people in the industry. If they found themselves in a situation they did not like, they'd move on soon enough (especially once they're able to sell their options and retire (and that's no exaggeration)). The truth will unfold in time.
While I think that Google and Yahoo can co-exist if they differentiat their offerings, the "winner" in this battle will be determined by marketing, not technical innovation.
While you may be correct, this reminds me of the year 2000 when I had just graduated from college. I think my favorite search engine at the time was altavista and then I eventually found out about Google. I had not heard about them outside of my friends but the superior technology made me switch over.
Maybe I'm an exception since I travel in the CS/programming circles but, to date, I haven't seen the marketing (in the traditional sense, I suppose) of the Google search engine like I have for all of Yahoo.
It was a similar story back in 1996 when I switched from the netscape browser to IE. It wasn't marketing, it was superior technology.
Actually more details on the story brought to light the fact that he elicted money for FAKE services and accepted money for it. Last I checked that was illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow! Tried out the voice chat and it's really awesome. So far it's been very responsive with very minimal packet loss and very low (imperceptible) latency.
I have to respectfully disagree. While I feel you're right in almost all aspects, I don't see Google providing this feature.
Having the ability to connect to other companies' IM protocols has proved to be messy at best. So far, Trillian successfully does this but, even then, there was a very messy period often involving updates, service packs, downtime, etc. There's just no pretty way to do it w/o hacking and reverse engineering.
Also, Google hasn't been the best integrator into services provided by competitors like Yahoo, AOL and MSN. Their vision seems to be to bring something to market that completely blows the competition away, so integration is not needed. I don't see that changing.
Perhaps we should contrast the CEOs/shareholder's vision to Page/Brin's vision. The former's vision is to get as many people to click on their ads (true). The latter's vision is to index all of the world's information. Does this fit into that latter's vision? I'm not so sure it does. Given that GDS was recently released and is something surprisingly more consumer-oriented, perhaps what I've said can be thrown out the window.
A humble supposition: If it integrates into the sidebar then the functionality would already be in there (assuming that the IM client will be release soon (tomorrow)). I don't see Google being sloppy (e.g., releasing GDS yesterday and then two days later releasing Google Talk and then asking everyone to download the latest plugin... worst way to bring it to market).
I don't think Google Talk is for real. If it is, then I don't see automatic integration into sidebar for now. I would LIKE to see the two combined somehow.. maybe that just makes both applications bloated.
This is true for the geek/slashdot community. This is not true for the majority of the public. I still know non-technical people who won't move away from hotmail to gmail because they are so used to the interface and have all their email there. It's really quite sad.
Apples and oranges, my friend.You have to look at each situation independently before claiming it fact.
In the case of hotmail/gmail, the functionality and interface was far superior. Less intrusive ads, better spam filtering, more responsive interface, unique style of categorization.
MSN/ICQ. This is actually something I didn't notice. When MSN came out, I still used ICQ. At that time I probably migrated to AIM as my primary IM provider simply because most of my friends were on AIM. Even today my IM users breakdown to: 90% AIM, 8% YIM and 2% MSN. I don't even bother connecting to MSN anymore since those users are only other IM services. So as far as this huge exodus goes, I haven't seen it.
Lastly, I think Google will need more than brand name in order to get a large influx of users. I've never seen Google half-ass anything hoping users will flock. They will need some killer, ground-breaking features in order to get users to migrate. I just can't see what that will be.
Agreed.
We have clients like Trillian and GAIM because people are spread out across different IM services. Unless the supposed Google Talk can provide some groundbreaking features/functionality, I don't see people migrating to Google Talk.
Secondly, I don't see Google putting out a client that supports other services (Yahoo, MSN, AOL). It just hasn't been their style on their previous products, imo.
..or mountain dew, the drink of (programming) champions.
I've installed it and from my initial impressions it looks like a response to Yahoo's recent purchase of Konfabulator which does very similar things (brings a variety of different information directed towards the consumer to the desktop in one piece). Perhaps "response" is not the right word, but it's interesting to note how the two companies are converging in this direction. I'm not aware of a Microsoft application that's very similar. Maybe there is one.. if not, then expect one very soon.
The other thing that really, really bothered me is that I can't get the Google Desktop to work for firewall reasons (blame work). I couldn't find any proxy settings to muck with so now I'm dead in the water. (I'll try it at home, later.) Konfabulator, though, does work. Just something to note.
Is it just me or does this study not sound convincing enough? There are too many holes in the way the study was conducted, IMHO. First of all, they restricted queries that return less than 1000 results? They're already limitied the sort of queries they're executing by choosing those that return significantly less results that other "popular" queries.
Secondly, they chose random words to create a query. This doesn't give me the confidence that this belongs to the same space of queries that people execute on the average. It would've been great if they sampled their queries from those that people actually execute instead of just crawling the english dictionary.
Nevertheless, bigger is not always better. The reason why Google became such a phenomenon was because of the quality of their search results. Duh.
Work two jobs. It's worth it in the long run. You can't compare experience in a research lab to the experience of flipping burgers with respect to what sort of jobs it can get you in the future. Plus, unless you plan on flipping burgers your whole life, research experience in your area of study will help you identify if that's what you want to do as a career.
(Assumption: you're a computer science major.)
If you have the luck of going to a university with a reputable computer science department, I would recommend you look to do some research under a CS professor.
In general, it's a good opportunity to find a project that you're interested in. At this point in your life there will probably be many projects that interest you. Find one! Find a couple! Contact the professors and ask to do a summer internship. Offer to help out with ANYTHING for FREE. Typically the experience itself will pay off.
The reason why it's such a great experience is that you'll work on interesting projects and the latest stuff. It's also a good opportunity to build contacts within your CS department should you need recommendations, etc. After you've contributed for a couple months, typically professors will find a way to get you some money as a part of work-study.
Personally, my summer internship turned into part-time research year around. It's probably the most interesting work I've ever done since you're actually doing research. It was an opportunity to do something really challenging. The goals are typically more groundbreaking.
Plus, this experience will help if you either 1) are looking for a job or 2) apply to grad school. It also helps you figure out what you want to do later on for a career or further CS studies.
While CNET's claim was that they were banned for displaying personal info, it seems like they were probably banned due to the tone of the article. If you read the original article that started all this, it's complete FUD w.r.t. Google. Read the original article for yourself.
I'd have to disagree. Radio tends to play 1-2 major hit tracks from an artist's CD. When I was a kid, this might've been enough for me to buy it. But in this day and age, given that I'm older and digital content, I never do this anymore.
I might buy a CD if 1) I enjoy at least half the tracks very much and 2) I want to support the artist. Why would I do this over p2p? Not everything is available over p2p. Ironically, the most available stuff is the most marketed stuff (most of which is crap). CDs sound better in my car then ripped mp3s (frequency range).
It wasn't until the advent of Napster did I really explore the different types of music out there. You can sample music at places like Amazon, but I, personally, can't really come to enjoy a song by only listening to a 30 second clip of it. Nor am I encouraged to buy the CD while still having this half-blindfold.
My guess is that you're describing a personal anecdotal experience that does not hold true for everyone.
Westerners do eat some nasty shit. Have you ever had "food" in Britain?? blech!
And I won't even get into the rest of Europe...
You're omitting things like the cost of living, the cost of healthcare, inflation, the lack of pension packages, rising cost of education etc.
I quote the article:
"Now that manual labor can be done in developing countries for $2 a day, skills and education have become more essential than ever.
This has helped produce the extraordinary jump in income inequality. The after-tax income of the top 1 percent of American households jumped 139 percent, to more than $700,000, from 1979 to 2001, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which adjusted its numbers to account for inflation. The income of the middle fifth rose by just 17 percent, to $43,700, and the income of the poorest fifth rose only 9 percent.
For most workers, the only time in the last three decades when the rise in hourly pay beat inflation was during the speculative bubble of the 90's. Reduced pensions have made retirement less secure."
If you're truly interested in social (in)equality read the article. Many studies have been done on including those that can be found here:
Russell Sage Foundation: Social Inequality Working Papers
Why don't you read something about the topic before acting like a pundit? It's quite obvious you don't know much about the facts.
In general, I'd agree with this contention that a middle class is needed for a democracy. Otherwise what sort of society are you left with? An aristocracy? We're certainly NOT headed towards communism/socialism .. in fact you could say we're headed in the opposite direction.
So if we had an aristocracy, I can certainly see "democracy" evaporating. More and more power will be wielded by the rich until one day the poor can take it no longer and they revolt. Isn't this the basic premise behind all the revolutions (Russian, French, etc) during the turn of the century?
Fortunately, I have a bit more faith in our little experiment. I have faith that our citizens won't be stupid enough to allow the unbalance of power to go too far.
I'm certainly no expert, but I'm calling you out. The divide between the rich and the poor is ever increasing. The gap between the haves and havenots gets bigger each year. If you read current literature, all signs point to this.
If you want to read more about how the poor are doing worse and how the super-rich are doing better than ever (and how the middle class is falling away) see it here:
Class Matters - Social Class in the USA
As Reagan said, "Trust, but verify." :)
I know how you feel. I've been there too. I've been screwed. It doesn't feel good to be bent over. I think the key is to watch who you trust, but not come to a state where you trust no one.
Good luck.
Perhaps I came off as too strong. I meant to imply that they seem to foster a sense of culture of optimism. Their motto seems to indicate that you can run a business without being "evil." I wouldn't call you evil, but you have to admit that you have a sense of pessimism (I'm sure you feel that it's just "realism"). I apologize if you thought I was calling you evil. I'm not. In fact I have a good friend (also a CS major) who is very much like you. You quoted me out of context but I think the rest of my post indicated this.
So I'm a bit late to the game and I didn't read every word between Paradox and ajs, but I have to say this: I think you both should save your breath. Here's why.
I think you're both examples of people who are cut from different cloths. Paradox is your typical misanthrope and pessimist: people are out to get you, money/greed is the basic motivator of all, keep your friends close but enemies closer. Ajs is the counter to that: people are generally good, there is such a thing as being unselfish, etc.
First of all, I had to admit I'm a bit biased in ajs direction. Why? Because back in school (in the CS dept at UC Berkeley) most of my classmates thought along the lines of ajs and what sounds like Brin and Page do. Perhaps that's a bit idealistic, but I think most CS types from the good institutions think the same. Perhaps I'M being too idealistic. But, if you've been there then you know what I'm talking about.
Frankly, I'd like to give Google the benefit of the doubt. Working on your project (without knowing too many of the deatils) is beneficial in both directions. You are both correct. 1) It's a fantastic outlet for employees and 2) It can provide software for the future. I'd rather have both than none.
Given that Paradox's position seems to be softening from his original post, I think part of him would agree with that. It's obvious, though, that Paradox is probably NOT the type to ever work at Google. I don't mean to sound judgmental but their motto IS "don't be evil" and Paradox's personality borders upon it. That sort of skepticism could be poison in a culture of dreamers.
I know some people who work at Google too. All of them are the most talented people in the industry. If they found themselves in a situation they did not like, they'd move on soon enough (especially once they're able to sell their options and retire (and that's no exaggeration)). The truth will unfold in time.
While you may be correct, this reminds me of the year 2000 when I had just graduated from college. I think my favorite search engine at the time was altavista and then I eventually found out about Google. I had not heard about them outside of my friends but the superior technology made me switch over.
Maybe I'm an exception since I travel in the CS/programming circles but, to date, I haven't seen the marketing (in the traditional sense, I suppose) of the Google search engine like I have for all of Yahoo.
It was a similar story back in 1996 when I switched from the netscape browser to IE. It wasn't marketing, it was superior technology.
Actually more details on the story brought to light the fact that he elicted money for FAKE services and accepted money for it. Last I checked that was illegal.
Try telling that to Joe User.