It is worth hundreds of millions because it has none of its own content. Anyone with enough hardware could copy WP's content, code, and system settings (all publicly available info) in a week or two (depending on your level of skill in linux/mysql/php/mediawiki)
As for hardware expenses. Wikipedia buys all of their own equipment rather than leasing it from any provider (which would save them quite a bit of money in the short term, especially since they keep buying hardware to replace old hardware.) Their rapid and aggressive growth would have made leasing servers much more effective.
If Mozilla is any indication, Wikipedia could be making quite a bit of cash just working out an agreement selling targeted advertising from these providers simply on the search pages. No ads on the content at all, simply the search pages. Hell, you could offer to have it turned off for registered users!
I always find it amusing that MSFT says that Vista is the least cracked OS they have made to date... They fail to see that most people who pirate OSes actually intend on using that OS and are as likely to want vista as anyone else...
No, you need to be using like sub 1mbps (aka idling, only viewing individual pages on non multimedia sites, etc) before Comcast will give you another 12mbps boost. You always get at least 6 (or 8) Mbps to use, the other 6/4 you get as an extra 'bonus' for the small periods of time you may need it.
There is a 'cooldown' timer. You need to be at very low bandwidth levels for a specific amount of time (or some other measure) before you can 'burst' again.
In chicago it is 12mbps then down to 6 or 8 depending on your plan. To do a proper speedtest on comcast you need to download a 100-200MB file. Although if you are getting 12mbps easily odds are you are getting your rated line speed.
Intelectual property itself is worthless, it is everything around it that has at least some worth. Think of IP as being in a big container, surrounded by things like 'costs to create' and 'man hours spent'
All 3 of the big players, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, have pretty good search algorithms in place. If you ran a Yahoo or MSN Live search and put it in the google template you wouldn't notice any major difference.
I have said this before, why does Comcast not just throttle BT packets when the lines are being saturated? On multiple levels. You could also throttle the bandwidth of the largest users in general if other users who barely ever use the internet want bandwidth. AKA if all I do is log on once a day and watch 10 youtube videos I would get priority over the guy who maxes out his line doing BT all day.
Of course, you would always want to prioritize VOIP, games, DNS and other types of vital traffic. Could even prioritize based on what servers are being accessed. Blackberry.net, Chase Online Banking, ETrade, and other similar sites are a bit more important than YouTube.com for most customers.
This shaping would only be if the line is being saturated.
I go to a school that, when I was a freshman, had a few thousand students on the residential network sharing a single T3. There were arrays of squids which basically cached all of Facebook & Yahoo Mail and traffic shapers for everything else. The shapers were set to aggregate and monitor the usage of bandwidth that is not being pulled from the squids based on the mac addresses they registered when they first connected to the network. So if one user was using a ton of bandwidth, their devices would be throttled down. I was absolutely floored by this. Not only because I feel like I was getting ripped off by sharing a single T3 with a thousand other college students, but also that I never even suspected that I was sharing such a small connection. In fact, since the squids were there things seemed to load even faster! (although I wouldn't recommend having Squids for business customers, if it is a residential non-business network then it should be fair game if the remote hosts don't specifically say not to cache the content)
It can be done, and Comcast doesn't have to mess with the actual packets or play games with the traffic on their network. Just do some traffic shaping for Christ's sake! Not only that, you can start offering faster connections like RCN... Hey, if they can get me 20mbit even if any BT I use is throttled based on what my neighbor's needs are, then I'm game.
Exactly! You would think there would be some 'legacy plugin support' for people to enable if they so desire. I don't know that all of my plugins are being actively developed, and I cannot stand this version of Firefox on OS X for much longer (the beta is much more stable, but no plugins work)
I still don't get why people hate Vista so damn much. I have it and it runs fine. Just make sure you turn off the warning system when you first setup your box then enable it when you are done and you will only get the annoying 'warnings' every so often.
Would have also been nice if Microsoft made Vista more modular... so you could remove modules you don't need / don't want (indexing, I'm looking at you buddy)
Here in Packer Country they make sure that all church services are done on time so people can get to the game. The priests are just as anxious to see the game
No Catholic is there for any reason other than by choice (well, little kids get dragged along sometimes.) Everyone knows that god is not going to smite them for missing church (well, at least not the post vatican-2 american ones)
Getting confirmed is something you must choose to do. It really is a choice. If you do it for any reason other than faith... ultimately blind faith... then you are doing it for the wrong reason.
And the reason behind mass is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus and how by doing that he 'washed away the sins of the world'
At least that is what I get out of it... I'm no priest (thank god, no offense) but go to a jesuit univeristy with more than enough of them
As for the politics of the Vatican... meh... at least they are consistent nowadays (no abortion, no war, no death penalty, etc)... they don't really have many "EXCEPT WHEN...." statements
Geeky priest.. cool... The Vatican needs to start digitizing their library... carefully (some are very fragile)
I don't understand why more people don't use reCAPTCHA. If the best book OCRs can't figure out a word, it is probably going to be difficult for a 3rd party OCR to figure out a distorted version of that word. Much less 2 words. Add on to that the fact that there is a central DB monitoring what IPs are solving these CAPTCHAs and on what sites these CAPTCHAs are being solved on and you allow the reCAPTCHA project the ability to improve the reliability of their service.
Plus you get to help digitize books for public access. Which is always a good thing.
It's been like that since the beginning, and it is like that now. Windows Vista is sloppy, unfinished code that causes users a lot of grief.
I have never had a problem with Vista, nor has anyone I deal with had any problems. I recommend turning off the 'protection system' they have when you are first setting up your machine, but after that I enable it again.
I read somewhere that Deibold wants out of the business because it is like 10% of their revenue and 90% of their PR headaches.
I love optical scanners. They are so easy to do, quick to report, and easy to check if there is a problem.
What a lot of people don't realize is that on election day those boxes are carted around escorted by agents from both parties. There is no funny business to be done because it is being watched the entire election with lawyers for both parties parked around the area ready to respond to a phone call and judges literally sitting at their desks all day waiting for phone calls. Even if the 'seal is broken' the box was watched from point a to point z by reps from all parties involved.
Meh. Bandwidth is dirt cheap and getting cheaper all the time.
Bandwidth is cheap, yes... if you are picking it up in a major telco center.
Now go and ask Verizon how much they pay to upgrade entire neighborhoods with fiber-to-the-home. And remember, they are relying on the fact that the customer is almost always going to get the triple-service-deal (tv/internet/phone) which makes them the most money... TWC doesn't have that type of guarantee
TWC doesn't want to run an entirely new infrastructure just to satisfy the people who are using the most bandwidth. And if they are going to go through the trouble to upgrade infrastructure, they need to have a financial benefit to doing such (i.e. more users paying more for more bandwidth.) They are already going to have to invest in new lines once all the major cable networks go HD
It sucks for the high-bandwidth user, but it makes perfect sense.
Exactly... I am all for a set of design standards... a central DB is a bit much..
Although I do not like the idea of someone who had their license revoked (or almost did) or got caught drunk driving in another state getting a clean ID in a different state. Linking traffic violations/points between all 50 states would be a real advancement IMO
Verizon announced that it plans to go GSM in the future, and if they completely phase out CDMA, pretty much only Sprint/Nextel would be the only CDMA provider in the US.
A lot (if not most) high schools have conduct codes that all student athletes/extra curricular participants must sign that states they will not do illegal activities. This is basically proof that they went back on that code and they are being punished for it.
Yeah, but coke/H/meth are more immediate in their addiction, and once you are addicted it is very difficult for you to function... alcohol has a similar effect, but the % of people who become addicted is not high enough to really make a HUGE societal impact... cigarettes are amazingly addictive, but they don't really reduce someone's functionality like alcohol/coke/H/meth...
Now pot, on the other hand, doesn't really fall into any of the above categories... it is, in all seriousness, pretty harmless... it is a lot more like alcohol in its effects than cigarettes... as in you don't show up to work drunk, so if pot is illegal obviously you wouldn't show up to work stoned... and driving while under the influence of pot should be illegal and have the same penalties as driving while under the influence of alcohol (don't give me that 'I can drive better when high' line, you are either full of shit or the exception to the rule)
as for hemp... hemp is legal in a lot of countries and it is rarely used... why? because it is a really shitty fabric... feels horrible to wear, is more difficult to work with than some other materials, and in general it is just a 'cheaper' fabric... although I hear it makes good rope... you know, because there is a major shortage of rope-making-materials out there...
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It is worth hundreds of millions because it has none of its own content. Anyone with enough hardware could copy WP's content, code, and system settings (all publicly available info) in a week or two (depending on your level of skill in linux/mysql/php/mediawiki)
As for hardware expenses. Wikipedia buys all of their own equipment rather than leasing it from any provider (which would save them quite a bit of money in the short term, especially since they keep buying hardware to replace old hardware.) Their rapid and aggressive growth would have made leasing servers much more effective.
If Mozilla is any indication, Wikipedia could be making quite a bit of cash just working out an agreement selling targeted advertising from these providers simply on the search pages. No ads on the content at all, simply the search pages. Hell, you could offer to have it turned off for registered users!
Scratch that... Turns out everybody has done a last supper pose with their cast: http://culturepopped.blogspot.com/2007/04/suddenly-last-supper.html
Most notable lately would be BSG and House
Is there a story behind that?
I always find it amusing that MSFT says that Vista is the least cracked OS they have made to date... They fail to see that most people who pirate OSes actually intend on using that OS and are as likely to want vista as anyone else...
No, you need to be using like sub 1mbps (aka idling, only viewing individual pages on non multimedia sites, etc) before Comcast will give you another 12mbps boost. You always get at least 6 (or 8) Mbps to use, the other 6/4 you get as an extra 'bonus' for the small periods of time you may need it.
There is a 'cooldown' timer. You need to be at very low bandwidth levels for a specific amount of time (or some other measure) before you can 'burst' again.
In chicago it is 12mbps then down to 6 or 8 depending on your plan. To do a proper speedtest on comcast you need to download a 100-200MB file. Although if you are getting 12mbps easily odds are you are getting your rated line speed.
Intelectual property itself is worthless, it is everything around it that has at least some worth. Think of IP as being in a big container, surrounded by things like 'costs to create' and 'man hours spent'
There is only a movie if the missile moves it back and to the left
http://search.yahoo.com/ (yahoo clean searc page)
http://www.live.com/ (msn clean search page)
All 3 of the big players, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, have pretty good search algorithms in place. If you ran a Yahoo or MSN Live search and put it in the google template you wouldn't notice any major difference.
Seriously...
I have said this before, why does Comcast not just throttle BT packets when the lines are being saturated? On multiple levels. You could also throttle the bandwidth of the largest users in general if other users who barely ever use the internet want bandwidth. AKA if all I do is log on once a day and watch 10 youtube videos I would get priority over the guy who maxes out his line doing BT all day.
Of course, you would always want to prioritize VOIP, games, DNS and other types of vital traffic. Could even prioritize based on what servers are being accessed. Blackberry.net, Chase Online Banking, ETrade, and other similar sites are a bit more important than YouTube.com for most customers.
This shaping would only be if the line is being saturated.
I go to a school that, when I was a freshman, had a few thousand students on the residential network sharing a single T3. There were arrays of squids which basically cached all of Facebook & Yahoo Mail and traffic shapers for everything else. The shapers were set to aggregate and monitor the usage of bandwidth that is not being pulled from the squids based on the mac addresses they registered when they first connected to the network. So if one user was using a ton of bandwidth, their devices would be throttled down. I was absolutely floored by this. Not only because I feel like I was getting ripped off by sharing a single T3 with a thousand other college students, but also that I never even suspected that I was sharing such a small connection. In fact, since the squids were there things seemed to load even faster! (although I wouldn't recommend having Squids for business customers, if it is a residential non-business network then it should be fair game if the remote hosts don't specifically say not to cache the content)
It can be done, and Comcast doesn't have to mess with the actual packets or play games with the traffic on their network. Just do some traffic shaping for Christ's sake! Not only that, you can start offering faster connections like RCN... Hey, if they can get me 20mbit even if any BT I use is throttled based on what my neighbor's needs are, then I'm game.
Exactly! You would think there would be some 'legacy plugin support' for people to enable if they so desire. I don't know that all of my plugins are being actively developed, and I cannot stand this version of Firefox on OS X for much longer (the beta is much more stable, but no plugins work)
Exactly. I download XP copies to use with my 100% legit keys just because I want the slipstreamed versions with the latest updates.
Microsoft.com has the last RC for SP1..
I still don't get why people hate Vista so damn much. I have it and it runs fine. Just make sure you turn off the warning system when you first setup your box then enable it when you are done and you will only get the annoying 'warnings' every so often.
Would have also been nice if Microsoft made Vista more modular... so you could remove modules you don't need / don't want (indexing, I'm looking at you buddy)
To piggy back on your post:
No Catholic is there for any reason other than by choice (well, little kids get dragged along sometimes.) Everyone knows that god is not going to smite them for missing church (well, at least not the post vatican-2 american ones)
Getting confirmed is something you must choose to do. It really is a choice. If you do it for any reason other than faith... ultimately blind faith... then you are doing it for the wrong reason.
And the reason behind mass is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus and how by doing that he 'washed away the sins of the world'
At least that is what I get out of it... I'm no priest (thank god, no offense) but go to a jesuit univeristy with more than enough of them
As for the politics of the Vatican... meh... at least they are consistent nowadays (no abortion, no war, no death penalty, etc)... they don't really have many "EXCEPT WHEN...." statements
Geeky priest.. cool... The Vatican needs to start digitizing their library... carefully (some are very fragile)
If it was a corporation doing this I would have more of a problem, but reCAPTCHA is run by Carnegie Mellon University.
I don't understand why more people don't use reCAPTCHA. If the best book OCRs can't figure out a word, it is probably going to be difficult for a 3rd party OCR to figure out a distorted version of that word. Much less 2 words. Add on to that the fact that there is a central DB monitoring what IPs are solving these CAPTCHAs and on what sites these CAPTCHAs are being solved on and you allow the reCAPTCHA project the ability to improve the reliability of their service.
Plus you get to help digitize books for public access. Which is always a good thing.
I have never had a problem with Vista, nor has anyone I deal with had any problems. I recommend turning off the 'protection system' they have when you are first setting up your machine, but after that I enable it again.
I read somewhere that Deibold wants out of the business because it is like 10% of their revenue and 90% of their PR headaches.
I love optical scanners. They are so easy to do, quick to report, and easy to check if there is a problem.
What a lot of people don't realize is that on election day those boxes are carted around escorted by agents from both parties. There is no funny business to be done because it is being watched the entire election with lawyers for both parties parked around the area ready to respond to a phone call and judges literally sitting at their desks all day waiting for phone calls. Even if the 'seal is broken' the box was watched from point a to point z by reps from all parties involved.
But it is more fun to claim rigged elections.
Bandwidth is cheap, yes... if you are picking it up in a major telco center.
Now go and ask Verizon how much they pay to upgrade entire neighborhoods with fiber-to-the-home. And remember, they are relying on the fact that the customer is almost always going to get the triple-service-deal (tv/internet/phone) which makes them the most money... TWC doesn't have that type of guarantee
TWC doesn't want to run an entirely new infrastructure just to satisfy the people who are using the most bandwidth. And if they are going to go through the trouble to upgrade infrastructure, they need to have a financial benefit to doing such (i.e. more users paying more for more bandwidth.) They are already going to have to invest in new lines once all the major cable networks go HD
It sucks for the high-bandwidth user, but it makes perfect sense.
Exactly... I am all for a set of design standards... a central DB is a bit much..
Although I do not like the idea of someone who had their license revoked (or almost did) or got caught drunk driving in another state getting a clean ID in a different state. Linking traffic violations/points between all 50 states would be a real advancement IMO
Link?
A lot (if not most) high schools have conduct codes that all student athletes/extra curricular participants must sign that states they will not do illegal activities. This is basically proof that they went back on that code and they are being punished for it.
Yeah, but coke/H/meth are more immediate in their addiction, and once you are addicted it is very difficult for you to function... alcohol has a similar effect, but the % of people who become addicted is not high enough to really make a HUGE societal impact... cigarettes are amazingly addictive, but they don't really reduce someone's functionality like alcohol/coke/H/meth...
Now pot, on the other hand, doesn't really fall into any of the above categories... it is, in all seriousness, pretty harmless... it is a lot more like alcohol in its effects than cigarettes... as in you don't show up to work drunk, so if pot is illegal obviously you wouldn't show up to work stoned... and driving while under the influence of pot should be illegal and have the same penalties as driving while under the influence of alcohol (don't give me that 'I can drive better when high' line, you are either full of shit or the exception to the rule)
as for hemp... hemp is legal in a lot of countries and it is rarely used... why? because it is a really shitty fabric... feels horrible to wear, is more difficult to work with than some other materials, and in general it is just a 'cheaper' fabric... although I hear it makes good rope... you know, because there is a major shortage of rope-making-materials out there...
Google doesn't own Doubleclick yet