Unfortunately this seems pretty typical of this government. They like to make policies up on the spot and those policies don't have any thought put into them.
Oh I like to think that there's just the right amount of thought put into this. Let me guess how it went: a MS rep took the right people out for dinner, blow, and hookers, and that's pretty much all it took.
Because frankly, there's no shortage of OSS advocates in touch with the government. That at least at some point in the discussion someone would've pointed out that when MS says free, they don't mean it, I can almost guarantee.
Sure, I got no proof of what I'm saying, but neither does the next guy who thinks that incompetence comes first than malice, when lobbying is a well documented phenomena.
Your government grew, and became hugely inefficient at serving anyone but itself. How can this not be clear when it is actively working to deny me and you access to information that paints it in a negative light?
Whether you believe it's a threat to national security that this sort of information gets leaked or not, actions like this one show that corruption runs deep, and it won't just stop by itself. Corruption is much like cancer: it doesn't retreat on it's own, and as history has shown many times over, there's hardly a way to remove it without collateral damage.
That unfortunate truth is what corrupt politicians cling on, so to make it look like the people fighting corruption are actually the villains, and divert our attention from the fact that the reason why Wikileaks (and other groups) came to be in the first place was because they're the response to an existing problem. One that won't go away without a fight, and that will ultimately destroy your country from the inside, because that's what corruption does. Read on the history of Rome for an example.
There is, and that's one among a few potential problems with this idea. Though identifying said problems isn't reason enough to throw it out of the window.
I also see the problem he's trying to address (US control over it) as a huge deal, considering that that pretty much means *some* corporations having control over the Internet. While today we're here posting on Slashdot, and browsing/using it in whichever way we want, it's not prudent to wait until that's not the case anymore to start looking into it.
... Spammers so far have killed quite a large number of things that used to be cool on the internet and they're not going to stop until they're reigned in or nobody uses anything electronic anymore because of them.
The same could be said about ICANN (and by extension the US govt), the day they decide that a website or product "violates their copyrights", "hasn't paid royalties for patents", "is controversial", or whatever.
There's a such thing as responsible disclosure, and Wikileaks blew it. They're irresponsible. We do need to know about wrongdoing, yes. But there's a huge difference between reporting and disclosing serious wrongdoing and just throwing hundreds of thousands of documents at the world and saying here, read this! I don't know what agenda Wikileaks really has, but it's not a good one.
And what exactly is the right way to do it? Forums such as Slashdot could do with sensible arguments as opposed to "oh this just feels wrong so it's not good".
Don't attribute to ignorance what can be adequately explained by malice. (yeah I know I got it backwards)
At this point I doubt the brains behind this operation are out to make anyone's lives more secure. They just can't be that stupid. This is about the multi-million dollar contracts involved in selling these machines, and propagating fear, which in turn leads to more contracts.
Surely you can blame then when, in the course of protecting their interests, they bribe and corrupt a system designed to protect the interests of the majority, in order to create blockades that add no value whatsoever to a product that got paid for with tax money.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, so apologies in case you are.
Technology won't stop here. One day we'll come up with infinite (or nearly) energy supplies, maybe in 20 years, or 200, I don't know. That in itself will solve so many problems in the world that I can't even begin to imagine.
It will also ruin the market for energy completely. So what do we do? Do we shove it because there's jobs to be saved? Do we then get everyone to pretend that energy is scarce, when in reality it isn't, so we can keep our current economic models intact?
What I'm trying to point out is that eventually, almost everything that makes money today will be made obsolete by technology, and by then, capitalism (or trade based systems) won't scale anymore. What we're seeing here is yet another step. If our solutions to this problem consistently involve creating artificial scarcity, in a few centuries mankind will be comprised of corporations sitting on endless resources, and of people legislated into compliance to ensure said corporations can live forever.
I recently finished watching The Wire (great show by the way). The last season is all about the media and how journalism has been tanking for years now, thanks to the Internet.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not in favor of halting technology to save the industry. But the point they illustrate there (on the season 5 DVD there's a nice little documentary which goes into detail) is that 1) bloggers are giving people what they need, and most people don't care about investigative journalism, and 2) the Internet solves the distribution problem, which is where a good chunk of their income would come from.
So because there's less money coming in, they start getting rid of staff, lowering quality because quality costs money, and more and more you get what you just described in there: infotainment. Because that sells, and if they don't worry about what sells, they're gone.
I don't have a solution to the problem. What I'm pointing out though is that infotainment is a consequence. It's not that every journalist and editor woke up one fine day and decided to do a poor job. And frankly I don't have a hard time believing in that.
And whether you agree with me or not, if you get the chance to get your hands on that DVD, do so and watch the documentary in the extras. It's pretty damn interesting.
... Lately it's all about the US government, and the wars. It's not the kind of information that most of us find interesting
What shocks me to no end is that you're right. I suppose people don't care if it ain't happening on their own backyard. But the apathy of the populace with regards to a war waged for reasons that have so many holes that, to be honest, I think at this point the powers that be don't care if they get busted or not, it just never ceases to amaze me.
What I can't conceive is a manager parenting his/her employees by using a monitoring tool that keeps tabs on them on the Internet.
But really, it's Darwinism in action: should a company start getting rid of good employees thanks to what may seem to be an indicator or a "devious" personality, it'll get what it deserves eventually. No one even remotely good will want to work for them. Their workforce will be made of prudes, people with weak personalities, or people who need the job too desperately and hence are willing to put up with ridiculous shit like that.
Oh I know that one: the cousins/brothers/buddies of the people in govt buying them. You know, people who wouldn't be in business if it wasn't for that kind of favor and hand-greasing.
I may be a bit off-topic here, but oh well. I've seen that being pointed out enough times that I feel I should say something.
> Without the amazing skills of Apple's marketing department, this pathetic joke of a store would fail horribly.
Marketing, when it comes to consumer electronics, will only take you so far. Apple's real "marketing department" is the same as Google's: their customers. Friends who tell their friends they loved the product, who then tell friends, and so on.
In a space where there's so much competition such as theirs, you can only achieve that with quality. Lies (or marketing) won't get you past the first impulse buyers.
ps: I don't agree with their decisions regarding app removals. Though I read the article and I seriously think we haven't been told the whole story.
A lot of what you just pointed out, in the eyes of law enforcement (the cronies for some corrupt politician), is nothing more than problems that get in the way of their certainty.
Also, for all the previous posts suggesting that politicians should then be forced to include their own DNA in the database: they might as well do. It won't change anything because that database, should we get to the point where it's being used to prosecute people, well, it will work against people who *actually* get prosecuted for something. And in general that doesn't happen to them.
Amazing how the same happened in Rome happens now, and my guess is it will have the same outcome. This mafia commanding the nation will ultimately destroy everything in their pursuit of power and money. And you know what, that's probably fine as far as they're concerned.
Bandwidth is a finite resource, even if we don't believe it.
That's not what pretty much every ISP is advertising though. I still see the word "unlimited" everywhere I look at an ad.
I take Bell Canada will have to be clear about what they're selling in this case. If they do, no problems at all.
Just understand that the grudge most people have (myself included) has a lot to do with the recent wave of ISPs doing "traffic management" despite having been left under the impression they were getting what they're seeing on the ad.
Except he's a public official. I for one very much doubt he did this in his own time, or with his own money.
The blogger committed no crime, as from TFA. So what gives?
Hate to state the obvious, but that strikes me as a personal vendetta being pursued while the fine representative should be more concerned with matters of public interest.
Because, done correctly, it provides a massive improvement in service for games and voice, with a small reduction in service for downloaders.
As for them overselling, if they had to be totally honest about how much bandwidth is available to each customer, they would have to say 'Total Bandwidth / Number of Customers = Your alotted bandwidth'. It would be next to nothing, and even more meaningless than the ideal maximums that they use for advertising now. That being said, perhaps they should be forced to make that data available to prospective customers, it would certainly influence my choice.
And in that case they wouldn't be scamming people into believing they're getting what was advertised.
Oh wait, that's what this is about isn't it. It's about a bunch of ISPs trying to get away with not doing their jobs. It's about a few telcos ripping off your country with subsidized infrastructure that never happened.
So whatever. While the talk in the west is "how we'll start throttling/capping/just generally cutting down on bandwidth", in places like Asia, they're going the other way. Guess we'll see pretty soon the outcome of all that won't we.
You gotta love the thinly veiled attempt to diminish their persona by calling them "kids who don't have a life yet". This is the sort of judgment you can expect from a managerial type who never took on a subject too seriously in his life.
I've seen this happening a few times before. It's how they explain to themselves how come someone half their age knows a lot about something, while all they have is half-wit, "street smarts", and the luck to be surrounded by other knobs just like him.
I'll get smashed by the fanboys around, but well...
Fun games as in what? To whose liking?
I find that nearly all the gamers I know would (much) rather have an Xbox 360 than a Wii, not only because it delivers a better graphic experience but mostly because Wii games are just "cute" (I know there are exceptions). What most people seem to imply is that these games are "better" because "everyone can play", "it's for the whole family", or crap like that. I'm a hardcore gamer (and older than 21). I like to see an intense experience in front of me. When I saw Far Cry running on the Wii, I truly laughed out loud. I can't imagine why someone decided they should bring it to the Wii. Probably for the fanboys who LIKE to believe good graphics != fun. It felt like the PS2, at best.
Yeah yeah, the controller is cool, and I'll probably buy the console someday. But before implying that the Wii games are "catchier" or "funnier", try asking someone who *actually played* in an Xbox 360 (or PS3) what console they would buy if all consoles costed $200. This would take price from the equation, and I'm sure is an important factor.
Also, don't forget to ask if the person is actually a gamer. I'm sure my grandma would love colorful balloons floating around and having to score points by shooting them as your only objective, or seeing all those cute japanese-like characters smiling at each other all the time. But this definitely ain't my cup of tea. That's in fact what I dislike in most Nintendo (all their consoles) games.
I find it's somewhat weird that one can't directly vote as "null" (this means, in other words, you're refraining yourself from participating). In order to vote as "null", you have to pick an invalid candidate number. It's been like this since the last election (or maybe before, but I can't recall). There's apparently not much press on the fact. So I guess most uninformed people (majority, as usual) would simply do otherwise just thinking "they've done something wrong". For some reason, it seems to be this is a form of pushing the nation into voting *for someone*. Call me paranoid, but I can't see a good reason for that. It reminds me of that quote: "if voting worked, it would be illegal".
And yes, I'd rather not participate. There may not be any evidence of fraud in our elections, but I don't see the point in participating in the circus of lies that is politics in Brazil. If after all these years no one has realized politicians (right/left wing, doesn't matter) aren't out to help anyone there, they well deserve what's happening now.
The soul of South America lies within Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, and Argentina.
Tell you what. The other day I was on #rubyonrails at irc.freenode.net, and I (bravely) stated I didn't get why wouldn't they code the framework's website using it. OR, at least, using Ruby on FastCGI.
The answer I got was "Because RoR isn't supposed to be used to make brochures". That kind of annoyed me, as it not only sounded arrogant, but coming from a channel operator which ALSO happens to be one of the core developers (not mentioning the nick here), I found that to be even more stupid than if a "regular" user said so. I told him "well, it CAN be used for that, you don't even need ActiveRecord in that case... it would be nice to show people that there's real websites out there using it... the more the better". His reply was simply "We're past the point of having to prove anything".
If I wasn't too much into Rails (and Ruby, but that IS a different story) already, that would have been the day I would stop using it and start dedicating 30 minutes every day to tell the world how they can be idiots. He's clearly the sort that refuses to get what people hint at him. Like there's no equivalent (I'll dare to say better) around, that is at the very least more suitable for real world projects, and not your own blog with 10 hits a day from your friends.
If you're like me and you love Rails without the stupidities, check this guy's blog. He gives some nice tips on performance and smarter coding in Rails (there's some presentations there for downloading who are definitely worth the time). And take your time to really get into Ruby. That will allow you to see through the pile of BS that's suggested around as "good Rails code practices".
If they mean the same "good work" Google did with Orkut, than everybody's in for trouble. Seeing Google as _the_ high quality web development company, one can't conceive they bought and kept a product in such a bad shape as that.
Forgive me if I guess wrong, but I think Orkut has been around for 4 years or so, right? I still get silly error messages all the time (ask an user if he hasn't seen the "Bad, bad server, no donut for you" at least 10 times in his life), either when you try to upload a picture, write a scrap, or do any sort of interaction. It's the same average I used to get when the product was launched, and it didn't belong to Google. Meaning they bought it for some reason that's not making good use of it.
Second, success of Orkut in Brazil had nothing to do with soccer (of course, the text didn't mention that as the reason, but suggests correlation). Orkut was the first social network that became widely known over there. That's all. Word of mouth took care of the rest.
Slashdot Mirror
So when is the US/EU/etc going to step in and liberate Egypt?
Once again showing that using the demographic you're in as sample leads to bad conclusions more often than not.
Unfortunately this seems pretty typical of this government. They like to make policies up on the spot and those policies don't have any thought put into them.
Oh I like to think that there's just the right amount of thought put into this. Let me guess how it went: a MS rep took the right people out for dinner, blow, and hookers, and that's pretty much all it took.
Because frankly, there's no shortage of OSS advocates in touch with the government. That at least at some point in the discussion someone would've pointed out that when MS says free, they don't mean it, I can almost guarantee.
Sure, I got no proof of what I'm saying, but neither does the next guy who thinks that incompetence comes first than malice, when lobbying is a well documented phenomena.
I'm glad you called him a rapist. Otherwise I would've thought I should take your comment into consideration.
Your government grew, and became hugely inefficient at serving anyone but itself. How can this not be clear when it is actively working to deny me and you access to information that paints it in a negative light?
Whether you believe it's a threat to national security that this sort of information gets leaked or not, actions like this one show that corruption runs deep, and it won't just stop by itself. Corruption is much like cancer: it doesn't retreat on it's own, and as history has shown many times over, there's hardly a way to remove it without collateral damage.
That unfortunate truth is what corrupt politicians cling on, so to make it look like the people fighting corruption are actually the villains, and divert our attention from the fact that the reason why Wikileaks (and other groups) came to be in the first place was because they're the response to an existing problem. One that won't go away without a fight, and that will ultimately destroy your country from the inside, because that's what corruption does. Read on the history of Rome for an example.
There is, and that's one among a few potential problems with this idea. Though identifying said problems isn't reason enough to throw it out of the window.
I also see the problem he's trying to address (US control over it) as a huge deal, considering that that pretty much means *some* corporations having control over the Internet. While today we're here posting on Slashdot, and browsing/using it in whichever way we want, it's not prudent to wait until that's not the case anymore to start looking into it.
... Spammers so far have killed quite a large number of things that used to be cool on the internet and they're not going to stop until they're reigned in or nobody uses anything electronic anymore because of them.
The same could be said about ICANN (and by extension the US govt), the day they decide that a website or product "violates their copyrights", "hasn't paid royalties for patents", "is controversial", or whatever.
There's a such thing as responsible disclosure, and Wikileaks blew it. They're irresponsible. We do need to know about wrongdoing, yes. But there's a huge difference between reporting and disclosing serious wrongdoing and just throwing hundreds of thousands of documents at the world and saying here, read this! I don't know what agenda Wikileaks really has, but it's not a good one.
And what exactly is the right way to do it? Forums such as Slashdot could do with sensible arguments as opposed to "oh this just feels wrong so it's not good".
Don't attribute to ignorance what can be adequately explained by malice. (yeah I know I got it backwards)
At this point I doubt the brains behind this operation are out to make anyone's lives more secure. They just can't be that stupid. This is about the multi-million dollar contracts involved in selling these machines, and propagating fear, which in turn leads to more contracts.
"Gee, this guy is using encryption. We'll have to leave him alone then".
Or
"He's using encryption, so he must be a terrorist. Ship him to Gitmo".
Pick the one you think it's more likely.
Surely you can blame then when, in the course of protecting their interests, they bribe and corrupt a system designed to protect the interests of the majority, in order to create blockades that add no value whatsoever to a product that got paid for with tax money.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, so apologies in case you are.
Technology won't stop here. One day we'll come up with infinite (or nearly) energy supplies, maybe in 20 years, or 200, I don't know. That in itself will solve so many problems in the world that I can't even begin to imagine.
It will also ruin the market for energy completely. So what do we do? Do we shove it because there's jobs to be saved? Do we then get everyone to pretend that energy is scarce, when in reality it isn't, so we can keep our current economic models intact?
What I'm trying to point out is that eventually, almost everything that makes money today will be made obsolete by technology, and by then, capitalism (or trade based systems) won't scale anymore. What we're seeing here is yet another step. If our solutions to this problem consistently involve creating artificial scarcity, in a few centuries mankind will be comprised of corporations sitting on endless resources, and of people legislated into compliance to ensure said corporations can live forever.
I recently finished watching The Wire (great show by the way). The last season is all about the media and how journalism has been tanking for years now, thanks to the Internet.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not in favor of halting technology to save the industry. But the point they illustrate there (on the season 5 DVD there's a nice little documentary which goes into detail) is that 1) bloggers are giving people what they need, and most people don't care about investigative journalism, and 2) the Internet solves the distribution problem, which is where a good chunk of their income would come from.
So because there's less money coming in, they start getting rid of staff, lowering quality because quality costs money, and more and more you get what you just described in there: infotainment. Because that sells, and if they don't worry about what sells, they're gone.
I don't have a solution to the problem. What I'm pointing out though is that infotainment is a consequence. It's not that every journalist and editor woke up one fine day and decided to do a poor job. And frankly I don't have a hard time believing in that.
And whether you agree with me or not, if you get the chance to get your hands on that DVD, do so and watch the documentary in the extras. It's pretty damn interesting.
... Lately it's all about the US government, and the wars. It's not the kind of information that most of us find interesting
What shocks me to no end is that you're right. I suppose people don't care if it ain't happening on their own backyard. But the apathy of the populace with regards to a war waged for reasons that have so many holes that, to be honest, I think at this point the powers that be don't care if they get busted or not, it just never ceases to amaze me.
What I can't conceive is a manager parenting his/her employees by using a monitoring tool that keeps tabs on them on the Internet.
But really, it's Darwinism in action: should a company start getting rid of good employees thanks to what may seem to be an indicator or a "devious" personality, it'll get what it deserves eventually. No one even remotely good will want to work for them. Their workforce will be made of prudes, people with weak personalities, or people who need the job too desperately and hence are willing to put up with ridiculous shit like that.
Oh I know that one: the cousins/brothers/buddies of the people in govt buying them. You know, people who wouldn't be in business if it wasn't for that kind of favor and hand-greasing.
I may be a bit off-topic here, but oh well. I've seen that being pointed out enough times that I feel I should say something.
> Without the amazing skills of Apple's marketing department, this pathetic joke of a store would fail horribly.
Marketing, when it comes to consumer electronics, will only take you so far. Apple's real "marketing department" is the same as Google's: their customers. Friends who tell their friends they loved the product, who then tell friends, and so on.
In a space where there's so much competition such as theirs, you can only achieve that with quality. Lies (or marketing) won't get you past the first impulse buyers.
ps: I don't agree with their decisions regarding app removals. Though I read the article and I seriously think we haven't been told the whole story.
A lot of what you just pointed out, in the eyes of law enforcement (the cronies for some corrupt politician), is nothing more than problems that get in the way of their certainty.
Also, for all the previous posts suggesting that politicians should then be forced to include their own DNA in the database: they might as well do. It won't change anything because that database, should we get to the point where it's being used to prosecute people, well, it will work against people who *actually* get prosecuted for something. And in general that doesn't happen to them.
Amazing how the same happened in Rome happens now, and my guess is it will have the same outcome. This mafia commanding the nation will ultimately destroy everything in their pursuit of power and money. And you know what, that's probably fine as far as they're concerned.
Bandwidth is a finite resource, even if we don't believe it.
That's not what pretty much every ISP is advertising though. I still see the word "unlimited" everywhere I look at an ad.
I take Bell Canada will have to be clear about what they're selling in this case. If they do, no problems at all.
Just understand that the grudge most people have (myself included) has a lot to do with the recent wave of ISPs doing "traffic management" despite having been left under the impression they were getting what they're seeing on the ad.
Except he's a public official. I for one very much doubt he did this in his own time, or with his own money.
The blogger committed no crime, as from TFA. So what gives?
Hate to state the obvious, but that strikes me as a personal vendetta being pursued while the fine representative should be more concerned with matters of public interest.
Because, done correctly, it provides a massive improvement in service for games and voice, with a small reduction in service for downloaders.
As for them overselling, if they had to be totally honest about how much bandwidth is available to each customer, they would have to say 'Total Bandwidth / Number of Customers = Your alotted bandwidth'. It would be next to nothing, and even more meaningless than the ideal maximums that they use for advertising now. That being said, perhaps they should be forced to make that data available to prospective customers, it would certainly influence my choice.
And in that case they wouldn't be scamming people into believing they're getting what was advertised.
Oh wait, that's what this is about isn't it. It's about a bunch of ISPs trying to get away with not doing their jobs. It's about a few telcos ripping off your country with subsidized infrastructure that never happened.
So whatever. While the talk in the west is "how we'll start throttling/capping/just generally cutting down on bandwidth", in places like Asia, they're going the other way. Guess we'll see pretty soon the outcome of all that won't we.
You gotta love the thinly veiled attempt to diminish their persona by calling them "kids who don't have a life yet". This is the sort of judgment you can expect from a managerial type who never took on a subject too seriously in his life.
I've seen this happening a few times before. It's how they explain to themselves how come someone half their age knows a lot about something, while all they have is half-wit, "street smarts", and the luck to be surrounded by other knobs just like him.
I'll get smashed by the fanboys around, but well...
Fun games as in what? To whose liking?
I find that nearly all the gamers I know would (much) rather have an Xbox 360 than a Wii, not only because it delivers a better graphic experience but mostly because Wii games are just "cute" (I know there are exceptions). What most people seem to imply is that these games are "better" because "everyone can play", "it's for the whole family", or crap like that. I'm a hardcore gamer (and older than 21). I like to see an intense experience in front of me. When I saw Far Cry running on the Wii, I truly laughed out loud. I can't imagine why someone decided they should bring it to the Wii. Probably for the fanboys who LIKE to believe good graphics != fun. It felt like the PS2, at best.
Yeah yeah, the controller is cool, and I'll probably buy the console someday. But before implying that the Wii games are "catchier" or "funnier", try asking someone who *actually played* in an Xbox 360 (or PS3) what console they would buy if all consoles costed $200. This would take price from the equation, and I'm sure is an important factor.
Also, don't forget to ask if the person is actually a gamer. I'm sure my grandma would love colorful balloons floating around and having to score points by shooting them as your only objective, or seeing all those cute japanese-like characters smiling at each other all the time. But this definitely ain't my cup of tea. That's in fact what I dislike in most Nintendo (all their consoles) games.
I find it's somewhat weird that one can't directly vote as "null" (this means, in other words, you're refraining yourself from participating). In order to vote as "null", you have to pick an invalid candidate number. It's been like this since the last election (or maybe before, but I can't recall). There's apparently not much press on the fact. So I guess most uninformed people (majority, as usual) would simply do otherwise just thinking "they've done something wrong". For some reason, it seems to be this is a form of pushing the nation into voting *for someone*. Call me paranoid, but I can't see a good reason for that. It reminds me of that quote: "if voting worked, it would be illegal".
And yes, I'd rather not participate. There may not be any evidence of fraud in our elections, but I don't see the point in participating in the circus of lies that is politics in Brazil. If after all these years no one has realized politicians (right/left wing, doesn't matter) aren't out to help anyone there, they well deserve what's happening now.
The soul of South America lies within Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, and Argentina.Tell you what. The other day I was on #rubyonrails at irc.freenode.net, and I (bravely) stated I didn't get why wouldn't they code the framework's website using it. OR, at least, using Ruby on FastCGI.
... it would be nice to show people that there's real websites out there using it ... the more the better". His reply was simply "We're past the point of having to prove anything".
The answer I got was "Because RoR isn't supposed to be used to make brochures". That kind of annoyed me, as it not only sounded arrogant, but coming from a channel operator which ALSO happens to be one of the core developers (not mentioning the nick here), I found that to be even more stupid than if a "regular" user said so. I told him "well, it CAN be used for that, you don't even need ActiveRecord in that case
If I wasn't too much into Rails (and Ruby, but that IS a different story) already, that would have been the day I would stop using it and start dedicating 30 minutes every day to tell the world how they can be idiots. He's clearly the sort that refuses to get what people hint at him. Like there's no equivalent (I'll dare to say better) around, that is at the very least more suitable for real world projects, and not your own blog with 10 hits a day from your friends.
If you're like me and you love Rails without the stupidities, check this guy's blog. He gives some nice tips on performance and smarter coding in Rails (there's some presentations there for downloading who are definitely worth the time). And take your time to really get into Ruby. That will allow you to see through the pile of BS that's suggested around as "good Rails code practices".
Really, what expertise?
If they mean the same "good work" Google did with Orkut, than everybody's in for trouble. Seeing Google as _the_ high quality web development company, one can't conceive they bought and kept a product in such a bad shape as that.
Forgive me if I guess wrong, but I think Orkut has been around for 4 years or so, right? I still get silly error messages all the time (ask an user if he hasn't seen the "Bad, bad server, no donut for you" at least 10 times in his life), either when you try to upload a picture, write a scrap, or do any sort of interaction. It's the same average I used to get when the product was launched, and it didn't belong to Google. Meaning they bought it for some reason that's not making good use of it.
Second, success of Orkut in Brazil had nothing to do with soccer (of course, the text didn't mention that as the reason, but suggests correlation). Orkut was the first social network that became widely known over there. That's all. Word of mouth took care of the rest.