Probably meant it as a joke/troll, but it's a pretty empty comment, Ruby and AJAX are completely different things, one's a language the other's not. I understand the "flavor of the month" thing, but you're talking apples and oranges.
The PhDs aren't worthless. Or rather the people with PhDs aren't worthless, they're very valuable. But as I said in a previous post, Google, Microsoft, and one poor office chair all know that having 5000 PhDs today doesn't mean you'll have 5000 PhDs tomorrow. On top of that, PhDs are a renewable resource. Google doesn't control their own PhDs or the ability of competitors to acquire PhDs, which means long-term they can't claim a competitive advantage from it.
But for right now, yeah, all that talent is great for Google. The article's talking about the future. A hundred years out.
I think it's all just more of the "irrational exuberance". Investors, tech people, modernists, whomever all are going to laud and hype the next place to put their money and their faith. People are right to ask that 10 years ago Google was just an idea of two Stanford students and I used AltaVista as the end-all to all search engines. What is making Google so impenetrable such that nobody else could come by and create the same turn-around in another 10 years?
Especially since Google has no tangible "product". At least with, say, a mining company, you know that the company owns the resources (or the land containing the resources) and has all of the assets and products associated with their business. Google's primary resource, talented employees, is one that (as Google and Microsoft and a certain office chair all know) can't be controlled by the company (a good employee can leave one company for another, resource-rich land can't voluntarily do so) and is unendingly renewable, which (valuable as talented people are) isn't an optimal asset to build your company on.
I'm not preaching doom and gloom for Google, but the fact is Google's business is centered around one item (search engines + advertising) and they are very good at that, and that's not going away soon. Expecting Google to topple businesses in other sectors in which these other businesses are very good is being a tad optimistic.
True, the EXP model is perhaps the most outdated aspect in all of MMOGs, and user created content might just be the thing the push it forward.
If a certain MMOG consisted of a patchwork of user modules conventional EXP and loot wouldn't work as it is. To build off of my last post, maybe there could be some sort of economic or regressive reward system. Somebody creates their instance or whatever and a formula approximates the reward that each mob gives, or the reward for completing an instance or a quest in the instance, and this estimation would modulate as people run the instance. If people are having no trouble running the instance then the rewards and requirements become weaker, and vice versa.
This would also modulate things like Molten Core in WoW where people have it mapped out to be just loot farms. When an instance becomes formulaic like this, under my model, the reward formula makes the reward less and less appealing (as it is, Blizzard has to continue introducing harder mobs and better loot to deal with this).
And of course, it would help (in a way) to make all the modules "open" so obvious bugs or problems or impossible encounters could be fixed.
And on top of that, the administration isn't addressed either. One of the most significant aspects of any MMOG is the tight control the GMs have over certain things in the world. Cheating is always (one of) the biggest issue in all MMOGs so if those concerns (content control, data isolation, cheater detection) aren't well addressed or fleshed out, then any boutique MMOG will never be able to launch outside of a group of friends who can all trust each other.
I mean huge for-profit MMORPGs are having a hell of a time trying to deal with these very problems, how can a custom MMOG deal with them and still hope to attract enough accounts to be at all entertaining?
While it could be a nightmare to implement, I think that this sort of thing could be a breakthrough. Creating an entire world is too much to expect somebody to do, but if some established MMORPG let users create instanced or separate zones where user created content can be accessed then it could be like CounterStrike is to Half-Life.
Now, there will be issues with items and EXP. Either you have to have all EXP and items not appear in the common world or (less likely) force a computer generated cap on EXP and items (i.e. this enemy is this difficult so the computer calculates the max EXP and best items he can drop... not an easy task), but the core idea is that allowing an easy way to plug in user-created content could keep the WoW (or whatever) ship cruising all on its own without having to have their devs kill themselves every patch for new content.
Imagine all the user instances you could hack at, though it wouldn't be worth it for the loot fiends I guess. And they'd need to include some applications to do this.
It's good now, but that won't stop it from hitting heavier legislation.
The thing that makes video game regulation so different is that (unlike other polarizing issues such as abortion) the issue hasn't yet been classified as "Democratic" or "Republican" and is regarded as "relatively harmless" (unlike, say, abortion which has much heavier consequences and "real life" impact) and there is evidently a political "right side" (few politicians or people outside of gaming seem to have much interest in defending the "wrong" side). So you see this clamor where both parties are trying to stake their claim as being representative of the family-friendly side (Hillary and Lieberman for the Dems, Thompson et al for the Reps).
These advocates probably don't care nearly so much about the actual issue of violence in video game (an issue that can be actually quite easily resolved through other means... parenting?) as they care about the opportunity to establish themselves as the clear "good guys" on an issue that doesn't have such life-altering consequences on an issue that will win their party substantial constituency (aside from the gamers, of course). This sort of thing is political gold.
I think Google is overreaching at this point. I guess Google's now trying to float off of their cachet to move into other industries.
Parent has a good point in asking why we would want to use Google's DVR when there are ad-free versions already available. Indeed, isn't the *point* of a DVR to get rid of ads? Am I missing something?
On top of that, the example of Tivo indicates that there are evidently some issues with the technology/market as it is (the DRM "forced delete", for example), and I'm not sure if Google's DVR system will resolve any of those, though I wouldn't put it past Google to figure out a way to get it working.
But I'm not sure if I'm buying this "total integration" thing Google's pushing. What are they going to get from my email? I send an email to my friends saying, "Wow, did you catch the latest 'Lost'?" and Google knows to record 'Lost'? I think in the end, some separation of the different aspects of my life is a good thing and I'm not eager to plug my whole life into Google just yet.
Yeah, the PHP files will have code mixed in with your html, which can only somewhat be mitigated by things like CSS and function imports and such, which is actually a big reason why I'm not completely sold on PHP. The php files end up looking somewhat ugly and sometimes the code is pretty convoluted.
On the flip side, I've been working with Ruby on Rails and it's beautiful. Scripts to generate the starting points for your web files, separation of design and implementation, a great framework. Only thing it lacks is a strong IDE (as far as I can tell) behind it and extensive documentation or resources on the web if you hit a wall (PHP sites are everywhere, for example).
Or maybe it'll level the playing field a bit.
Violent and explicit games are incredibly popular these days and if a company wants to publish a game like this their only outlet might be to sell it independently online, foregoing a major outlet (retail) which larger publishers are likely to have an advantage.
So to sell their violent (and presumably "popular") games they'll be restricted to web sites, which is potentially a smaller developer's only (or best) means to sell their own games.
Sure, from a business perspective maybe it'll help "filter" the riffraff.
But from a social standpoint this does have ramifications as far as isolating a certain American demographic and preventing them from accessing a resource (television is not merely for entertainment) that keeps them plugged into what's happening in the country and the world.
And even if advertisers don't give a crap, these are things that the FCC and the American people should be thinking about.
True. But what about those who can't afford a computer or the internet (or don't know how to use them effectively) who still watch a 20 year old set and for whom upgrading will be a significant expense?
You and I probably have very reasonable alternatives to analog TV (I have cable, you can BitTorrent), but I'm sure that many of these 30 mn sets still on analog don't.
Yes, but there are a great many Americans who do rely on television to stay connected to the world because they can't afford/don't have access to/don't know how to use the internet and for them television becomes less of a luxury than a necessity, and from what I've read this is one of the big concerns regarding the conversion.
Granted the news on television (and even on the radio) tends to be softer than that of a newspaper, but it probably is their strongest connection to the nation/world. Simply because almost all of the middle/upper class won't notice the conversion (and might even benefit from it) doesn't mean it won't have its consequences.
I agree. First, 12% means that a lot of sets will be effected, but the additional problem in in who will be effected.
By now most Americans won't even notice because they receive their television through cable or satellite, but the people who would be effected (still receive analog television) are more likely to be lower class and the overhead of upgrading (however small it might seem) might actually mean a great deal to these people/families.
The point is, those who still rely on analog are probably already somewhat disenfranchised because of their likely economic class that this conversion (however "progressive") might serve to disenfranchise them further.
Perhaps not right now on the forefront, but if there's any company that can quickly push themselves into relevancy it would be Google and then Microsoft. Even Oracle with all of their megalomaniacal acquisitions can't quite push themselves into the application software market.
I'm not an MS fan by any measure but keep in mind they still dominate the OS market and even if our user environment can eventually be run by web apps, we'll still need an OS to get there. (Though many workplaces don't bother to upgrade their Windows versions with new releases)
While here Ballmer doesn't seem to be convincing anybody of MS's relevance, I wouldn't underestimate MS. They've shown that they can be moderately relevant in many markets if they throw enough cash at their project (and cash they do have). The X-Box, for example.
While it also doesn't make too much sense to me (when there are mature and viable alternatives out there), it feels like (it this is true) that Apple simply wants to have their own complete office suite just for the sake of having their full office suite.
Maybe Apple feels like half the company it could be without a spreadsheet app.
It seems so obvious, doesn't it? Don't sue the people who pay your bills.
The problem is that too often public companies, especially ones that aren't doing well, end up having to resort to short-term moneymaking schemes to meet their earnings (so that they have a chance to sell more stock and raise more funds).
SCO's short-sighted profit-boosting measures should have been (and likely were) regarded as signs of a company that was (well, is) in serious trouble.
In a public company Shareholder value (or profit) is basically always the primary motivation (which one of the reasons why some worried Google would lose its cachet after going public). Investors tend to be very fickle with their cash.
That why SCO's been trying to do the things they've been doing.
I've also mapped my (home) keyboard to swap the Caps Lock and the left Control, which is amazingly comfortable once you get used to it (and alleviates some of the hassle of trying to CTRL-C and CTRL-V in Dvorak).
This did require some registry changes so I obviously can't do that as easily on my work system.
But in many cases, keyboard hacking can be much better than this blank keyboard... especially if you're an "ubergeek".
Slashdot Mirror
Probably meant it as a joke/troll, but it's a pretty empty comment, Ruby and AJAX are completely different things, one's a language the other's not. I understand the "flavor of the month" thing, but you're talking apples and oranges.
Though it might not have been the original intent it might be a nice means of forced consumerism for an economy struggling against a weak Yen.
1) "To Google or Not to Google?," by Jason Kottke, kottke.org, Feb 26, 2003
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Google fanatics?
The PhDs aren't worthless. Or rather the people with PhDs aren't worthless, they're very valuable. But as I said in a previous post, Google, Microsoft, and one poor office chair all know that having 5000 PhDs today doesn't mean you'll have 5000 PhDs tomorrow. On top of that, PhDs are a renewable resource. Google doesn't control their own PhDs or the ability of competitors to acquire PhDs, which means long-term they can't claim a competitive advantage from it.
But for right now, yeah, all that talent is great for Google. The article's talking about the future. A hundred years out.
Agreed.
I think it's all just more of the "irrational exuberance". Investors, tech people, modernists, whomever all are going to laud and hype the next place to put their money and their faith. People are right to ask that 10 years ago Google was just an idea of two Stanford students and I used AltaVista as the end-all to all search engines. What is making Google so impenetrable such that nobody else could come by and create the same turn-around in another 10 years?
Especially since Google has no tangible "product". At least with, say, a mining company, you know that the company owns the resources (or the land containing the resources) and has all of the assets and products associated with their business. Google's primary resource, talented employees, is one that (as Google and Microsoft and a certain office chair all know) can't be controlled by the company (a good employee can leave one company for another, resource-rich land can't voluntarily do so) and is unendingly renewable, which (valuable as talented people are) isn't an optimal asset to build your company on.
I'm not preaching doom and gloom for Google, but the fact is Google's business is centered around one item (search engines + advertising) and they are very good at that, and that's not going away soon. Expecting Google to topple businesses in other sectors in which these other businesses are very good is being a tad optimistic.
True, the EXP model is perhaps the most outdated aspect in all of MMOGs, and user created content might just be the thing the push it forward.
If a certain MMOG consisted of a patchwork of user modules conventional EXP and loot wouldn't work as it is. To build off of my last post, maybe there could be some sort of economic or regressive reward system. Somebody creates their instance or whatever and a formula approximates the reward that each mob gives, or the reward for completing an instance or a quest in the instance, and this estimation would modulate as people run the instance. If people are having no trouble running the instance then the rewards and requirements become weaker, and vice versa.
This would also modulate things like Molten Core in WoW where people have it mapped out to be just loot farms. When an instance becomes formulaic like this, under my model, the reward formula makes the reward less and less appealing (as it is, Blizzard has to continue introducing harder mobs and better loot to deal with this).
And of course, it would help (in a way) to make all the modules "open" so obvious bugs or problems or impossible encounters could be fixed.
And on top of that, the administration isn't addressed either. One of the most significant aspects of any MMOG is the tight control the GMs have over certain things in the world. Cheating is always (one of) the biggest issue in all MMOGs so if those concerns (content control, data isolation, cheater detection) aren't well addressed or fleshed out, then any boutique MMOG will never be able to launch outside of a group of friends who can all trust each other.
I mean huge for-profit MMORPGs are having a hell of a time trying to deal with these very problems, how can a custom MMOG deal with them and still hope to attract enough accounts to be at all entertaining?
While it could be a nightmare to implement, I think that this sort of thing could be a breakthrough. Creating an entire world is too much to expect somebody to do, but if some established MMORPG let users create instanced or separate zones where user created content can be accessed then it could be like CounterStrike is to Half-Life.
... not an easy task), but the core idea is that allowing an easy way to plug in user-created content could keep the WoW (or whatever) ship cruising all on its own without having to have their devs kill themselves every patch for new content.
Now, there will be issues with items and EXP. Either you have to have all EXP and items not appear in the common world or (less likely) force a computer generated cap on EXP and items (i.e. this enemy is this difficult so the computer calculates the max EXP and best items he can drop
Imagine all the user instances you could hack at, though it wouldn't be worth it for the loot fiends I guess. And they'd need to include some applications to do this.
It's good now, but that won't stop it from hitting heavier legislation.
... parenting?) as they care about the opportunity to establish themselves as the clear "good guys" on an issue that doesn't have such life-altering consequences on an issue that will win their party substantial constituency (aside from the gamers, of course). This sort of thing is political gold.
The thing that makes video game regulation so different is that (unlike other polarizing issues such as abortion) the issue hasn't yet been classified as "Democratic" or "Republican" and is regarded as "relatively harmless" (unlike, say, abortion which has much heavier consequences and "real life" impact) and there is evidently a political "right side" (few politicians or people outside of gaming seem to have much interest in defending the "wrong" side). So you see this clamor where both parties are trying to stake their claim as being representative of the family-friendly side (Hillary and Lieberman for the Dems, Thompson et al for the Reps).
These advocates probably don't care nearly so much about the actual issue of violence in video game (an issue that can be actually quite easily resolved through other means
Or you could use Dvorak. Keys still logged, but would look like a mess unless they expect it.
I think Google is overreaching at this point. I guess Google's now trying to float off of their cachet to move into other industries.
Parent has a good point in asking why we would want to use Google's DVR when there are ad-free versions already available. Indeed, isn't the *point* of a DVR to get rid of ads? Am I missing something?
On top of that, the example of Tivo indicates that there are evidently some issues with the technology/market as it is (the DRM "forced delete", for example), and I'm not sure if Google's DVR system will resolve any of those, though I wouldn't put it past Google to figure out a way to get it working.
But I'm not sure if I'm buying this "total integration" thing Google's pushing. What are they going to get from my email? I send an email to my friends saying, "Wow, did you catch the latest 'Lost'?" and Google knows to record 'Lost'? I think in the end, some separation of the different aspects of my life is a good thing and I'm not eager to plug my whole life into Google just yet.
It's a great project, but is definitely not meant for large-scale apps.
What are you talking about? I'm posting this right now on my php-coded web-bro&%($(*#&%#&@&NO CARRIER
Yeah, the PHP files will have code mixed in with your html, which can only somewhat be mitigated by things like CSS and function imports and such, which is actually a big reason why I'm not completely sold on PHP. The php files end up looking somewhat ugly and sometimes the code is pretty convoluted.
On the flip side, I've been working with Ruby on Rails and it's beautiful. Scripts to generate the starting points for your web files, separation of design and implementation, a great framework. Only thing it lacks is a strong IDE (as far as I can tell) behind it and extensive documentation or resources on the web if you hit a wall (PHP sites are everywhere, for example).
Or maybe it'll level the playing field a bit. Violent and explicit games are incredibly popular these days and if a company wants to publish a game like this their only outlet might be to sell it independently online, foregoing a major outlet (retail) which larger publishers are likely to have an advantage.
So to sell their violent (and presumably "popular") games they'll be restricted to web sites, which is potentially a smaller developer's only (or best) means to sell their own games.
Taking away retail is a huge deal.
"Do hackers and geeks just not care about communicating effectively?"
No.
After all, in the workplace the more you know and the less others know the more valuable you are. Why would you want to communicate effectively?
Apparently you missed the debacle that was Tuesday.
(See the stories about France's fusion plant.)
Sure, from a business perspective maybe it'll help "filter" the riffraff.
But from a social standpoint this does have ramifications as far as isolating a certain American demographic and preventing them from accessing a resource (television is not merely for entertainment) that keeps them plugged into what's happening in the country and the world.
And even if advertisers don't give a crap, these are things that the FCC and the American people should be thinking about.
True. But what about those who can't afford a computer or the internet (or don't know how to use them effectively) who still watch a 20 year old set and for whom upgrading will be a significant expense?
You and I probably have very reasonable alternatives to analog TV (I have cable, you can BitTorrent), but I'm sure that many of these 30 mn sets still on analog don't.
Yes, but there are a great many Americans who do rely on television to stay connected to the world because they can't afford/don't have access to/don't know how to use the internet and for them television becomes less of a luxury than a necessity, and from what I've read this is one of the big concerns regarding the conversion.
Granted the news on television (and even on the radio) tends to be softer than that of a newspaper, but it probably is their strongest connection to the nation/world. Simply because almost all of the middle/upper class won't notice the conversion (and might even benefit from it) doesn't mean it won't have its consequences.
I agree. First, 12% means that a lot of sets will be effected, but the additional problem in in who will be effected.
By now most Americans won't even notice because they receive their television through cable or satellite, but the people who would be effected (still receive analog television) are more likely to be lower class and the overhead of upgrading (however small it might seem) might actually mean a great deal to these people/families.
The point is, those who still rely on analog are probably already somewhat disenfranchised because of their likely economic class that this conversion (however "progressive") might serve to disenfranchise them further.
Not quite irrelevant.
Perhaps not right now on the forefront, but if there's any company that can quickly push themselves into relevancy it would be Google and then Microsoft. Even Oracle with all of their megalomaniacal acquisitions can't quite push themselves into the application software market.
I'm not an MS fan by any measure but keep in mind they still dominate the OS market and even if our user environment can eventually be run by web apps, we'll still need an OS to get there. (Though many workplaces don't bother to upgrade their Windows versions with new releases)
While here Ballmer doesn't seem to be convincing anybody of MS's relevance, I wouldn't underestimate MS. They've shown that they can be moderately relevant in many markets if they throw enough cash at their project (and cash they do have). The X-Box, for example.
While it also doesn't make too much sense to me (when there are mature and viable alternatives out there), it feels like (it this is true) that Apple simply wants to have their own complete office suite just for the sake of having their full office suite.
Maybe Apple feels like half the company it could be without a spreadsheet app.
It seems so obvious, doesn't it? Don't sue the people who pay your bills.
The problem is that too often public companies, especially ones that aren't doing well, end up having to resort to short-term moneymaking schemes to meet their earnings (so that they have a chance to sell more stock and raise more funds).
SCO's short-sighted profit-boosting measures should have been (and likely were) regarded as signs of a company that was (well, is) in serious trouble.
In a public company Shareholder value (or profit) is basically always the primary motivation (which one of the reasons why some worried Google would lose its cachet after going public). Investors tend to be very fickle with their cash.
That why SCO's been trying to do the things they've been doing.
I've also mapped my (home) keyboard to swap the Caps Lock and the left Control, which is amazingly comfortable once you get used to it (and alleviates some of the hassle of trying to CTRL-C and CTRL-V in Dvorak).
... especially if you're an "ubergeek".
This did require some registry changes so I obviously can't do that as easily on my work system.
But in many cases, keyboard hacking can be much better than this blank keyboard