But I don't agree with what you seem to be saying, which is that search engines should be advertising disguised as a reference tool.
Google is a reference tool through which people are advertising, and as an advertising medium, it is not good.
That's the problem.
By commercial search, I mean a search for products and services, such as "web hosting". There are thousands of companies providing "web hosting", but you go to Google, and the same company is #1 every time.
That isn't right.
Or set up a commercial search engine that announces itself as nothing more than an advertising engine
Exactly - this is the way it needs to be. Google may even be laying the groundwork with Froogle, but there's still a long way to go.
I'm not sure why a search engine would need to "represent an even distribution of wealth."
Of course there is no requirement on a search engine to represent an even distribution of wealth, but it is in the SE's own interest to if it does not want to become the spam-fest that is the commercial Google.
When there are thousands of companies providing $service, why should serch engines direct the overwhelming majority of traffic to the one site that happens to fit their algorithmic opinion the best.
Any system like this with such a clear need for top ranking is going to invite abuse.
Exactly, that is why I am saying that free search has no place in the commercial Internet.
Google's PageRank is failing miserably for commercial search. PageRank is fine for academic / informational searches.
In a commercial environment, it is simply not possible for a free search service to exist that is fair, represents an even distribution of wealth, and is immune from abuse.
Advertising has to be paid for. "Free Search" is fine for university sites and purely non-profit informational pages, but for a commercial search your position in search engines must be purchased based on the keywords against which you wish to bid.
I've been thinking about this, and although I have no professional qualification in economics i'm not sure you can base a stable economy on non-tangible (i.e. Intellectual Property) assets.
We used to live in caves. Your body is perfectly capable of seeing off any nastyness you pick up of public keyboards.
To much cleanliness is just as unhealthy as too little. People that wash their hands all the time are generally ill far more often than those that feed their bodies immune system and let it develop in the way in which it is supposed to.
Further, i'd bet that MasterCard and Visa already have it worked out and have had teams working on the infrastructure for MicroPayments for online transactions for a while.
The problem with there being competing systems for MicroPayments is that consumers don't want to have multiple accounts (well at least I don't anyway).
Let's say Slashdot joins MicroPayment provider X, and New York Times Online joins MicroPayment provider Y, I need to have accounts with X and Y if those 2 websites happen to be in my favourites.
Interoperability needs to be sorted out right up front; otherwise no one company will be successful.
The obvious players are Visa and Mastercard. I suspect that they are just treading water until there is a whiff of possible competition, at which point they will swoop in together make MicroPayments happen between them.
...then you can go and buy software developed out of a motivation for financial gain.
Surely open source projects exist for other motivations, and hence have less (if any) need to aim towards release dates.
After all, in the business world the sheer fact that you _have_ to get something out by a particular date (because marketing / the bean counters said so) contributes significantly to the quality problems.
But that one click is one more click than they would have got.
The whole point is that deep linking drives somebody to your site that would never have come by were it not for that deep link - i.e. you do not have the opportunity to generate the 2 clicks that you talk about.
You have the opportunity on the end of that one click to capitalise on it and entice the visitor into the rest of your site.
I've recently started using a news aggregator that takes RSS feeds from various sources and provides deep links straight to the article pages of their sites.
I find myself visiting pages on the Register, The Motley Fool, and loads of other websites that I would never have visited otherwise.
The publishers of these feeds know that, they know that it brings traffic and if they didn't want to do it they could pull the feed and prevent deep linking using any of various hacks.
It is up to them as a publisher to use deep linking to their advantage and stop being so anal about it.
B&Q (well at least the bigger stores) now stock a whole range of home networking kit that is wau cheaper than same stuff in PC World. Not a lot of people know that.
If two parties have a legal dispute it should be taken up in private between themselves - ideally limited to necessary personnel and their legal departments.
You should not use "open letters" and press releases as part of what could become a legal process.
Too much media attention after all can cause cases to be thrown out of court.
Look at SCO and their press statement "we're going to revoke IBM's license at midnight Friday...." I'm sorry, but that is pathetic behaviour and something that should be a private matter between the two companies legal representatives.
I have a theory that boredom is actually a natural self preservation mechanism designed to prevent you from getting stuck in a life threatening recursive situation.
The purpose of a postal code is to provide an encoding system that allows the postal distribution network to route mail first between hubs, then down to a local sorting office, and finally into a postman's walk number.
The purpose is not to locate point X on a sphere, we already have a perfectly adequate global coordinate system for that.
Slashdot Mirror
been part of the due legal process?
This really pisses me off that companies put out "press releases" covering what should be a private matter between the parties involved.
Why don't journalists just ignore SCO in the same way a parent ignores a screaming child pushing for an ice cream?
But I don't agree with what you seem to be saying, which is that search engines should be advertising disguised as a reference tool.
Google is a reference tool through which people are advertising, and as an advertising medium, it is not good.
That's the problem.
By commercial search, I mean a search for products and services, such as "web hosting". There are thousands of companies providing "web hosting", but you go to Google, and the same company is #1 every time.
That isn't right.
Or set up a commercial search engine that announces itself as nothing more than an advertising engine
Exactly - this is the way it needs to be. Google may even be laying the groundwork with Froogle, but there's still a long way to go.
I'm not sure why a search engine would need to "represent an even distribution of wealth."
Of course there is no requirement on a search engine to represent an even distribution of wealth, but it is in the SE's own interest to if it does not want to become the spam-fest that is the commercial Google.
When there are thousands of companies providing $service, why should serch engines direct the overwhelming majority of traffic to the one site that happens to fit their algorithmic opinion the best.
Any system like this with such a clear need for top ranking is going to invite abuse.
Exactly, that is why I am saying that free search has no place in the commercial Internet.
Google's PageRank is failing miserably for commercial search. PageRank is fine for academic / informational searches.
In a commercial environment, it is simply not possible for a free search service to exist that is fair, represents an even distribution of wealth, and is immune from abuse.
Advertising has to be paid for. "Free Search" is fine for university sites and purely non-profit informational pages, but for a commercial search your position in search engines must be purchased based on the keywords against which you wish to bid.
Otherwise basic economics breaks down.
Those that can't, talk about it.
But if you can't do it, surely you're not qualified to talk about it.
Journalists suck.
Tech. journalists suck.
I've been thinking about this, and although I have no professional qualification in economics i'm not sure you can base a stable economy on non-tangible (i.e. Intellectual Property) assets.
Bear in mind I don't know what i'm talking about.
We used to live in caves. Your body is perfectly capable of seeing off any nastyness you pick up of public keyboards.
To much cleanliness is just as unhealthy as too little. People that wash their hands all the time are generally ill far more often than those that feed their bodies immune system and let it develop in the way in which it is supposed to.
who insist on a completely new design of power supply and data cable for every phone that they bring out :(
Further, i'd bet that MasterCard and Visa already have it worked out and have had teams working on the infrastructure for MicroPayments for online transactions for a while.
For some reason they are waiting.
The problem with there being competing systems for MicroPayments is that consumers don't want to have multiple accounts (well at least I don't anyway).
Let's say Slashdot joins MicroPayment provider X, and New York Times Online joins MicroPayment provider Y, I need to have accounts with X and Y if those 2 websites happen to be in my favourites.
Interoperability needs to be sorted out right up front; otherwise no one company will be successful.
The obvious players are Visa and Mastercard. I suspect that they are just treading water until there is a whiff of possible competition, at which point they will swoop in together make MicroPayments happen between them.
...then you can go and buy software developed out of a motivation for financial gain.
Surely open source projects exist for other motivations, and hence have less (if any) need to aim towards release dates.
After all, in the business world the sheer fact that you _have_ to get something out by a particular date (because marketing / the bean counters said so) contributes significantly to the quality problems.
They're running an Ad on the DoubleClick network that looks like a dialog box.
If you click on it they invite you to join the class...
oh wait
But that one click is one more click than they would have got.
The whole point is that deep linking drives somebody to your site that would never have come by were it not for that deep link - i.e. you do not have the opportunity to generate the 2 clicks that you talk about.
You have the opportunity on the end of that one click to capitalise on it and entice the visitor into the rest of your site.
I've recently started using a news aggregator that takes RSS feeds from various sources and provides deep links straight to the article pages of their sites.
I find myself visiting pages on the Register, The Motley Fool, and loads of other websites that I would never have visited otherwise.
The publishers of these feeds know that, they know that it brings traffic and if they didn't want to do it they could pull the feed and prevent deep linking using any of various hacks.
It is up to them as a publisher to use deep linking to their advantage and stop being so anal about it.
The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
B&Q (well at least the bigger stores) now stock a whole range of home networking kit that is wau cheaper than same stuff in PC World. Not a lot of people know that.
So that's prior art to their 1's and 0's patent then.
telling you not to buy Kentucky Fried Chicken.
DUH.
#include "/plane_stuff/fly-by-wire/777.h"
I'm getting a bit tired of all this.
If two parties have a legal dispute it should be taken up in private between themselves - ideally limited to necessary personnel and their legal departments.
You should not use "open letters" and press releases as part of what could become a legal process.
Too much media attention after all can cause cases to be thrown out of court.
Look at SCO and their press statement "we're going to revoke IBM's license at midnight Friday...." I'm sorry, but that is pathetic behaviour and something that should be a private matter between the two companies legal representatives.
I have a theory that boredom is actually a natural self preservation mechanism designed to prevent you from getting stuck in a life threatening recursive situation.
The purpose of a postal code is to provide an encoding system that allows the postal distribution network to route mail first between hubs, then down to a local sorting office, and finally into a postman's walk number.
The purpose is not to locate point X on a sphere, we already have a perfectly adequate global coordinate system for that.
Especially if the clean-up group are not working closely with the original developers.
Fix 1 security hole.
Introduce 100 bugs.
Hmmm.
..you can't go making throw-away comments about it in a PRESS RELEASE of all things and then expect to be taken seriously in a court of law later.
There are plenty of nerds into Windsurfing, Handgliding, Morris Dancing, and goodness knows what else.
But that does not make them Slashdot material.
Buffey is not slashdot material. Sorry.