Can't say I'd be too keen on it myself, but having worked on deployed IPTV systems (although nothing on this scale, obviously) I can see that this idea has a lot going for it.
All your information services are going to come into your home over IP and Google want to base their business on layering advertising on top of all of that content.
I suspect this explains what they wanted with that pile of cash for and what will be pumped over that dark fibre they have allegedly been buying up.
I'm no Google fanboy, but this makes a lot of sense. Their whole business model is based on directed advertising - imagine TV adds that are targetted to you personally based on your viewing habits.
I did a compiler from lambda calculus (and through a set of m4 macros some higher level constructs like arithmetic and conditions) to various set of combinators - from SK upwards. I even came up with a moderately novel approach to combinator evaluation.
Now this was not useful other than it taught me a lot about functional languages and some related topics such as garbage collection techniques. I found it fascinating - which was far better than "useful".
Projects at this stage of your career can be fun because you don't have to do the rigourous research that is (should be) required for postgraduate work and its not work so you don't have to worry about "maximising shareholder value".
I thought the yields of Castle Bravo and Romeo were underestimated because the measurement of the cross sections of one of the components of the fusion reaction were incorrect.
Is there really anything unpredictable about fast fission?
Doesn't it depend on the design of the H-bomb? AFAIK most H-bombs are fission-fusion-fission designs where a large proportion of the final yield actually comes from the fissioning of the natural uranium tamper from the neutrons created by the fusion stage.
I think the yield from the original Mike shot was mostly from the huge uranium tamper. In the case of the Soviet "Tsar Bomb" the yield was mostly from fusion but that is because they (fortunately) left out the uranium tamper to reduce the yield from the planned 100Mt to about 50Mt or so.
True enough, but what I was getting at is that maintaining and updating a search index is a pretty different kind of operation from updating data in a typical business "transaction processing" model.
Maybe I'm just oversensitive to Google fanboy comments;-)
Google isn't transactional - not even close. Sure what Google does is extremely impressive but what they do isn't really related to heavy duty transaction processing.
And what about Russia? Possibly the world leader in "vast, unpopulated regions" and so industrialized that the US thought it was a strategic threat until a few years ago?
Well, I pay $30 a month or so for a shared Windows hosting service with Database Power and it works fine. Haven't had any problems in the year and a half that I've been using them.
Close enough to "completely secure and safe Windows" for me.
Note that I have no connection with Database Power other than being a customer.
Here is one pattern anti pattern that can increase the complexity of a project hugely. For each class:
Define an interface for the class to implement
Create a factory class that does nothing but call the constructor on the class
Define an abstract factory interface
Have a factory factory that creates instances of the factory based on a system property or properties file
And do this for every class in your system!
Design patterns are a great idea but they can lead to a huge increase in complexity when people feel that they have to blindly apply patterns for no actual benefit.
If you want a WYSIWYG Wiki try Perspective - which is Open Source (GPL).
Note: I am the author, I do use my own private instance for personal note taking.
But its all to do with advertisements - their revenue model is based on serving up adds. The technology is necessary, but secondary to that goal.
If they made most of their revenue from licensing their search engine code, selling search appliances or selling their desktop search tool then I think Wall Street would treat them as a technology company. As it is they seem to regard them as a 'media' company ('internet' stocks not being a popular category these days) - and to be honest I can see why.
Last time I checked, Google hardly made any revenue supplying technology. AFAIK the overwhelming bulk of their revenue comes from showing adverts to people who use their service, which sounds like a fairly traditional media company business model to me.
I wonder if a DS has enough CPU power to decode an MPEG-2 stream. If it has, then it could well be feasible to stream a IPTV (e.g. from VideoLan Server) over the wireless networking.
Which would make a DS a pretty cool handheld media client!
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe the Kiwis as everyone from NZ does seem unusually civilised.
This would be cool as an email gateway that processed all attachments.
Please mod this up. Most sensible comment that I've seen on Slashdot for a while!
Money raised during an IPO is not revenue. This small fact caused quite a bit of trouble a few years back!
The next Cobol is Java!
All your information services are going to come into your home over IP and Google want to base their business on layering advertising on top of all of that content.
I'm no Google fanboy, but this makes a lot of sense. Their whole business model is based on directed advertising - imagine TV adds that are targetted to you personally based on your viewing habits.
See: Tsar Bomba.
I'm really rather glad they didn't test it in the 100Mt form!
I thought Google was in the business of selling ads!
Now this was not useful other than it taught me a lot about functional languages and some related topics such as garbage collection techniques. I found it fascinating - which was far better than "useful".
Projects at this stage of your career can be fun because you don't have to do the rigourous research that is (should be) required for postgraduate work and its not work so you don't have to worry about "maximising shareholder value".
Is there really anything unpredictable about fast fission?
I'd never realised how dangerous a little Computer Science theory can be.
I think the yield from the original Mike shot was mostly from the huge uranium tamper. In the case of the Soviet "Tsar Bomb" the yield was mostly from fusion but that is because they (fortunately) left out the uranium tamper to reduce the yield from the planned 100Mt to about 50Mt or so.
Maybe I'm just oversensitive to Google fanboy comments ;-)
Google isn't transactional - not even close. Sure what Google does is extremely impressive but what they do isn't really related to heavy duty transaction processing.
And what about Russia? Possibly the world leader in "vast, unpopulated regions" and so industrialized that the US thought it was a strategic threat until a few years ago?
Close enough to "completely secure and safe Windows" for me.
Note that I have no connection with Database Power other than being a customer.
Looks like we are OK for now: big.google.com doesn't resolve.
Well, I'm glad to know its not just me then!
- Define an interface for the class to implement
- Create a factory class that does nothing but call the constructor on the class
- Define an abstract factory interface
- Have a factory factory that creates instances of the factory based on a system property or properties file
And do this for every class in your system!Design patterns are a great idea but they can lead to a huge increase in complexity when people feel that they have to blindly apply patterns for no actual benefit.
If you want a WYSIWYG Wiki try Perspective - which is Open Source (GPL). Note: I am the author, I do use my own private instance for personal note taking.
But its all to do with advertisements - their revenue model is based on serving up adds. The technology is necessary, but secondary to that goal. If they made most of their revenue from licensing their search engine code, selling search appliances or selling their desktop search tool then I think Wall Street would treat them as a technology company. As it is they seem to regard them as a 'media' company ('internet' stocks not being a popular category these days) - and to be honest I can see why.
Last time I checked, Google hardly made any revenue supplying technology. AFAIK the overwhelming bulk of their revenue comes from showing adverts to people who use their service, which sounds like a fairly traditional media company business model to me.
I wonder if a DS has enough CPU power to decode an MPEG-2 stream. If it has, then it could well be feasible to stream a IPTV (e.g. from VideoLan Server) over the wireless networking. Which would make a DS a pretty cool handheld media client!
I'm still working on the time machine so I can send the 1995 version of me a copy!