After I had read the original article I wondered what impulse would be the stronger among the slashdot crowd: the Google-is-god/f***-the-world or the respect-other-cultures impulse. There appears to be ample evidence of both here.
So I wonder if the Google-can-do-no-harm crowd can recall their Star Trek franchise, and if they are prepared to consider whether the Prime Directive of any decent group (society, country, company) should be: "don't interfere".
That includes, as far as I remember, to repect the whishes of a society to be left alone, in general and in Street View.
Could anyone in the US please remind the RIAA, MIAA and their stooges in Congress of the following clause of the Holy Constitution of the Greatest and Justly Envied Nation on the Face of this Planet (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8) giving Congress the right and obligation
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
Do I need to point out that the clause says To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts and not To Maximize Profit.... There is no such thing as intellectual property. Ideas belong to everyone. There is only a time-limited monopoly ("for limited Times (...) the exclusive Right"). Members of Congress and their paymasters should be invited to read the Constitution before taking office. The "invitation" can be accompanied by a few beatings with a baseball bat on the back of their heads.
I know of several Highlevel-to-Lowlevel language translators (e.g. Java-toC, Oberon-to-C, you name it) that have been around for decades. Surely, you cannot get a patent for doing the same thing with a different language, can you. Can you?!?
Compiling something to JavaScript in the browser environment is about as obvious as compiling to C on Unix. Case in point, here are a few other X-to-JavaScript compilers pulled off the top of my head: Python, Prolog, Oberon, etc. Seems pretty obvious to me. Not that that has ever prevented the US Patent Office from granting a patent, of course.
You would have thought that of all media companies in the world Sony would behave less stupidly with respect to copyright and DRM than all the other's. Let's not forget that it was Sony (the hardware manufacturer) who won the Betamax suit by which the media companies tried to kill the very same device that only a few years later would make them billions in video sales. But NO! As soon as they've become a media company themselves they act precisely the same way like the ones who bullied them into the Betamax suit. Are there any bets on how long it'll take until Sony (the media corporation) sues the socks off Sony (the MP3 device manufacturer)?
I remember seeing devices like the ones you mention on tram carriages. However, they were used to ventillate them, and not for driving generators. When rotating the rotor "sucks" air through holes around the axle like a rotary pump of similar design
Am I the only one to think that Bible literalists are quite selective on what they believe to be literally true.
Take this example (Matthew 19:23-25)
23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Emphasis mine)
To me this is a pretty clear statement that allows little lying about: Rich bastards go to hell! But, of course, in the otherwise totally literal Bible that was meant only metaphorically.
--SomPost
I will never understand, why Creationists (or Intelligent Designionists) insist on believing in a God who's essentially a moron.
So now we have this "marvelous complexity of our universe, its clockwork perfection" (as quoted from Star Trek in an earlier post), so beautifully designed that after a few billion years --without any further interference-- evolution of life kicks in, and plants and animals start growing and filling previously dead environments (God must have jumped of joy that it all worked as planned!).
Instead, they insist on believing in a God who formulated all these complex laws and rules of nature, yet still needs to build all the stuff himself.
Which God is a more "intelligent designer"? One who builds a machine that works with perfection once it is started, or one whose machine requires a permanent turning of knobs and pulling of levers because all would stop if he didn't.
It's all in the culture, guys
on
Gates on Google
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Whether Bill Gates admits it or not, it is a matter of fact that the bureaucracy that comes with size slows down innovation to a grinding halt.
I have heard (via a friend's friend whose friend has a friend...) that product groups within certain Slashdotters' Favorite Software companies (SFSCs) boast about a new product or feature being beta in August and being shipped next February while the same feature is up and running in Google. And took them 2 months or something to complete.
Unless these SFSCs change their culture they will always be outsmarted by Google. Money can go a long way, but against brains... I have my doubts.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Google-fundamentalist, but I use what's the best search engine - for now.
Thanks (sarcasm!) to the hysteria currently ravaging the USA, turning the "most powerful nation on the planet" (sarcasm!) into a bunch of scared chickens, this is not so true anymore.
As a matter of fact, the "Gates plea" mentioned somewhere above was issued because US Homeland Security measures harrass, drive and keep away the "young talents".
(...) But universities are concerned as new procedures before increasingly cumbersome, and foreign officials complain their citizens are being profiled- international graduate student applications are down 32 percent compared to a year ago and student visa applications are down 24 percent from 2001
...and, cynically, it may be about being a public company that needs revenue growth
Saying "don't be evil" and then doing an IPO is like saying "don't be a slut" and then join a brothel. I don't think that doing fancier, more colorful ads is necessarily "evil", but I do agree with the premise of above quote, that it's only a matter of time until the unimportant thing called "bottom line" tops everything else. Was it "Lush" or "The Body Shop" that started from a similar premise and were later forced by their shareholders to abandon their "do-gooding" in favor of the cold blooded bottom line?
The problems do relate to "real world" life insofar as you might be faced with problems like these during a job interview with companies such as Google.
Although I don't think that you'll necessarily get the best people by relying too heavily on their abilities to solve such puzzles quickly (i.e. during an interview session), Google certainly does.
In fact, they might want to know how you approach the problem if there are 5 billion instead of 5 items in the puzzle;-)
Here's an online map that does satellite images for ages, including the client-based UI using Script (Google's second here, too). Note that the satellite images are overlaid with transparent graphics indicating street names, railway tracks etc.
Slashdot Mirror
After I had read the original article I wondered what impulse would be the stronger among the slashdot crowd: the Google-is-god/f***-the-world or the respect-other-cultures impulse. There appears to be ample evidence of both here.
So I wonder if the Google-can-do-no-harm crowd can recall their Star Trek franchise, and if they are prepared to consider whether the Prime Directive of any decent group (society, country, company) should be: "don't interfere".
That includes, as far as I remember, to repect the whishes of a society to be left alone, in general and in Street View.
The King said to the Priest: "You keep 'em stupid! I'll keep 'em poor!"
We (you Americans, rather) don't have Kings anymore, but "Business" will do just as well.
-- SomPost
Maybe we should invade its surface, kill its plasma and convert it to black holeness.
I know of several Highlevel-to-Lowlevel language translators (e.g. Java-toC, Oberon-to-C, you name it) that have been around for decades. Surely, you cannot get a patent for doing the same thing with a different language, can you. Can you?!?
Compiling something to JavaScript in the browser environment is about as obvious as compiling to C on Unix. Case in point, here are a few other X-to-JavaScript compilers pulled off the top of my head: Python, Prolog, Oberon, etc. Seems pretty obvious to me. Not that that has ever prevented the US Patent Office from granting a patent, of course.
You would have thought that of all media companies in the world Sony would behave less stupidly with respect to copyright and DRM than all the other's. Let's not forget that it was Sony (the hardware manufacturer) who won the Betamax suit by which the media companies tried to kill the very same device that only a few years later would make them billions in video sales.
But NO! As soon as they've become a media company themselves they act precisely the same way like the ones who bullied them into the Betamax suit.
Are there any bets on how long it'll take until Sony (the media corporation) sues the socks off Sony (the MP3 device manufacturer)?
I remember seeing devices like the ones you mention on tram carriages. However, they were used to ventillate them, and not for driving generators. When rotating the rotor "sucks" air through holes around the axle like a rotary pump of similar design
Turbine? What turbine?? Oh.. that turbine! Yeah, sure! Cool turbine!
The turtle moves
We know that! But does it move because it was intelligently designed to do so?
I will never understand, why Creationists (or Intelligent Designionists) insist on believing in a God who's essentially a moron.
So now we have this "marvelous complexity of our universe, its clockwork perfection" (as quoted from Star Trek in an earlier post), so beautifully designed that after a few billion years --without any further interference-- evolution of life kicks in, and plants and animals start growing and filling previously dead environments (God must have jumped of joy that it all worked as planned!).
Instead, they insist on believing in a God who formulated all these complex laws and rules of nature, yet still needs to build all the stuff himself.
Which God is a more "intelligent designer"? One who builds a machine that works with perfection once it is started, or one whose machine requires a permanent turning of knobs and pulling of levers because all would stop if he didn't.
Whether Bill Gates admits it or not, it is a matter of fact that the bureaucracy that comes with size slows down innovation to a grinding halt.
I have heard (via a friend's friend whose friend has a friend...) that product groups within certain Slashdotters' Favorite Software companies (SFSCs) boast about a new product or feature being beta in August and being shipped next February while the same feature is up and running in Google. And took them 2 months or something to complete.
Unless these SFSCs change their culture they will always be outsmarted by Google. Money can go a long way, but against brains... I have my doubts.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Google-fundamentalist, but I use what's the best search engine - for now.
Thanks (sarcasm!) to the hysteria currently ravaging the USA, turning the "most powerful nation on the planet" (sarcasm!) into a bunch of scared chickens, this is not so true anymore.
As a matter of fact, the "Gates plea" mentioned somewhere above was issued because US Homeland Security measures harrass, drive and keep away the "young talents".
Here and elswhere (google for it yourself).
Cheers, SomPostPS: "And yet I Google..." SomPost, after Galileo
The problems do relate to "real world" life insofar as you might be faced with problems like these during a job interview with companies such as Google. ;-)
Although I don't think that you'll necessarily get the best people by relying too heavily on their abilities to solve such puzzles quickly (i.e. during an interview session), Google certainly does.
In fact, they might want to know how you approach the problem if there are 5 billion instead of 5 items in the puzzle
Here's an online map that does satellite images for ages, including the client-based UI using Script (Google's second here, too). Note that the satellite images are overlaid with transparent graphics indicating street names, railway tracks etc.