Prediction #1 - google.cn becomes unavailable in China today, never to return.
Prediction #2 - no other companies will stand with Google on this matter, preferring to endure Chinese hackers rather than turning away Chinese business.
emails we get out of the blue stating "we're an all Linux shop but we want an Exchange server with Outlook licenses for compatibility reasons.
Compatibility with what? Sounds like BS to me.
Compatibility in communicating with other customers, I guess. I'm not in sales so I don't get to hear the full story. Believe me or don't, but I see these emails monthly.
No, the US buys it for its own (government) use. But it spends way more than France does on OOo disks. You complain that France spends such an amount on disks, but you don't seem to care about how much the US government spends.
I wasn't complaining about anything. I was stating a fact. I don't live in France or America so I really don't care what those governments spend their money on.
Microsoft is marginally worried about Openoffice in some geographies (mainly France where the government freely gives out OOo disks at the taxpayers' expense)
As opposed to the US, which buys Microsoft Office disks at the taxpayers' expense. And how much does an OOo disk cost? The price of CD-R?
Not sure I understand your point. Are you saying the US government distributes MS Office for free to its citizens like France does with OpenOffice?
Yeah. Even it if was possible, which I doubt, it would still be a BAD THING (TM). It nullifies the only real advantage PCs have over consoles (modability and independent games), you lose the concept of owning a game...
OnLive doesn't nullify anything - it enables gamers who are below the bar of entry to play high-end games on their current hardware. Watch the video in TFA. The presenter plays Crysis on a Mac netbook and on an iphone. The customer who does this will not care about modding; he'll just be thanking his lucky stars he can play this game without having to invest in an entirely new platform.
This looks to me like a unique platform with its own advantages and shortcomings. It's not going to be all things to all people, it's a means to play games from multiple platforms on any dumb terminal.
I work for a reseller of Microsoft (and other vendors') software and have attended many MS presentations about Office vs. OOo vs. Google Apps. Microsoft is marginally worried about Openoffice in some geographies (mainly France where the government freely gives out OOo disks at the taxpayers' expense) but has a clear objection handling routine for everywhere else. Basically, Microsoft urges companies to to try Openoffice so that they can learn how dated and incompatible it is with the business world in general. They also push organizations to try Evolution instead of Outlook for the same reasons.
You'd be surprised how many emails we get out of the blue stating "we're an all Linux shop but we want an Exchange server with Outlook licenses for compatibility reasons. How much for a server and 100 seats of Office?"
Anyway, Microsoft's real fear right now is Google Apps. Everybody, even Google, knows how inferior Apps is to Office, but the sexy Google name greases the runway to bring this cloud-based office solution into more and more workplaces. Microsoft is fighting tooth and nail to prevent every single switch from Office to Apps. Openoffice is hardly on Microsoft's radar compared to Google.
Google is using target's search engine to run searches and doesn't know how to interpret the string "We could find no matches"?
Not spam. Bad coding at Google.
Google isn't using Target's search engine to run searches, it just doesn't know the difference between a search engine results page and a page with actual content on it. I agree that the fault is with Google, but this is some bad press for Target as well.
People are linking to an old product URL (Target sometimes has humorous products on their site), which Target redirects to a search page when they no longer carry the product. Google indexes this redirect and treats both URLs as the roughly the same (you'll notice that the links you find above point to a product URL, not the search result URL).
Good sleuthing there. It's a clever feature to run a search on similar products if the desired one is not found. It may or may not have been intentional for Target to pollute search results with garbage. However, Google's mission statement is "To organize the world's information and make it useful", and failed retailer SERPs are not information nor useful.
This is hardly a new issue, though. Try looking for walkthroughs for a video game that has just been released and you'll find many SERPs full of "game123 walkthrough" links, only to click them and find a page with the content "be the first to submit your walkthrough." Misleading search users is a failure of Google's mission statement.
The query you want to run is: [blockquote]site:target.com "could not find matches"[/blockquote]
This produces 604,000 results. Definitely black hat seo spam. Google needs to either filter "/search?" and "/ref=sr" or they need to penalize Target like they would for any other spammer. Target is a large American retailer so Google probably won't do anything at all.
I see your point but I can't agree with it. It's a recommendation, and the rating in the big bold letters is just a visual summary to enable parents to scan a wall full of unfamiliar products for the few that may be appropriate. As an avid gamer I'm willing to read a lot of content about many games, but a parent or grandparent might assume that all games are appropriate for kids, like board games, and may make an uninformed decision without guidance.
If you don't have it, get it now. Child-friendly, and great for adults too.
I agree with this 100%. This game is all about identifying seemingly insurmountable obstacles and planning incremental steps to surpass them. It's a great lesson to reinforce.
ESRB is a private organization which was formed so that the games industry could self-regulate. Its intent is to keep the government out of the ratings process. ESRB ratings are a suggested watermark for entry with a summary of potentially objectionable material. It's a tool to allow parents to shield their children from specific content. Nothing is forced upon anyone.
If there is any censorship going on it's from stores like Walmart that refuse to carry games based on that rating. You can still buy those products elsewhere.
It depends on the age you're recommending to, but I just finished Mirror's Edge and I wouldn't recommend it to kids under 16. It's got gunplay and blood, you perform dangerous acrobatics in a typical urban setting, and the characters are rather foul-mouthed. Honestly, it's the acrobatics that would make me most nervous as a parent (if I were one).
Modern parents need to enforce moralistic killing quotas. x number of people need to be shot dead, so it's the onus of our children to ensure it's the bad guys from other countries who take the brunt.
I agree it's unlikely NCsoft will open up TR or AA, but I'm not sure I understand your comment about TR users migrating to Aion. Does Aion have anything in common with TR other than the publisher?
The first raises the question, the second makes a blanket statement. Whether the question is valid or not is up for debate, but it is not like in this article Eric Schmidt has said he's going to start taking steps to curb users' privacy beyond complying with legal requirements, nor has he said that privacy is immoral.
Nor does he concede that ordinary people do not intend for every sentence they speak to come into the limelight. In my opinion what Schmidt is declaring is that if you value discretion you should not use any Google service - that Google will opt you in if you don't opt out.
In all likelihood Schmidt doesn't believe the statement he made whatsoever, but was using it to justify Google's policies and actions. It's an unfortunate sentiment which makes him look equally heartless and spineless since he makes such a sweeping damnation of reasonable human behaviour, yet hides behind a "maybe".
Maybe he's got a point, but maybe he's grossly overstating. Maybe he should choose his words more carefully next time.
I agree with much of your argument, except that your conclusions are about what Google will do with personal (if not private) information. My concern is that Google opens this personal information up to the world. There's a difference between posting your thoughts SOMEWHERE versus posting your thoughts EVERYWHERE, but Schmidt is dismissing this distinction.
To play devil's advocate: in the context of the internet there really has never been an expectation of privacy, or at least the expectation has been that you have to go a long way to achieve privacy.
Fair point. I suppose I'm talking about reasonable expectation of discretion, if not privacy. I think one should be able to reasonably expect to say something online without it ending up as front page news.
People keep screaming "evil," but I'm just not seeing it. They're being "nicer" than any other multi-billion corp I can name.
You don't even see it after this direct quote from the CEO? He's effectively saying that privacy is immoral, and private people are shameful.
Sure Google occasionally releases open code, but code is a means to an end, and on the web that end is for the common man to publish anything he wishes. What's the point of open code if you have to use it the way Google mandates?
It reminds me of an old Peanuts comic I once read. Lucy is running a root beer stand with a sign that says "all you can drink for $1". Charlie Brown walks up to her stand and gives her a dollar, and Lucy gives him a tiny cup of root beer. When Charlie Brown inquires about the sign Lucy tells him "It's not false advertising - that's all you can drink for $1".
You're certainly correct that it's a monumental achievement to reverse-engineer a game. I kind of wish the original developers would release a server binary or some other means of allowing people to run the servers without exposing their valuable proprietary source code.
I wish decommissioned MMOs like Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault could be released to the public for private server admins to host. Unlikely to happen, so it remains my wish.
Hacking is about finding the most efficient route to the juiciest payload without ruffling feathers unduly. Here's a fun article that I think illustrates this concept really well.
Slashdot Mirror
Prediction #1 - google.cn becomes unavailable in China today, never to return.
Prediction #2 - no other companies will stand with Google on this matter, preferring to endure Chinese hackers rather than turning away Chinese business.
emails we get out of the blue stating "we're an all Linux shop but we want an Exchange server with Outlook licenses for compatibility reasons.
Compatibility with what? Sounds like BS to me.
Compatibility in communicating with other customers, I guess. I'm not in sales so I don't get to hear the full story. Believe me or don't, but I see these emails monthly.
No, the US buys it for its own (government) use. But it spends way more than France does on OOo disks. You complain that France spends such an amount on disks, but you don't seem to care about how much the US government spends.
I wasn't complaining about anything. I was stating a fact. I don't live in France or America so I really don't care what those governments spend their money on.
Don't google apps make extensive use of open office in the backend?
No, it uses its own open formats.
Microsoft is marginally worried about Openoffice in some geographies (mainly France where the government freely gives out OOo disks at the taxpayers' expense)
As opposed to the US, which buys Microsoft Office disks at the taxpayers' expense. And how much does an OOo disk cost? The price of CD-R?
Not sure I understand your point. Are you saying the US government distributes MS Office for free to its citizens like France does with OpenOffice?
Yeah. Even it if was possible, which I doubt, it would still be a BAD THING (TM). It nullifies the only real advantage PCs have over consoles (modability and independent games), you lose the concept of owning a game...
OnLive doesn't nullify anything - it enables gamers who are below the bar of entry to play high-end games on their current hardware. Watch the video in TFA. The presenter plays Crysis on a Mac netbook and on an iphone. The customer who does this will not care about modding; he'll just be thanking his lucky stars he can play this game without having to invest in an entirely new platform.
This looks to me like a unique platform with its own advantages and shortcomings. It's not going to be all things to all people, it's a means to play games from multiple platforms on any dumb terminal.
I work for a reseller of Microsoft (and other vendors') software and have attended many MS presentations about Office vs. OOo vs. Google Apps. Microsoft is marginally worried about Openoffice in some geographies (mainly France where the government freely gives out OOo disks at the taxpayers' expense) but has a clear objection handling routine for everywhere else. Basically, Microsoft urges companies to to try Openoffice so that they can learn how dated and incompatible it is with the business world in general. They also push organizations to try Evolution instead of Outlook for the same reasons.
You'd be surprised how many emails we get out of the blue stating "we're an all Linux shop but we want an Exchange server with Outlook licenses for compatibility reasons. How much for a server and 100 seats of Office?"
Anyway, Microsoft's real fear right now is Google Apps. Everybody, even Google, knows how inferior Apps is to Office, but the sexy Google name greases the runway to bring this cloud-based office solution into more and more workplaces. Microsoft is fighting tooth and nail to prevent every single switch from Office to Apps. Openoffice is hardly on Microsoft's radar compared to Google.
Google is using target's search engine to run searches and doesn't know how to interpret the string "We could find no matches"?
Not spam. Bad coding at Google.
Google isn't using Target's search engine to run searches, it just doesn't know the difference between a search engine results page and a page with actual content on it. I agree that the fault is with Google, but this is some bad press for Target as well.
People are linking to an old product URL (Target sometimes has humorous products on their site), which Target redirects to a search page when they no longer carry the product. Google indexes this redirect and treats both URLs as the roughly the same (you'll notice that the links you find above point to a product URL, not the search result URL).
Good sleuthing there. It's a clever feature to run a search on similar products if the desired one is not found. It may or may not have been intentional for Target to pollute search results with garbage. However, Google's mission statement is "To organize the world's information and make it useful", and failed retailer SERPs are not information nor useful.
This is hardly a new issue, though. Try looking for walkthroughs for a video game that has just been released and you'll find many SERPs full of "game123 walkthrough" links, only to click them and find a page with the content "be the first to submit your walkthrough." Misleading search users is a failure of Google's mission statement.
The query you want to run is:
[blockquote]site:target.com "could not find matches"[/blockquote]
This produces 604,000 results. Definitely black hat seo spam. Google needs to either filter "/search?" and "/ref=sr" or they need to penalize Target like they would for any other spammer. Target is a large American retailer so Google probably won't do anything at all.
I see your point but I can't agree with it. It's a recommendation, and the rating in the big bold letters is just a visual summary to enable parents to scan a wall full of unfamiliar products for the few that may be appropriate. As an avid gamer I'm willing to read a lot of content about many games, but a parent or grandparent might assume that all games are appropriate for kids, like board games, and may make an uninformed decision without guidance.
If you don't have it, get it now. Child-friendly, and great for adults too.
I agree with this 100%. This game is all about identifying seemingly insurmountable obstacles and planning incremental steps to surpass them. It's a great lesson to reinforce.
ESRB is a private organization which was formed so that the games industry could self-regulate. Its intent is to keep the government out of the ratings process. ESRB ratings are a suggested watermark for entry with a summary of potentially objectionable material. It's a tool to allow parents to shield their children from specific content. Nothing is forced upon anyone.
If there is any censorship going on it's from stores like Walmart that refuse to carry games based on that rating. You can still buy those products elsewhere.
Not really sure what your objection is here.
Assassin's Creed 2 replaced by Mirror's Edge
It depends on the age you're recommending to, but I just finished Mirror's Edge and I wouldn't recommend it to kids under 16. It's got gunplay and blood, you perform dangerous acrobatics in a typical urban setting, and the characters are rather foul-mouthed. Honestly, it's the acrobatics that would make me most nervous as a parent (if I were one).
Modern parents need to enforce moralistic killing quotas. x number of people need to be shot dead, so it's the onus of our children to ensure it's the bad guys from other countries who take the brunt.
FTA:
[blockquote] if you need gift ideas for the surly, pale teenager in your home whose body contains more plastic then your average d20[/blockquote]
What on earth is this supposed to mean? Is there some kind of gamer fad to get nose jobs or something?
I agree it's unlikely NCsoft will open up TR or AA, but I'm not sure I understand your comment about TR users migrating to Aion. Does Aion have anything in common with TR other than the publisher?
The first raises the question, the second makes a blanket statement. Whether the question is valid or not is up for debate, but it is not like in this article Eric Schmidt has said he's going to start taking steps to curb users' privacy beyond complying with legal requirements, nor has he said that privacy is immoral.
Nor does he concede that ordinary people do not intend for every sentence they speak to come into the limelight. In my opinion what Schmidt is declaring is that if you value discretion you should not use any Google service - that Google will opt you in if you don't opt out.
In all likelihood Schmidt doesn't believe the statement he made whatsoever, but was using it to justify Google's policies and actions. It's an unfortunate sentiment which makes him look equally heartless and spineless since he makes such a sweeping damnation of reasonable human behaviour, yet hides behind a "maybe".
Maybe he's got a point, but maybe he's grossly overstating. Maybe he should choose his words more carefully next time.
I agree with much of your argument, except that your conclusions are about what Google will do with personal (if not private) information. My concern is that Google opens this personal information up to the world. There's a difference between posting your thoughts SOMEWHERE versus posting your thoughts EVERYWHERE, but Schmidt is dismissing this distinction.
Yes, that's what I'm saying. Good reading comprehension.
To play devil's advocate: in the context of the internet there really has never been an expectation of privacy, or at least the expectation has been that you have to go a long way to achieve privacy.
Fair point. I suppose I'm talking about reasonable expectation of discretion, if not privacy. I think one should be able to reasonably expect to say something online without it ending up as front page news.
People keep screaming "evil," but I'm just not seeing it. They're being "nicer" than any other multi-billion corp I can name.
You don't even see it after this direct quote from the CEO? He's effectively saying that privacy is immoral, and private people are shameful.
Sure Google occasionally releases open code, but code is a means to an end, and on the web that end is for the common man to publish anything he wishes. What's the point of open code if you have to use it the way Google mandates?
It reminds me of an old Peanuts comic I once read. Lucy is running a root beer stand with a sign that says "all you can drink for $1". Charlie Brown walks up to her stand and gives her a dollar, and Lucy gives him a tiny cup of root beer. When Charlie Brown inquires about the sign Lucy tells him "It's not false advertising - that's all you can drink for $1".
You're certainly correct that it's a monumental achievement to reverse-engineer a game. I kind of wish the original developers would release a server binary or some other means of allowing people to run the servers without exposing their valuable proprietary source code.
I wish decommissioned MMOs like Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault could be released to the public for private server admins to host. Unlikely to happen, so it remains my wish.
Hacking is about finding the most efficient route to the juiciest payload without ruffling feathers unduly. Here's a fun article that I think illustrates this concept really well.