What kind of products does Google produce? What exactly do they sell? Let's recall that at one time Priceline.com had a stock market valuation greater than some airline companies. Did Priceline.com have any planes? No it sold tickets.
The idea that Google will become an IPO is laughable. Any idiot who throws money down on a Google IPO will soon lose their shirt like the suckers who thought the dot-com boom would last 20-30 years. And how exactly is Google going to produce revenue? Are they going to do it like that old Saturday Night Live commercial about the "Change Bank"? How do we do it? Volume. How will Google do it? Lots of searches?
Those who think that Google will continue to play an important role in our lives need to ask themselves how Northern Light and Excite changed our lives. Remember them? Internet surfers are very fickle. As soon as a better alternative to Google comes along, goodbye Google hype.
I hate to admit this as an unemployed geek who hates wage slavery, but I think young geeks will learn social skills if they get a job working with the public. I was a geek in high school and one of my first jobs was at a theme park. When you have to work with the public, you learn social skills prety fast. But I had to get a job in order to pay for things I wanted, so I'm also wondering if part of the problem is parents who give their geek kids money and toys. There is little incentive to get a job when mom and dad give you money for the latest computer equipment.
Changes might be spotted and corrected sooner on more popular Wikipedia articles, but as more minor entries are added the odds increase that the eyes of editors will look at each new entry.
I signed up as a Wikipedia editor mainly because I kept finding so many factual errors. But we can't assume even that another editor who looks at the same page is going to know the things I know abou a subject, so if somebody changes back my edit and I happen to never come back to that entry, then you can see how many errors can creep into this open system.
Comparing the software industry to the Cold War is not going to make sense of journalists and Slashdot pundits adhere to a sixth grade understanding of political theories. The BCC columnist is partially correct when he compares Microsoft to the Soviet Union. But it's important to understand that the Soviet Union used a form of "state" communism that is totally different than forms of anti-statist communism (i.e. sharing without governments being involved). And if the journalist wants to compare Microsoft to the Soviet Union, he should also mention that contemporary American capitalism is awfully similar to the Soviet model. It is a looser system, but there is lots of command and control, especially in the government-run defense industry, which has a huge impact on the rest of the economy.
If you are going to make an accurate analogy, you should compare Microsoft to the authoritarian, centralized Soviet Union. Open source and free software, on the other hand, is more anarchist. The anarchist nature of the free software movement has been noted since the whole damn thing took off. And there is much free software out there being developed by anarchists, most notably the software that runs the Indymedia network.
Microsoft says that it working with the FBI. How many DIY programmers could ever claim that they were getting help from the FBI to track down people who had pirated their software? This is an example of how intellectual property only exists to benefit the rich and powerful who can get the authorities to do their policing for them. Microsoft has the FBI. I guess the rest of us would have to resort to rent-a-cops and DIY cease-and-desist letters.
How about just being honest about your experience so I can get the job instead? I've been an out of work techie for several years. My tendency is to be honest, but that route wasn't paying the rent. I talked to some tech friends and they all told me that I had to "stretch" things on my resume if I was ever going to pay the rent again. When you are getting your food from the food pantry because your benefits have run out, being creative on your resume is a fair response to employers who are obsessed with every minute of your past work life. The stuff I've added to my resume does not turn me into some wundertechie that I am not, but it does eliminate employer questions about recent gaps on my resume. It ain't my fault that I got laid off at the start of the IT depression. I'm capable of doing all of the work associated with the positions that I apply for.
It's probable that I could still get interviews if I left the unemployment gap on my resume. My experience and previous employment are solid. But when it comes to *surviving* you have to do what you have to do to make the situation more fair for yourself. If American employers wouldn't be so uptight about employment history and focused more on the actual skills that we have, this thread would be unnecessary.
Good luck finding that job! The employers will treat you like shit during the interview process, so do what you have to do to get the job.
Music sales were declining before music downloading took off. This situation rests on the greedy shoulders of the music industry. They had this monopoly scheme going where they could rip off music fans for $17 for medicore artists and now they think people will be sympathetic when new technology destroys their monopoly system? Like where does it say that they have a right to make billions of dollars? People have been making music for free for thousands of years. The punk movement has been distributing music cheaply for years. There are lots of quality punk CDs out there for $7.
I'm not a big music lover, but I would buy more music if it was cheaper. I had been buying CDs, but then I started wandering around Tower stores that were selling CDs for $17, which was even too expensive for a guy with a professional job. I've downloaded songs and totally support file sharing, but these days I just prefer to listening to the radio or radio stations over the Internet. I'd love to spend money on CDs, but only if they drop below $10.
The music industry just doesn't get it. And nobody sympathizes with a bully after some picked on kid fights back.
I've been in the job market for several years. I have a perfect resume, lots of experience that is suitable to a variety of positions, and a lifetime of experience searching for jobs. Since I usually get nibbles when I do find jobs to apply to, I would argue that the problem is the terrible job market and incompetent employers. This rant about bad resumes might be amusing to those of us used to belittling our fellow co-workers, but when I've been involved in the hiring process, most of the resumes I've seen have been pretty adequate.
The real problem here are incompetent, rude, and stupid employers. I've been through enough interview situations to know that the real incompetent factor in the job interview process is usually the employer. What burns me up these days are employers who can't even bother to contact you after you've gone in and interviewed with them. Think about it. You go out of your way to dress up for an interview, get your butt to the interview, spend an hour or two answering questions, and then the potential employers can't be bothered to contact you about the outcome of the interview.
Here is a short list of rude and stupid behavior that I have experienced from potential employers:
1) If you are contacting me to set up an interview, I assume that you have noticed the fact that I live halfway across the country from your office. Do you understand what a *phone interview* is? 2) It is rude behavior to leave an interviewee in a room so you can go get some cake at the department birthday party (Aspen Sytems in Washington, DC). 3) When you ask me stupid questions like "What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?" I make a mental note that I will not work for your company. 4) I sent you a nice resumer, cover letter and thank you letter after the interview. The least you can do is send me a rejection letter when you have made your decision. 5) Please don't spring "tests" and "homework assigments" on me when I show up for an interview. Please have some respect for my experience, skills, and time. Just because you think that it is a cute idea to send me home with "homework," doesn't mean that you are finding out anything more than you could have learned from my resume and interview. Stop wasting my time! 6) If the interview is going to take more than an hour, please tell me ahead of time so I can adjust my plans accordingly. It really sucks to show up for an interview only to be handed an "itinerary" for three hours of interviews. 7) It says a lot about your organization when you interview me once, then interview me again three months later, and never bother following up with me with a phone call or letter (ACLU). 8) Don't assume that I will leave the job because I am "overqualified." If I bothered to show up for the interview, then I have solid reasons to want the job. Did it ever occur to you that I might want a part time job so I can have time for the family or other projects or jobs? 9) Where do I see myself in five years? Probably in your job, if this is the most intelligent question you can throw at me.
Yeah, people write bad resumes, but let's talk about stupid employer tricks!
So what? I bet that if most Slashdot readers were sitting on a pile of billions, they'd be giving it away too. Most of this philanthropy is just PR to get people to like despicable people like Bill Gates. Andrew Carnegie donated money so that hundreds of libraries could be built, but that never changed the fact that Carnegie was a brutal gangster who had his own workers killed.
Please get Gates out of our computers and libraries.
Ahh, Grasshopper, when I was a big space program geek during the 1970s and 1980s, I would say the same thing in response to arguments about the space program versus social needs. Then I grew up and learned that social needs are pretty damn important if you to live in a free society where everybody ahs access to the same privileges that I have as a white middle class guy. Then I went to college and ended up as a poor person. I support sending robots to Mars but I can't support the man space program. When people are freezing to death on the streets of America tonight, you have to be a cold-hearted person to argue that sending people to Mars is more important than building affordable housing for the poor and homeless.
I'm an American who is tired of the jingoistic nonsense spouted on this website. "America" did not land a probe on Mars. This successful landing was the product of hard work by a large number of talented individuals and organizations. Give these folks credit, not some inane bumper sticker patriotism.
benna is not wrong when they say that they are against the American government. There are many Americans who are against the American government. I'm an anarchist and have worked for the demise of the U.S. government for most of my life (I'm 30-something). I'm also against all governments, including this pesky Martian one that keeps shooting down these probes.
Cheers to NASA for getting this one right. A Bronx Cheer to all the peeps who wave their stupid American flags about this news. Let's support a truly international space program and not these backward notions of nationalism.
Why don't you read up on the reasons why activists managed to stop the spread of nuclear power. There are many excellent reasons to oppose nuclear power, raning from Chernobyl-type accidents, to terrorist strikes, to the small problem of where to put all of that waste.
Lomborg's book has 2 930 footnotes which allows you to fact check every single assertion that he makes.
No, you can verify that the footnotes cite the correct sources, but verifying the facts means that you would have to to do exhaustive research into the research that goes into those footnotes.
Saw the latest movie yesterday and was simply blown away. The thread here doesn't do the movie justice, because it just rivets you to your seat for three hours of amazing stroytelling. And I almost jumped out of my seat at one point during the big battle, which is something I never feel during movies.
This movie should win the Academy Award for best picture, btu given the track record of the Oscars being given to touch feely Hollywood schmaltz, I wouldn't get your hopes up.
spoiler alert
It fun for movie geeks to spot the bloopers in movies, but how about if we look at this movie from the perspective of somebody who isn't looking for bloopers? Which parts of the movie seem odd and out of place? For me, the only disappointing scene in Return of the King is the scene where Frodo and Sam flee the volcano and get stuck in the middle of a lava field. OK, so that was really dramatic, but could it have been plotted and filmed in a more believable manner?
It was brilliant to start out the movie with a flashback to how Gollum first came into contact with the ring.
How about more accurate science in mass media science fiction? Case in point: the recent remake of Battlestar Galactica which featured more believable space flight.
I run a website that is frequented by the more radical variety of high school students. I hear from students all the time who talk about the humiliation they are put through when they refuse to stand for the pledge. These stupid customs have nothing to do with learning and have no place in our schools.
It's really great to hear this news about PLoS, because it looks like all the barriers to open scientific publishing have finally been surmounted. I worked several years ago for Science magazine and at that time we were very concerned about the Internet's impact on science publishing. We took some real risks in making Science available online and we approached the issue of institutional site licenses with much trepidation and lots of research. I remember sitting around meetings where we talked about why Nature was dragging its feet on online institutional subscriptions and other meetings where we talked about efforts such as PubMed and other forerunners of PLoS. We really didn't know how to price Science Online for libraries, but we ended up making money only to lose lots of money when scientists started dropping their subscriptions to the print magazine.
I remember doing some research at the time into open archives, an idea that I had always liked for political reasons unrelated to my job. I concluded that the main barrier to the acceptance of open archive journals revolved around tenure and resume stuff. If employers looked at publishing in open access journals as the same as being published in a print publication, then scientists and researchers would have less reservations about publishing in open access journals. Stuff like peer review for open access journals are problems that can be easily solved using existing technology, but changing the attitudes in universities and libraries is the main obstacle.
Here's hoping that PLoS and similar projects succeed and start replacing the obsolete journal industry. If it hurts Elsevier, then it has to be a good thing.
This news really sucks, because as a techie who provides list hosting for groups, I was hoping that some relief from spam was around the corner.
I'm so sick of spam that I've rethought my stance on the death penalty. After years of activism against it, I know support it's application against spammers. In my book, spammers are worse than other criminals because they are so in your face with their anti-social behavior.
What we need is a national list of home addresses of spammers, distributed via p2p services. This would allow people who are sick of spam to exercise whatever form of creative justice they want on spammers.
Slashdot Mirror
What kind of products does Google produce? What exactly do they sell? Let's recall that at one time Priceline.com had a stock market valuation greater than some airline companies. Did Priceline.com have any planes? No it sold tickets.
The idea that Google will become an IPO is laughable. Any idiot who throws money down on a Google IPO will soon lose their shirt like the suckers who thought the dot-com boom would last 20-30 years. And how exactly is Google going to produce revenue? Are they going to do it like that old Saturday Night Live commercial about the "Change Bank"? How do we do it? Volume. How will Google do it? Lots of searches?
Those who think that Google will continue to play an important role in our lives need to ask themselves how Northern Light and Excite changed our lives. Remember them? Internet surfers are very fickle. As soon as a better alternative to Google comes along, goodbye Google hype.
I hate to admit this as an unemployed geek who hates wage slavery, but I think young geeks will learn social skills if they get a job working with the public. I was a geek in high school and one of my first jobs was at a theme park. When you have to work with the public, you learn social skills prety fast. But I had to get a job in order to pay for things I wanted, so I'm also wondering if part of the problem is parents who give their geek kids money and toys. There is little incentive to get a job when mom and dad give you money for the latest computer equipment.
Changes might be spotted and corrected sooner on more popular Wikipedia articles, but as more minor entries are added the odds increase that the eyes of editors will look at each new entry. I signed up as a Wikipedia editor mainly because I kept finding so many factual errors. But we can't assume even that another editor who looks at the same page is going to know the things I know abou a subject, so if somebody changes back my edit and I happen to never come back to that entry, then you can see how many errors can creep into this open system.
Comparing the software industry to the Cold War is not going to make sense of journalists and Slashdot pundits adhere to a sixth grade understanding of political theories. The BCC columnist is partially correct when he compares Microsoft to the Soviet Union. But it's important to understand that the Soviet Union used a form of "state" communism that is totally different than forms of anti-statist communism (i.e. sharing without governments being involved). And if the journalist wants to compare Microsoft to the Soviet Union, he should also mention that contemporary American capitalism is awfully similar to the Soviet model. It is a looser system, but there is lots of command and control, especially in the government-run defense industry, which has a huge impact on the rest of the economy.
If you are going to make an accurate analogy, you should compare Microsoft to the authoritarian, centralized Soviet Union. Open source and free software, on the other hand, is more anarchist. The anarchist nature of the free software movement has been noted since the whole damn thing took off. And there is much free software out there being developed by anarchists, most notably the software that runs the Indymedia network.
Are there any websites where people can compare notes about lousy tech support?
Microsoft says that it working with the FBI. How many DIY programmers could ever claim that they were getting help from the FBI to track down people who had pirated their software? This is an example of how intellectual property only exists to benefit the rich and powerful who can get the authorities to do their policing for them. Microsoft has the FBI. I guess the rest of us would have to resort to rent-a-cops and DIY cease-and-desist letters.
How about just being honest about your experience so I can get the job instead? I've been an out of work techie for several years. My tendency is to be honest, but that route wasn't paying the rent. I talked to some tech friends and they all told me that I had to "stretch" things on my resume if I was ever going to pay the rent again. When you are getting your food from the food pantry because your benefits have run out, being creative on your resume is a fair response to employers who are obsessed with every minute of your past work life. The stuff I've added to my resume does not turn me into some wundertechie that I am not, but it does eliminate employer questions about recent gaps on my resume. It ain't my fault that I got laid off at the start of the IT depression. I'm capable of doing all of the work associated with the positions that I apply for.
It's probable that I could still get interviews if I left the unemployment gap on my resume. My experience and previous employment are solid. But when it comes to *surviving* you have to do what you have to do to make the situation more fair for yourself. If American employers wouldn't be so uptight about employment history and focused more on the actual skills that we have, this thread would be unnecessary.
Good luck finding that job! The employers will treat you like shit during the interview process, so do what you have to do to get the job.
Music sales were declining before music downloading took off. This situation rests on the greedy shoulders of the music industry. They had this monopoly scheme going where they could rip off music fans for $17 for medicore artists and now they think people will be sympathetic when new technology destroys their monopoly system? Like where does it say that they have a right to make billions of dollars? People have been making music for free for thousands of years. The punk movement has been distributing music cheaply for years. There are lots of quality punk CDs out there for $7.
I'm not a big music lover, but I would buy more music if it was cheaper. I had been buying CDs, but then I started wandering around Tower stores that were selling CDs for $17, which was even too expensive for a guy with a professional job. I've downloaded songs and totally support file sharing, but these days I just prefer to listening to the radio or radio stations over the Internet. I'd love to spend money on CDs, but only if they drop below $10.
The music industry just doesn't get it. And nobody sympathizes with a bully after some picked on kid fights back.
I've been in the job market for several years. I have a perfect resume, lots of experience that is suitable to a variety of positions, and a lifetime of experience searching for jobs. Since I usually get nibbles when I do find jobs to apply to, I would argue that the problem is the terrible job market and incompetent employers. This rant about bad resumes might be amusing to those of us used to belittling our fellow co-workers, but when I've been involved in the hiring process, most of the resumes I've seen have been pretty adequate.
The real problem here are incompetent, rude, and stupid employers. I've been through enough interview situations to know that the real incompetent factor in the job interview process is usually the employer. What burns me up these days are employers who can't even bother to contact you after you've gone in and interviewed with them. Think about it. You go out of your way to dress up for an interview, get your butt to the interview, spend an hour or two answering questions, and then the potential employers can't be bothered to contact you about the outcome of the interview.
Here is a short list of rude and stupid behavior that I have experienced from potential employers:
1) If you are contacting me to set up an interview, I assume that you have noticed the fact that I live halfway across the country from your office. Do you understand what a *phone interview* is?
2) It is rude behavior to leave an interviewee in a room so you can go get some cake at the department birthday party (Aspen Sytems in Washington, DC).
3) When you ask me stupid questions like "What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?" I make a mental note that I will not work for your company.
4) I sent you a nice resumer, cover letter and thank you letter after the interview. The least you can do is send me a rejection letter when you have made your decision.
5) Please don't spring "tests" and "homework assigments" on me when I show up for an interview. Please have some respect for my experience, skills, and time. Just because you think that it is a cute idea to send me home with "homework," doesn't mean that you are finding out anything more than you could have learned from my resume and interview. Stop wasting my time!
6) If the interview is going to take more than an hour, please tell me ahead of time so I can adjust my plans accordingly. It really sucks to show up for an interview only to be handed an "itinerary" for three hours of interviews.
7) It says a lot about your organization when you interview me once, then interview me again three months later, and never bother following up with me with a phone call or letter (ACLU).
8) Don't assume that I will leave the job because I am "overqualified." If I bothered to show up for the interview, then I have solid reasons to want the job. Did it ever occur to you that I might want a part time job so I can have time for the family or other projects or jobs?
9) Where do I see myself in five years? Probably in your job, if this is the most intelligent question you can throw at me.
Yeah, people write bad resumes, but let's talk about stupid employer tricks!
So what? I bet that if most Slashdot readers were sitting on a pile of billions, they'd be giving it away too. Most of this philanthropy is just PR to get people to like despicable people like Bill Gates. Andrew Carnegie donated money so that hundreds of libraries could be built, but that never changed the fact that Carnegie was a brutal gangster who had his own workers killed.
Please get Gates out of our computers and libraries.
Ahh, Grasshopper, when I was a big space program geek during the 1970s and 1980s, I would say the same thing in response to arguments about the space program versus social needs. Then I grew up and learned that social needs are pretty damn important if you to live in a free society where everybody ahs access to the same privileges that I have as a white middle class guy. Then I went to college and ended up as a poor person. I support sending robots to Mars but I can't support the man space program. When people are freezing to death on the streets of America tonight, you have to be a cold-hearted person to argue that sending people to Mars is more important than building affordable housing for the poor and homeless.
I'm an American who is tired of the jingoistic nonsense spouted on this website. "America" did not land a probe on Mars. This successful landing was the product of hard work by a large number of talented individuals and organizations. Give these folks credit, not some inane bumper sticker patriotism.
benna is not wrong when they say that they are against the American government. There are many Americans who are against the American government. I'm an anarchist and have worked for the demise of the U.S. government for most of my life (I'm 30-something). I'm also against all governments, including this pesky Martian one that keeps shooting down these probes.
Cheers to NASA for getting this one right. A Bronx Cheer to all the peeps who wave their stupid American flags about this news. Let's support a truly international space program and not these backward notions of nationalism.
Why don't you read up on the reasons why activists managed to stop the spread of nuclear power. There are many excellent reasons to oppose nuclear power, raning from Chernobyl-type accidents, to terrorist strikes, to the small problem of where to put all of that waste.
Lomborg's book has 2 930 footnotes which allows you to fact check every single assertion that he makes. No, you can verify that the footnotes cite the correct sources, but verifying the facts means that you would have to to do exhaustive research into the research that goes into those footnotes.
Tony Blair: "I have extremely good news to report from Mars this afternoon. Our probe to Mars has found Saddam's missing weapons of mass destruction."
Saw the latest movie yesterday and was simply blown away. The thread here doesn't do the movie justice, because it just rivets you to your seat for three hours of amazing stroytelling. And I almost jumped out of my seat at one point during the big battle, which is something I never feel during movies.
This movie should win the Academy Award for best picture, btu given the track record of the Oscars being given to touch feely Hollywood schmaltz, I wouldn't get your hopes up.
spoiler alert
It fun for movie geeks to spot the bloopers in movies, but how about if we look at this movie from the perspective of somebody who isn't looking for bloopers? Which parts of the movie seem odd and out of place? For me, the only disappointing scene in Return of the King is the scene where Frodo and Sam flee the volcano and get stuck in the middle of a lava field. OK, so that was really dramatic, but could it have been plotted and filmed in a more believable manner?
It was brilliant to start out the movie with a flashback to how Gollum first came into contact with the ring.
How about more accurate science in mass media science fiction? Case in point: the recent remake of Battlestar Galactica which featured more believable space flight.
I run a website that is frequented by the more radical variety of high school students. I hear from students all the time who talk about the humiliation they are put through when they refuse to stand for the pledge. These stupid customs have nothing to do with learning and have no place in our schools.
It's really great to hear this news about PLoS, because it looks like all the barriers to open scientific publishing have finally been surmounted. I worked several years ago for Science magazine and at that time we were very concerned about the Internet's impact on science publishing. We took some real risks in making Science available online and we approached the issue of institutional site licenses with much trepidation and lots of research. I remember sitting around meetings where we talked about why Nature was dragging its feet on online institutional subscriptions and other meetings where we talked about efforts such as PubMed and other forerunners of PLoS. We really didn't know how to price Science Online for libraries, but we ended up making money only to lose lots of money when scientists started dropping their subscriptions to the print magazine.
I remember doing some research at the time into open archives, an idea that I had always liked for political reasons unrelated to my job. I concluded that the main barrier to the acceptance of open archive journals revolved around tenure and resume stuff. If employers looked at publishing in open access journals as the same as being published in a print publication, then scientists and researchers would have less reservations about publishing in open access journals. Stuff like peer review for open access journals are problems that can be easily solved using existing technology, but changing the attitudes in universities and libraries is the main obstacle.
Here's hoping that PLoS and similar projects succeed and start replacing the obsolete journal industry. If it hurts Elsevier, then it has to be a good thing.
This news really sucks, because as a techie who provides list hosting for groups, I was hoping that some relief from spam was around the corner.
I'm so sick of spam that I've rethought my stance on the death penalty. After years of activism against it, I know support it's application against spammers. In my book, spammers are worse than other criminals because they are so in your face with their anti-social behavior.
What we need is a national list of home addresses of spammers, distributed via p2p services. This would allow people who are sick of spam to exercise whatever form of creative justice they want on spammers.