Those who find this mind-blowing might want to check out Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - fantastic SF book (winner of both the awards whose names I can't remember now). At its core is a game not so unlike this (although admittedly a tad more sophisticated)...
Sheesh... I've tried writing back to these guys several times and they just ignore me. I want to help - do they have access to my credit records or something?
Excellent point. I sometimes see serious load on our proxy from individual RSS readers who find that a feed doesn't exist, and then keep polling it as often as every minute, to see if it suddenly magically appeared. Exponential (or hell with it, even quadratic) backoff is the way to go.
Seems Google has a kind of dilemma. On the one hand, they want to avoid all automated querying since it undermines their marketing model and perceived advertiser value. On the other, they want to build up automated third-party services (such as TouchGraph GoogleBrowser or GoogleAlert, both big users of the Google APIs). How are they ever going to be able to push advertising alongside automated queries if they can't even be sure that click throughs on normal queries aren't being faked? Or are they resigned to a pure pay-for-query model?
I can't see Google expanding their APIs at all. They've languished without improvement in over 2 years since their release, while Google has added a million and one other features to their site. My guess is that the APIs are not seen as a strategic asset, but rather a bone thrown to keep the hackers happy and smiling. The last thing the IPO will do is change that...
As I understand it, the main problem with RSS is finding a suitable advertising model. With web search, you can put the ad results to one side, without interrupting the flow too much. Advertising in RSS would have to be far more intrusive, upsetting users and destroying Google's low-interference model.
Seriously, I reckon that one of Google's main motivating factors behind the APIs is to have top development talent find them, and save them having to scour the earth. But they do also seem to be looking to make money from the APIs - see this article about Google Alert for an example.
This is just one of many moves Google are making to counter their primary business risk - that someone (or more specifically, Microsoft) comes along tomorrow with a better search engine and puts them out of business overnight. They are looking to create a long-term relationship with people - that's why they're moving towards Personalized Search, and are also working on a whole host of ongoing searching products such as their Web Alerts, News Alerts. They're even encouraging the third-party Google Alerts service to try their hand at making money from this kind of thing.
This looks neat - but it would help if there was a way to build the ASCII art from text within the program. In the meantime Email Effects will do the trick very nicely.
There's no reason why you'd necessarily need to train it - Bayesian clustering can look for similarities in documents, and use model-selection techniques such as MDL or BIC to determine the most information-efficient arrangement. No doubt that's the kind of thing that is used over at Vivisimo, which automatically clusters search results.
Maybe I'm missing some over-arching physics theory, but I reckon time in the universe and time as we experience it are two very different things. Time in the universe is just another dimension, with a few unusual rules to separate it from the three of space. Time as we experience it is about ordering - our consciousness seems to move forwards through time (this is different from the intuitive notion that we are static, and time is moving).
I've had similar problems with AppleCare Ireland. Apparently I lost some special AppleCare number document, so even though Apple had the serial number of my PowerBook on file, it took months of repeated phone calls, letters, emails and faxes, until they finally recovered my data from their database. How difficult can a database search be?
I don't know why Apple haven't released an OS X version of the OpenMosix project, which works wonders on Linux. It moves processes automatically between nodes while they are running, automatically re-routing disk and network access, and copying memory data across. Needs tricky work on the kernel, but combined with Rendezvous technology, it could be a killer. Your heavy tasks would be automatically routed around the workgroup, as and when is appropriate, even if they are only half-way complete.
Geez I wish those GNOME developers would spare a thought for us Mac-heads - it's bad enough getting used to control-clicking but trying to work out what three different mouse buttons do makes my head spin. Preferably: remove the command line too.
This is an idea I've been thinking of myself for some time. But don't think that the energy requirements aren't huge - nanotechnology notwithstanding, there is still a huge amount of material that has to be broken up and moved. And where would it all be put - into space?
The same network could be used for product delivery, mail, etc... It's a well-known (and hopefully true!) statistic that half of the world's GDP is taken up with inefficient transportation and associated industries (e.g. oil, shipping, cars, airlines) so a global underground subway could save a vast amount of resources and energy.
This is a great idea - the only problem I can see with it is that the browser history map becomes too unwieldly, requiring a lot of horizontal and vertical scrolling. The missing element is mouseover magnification like the OS X Dock has - that would let the user see their entire history (OK, let's be realistic - one week at a time) in the window, and then home in on the relevant part by moving the mouse. Kudos guys!
Slashdot Mirror
Those who find this mind-blowing might want to check out Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - fantastic SF book (winner of both the awards whose names I can't remember now). At its core is a game not so unlike this (although admittedly a tad more sophisticated)...
Sheesh... I've tried writing back to these guys several times and they just ignore me. I want to help - do they have access to my credit records or something?
Excellent point. I sometimes see serious load on our proxy from individual RSS readers who find that a feed doesn't exist, and then keep polling it as often as every minute, to see if it suddenly magically appeared. Exponential (or hell with it, even quadratic) backoff is the way to go.
Seems Google has a kind of dilemma. On the one hand, they want to avoid all automated querying since it undermines their marketing model and perceived advertiser value. On the other, they want to build up automated third-party services (such as TouchGraph GoogleBrowser or GoogleAlert, both big users of the Google APIs). How are they ever going to be able to push advertising alongside automated queries if they can't even be sure that click throughs on normal queries aren't being faked? Or are they resigned to a pure pay-for-query model?
I can't see Google expanding their APIs at all. They've languished without improvement in over 2 years since their release, while Google has added a million and one other features to their site. My guess is that the APIs are not seen as a strategic asset, but rather a bone thrown to keep the hackers happy and smiling. The last thing the IPO will do is change that...
As I understand it, the main problem with RSS is finding a suitable advertising model. With web search, you can put the ad results to one side, without interrupting the flow too much. Advertising in RSS would have to be far more intrusive, upsetting users and destroying Google's low-interference model.
Seriously, I reckon that one of Google's main motivating factors behind the APIs is to have top development talent find them, and save them having to scour the earth. But they do also seem to be looking to make money from the APIs - see this article about Google Alert for an example.
This is just one of many moves Google are making to counter their primary business risk - that someone (or more specifically, Microsoft) comes along tomorrow with a better search engine and puts them out of business overnight. They are looking to create a long-term relationship with people - that's why they're moving towards Personalized Search, and are also working on a whole host of ongoing searching products such as their Web Alerts, News Alerts. They're even encouraging the third-party Google Alerts service to try their hand at making money from this kind of thing.
This looks neat - but it would help if there was a way to build the ASCII art from text within the program. In the meantime Email Effects will do the trick very nicely.
There's no reason why you'd necessarily need to train it - Bayesian clustering can look for similarities in documents, and use model-selection techniques such as MDL or BIC to determine the most information-efficient arrangement. No doubt that's the kind of thing that is used over at Vivisimo, which automatically clusters search results.
Maybe I'm missing some over-arching physics theory, but I reckon time in the universe and time as we experience it are two very different things. Time in the universe is just another dimension, with a few unusual rules to separate it from the three of space. Time as we experience it is about ordering - our consciousness seems to move forwards through time (this is different from the intuitive notion that we are static, and time is moving).
I've had similar problems with AppleCare Ireland. Apparently I lost some special AppleCare number document, so even though Apple had the serial number of my PowerBook on file, it took months of repeated phone calls, letters, emails and faxes, until they finally recovered my data from their database. How difficult can a database search be?
I don't know why Apple haven't released an OS X version of the OpenMosix project, which works wonders on Linux. It moves processes automatically between nodes while they are running, automatically re-routing disk and network access, and copying memory data across. Needs tricky work on the kernel, but combined with Rendezvous technology, it could be a killer. Your heavy tasks would be automatically routed around the workgroup, as and when is appropriate, even if they are only half-way complete.
Geez I wish those GNOME developers would spare a thought for us Mac-heads - it's bad enough getting used to control-clicking but trying to work out what three different mouse buttons do makes my head spin. Preferably: remove the command line too.
The same network could be used for product delivery, mail, etc... It's a well-known (and hopefully true!) statistic that half of the world's GDP is taken up with inefficient transportation and associated industries (e.g. oil, shipping, cars, airlines) so a global underground subway could save a vast amount of resources and energy.
This is a great idea - the only problem I can see with it is that the browser history map becomes too unwieldly, requiring a lot of horizontal and vertical scrolling. The missing element is mouseover magnification like the OS X Dock has - that would let the user see their entire history (OK, let's be realistic - one week at a time) in the window, and then home in on the relevant part by moving the mouse. Kudos guys!