What about the freedom to make a promise to your employer not to take all of the company's secrets in exchange for a higher salary and/or a better position?
Fair is fair: if this guy made a promise, not matter how ridiculous it might be, he should be made to keep it.
All that said, does Google *really* think they are going to win this kind of war against Microsoft? A company that makes a Google's yearly profits every couple of weeks and wrote the book on predatory hiring? If Google opens the door here, they aren't going to be able to close it. Good luck fellas.
They said the same thing about the Microsoft battle against Netscape back when they had a 95% share of the browser market. They kept calling it a "huge battle" even though Netscape was the clear winner in the browser market and Microsoft obviously could never catch up with them. You think these journalists would learn, jeez.
The next version of Windows will most undoubtedly require more power than the Sun can adequately put out. We may have to look for a new solar system asap.
The payment model could be based on a simple royalty each time each subroutine is accessed. The easiest way to implement this would be an opaque wrapper on all GLPed APIs, which in turn could be easily implmented in a new version of gcc.
The wrapper code could then count the number of calls, the function name called, and the company calling them, and this in turn could append a text file that is stored somewhere and automatically sent once a month to the FSF which will then use the file to send the company a bill. The FSF would then distrubute the money to each of the authors of the given API calls.
I will volunteer to make the necessary modifications to gcc. This of course will require all GPL'd code to call my APIs, which will of course be the first to implement this new system.
If the patent is based on one or more in-process IETF standards, then the short answer is "no way". There's no way they'd even grant their patents let alone let them enforce them.
If the counter-bombers can counter-bomb, then the spammers can counter-counter-bomb, and so on. This sounds like nuclear war, but with keywords.
The only problem is, the automated robots that Google et. al. use are based on rules, and those rules will ALWAYS be able to be reverse-engineered by spammers.
Is there any way out of this?
(And please don't just say, "Google can just hire a bunch of people to look at stuff" because that won't scale to billions of Internet pages).
There are many more humans on this planet, with little sign of a stable population anytime in the near future.
If by "near future" you mean the next six months, then that is true. However, the UN is now predicting that the world population will peak in 2040 at 7.5B and then go down. China's systematic (some say, highly cruel and draconian) forced-population control programs are working, and people in the West are too selfish to have more babies and are using birth control. The "omigod the world population is exploding" scare is like, so 1987...
In order to stay current with all Linux features, Microsoft Feed (tm) will be bundled with the next major release of Windows.
The early insider-only reviews contain the following highlights:
The feeder dispenses 70kg of food at a time no matter what size cat you have.
Users of the feeder must use Microsoft CatChow (tm) or an authorized, licensed, compatible cat food (MS-ALCCF). Non-Microsoft licensed cat foods "may" cause your cat to crash.
The feeder contains hidden, Microsoft-only APIs to connect to Microsoft LitterBox (tm) and Microsoft ScratchingPost (tm). These products will be available early next year.
To show Microsoft's committment to open standards, any kind of water may be used with the Feeder product, although Microsoft may "extend" the Water Standard anytime in the future in incompatible ways.
When a company gives out options, they are priced at the current day's closing price. Ergo, when you get options, the price of the company's stock MUST go up or your options are worthless. Given that Google is currently valued at about the same as companies like Oracle (who have 10x Google's profits), I'd say the chances of GOOG stock going up in the next few years is virtually nil (now that MSFT is going after them in full force, good luck keeping the stock above $1).
As such, GOOG is giving out STOCK, not OPTIONS. Most Silly Valley types know all about the scenario above, and know that GOOG options would be worthless. As such, the only thing employees will accept as incentives at Google would be actual stock (which is almost exactly like getting paid in cash since it is immediately redeemable in the marketplace).
The GOOG pump-and-dump scam is over, and everybody knows it. Silly Valley types know this game, and nobody's going to work for Google if they actually want to make a lot of money. A good salary maybe, but forget about the millions. That is reserved for the lucky few that were there before the IPO and perhaps a few more that kiss up to the management to get one of these genius awards...
Microsoft is trying to push in on Google's territory, so it makes perfect sense for Google to push in on Microsoft's territory.
Wow, I didn't think of that. You're right, it makes SO MUCH SENSE to get into a direct war with Microsoft. So many companies have fared SO WELL by doing that.
it seems, however, that the days of content spam are numbered: today Google announced that...
..that they are infinitely wise, all-knowing, and all-powerful. They HAD to announce this since this is the ONLY way they are going to end search engine spam. What, do they think the spammers are stupid are and going to roll over and play dead? Oh that's right, that's what they have been doing with email spam. A few sendmail filters and poof, no more spammers!
I'd LOVE to hear somebody explain exactely why they are not theoretically screwed here. As near as I can tell, no matter what they do, people are still going to be able to make the "miserable failure" trick work, and if they can do that, all of the spammers can/will end the usefullness of search engines as we know it.
Of course this could be Labour spin to try and get people excited about the idea of cheating at mega casinos.
Can somebody tell me what this means? Why would Labour (which I assume to mean the UK Labour Party) want to get people excited about cheating at mega casinos?
Java is not open source, but is owned by a increasingly desparate company that is about to go down the tubes trying to sell overpriced hardware.
Get it through your thick heads people:
1. Java is owned by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
2. Sun (NASDAQ:SUNW) has a duty to its stockholders to not go bankrupt, and thus its management have an absolute duty to at least TRY to stop the world from spinning (aka stop LAMP).
3. Sun will not stop the world from spinning, they are still tied to a failed CPU architecture, and essentially have no future.
4. Java, being owned by Sun, has the same future as Sun, which is to say no future at all.
Um, how many of us here are tired of clicking on links from slashdot story only to find out (2 minutes later, after the timeout) that the server is trashed because it got more than it's usual 6 hits per day?
So here's a programming assignment for (somebody). How about we create a slashdot caching server such that the URL reads:
Unlike material assets, which have value by themselves, copyright is a government imposed monopoly, created to ensure that creators of works get an incentive to create above those who merely distribute.
Just a side note here. Any "property" you might "own" depends on a "government imposed monopoly". Your house and car amount to a few little pieces of paper (deeds), and the only thing protecting you from being separated from these things are the cops.
Either you agree with the notion of property rights or you don't, but it's ridiculous to think that there's any difference between "intellectual" property and "physical" property. Programmers think that the latter is harder to steal, but most street criminals (who don't know who to use a computer) would think the former...
Note that I deliberately said song *writers*. Sure, somebody that can play an instrument might be able to get a job at a restaurant or something, but *writers* are screwed.
As for Mozart et. al... They depended on free handouts from the state (the king, benefactors connected to the king, etc.). Perhaps we should institute a government program of funding for artists? Of course folks like Bob Dylan would never have made it, being so anti-establishment (and thus anti-government) and all...
Say what you want about file sharing, about whether its unstoppable, inevitable, etc. etc. The bottom line is that it takes the money out of music, leaving both big evil record companies and stuggling artists with no money.
Are "professional" song writers that make their primary living as artists a thing of the past? If South Korea is any indication, the answer is YES...
For those of you under the age of 30...
on
Less Might Be More
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Yahoo Search has had Yellow Pages for (a long time now). Google is just trying to match them feature for feature.
Their bid to take over the world is rooted in reports that they are working on an operating system to compete against Microsoft's (man, Google is sounding more and more like Netscape every day).
If all software patents were actually enforcable, then Sun would own Oracle, and Microsoft would own Sun. It's just that they don't want to fully enforce the patents they have, because such blatant anti-innovation will encourage legislatures to fix the laws.
Um, wow. Where to begin... Let's see... Sun was founded in 1982 and Oracle was founded in 1977. Perhaps one of Sun's Oracle-killing patents is on the time machine?
Meanwhile, you clearly have never seen a software patent in your life if you think patents allow you to "own" a company.
For instance, why doesn't Yahoo "own" Google now? Yahoo successfully sued Google when Google ripped off Yahoo's (Overture's) patent on paid search engine keywords (an idea everybody thought was really stupid at the time, but it was highly unique, and Overture developed the product and the demand for the concept over time at great expense, etc. etc.).
Yes, Google paid dearly for the rights to Yahoo's technology, but Yahoo certainly does not "own" Google. Sheesh.
Slashdot Mirror
Fair is fair: if this guy made a promise, not matter how ridiculous it might be, he should be made to keep it.
All that said, does Google *really* think they are going to win this kind of war against Microsoft? A company that makes a Google's yearly profits every couple of weeks and wrote the book on predatory hiring? If Google opens the door here, they aren't going to be able to close it. Good luck fellas.
They said the same thing about the Microsoft battle against Netscape back when they had a 95% share of the browser market. They kept calling it a "huge battle" even though Netscape was the clear winner in the browser market and Microsoft obviously could never catch up with them. You think these journalists would learn, jeez.
OTEC? Holy Christ don't tell me that the Arabs are already planning on price-fixing this market before it even gets started!
The next version of Windows will most undoubtedly require more power than the Sun can adequately put out. We may have to look for a new solar system asap.
The wrapper code could then count the number of calls, the function name called, and the company calling them, and this in turn could append a text file that is stored somewhere and automatically sent once a month to the FSF which will then use the file to send the company a bill. The FSF would then distrubute the money to each of the authors of the given API calls.
I will volunteer to make the necessary modifications to gcc. This of course will require all GPL'd code to call my APIs, which will of course be the first to implement this new system.
If the patent is based on one or more in-process IETF standards, then the short answer is "no way". There's no way they'd even grant their patents let alone let them enforce them.
If the counter-bombers can counter-bomb, then the spammers can counter-counter-bomb, and so on. This sounds like nuclear war, but with keywords.
The only problem is, the automated robots that Google et. al. use are based on rules, and those rules will ALWAYS be able to be reverse-engineered by spammers.
Is there any way out of this?
(And please don't just say, "Google can just hire a bunch of people to look at stuff" because that won't scale to billions of Internet pages).
Ideas anybody?
The early insider-only reviews contain the following highlights:
These have been around for years...
When a company gives out options, they are priced at the current day's closing price. Ergo, when you get options, the price of the company's stock MUST go up or your options are worthless. Given that Google is currently valued at about the same as companies like Oracle (who have 10x Google's profits), I'd say the chances of GOOG stock going up in the next few years is virtually nil (now that MSFT is going after them in full force, good luck keeping the stock above $1).
As such, GOOG is giving out STOCK, not OPTIONS. Most Silly Valley types know all about the scenario above, and know that GOOG options would be worthless. As such, the only thing employees will accept as incentives at Google would be actual stock (which is almost exactly like getting paid in cash since it is immediately redeemable in the marketplace).
The GOOG pump-and-dump scam is over, and everybody knows it. Silly Valley types know this game, and nobody's going to work for Google if they actually want to make a lot of money. A good salary maybe, but forget about the millions. That is reserved for the lucky few that were there before the IPO and perhaps a few more that kiss up to the management to get one of these genius awards...
Um, so how do I short GOOG stock again?
Then today would be the worst day of the year... -18 in one day, ouch...
I'd LOVE to hear somebody explain exactely why they are not theoretically screwed here. As near as I can tell, no matter what they do, people are still going to be able to make the "miserable failure" trick work, and if they can do that, all of the spammers can/will end the usefullness of search engines as we know it.
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0006/satire-ellison .shtml
Get it through your thick heads people:
1. Java is owned by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
2. Sun (NASDAQ:SUNW) has a duty to its stockholders to not go bankrupt, and thus its management have an absolute duty to at least TRY to stop the world from spinning (aka stop LAMP).
3. Sun will not stop the world from spinning, they are still tied to a failed CPU architecture, and essentially have no future.
4. Java, being owned by Sun, has the same future as Sun, which is to say no future at all.
Have a nice day.
So here's a programming assignment for (somebody). How about we create a slashdot caching server such that the URL reads:
http://cache.slashdot.org/cache.php?url=www.dfs.co m/bla.html
And the slashdot cache would keep the given website in a cache on a nice fast server for say 30 days until the story dies down, etc.
Thoughts?
Brazil GDP: $1.375 trillion (2003 est.)/ br.html
Source: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos
Mexico GDP: $941.2 billion (2003 est.)/ mx.html
Source: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos
Either you agree with the notion of property rights or you don't, but it's ridiculous to think that there's any difference between "intellectual" property and "physical" property. Programmers think that the latter is harder to steal, but most street criminals (who don't know who to use a computer) would think the former...
As for Mozart et. al... They depended on free handouts from the state (the king, benefactors connected to the king, etc.). Perhaps we should institute a government program of funding for artists? Of course folks like Bob Dylan would never have made it, being so anti-establishment (and thus anti-government) and all...
Are "professional" song writers that make their primary living as artists a thing of the past? If South Korea is any indication, the answer is YES...
This is a VT100.
Their bid to take over the world is rooted in reports that they are working on an operating system to compete against Microsoft's (man, Google is sounding more and more like Netscape every day).
Meanwhile, you clearly have never seen a software patent in your life if you think patents allow you to "own" a company.
For instance, why doesn't Yahoo "own" Google now? Yahoo successfully sued Google when Google ripped off Yahoo's (Overture's) patent on paid search engine keywords (an idea everybody thought was really stupid at the time, but it was highly unique, and Overture developed the product and the demand for the concept over time at great expense, etc. etc.).
Yes, Google paid dearly for the rights to Yahoo's technology, but Yahoo certainly does not "own" Google. Sheesh.