There was a writeup somewhere by another blogger that pointed out that the original blogger misrepresented the google situation. He eventually came to the conclusion that Google's cache was simply a newer version of the spreadsheet and not actively purged.
Which, imo, is a way more plausible scenario than active action on Google's part.
Sorry, no links, google it:) Hopefully china hasn't gotten to the search results.
I see your point but I think there's a line that needs to be drawn somewhere (that's not to say we're drawing it correctly).
Smoking and obesity are good examples. I don't care if you want to kill yourself except that you're going to use our shared resources in the process. When smokers get sick and start to die it's not a cheap process, and they're pulling from the same pool I am for insurance and hospital resources. So yes, by smoking, you are subtly taking advantage of non-smokers. Obesity may turn out to be even worse.
There's probably many more sides to the argument, but this is just one example where something done seemingly to only you actually affects society as a whole, so it's in society's best interest to make you not do it.
AVG doesn't handle this properly and requests the URL http://mysite/%3Fquery%3Dmy+search+params which instead of even returning the page it's purportedly scanning returns a 404.
They may not be malicious but they are definitely completely incompetent.
I think he was referring to the $10 data plan increase, which over the length of a 2 year contract will add $240 to the cost of the phone (making it $40 more expensive than the original).
There is no guarantee when it comes to [any] stocks.
There are a bunch of books that illustrate this, "Irrational Exuberance" is one, and point out that stock market pricing has more to do with investor sentiment and enthusiasm (among other things) than company fundamentals.
If, for example, defined benefit retirement plans came back in style the market would surely take a very long hit as workers stopped contributing all of their 401k retirement savings to it reducing demand for stocks. This would happen regardless of the earnings of the companies in the market.
Just because we haven't seen a period where they don't make money over a set of hypothetical "long run"s doesn't mean that *your* long run will be as rosey.
I'd assume that's more of a virus protection measure than google actively blocking encryption. A while ago encrypted zip files where the password was in the email was a widely used attack vector for malware. Most everyone (my company, for example) blocks them now, so it's not as widely used.
I disagree, I started buying music again when Amazon started offering MP3s. It's still a bit of a pita compared to itunes, but close enough to my ideal to get me to use it.
There's a way to coax people back to purchasing, they're just doing it totally wrong.
If Pandora started a one-click purchase system (implementation here is key, it must integrate seemlessly with popular media management software), with proper marketing they could easily become the #1 music seller, AND get more people to actually buy music again.
Itunes is close to the perfect model except for the DRM aspect, it's extremely easy to find and buy music you like. Pandora could take that a step further by finding it for you.
I don't disagree with any of the points you've made, other than the fact that they chose this path in order to keep their dominance. Yes, keeping backwards compatibility for increasingly diverse environments is hard. But they figured it was the easiest way to keep people on their platform. To say that this somehow releases them from the commitment of making their hacks and fixes *work* is another issue entirely.
I don't disagree that it's 'hard'. I disagree that there was no choice in going that route. They chose poorly and we, the consumers, are left to deal with it. Just because the customer thinks they will be happy with a choice doesn't mean it was the right choice, or even that the customer will indeed be happier with it. Sometimes you have to make the hard choices for your customer knowing they aren't equipped to make it themselves.
It would be more like, I go to my profile page 'ballwall' and there's a field for my openID username[s]. After I populate that I can log in with that or my regular slashdot id. I'd imagine that once you've successfully logged in via openID that you would be able to disable normal password auth altogether.
I'd really love to see this get widespread use. I really really want to use two factor authentication everywhere. I very much dislike having to manage a ton of passwords.
In fact, I might like it enough that I'd actually wade through slashcode to try and implement it if it would have a remote chance of being used.
If you know what you're doing writing manageable perl is easy. I don't think I've ever seen a CPAN module I didn't readily understand.
I'm always welcome to examples of the contrary, but people can write crappy code in pretty much any language. Perl just lets crappy programmers take crappy code to the next level.
But, it's also very good about getting out of the way if you know what you're doing.
3. He chose a job that involves things he *likes* to do and therefore there isn't much of a distinction between work and play. (My personal favorite option).
A trackpoint is infinitely better than a touch pad (but it still has one if you want it). I wish they made a full size keyboard (with numkeys) with this style of keys and mouse input, but you can always add a 10 key to the right of it via usb.
Why is Blizzard doing this? It sounds to me like Blizzard figured out a way to not have to pay Akamai, or have a huge amount of bandwidth themselves. They're instead pushing their bandwidth costs to Comcast (and other ISPs).
IIRC, one of AT&T's statements was something like "Google is getting a free ride", which is obviously false. Google is paying for all of the bandwidth they are using on their end. In this situation, though, Blizzard *is* getting a free ride.
I'm not saying I agree with anything I've just said, but it seems like commercial use of Bittorrent is really just pawning your distrubtion costs off onto ISPs. You could say they're pawning distribution costs onto the end users, which I wouldn't necessarily disagree with, but in that case I don't think unlimited internet is going to be a viable model for ISPs for much longer. Especially if bittorrent starts to be the primary distribution mechanism for all the high bandwidth stuff coming up like IPTV.
I think there are two sides to this. On my resume I put java first, on slashdot I put perl first. Java is a great way to make money because some PHB realized that if you force everyone to reuse the same design patterns all over the place you can treat programmers like cogs. This, though, isn't a fun way to write code. Plus, you can still write crap in java, it's just legible crap. There are instances where you want to make java do something that you just can't make it do [without a LOT of code that ends up approximating other languages anyway].
That's why when I'm talking about what I/like/ to do I mention perl first. With perl a lot more of the language is in your control, and you can make it do all sorts of interesting things. Doing so in a maintainable way is tricky, but no more tricky than any other language.
Somehow perl got pigeonholed into the same group as shell scripting (and earlier versions were probably very similar), but in reality the current iteration of perl is a lot closer to Lisp. Granted, the OO stuff was bolted on later, but now it's even more OO capable than java in that it's not constrained by someone elses notion of what perfect OO is. (Interfaces vs multiple inheritance, I'm looking at you). I haven't written a non-OO perl app in years (minus throw away stuff).
Anyway, point is Resume: java Fun: perl That doesn't mean I'm a 'script writer'.
Blackberry (afaik) is much more than the device. It's actually a huge infrastructure that actually makes your device sit on the corporate network, along with all the encryption, authentication, and policy enforcement to make that communication secure. From wiping the device after a certain number of invalid password attempts to enforcement of password policies on the device itself.
If you wanted the same level of intranet access to be available on the iphone, you'd need to set up an internet facing IMAP server, proxy, LDAP server, etc, and then somehow authenticate every piece of traffic going to all of them (which, I'd imagine, would be setting multiple passwords in several places on the iPhone, but they may have been smarter than that). And this still leaves the device itself wide open in the case of loss or theft. The other option is a VPN, but I haven't heard of Apple stating they'd be included anything like that on the phone.
I have 'Keymarks' in my bookmarks for cpan and a few other pages (and have since ff 1.5), so putting: cpan DBD::DB2 in the address bar brings up the relevant cpan search.
Are there any new features that the Places feature offers? I imagine having a sql structure would be a benefit if you're talking about thousands of bookmarks, but it seems like overkill to me. Unnecessary complexity. (It could very well be I just haven't thought of what the developers are imagining it will be useful for).
Your post made me think of something... Anyone think there will soon be legislation for taking your email address with you when you change ISPs like the cell phone legislation a few years ago?
Technically it would be a mess, but from my understanding it was with the telecoms too.
The problem is the line between viral marketing and Tivo replacement. The single viral video probably is a great benefit to a company like Viacom, but if all the content is always available to YouTube, what incentive do people have to watch it on TV? They can just call it up any time they want on-demand. This is especially true for shows like the Daily Show or SNL, where you don't really need HDTV to enjoy it.
I think Viacom and others are trying to kill the viral marketing aspect to avoid the Tivo one. I'm not sure anyone can predict whether preventing or encouraging is the better route (time may tell). One can probably predict, though, that they can't stop it.
Then again, if someone comes up with a viable revenue model for these short clips (an adsense like system maybe) there may be money in it. The problem is, there's a HUGE barrier to entry for creating a video ad. Adsense is popular because advertisers don't have to spend an arm and a leg to produce an ad. Small internet businesses have cropped up where Adwords/adsense are the sole compenent in their marketing budgets, and it works. I don't think the same is possible with video ads.
Slashdot Mirror
There was a writeup somewhere by another blogger that pointed out that the original blogger misrepresented the google situation. He eventually came to the conclusion that Google's cache was simply a newer version of the spreadsheet and not actively purged.
Which, imo, is a way more plausible scenario than active action on Google's part.
Sorry, no links, google it :) Hopefully china hasn't gotten to the search results.
This thread (and how you worked it with the other slashdot employees) single-handedly convinced me to subscribe.
Keep up the good work, Taco.
I see your point but I think there's a line that needs to be drawn somewhere (that's not to say we're drawing it correctly).
Smoking and obesity are good examples. I don't care if you want to kill yourself except that you're going to use our shared resources in the process. When smokers get sick and start to die it's not a cheap process, and they're pulling from the same pool I am for insurance and hospital resources. So yes, by smoking, you are subtly taking advantage of non-smokers. Obesity may turn out to be even worse.
There's probably many more sides to the argument, but this is just one example where something done seemingly to only you actually affects society as a whole, so it's in society's best interest to make you not do it.
It does follow adwords links, but it does so without actually scanning the destination for malware (sometimes). Hilarious, really.
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=603045&cid=24046327
It's worse than that. The bot crawls the adwords links as well, but it does so poorly. There are two issues.
1. They may be actually charging advertisers money for the fake clicks.
2. Adwords can use url parameters to send data about the search (for example, instead of linking to http://mysite/ it links to http://mysite/?query=my+search+params
AVG doesn't handle this properly and requests the URL http://mysite/%3Fquery%3Dmy+search+params which instead of even returning the page it's purportedly scanning returns a 404.
They may not be malicious but they are definitely completely incompetent.
I think you mean "nucular"
I think he was referring to the $10 data plan increase, which over the length of a 2 year contract will add $240 to the cost of the phone (making it $40 more expensive than the original).
There is no guarantee when it comes to [any] stocks.
There are a bunch of books that illustrate this, "Irrational Exuberance" is one, and point out that stock market pricing has more to do with investor sentiment and enthusiasm (among other things) than company fundamentals.
If, for example, defined benefit retirement plans came back in style the market would surely take a very long hit as workers stopped contributing all of their 401k retirement savings to it reducing demand for stocks. This would happen regardless of the earnings of the companies in the market.
Just because we haven't seen a period where they don't make money over a set of hypothetical "long run"s doesn't mean that *your* long run will be as rosey.
I'd assume that's more of a virus protection measure than google actively blocking encryption. A while ago encrypted zip files where the password was in the email was a widely used attack vector for malware. Most everyone (my company, for example) blocks them now, so it's not as widely used.
I disagree, I started buying music again when Amazon started offering MP3s. It's still a bit of a pita compared to itunes, but close enough to my ideal to get me to use it.
There's a way to coax people back to purchasing, they're just doing it totally wrong.
If Pandora started a one-click purchase system (implementation here is key, it must integrate seemlessly with popular media management software), with proper marketing they could easily become the #1 music seller, AND get more people to actually buy music again.
Itunes is close to the perfect model except for the DRM aspect, it's extremely easy to find and buy music you like. Pandora could take that a step further by finding it for you.
My guess is the labels use Fedex or UPS (or some other non-postal service method). If so, do these rules apply?
I don't disagree with any of the points you've made, other than the fact that they chose this path in order to keep their dominance. Yes, keeping backwards compatibility for increasingly diverse environments is hard. But they figured it was the easiest way to keep people on their platform. To say that this somehow releases them from the commitment of making their hacks and fixes *work* is another issue entirely.
I don't disagree that it's 'hard'. I disagree that there was no choice in going that route. They chose poorly and we, the consumers, are left to deal with it. Just because the customer thinks they will be happy with a choice doesn't mean it was the right choice, or even that the customer will indeed be happier with it. Sometimes you have to make the hard choices for your customer knowing they aren't equipped to make it themselves.
I don't think it works like that.
It would be more like, I go to my profile page 'ballwall' and there's a field for my openID username[s]. After I populate that I can log in with that or my regular slashdot id. I'd imagine that once you've successfully logged in via openID that you would be able to disable normal password auth altogether.
I'd really love to see this get widespread use. I really really want to use two factor authentication everywhere. I very much dislike having to manage a ton of passwords.
In fact, I might like it enough that I'd actually wade through slashcode to try and implement it if it would have a remote chance of being used.
If you know what you're doing writing manageable perl is easy. I don't think I've ever seen a CPAN module I didn't readily understand.
I'm always welcome to examples of the contrary, but people can write crappy code in pretty much any language. Perl just lets crappy programmers take crappy code to the next level.
But, it's also very good about getting out of the way if you know what you're doing.
3. He chose a job that involves things he *likes* to do and therefore there isn't much of a distinction between work and play. (My personal favorite option).
You want this.
A trackpoint is infinitely better than a touch pad (but it still has one if you want it). I wish they made a full size keyboard (with numkeys) with this style of keys and mouse input, but you can always add a 10 key to the right of it via usb.
Playing devil's advocate for a second...
Why is Blizzard doing this? It sounds to me like Blizzard figured out a way to not have to pay Akamai, or have a huge amount of bandwidth themselves. They're instead pushing their bandwidth costs to Comcast (and other ISPs).
IIRC, one of AT&T's statements was something like "Google is getting a free ride", which is obviously false. Google is paying for all of the bandwidth they are using on their end. In this situation, though, Blizzard *is* getting a free ride.
I'm not saying I agree with anything I've just said, but it seems like commercial use of Bittorrent is really just pawning your distrubtion costs off onto ISPs. You could say they're pawning distribution costs onto the end users, which I wouldn't necessarily disagree with, but in that case I don't think unlimited internet is going to be a viable model for ISPs for much longer. Especially if bittorrent starts to be the primary distribution mechanism for all the high bandwidth stuff coming up like IPTV.
That didn't end too well for microsoft last time.
I think there are two sides to this. On my resume I put java first, on slashdot I put perl first. Java is a great way to make money because some PHB realized that if you force everyone to reuse the same design patterns all over the place you can treat programmers like cogs. This, though, isn't a fun way to write code. Plus, you can still write crap in java, it's just legible crap. There are instances where you want to make java do something that you just can't make it do [without a LOT of code that ends up approximating other languages anyway].
/like/ to do I mention perl first. With perl a lot more of the language is in your control, and you can make it do all sorts of interesting things. Doing so in a maintainable way is tricky, but no more tricky than any other language.
That's why when I'm talking about what I
Somehow perl got pigeonholed into the same group as shell scripting (and earlier versions were probably very similar), but in reality the current iteration of perl is a lot closer to Lisp. Granted, the OO stuff was bolted on later, but now it's even more OO capable than java in that it's not constrained by someone elses notion of what perfect OO is. (Interfaces vs multiple inheritance, I'm looking at you). I haven't written a non-OO perl app in years (minus throw away stuff).
Anyway, point is
Resume: java
Fun: perl
That doesn't mean I'm a 'script writer'.
Blackberry (afaik) is much more than the device. It's actually a huge infrastructure that actually makes your device sit on the corporate network, along with all the encryption, authentication, and policy enforcement to make that communication secure. From wiping the device after a certain number of invalid password attempts to enforcement of password policies on the device itself.
If you wanted the same level of intranet access to be available on the iphone, you'd need to set up an internet facing IMAP server, proxy, LDAP server, etc, and then somehow authenticate every piece of traffic going to all of them (which, I'd imagine, would be setting multiple passwords in several places on the iPhone, but they may have been smarter than that). And this still leaves the device itself wide open in the case of loss or theft. The other option is a VPN, but I haven't heard of Apple stating they'd be included anything like that on the phone.
Like this?
I thought this was in FF now?
I have 'Keymarks' in my bookmarks for cpan and a few other pages (and have since ff 1.5), so putting:
cpan DBD::DB2
in the address bar brings up the relevant cpan search.
Are there any new features that the Places feature offers? I imagine having a sql structure would be a benefit if you're talking about thousands of bookmarks, but it seems like overkill to me. Unnecessary complexity. (It could very well be I just haven't thought of what the developers are imagining it will be useful for).
Your post made me think of something... Anyone think there will soon be legislation for taking your email address with you when you change ISPs like the cell phone legislation a few years ago?
Technically it would be a mess, but from my understanding it was with the telecoms too.
Logically it's pretty much the same thing.
The problem is the line between viral marketing and Tivo replacement. The single viral video probably is a great benefit to a company like Viacom, but if all the content is always available to YouTube, what incentive do people have to watch it on TV? They can just call it up any time they want on-demand. This is especially true for shows like the Daily Show or SNL, where you don't really need HDTV to enjoy it.
I think Viacom and others are trying to kill the viral marketing aspect to avoid the Tivo one. I'm not sure anyone can predict whether preventing or encouraging is the better route (time may tell). One can probably predict, though, that they can't stop it.
Then again, if someone comes up with a viable revenue model for these short clips (an adsense like system maybe) there may be money in it. The problem is, there's a HUGE barrier to entry for creating a video ad. Adsense is popular because advertisers don't have to spend an arm and a leg to produce an ad. Small internet businesses have cropped up where Adwords/adsense are the sole compenent in their marketing budgets, and it works. I don't think the same is possible with video ads.