No, if the Chinese government wants to restrict access to some aspect of the internet *they* have to do that. In this case they could write their own search engine and limit the results in whichever way they please.
The only reason Google is willing to do this is... Money, like every other company out there - there's nothing idealistic about Google.
When confronted with this reality most developers switch to making synchronous calls (taking advantage of XMLHTTPRequest's truly new feature to "cheat")
Way before this all was called Ajax I used the following simple method:
Keep a - client side - queue of requests to be made to server.
Whenever the current queue is sent to (and processed at) the server, the client places new requests into the queue.
When the server finished processing (or a timeout occurs) the queue (if not-empty) is flushed to the server.
In order to handle timeout every server request also has to be tagged with a version to detect (and ignore) delayed replies from the server.
Hence there's at most one server request outstanding, ordering is guaranteed, etc, at the expense of less interleaving of network RTT and processing time at the server.
How the EU can call itself democratic is mystery to me.
The "EU Software Patent Directive" for me was the first time where I followed its way through the different EU instances:
1. The comission introduces the directive. This version allows unlimited software patentability 2. The directive is serverly amended during the 1st reading of the parliament (in effect disallowing software patents and patents on business processes alltogether) 3. Now it gets funky: The commission pulls the directive and presents the orgininal version to the EU council as a "compromise" 4. Now begins a series of attempts that seem fit for any small banana-republic: The directly is placed last-minute on the agenda of the "farming and fishing" council. We have to thank Poland to block this attempt. 5. After some more pushing and shuffing the directive is added as "A-Item" to the agenda of a meeting of the EU council (A-Item means: No further discussion necessary). 6. The "compromise" is accepted over the objections of some of the council's members and in disregard of the parliament. Now the parliament needs the absolute majority to amend the directive (remember this a version almost identical to the original version introduced by the comission) 7. There are various attempts by JURI to restart the process... All of which are denied. 8. Now the parliament faces a dilemma: The majority needed is relative to all the seats, not the number of MEP who actually show up (which is typically less than 50%). 9. The only way out for the parliament is to block the directive *before* the actual reading... Which, now encouraged by the patent-lobby (they could not have another amended version disallowing software patents), is what happened.
Now we were to supposed to celebrate this as some kind of democratic victory.
The only elected body of the EU is the parliament. The results of the 1st reading in the parliament should have been the final word.
The patent lobby is trying with all possible means to push software patents, past the fact that it will hurt EU business (most patents are owned by US and Japanese companies), past the general objection the parliament voiced...
And... What we all new would happened after the parliament was coerced into blocking the directive alltogether: The next attempt.
They will try until they succeed; bringing in new directives, retracting them if they do not like the amendments by the parliament, until they get lucky once. Then we'll have unlimited software patents in the EU, which will guarantee legal monopolies and hence guaranteed revenue streams to the owners of trivial patents.
The likes of SAP and Nokia and all others who fund or participate in the pro software patent lobby would do well to look past the next few quarters of revenue, and see that there is much more money to lose in the long run. (Just look at Microsoft/Eolas, RIM (blackberry), etc, etc, etc)
We'll find companies building patent arsenals to fend of patent claims of competitors with "cross-licensing-deals", which of course is ultimately doomed once we establish so called "patent trolls" on Europe as well (companies that have no business other then sueing for patent infringment).
Networking Algorithms and Protocols and... the Web.
Once you learned all that you can pick up any language and a matter of a few days (just learn its particular syntax and associated libraries).
I for one am getting sick and tired of folks who claim to know Java/C#/Whatever, but who are trapped in the specifics of that particular language and have no understanding about the underlying concepts.
They can't hack into other peoples networks to access the internet
They do not have any other forms communication
They do not know how to setyp anonymizer on foreign soil.
Truly, they must be of very limited mental capabailities. But then again, if we assume that all terrorists are idiots to begin with, then why bother at all?
All that this achieves a transparent citizen that is now open to all kinds of spy attacks from Record Industry and friends. And like the extensive camera system in London it will not help to catch a single terrorist.
I have a related story. I was using SBC DSL for a while. For some reason in my neighborhood (right in the center of the city) they could only deliver 120kbit (out of the minimum 384kbit advertised), when I ask to reduce by bill accordingly they said "Take it or leave it".
What could I do? I needed the service so I paid the full price. There were other issues where they tried to force me to do an assisted install of the DSL modem so that they can collect the installation fee, and they would refuse to give me basic information to setup my own DSL modem (that I got from SBC in my previous appartment).
The same week my cable provider finally enabled internet service I cancelled my SBC DSL and told them to shuff it up their a**es (man that felt good). Not that cable is necessarily better (in my neighborhood it happens to be), but I take anything over SBC DSL.
I find it strange that we are all "worshipping" a company whose only revenue stream is placing internet ads and whose main focus is to pester us with more ads.
I thought the EU directive "on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions" was defeated. What is the legal ground for the lawsuits in the UK and Germany?
Companies only need to buy the commercial MySQL license if they want to distribute closed source programs. Internal usage doesn't care a whit.
Correct! I think MySQL makes some chunk money of companies who embed the MySQL DB or parts of it and redistribute the result. Under the GPL that would be a derived work and hence the source code of the whole thing would have to distributed with the executable code; hence if these companies do not want to distribute their source they'd have to acquire a different from MySQL (you can actually argue whether MySQL is really an Open-Source company - I would argue it is not, the source distribution is just used for wide testing).
Remember, MySQL can only possibly make money from two sources:
Selling licenses (in this case close source licenses)
Providing service
Traditionally 1) scales better. Without owning the copyright or a redistribution agreement with the copyright owner, MySQL can only distribute the InnoDB under the license granted to them. In case of InnoDB that is the GPL (unless they find another agreement with Oracle). That basically cuts of big chunks of revenue stream 1).
The issue is this:
MySQL makes some of its revenue by selling non-open-source licenses to customers who, for whatever reason, do not widh to publish their contribution.
Now, you can only release code under any license of your choice if you own all the
copyrights.
Once Oracle owns the copyrights to InnoDB (and if Oracle does not extend the same relicensing rights to MySQL that InnoDB did), the only option MySQL has is redistributing a derived work under the GPL, they are legally no longer allowed to release under any other license. This in turn cuts off one of their revenue streams.
Indeed there are. After the Anthrax scare the US needed more doses of Cipro, a Bayer product. Bayer's price was apparently too high so the senat decided that in this case copyright and patents do not apply. Bayer was forced to provide Cipro for a fraction of its price or lose the copyright and patent status.
At the same time the US strictly enforce(d) copyrights and patents for AIDS medication in Afrika.
Remember: Copyright and patents are only good when they work to the advantage of the US, in all other cases they are dispicable actions.
Personally I applaud this decision of the Taiwanese government.
Granted, I did a benchmark with the application my group is developing using MySQL and PostgreSQL and MySQL was much faster.
Care to show us your benchmark, or at least what type of query MySQL is faster at? *Everything* (simple queries, table-scans, index-scans, simple joins, complex joins, multiple self-joins for hierarchical queries, etc) I tried suggested that PostgreSQL is faster or as fast, *except* for connection startup time (as Postgres spawns a process per connection), which is typically handled by a connection pool.
Interestingly I also did not find that MySQL's non-transactional storage are any faster than the transactional ones.
It is actually pretty simple (a similar scheme was also used for old C64 games with sprites).
1. you devide the visible map in tiles. 2. every tile is an image; it has a x/y poition on the screen and a source url, which "points" to the correct sub image of the map 3. when you drag the map around you just change the positions of the tiles 4. when a tile leaves the visible area you "reset" it (the x/y position and the url) and set its position to the other side 5. you make the map larger than the visible area in order to have the browser cache some image.
None if this is hard, mouse dragging scripts can be found anywhere. I guess the hard part is to come by the satellite data and to develop an adressing scheme (for the image urls) to address the correct subpart of the images that still works with different resolutions, etc.
I am not saying this is exactly how Google does is, but it could work this way (and it is how I would solve it).
Maybe you should consider who is pushing who in this issue. The US have been repeatedly called upon to relinguish control about the root servers.
The clear statement was: "No, we will not". Some folks ask: "Well, why not?"
Now the EU and other countries will install their own root DNS servers and that's the end of the story.
While PostgreSQL doesn't offer the insane (but inherently flawed) performance of MySQL
I have used and tested both; for *every* query that I tried PostgreSQL is either faster or as fast as MySQL. For some complex self-joins for tree-queries PostgreSQL finished within a few seconds where I stopped MySQL after 30mins (and yes I check all the indices, etc).
Since PostgreSQL has to spawn a new process for each connection - as opposed to MySQL which only spawns a new thread - there extra overhead involved in opening and closing many connection which is typical for web application. However, serious folks leave that up to a connection pool which completely eleminates the problem.
Google has a search engine no more no less. Their only revenue stream is advertising. They are riding a hype-wave, doing that same that Yahoo did many years ago. Where else can they go? I hear, they may be doing a browser, build a wi-fi network, and other speculations just like this article. Yet Google has no expertise in these areas. Just try their desktop search and you know what I mean.
So, here we have a company that provides internet advertising and it is valued higher than Boeing, 2/3 of IBM, over 2x Airbus. Yahoo is atually making more revenue with the same growth potential.
Everyone believing that Google can keep up this growth or even its current value is just following a pipe dream; there is a reason why Google floated $4bn of extra shares this time, as they have to assume that the hype is going to die down.
the author wants to download software for free *and* be able to hold the author liable for any (direct or indirect) damages... Talk about free-loading. Coding and liability are in principle independent. When the author assumes liability that constitutes an extra service. What we need is the ability to get software for free, and the ability to get fitness and other guarantees - in exchange of a fee.
not because of any these dump security measures, but for the simple fact that all passengers will have to assume that they won't make it out alive and hence fight the hijackers (which is what happened with the 4th 9/11 plane).
The patents are released to open source projects only. But what if you are writing derived commercial applications?
That may not be a problem with the GPL, where every derivation is under the GPL as well. It gets at best murky with the LGPL, and any BSD or MIT license would be completely subverted since as soon as you have commercial derivation - which these licenses explicitly allow - you lose the right to use the patents.
This, and the release of patents by IBM is a PR stunt, nothing more, nothing less. The only way to clean up this mess is to overhaul the patent system (unlikely) or to release the patents to the public, *without* any restrictions.
Yes, there are chinese hackers, so let's block the entire country's ip space.
Oh wait, there're European hackers as well, so let's block 'em too.
Wait again... There're US hackers. Let's block those too.
The only 100% safe computer is a computer that is switched off.
Draconian measures like this don't help anybody and are just plain stupid.
This pretty much proves the pathetic state of our legal system
I call bullsh*t.
These were two different cases one about trademarks in general, and one about trademarks in advertisements.
It seems clear to me that Google can't just sell any term as an adword. In this case Geico spent time and money to build the brand. Now a competitor may buy the "Geico" adword and place competing advertisements using the established brand of Geico capitalizing on Geico's investment.
I agree with your statement about the current state of the legal system - in general... In this case, however, the system actually worked.
Slashdot Mirror
The only reason Google is willing to do this is... Money, like every other company out there - there's nothing idealistic about Google.
Way before this all was called Ajax I used the following simple method:
In order to handle timeout every server request also has to be tagged with a version to detect (and ignore) delayed replies from the server.
Hence there's at most one server request outstanding, ordering is guaranteed, etc, at the expense of less interleaving of network RTT and processing time at the server.
How the EU can call itself democratic is mystery to me.
o ns040408)
The "EU Software Patent Directive" for me was the first time where I followed its way through the different EU instances:
1. The comission introduces the directive. This version allows unlimited software patentability
2. The directive is serverly amended during the 1st reading of the parliament (in effect disallowing software patents and patents on business processes alltogether)
3. Now it gets funky: The commission pulls the directive and presents the orgininal version to the EU council as a "compromise"
4. Now begins a series of attempts that seem fit for any small banana-republic: The directly is placed last-minute on the agenda of the "farming and fishing" council. We have to thank Poland to block this attempt.
5. After some more pushing and shuffing the directive is added as "A-Item" to the agenda of a meeting of the EU council (A-Item means: No further discussion necessary).
6. The "compromise" is accepted over the objections of some of the council's members and in disregard of the parliament. Now the parliament needs the absolute majority to amend the directive (remember this a version almost identical to the original version introduced by the comission)
7. There are various attempts by JURI to restart the process... All of which are denied.
8. Now the parliament faces a dilemma: The majority needed is relative to all the seats, not the number of MEP who actually show up (which is typically less than 50%).
9. The only way out for the parliament is to block the directive *before* the actual reading... Which, now encouraged by the patent-lobby (they could not have another amended version disallowing software patents), is what happened.
(More information here: http://swpat.ffii.org/news/recent/index.en.html#c
Now we were to supposed to celebrate this as some kind of democratic victory.
The only elected body of the EU is the parliament. The results of the 1st reading in the parliament should have been the final word.
The patent lobby is trying with all possible means to push software patents, past the fact that it will hurt EU business (most patents are owned by US and Japanese companies), past the general objection the parliament voiced...
And... What we all new would happened after the parliament was coerced into blocking the directive alltogether: The next attempt.
They will try until they succeed; bringing in new directives, retracting them if they do not like the amendments by the parliament, until they get lucky once. Then we'll have unlimited software patents in the EU, which will guarantee legal monopolies and hence guaranteed revenue streams to the owners of trivial patents.
The likes of SAP and Nokia and all others who fund or participate in the pro software patent lobby would do well to look past the next few quarters of revenue, and see that there is much more money to lose in the long run.
(Just look at Microsoft/Eolas, RIM (blackberry), etc, etc, etc)
We'll find companies building patent arsenals to fend of patent claims of competitors with "cross-licensing-deals", which of course is ultimately doomed once we establish so called "patent trolls" on Europe as well (companies that have no business other then sueing for patent infringment).
Once you learned all that you can pick up any language and a matter of a few days (just learn its particular syntax and associated libraries).
I for one am getting sick and tired of folks who claim to know Java/C#/Whatever, but who are trapped in the specifics of that particular language and have no understanding about the underlying concepts.
- They do not know how to use encryption
- They can't steal phone to make calls
- They can't hack into other peoples networks to access the internet
- They do not have any other forms communication
- They do not know how to setyp anonymizer on foreign soil.
Truly, they must be of very limited mental capabailities. But then again, if we assume that all terrorists are idiots to begin with, then why bother at all?All that this achieves a transparent citizen that is now open to all kinds of spy attacks from Record Industry and friends. And like the extensive camera system in London it will not help to catch a single terrorist.
What could I do? I needed the service so I paid the full price. There were other issues where they tried to force me to do an assisted install of the DSL modem so that they can collect the installation fee, and they would refuse to give me basic information to setup my own DSL modem (that I got from SBC in my previous appartment).
The same week my cable provider finally enabled internet service I cancelled my SBC DSL and told them to shuff it up their a**es (man that felt good). Not that cable is necessarily better (in my neighborhood it happens to be), but I take anything over SBC DSL.
I find it strange that we are all "worshipping" a company whose only revenue stream is placing internet ads and whose main focus is to pester us with more ads.
I thought the EU directive "on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions" was defeated. What is the legal ground for the lawsuits in the UK and Germany?
Correct! I think MySQL makes some chunk money of companies who embed the MySQL DB or parts of it and redistribute the result. Under the GPL that would be a derived work and hence the source code of the whole thing would have to distributed with the executable code; hence if these companies do not want to distribute their source they'd have to acquire a different from MySQL (you can actually argue whether MySQL is really an Open-Source company - I would argue it is not, the source distribution is just used for wide testing).
Remember, MySQL can only possibly make money from two sources:
Traditionally 1) scales better. Without owning the copyright or a redistribution agreement with the copyright owner, MySQL can only distribute the InnoDB under the license granted to them. In case of InnoDB that is the GPL (unless they find another agreement with Oracle). That basically cuts of big chunks of revenue stream 1).
MySQL makes some of its revenue by selling non-open-source licenses to customers who, for whatever reason, do not widh to publish their contribution.
Now, you can only release code under any license of your choice if you own all the copyrights.
Once Oracle owns the copyrights to InnoDB (and if Oracle does not extend the same relicensing rights to MySQL that InnoDB did), the only option MySQL has is redistributing a derived work under the GPL, they are legally no longer allowed to release under any other license. This in turn cuts off one of their revenue streams.
Indeed there are. After the Anthrax scare the US needed more doses of Cipro, a Bayer product. Bayer's price was apparently too high so the senat decided that in this case copyright and patents do not apply. Bayer was forced to provide Cipro for a fraction of its price or lose the copyright and patent status.
At the same time the US strictly enforce(d) copyrights and patents for AIDS medication in Afrika.
Remember: Copyright and patents are only good when they work to the advantage of the US, in all other cases they are dispicable actions.
Personally I applaud this decision of the Taiwanese government.
Care to show us your benchmark, or at least what type of query MySQL is faster at? *Everything* (simple queries, table-scans, index-scans, simple joins, complex joins, multiple self-joins for hierarchical queries, etc) I tried suggested that PostgreSQL is faster or as fast, *except* for connection startup time (as Postgres spawns a process per connection), which is typically handled by a connection pool.
Interestingly I also did not find that MySQL's non-transactional storage are any faster than the transactional ones.
It is actually pretty simple (a similar scheme was also used for old C64 games with sprites).
1. you devide the visible map in tiles.
2. every tile is an image; it has a x/y poition on the screen and a source url, which "points" to the correct sub image of the map
3. when you drag the map around you just change the positions of the tiles
4. when a tile leaves the visible area you "reset" it (the x/y position and the url) and set its position to the other side
5. you make the map larger than the visible area in order to have the browser cache some image.
None if this is hard, mouse dragging scripts can be found anywhere. I guess the hard part is to come by the satellite data and to develop an adressing scheme (for the image urls) to address the correct subpart of the images that still works with different resolutions, etc.
I am not saying this is exactly how Google does is, but it could work this way (and it is how I would solve it).
The clear statement was: "No, we will not". Some folks ask: "Well, why not?"
Now the EU and other countries will install their own root DNS servers and that's the end of the story.
No need to get emotional about it.
I have used and tested both; for *every* query that I tried PostgreSQL is either faster or as fast as MySQL. For some complex self-joins for tree-queries PostgreSQL finished within a few seconds where I stopped MySQL after 30mins (and yes I check all the indices, etc).
Since PostgreSQL has to spawn a new process for each connection - as opposed to MySQL which only spawns a new thread - there extra overhead involved in opening and closing many connection which is typical for web application. However, serious folks leave that up to a connection pool which completely eleminates the problem.
So, here we have a company that provides internet advertising and it is valued higher than Boeing, 2/3 of IBM, over 2x Airbus. Yahoo is atually making more revenue with the same growth potential.
Everyone believing that Google can keep up this growth or even its current value is just following a pipe dream; there is a reason why Google floated $4bn of extra shares this time, as they have to assume that the hype is going to die down.
the author wants to download software for free *and* be able to hold the author liable for any (direct or indirect) damages... Talk about free-loading.
Coding and liability are in principle independent.
When the author assumes liability that constitutes an extra service. What we need is the ability to get software for free, and the ability to get fitness and other guarantees - in exchange of a fee.
not because of any these dump security measures, but for the simple fact that all passengers will have to assume that they won't make it out alive and hence fight the hijackers (which is what happened with the 4th 9/11 plane).
for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither." -Thomas Jefferson
That may not be a problem with the GPL, where every derivation is under the GPL as well. It gets at best murky with the LGPL, and any BSD or MIT license would be completely subverted since as soon as you have commercial derivation - which these licenses explicitly allow - you lose the right to use the patents.
This, and the release of patents by IBM is a PR stunt, nothing more, nothing less. The only way to clean up this mess is to overhaul the patent system (unlikely) or to release the patents to the public, *without* any restrictions.
You have a point. CD's are (still) free of DRM. What else can one do to protest, though?
Anybody who does not agree with the RIAA's current actions, should do the same: Vote with your wallet.
Different companies have different requirements so they'll come to different conclusions.
There's no need to evangalize over this. For them open source wasn't the right choice.
You use the right tool for the right job. Period.
Oh wait, there're European hackers as well, so let's block 'em too.
Wait again... There're US hackers. Let's block those too.
The only 100% safe computer is a computer that is switched off.
Draconian measures like this don't help anybody and are just plain stupid.
I call bullsh*t.
- These were two different cases one about trademarks in general, and one about trademarks in advertisements.
- It seems clear to me that Google can't just sell any term as an adword. In this case Geico spent time and money to build the brand. Now a competitor may buy the "Geico" adword and place competing advertisements using the established brand of Geico capitalizing on Geico's investment.
I agree with your statement about the current state of the legal system - in general... In this case, however, the system actually worked.