Even though you don't seem to realize it, you are on the right track. All of those things that you mentioned are, in fact, addictive. Probably any thing that anyone enjoys is addictive in the sense that a person can become addicted to it.
So "addictive" is kind of a meaningless term; this fact is borne out by how easy it is for so many people to have such vastly different opinions about it (many, like you, simply refuse to consider that the term has any validity when applied to video games; whereas others are positive that it is meaningful).
I think that when people say 'addictive' what they really mean is, 'is acknowledged to have been a cause of addiction for a significant number of people."
Have video games reached that point? Well, that's clearly debateable. People like you would say no, the number of people addicted to video games is too few to constitute a recognizeable social problem.
I personally would say that video game addiction is not a social scourge yet, but, it's definitely more than a blip on the radar and is only going to get worse as game companies learn how to make more and more addictive games. Because I would imagine that it's every game designer's wet dream to have a game that millions of people can't help themselves but to spend money on. So over time the industry will just find ways to get better and better at making such games.
I personally have experience with video game addiction. All my life I have been addicted to varying degrees of intensity to video games. Perhaps the first significant addiction was to "Street Fighter" back in the 1990/1991 timeframe. I literally could NOT walk past an arcade that had Street Fighter without stopping in to play a few rounds. And if someone else was already playing - someone I could challenge and fight - forget it. I never once, no matter how hard I tried, succeeded in preventing myself from challenging another player when the chance arose. This was my freshman year of college and I had a single $50 bill in a hidden pocket in my wallet given to me by a family friend 'for emergencies'. I took that seriously and never intended to spend it on anything except an emergency - back in those days I had no credit cards and little money to my name, so this $50 meant something to me. I ended up breaking it and spending the whole thing on Street Fighter when I had no other way to play. It wasn't an addiction that was so bad as to significantly alter my life except in a few small ways such as this; I mean, I still did well at school and had a social life. But I definitely knew what it was to have a compulsion to play Street Fighter.
Definitely my most significant addiction was to Magic the Gathering Online in 2006. I started playing that game and got very hooked. I think it was very similar to a gambling addiction. I ended up spending over $2,000 on that game in 2006 and caused serious problems with my wife as a result. Several times I swore off the game, only to return when the urge to play again was too great. I used to play underneath the covers in bed (telling my wife that I was tired and needed to go to bed early) so that she wouldn't know that I was playing. I don't know how else to categorize my relationship with that game other than addiction. I would spend hours and many $$$ playing it. I would get very focused and exceedingly irritated if anything/anyone attempted to take my attention away from it. I hid my playing from family and friends. I neglected things that were very important to me, in favor of playing, always feeling terrible about it when I finally stopped playing for the day/night and yet always unable to prevent myself from repeating the same process over and over again.
Eventually, with the help of my wife's stern disapproval and watchful eye, I managed to quit playing that game. And yet to this day, the thought of cracking some packs for a booster draft game still is very enticing... much like I imagine an ex-drug-addict might feel when they think about sticki
Perhaps so, but he does have interesting things to say and a very intelligent way to say them. That was one of the best interviews I have read in a while, because both the questions and answers were intelligent and interesting.
I respectfully disagree. Which languages are easier to read and which ones are harder is of course obviously subjective. So maybe for YOU perl is easy to read. However, I myself have never, ever read or written (or written and then later read) perl code that was easy to read. There are lots and lots of very very small symbols which have very large effects on Perl code. Single characters can completely change the meaning of statements in perl. Sure that's true in many languages, but perl takes this problem to a whole new level.
Perl will die if people in general find it to be too troublesome to write and maintain. I personally have been in that camp for years and years. This article suggests that this is a global trend, and I say, good riddance.
C++ and perl are such different languages, that it's not really useful to compare them. They live in completely different parts of the programming language space. So it's not very useful for me to say that I find it much easier to write maintainable C++ code than perl code, even though it's true.
One thing that really disappoints me about C++ is the direction that it's been heading for the past 5 or 6 years - "template programming". In fact it's about as bad as perl in terms of readability and maintainability, but much worse for debuggability. I can't think of any programming "language" worse than C++ template programming. I stay away from Boost and really hate what it's doing to C++.
Just admit it. You were wrong when you used the term "completely broken". You were exaggerating just for the sake of adding flourish to your post and this person caught you in it. Just admit it already.
I believe that md does have problems given your further explanations. But to say that it is "completely broken" when obviously many people use it and the other poster claims success for his setup, is just plain wrong.
It's because there is no fixed correlation between "monetary value of the company outside of the stock market" and stock price within the stock market. The price of a stock is set by the current collective opinion about what the future price of that stock will be - which itself can be predicted to be set by the collective future opinion of the future future price of that stock - if that makes any sense at all:)
Setting aside stocks which pay dividends, which can at least claim to have some definite value, stocks' values are purely speculative. Even if the company was liquidated, common shareholders would never see any of the proceeds, because holders of preferred stock would get it all (which is likely much less than their investment anyway).
While the overall trend of the market is to give money to companies most likely to add value to the economy, definitely there are many many "stupid" decisions made by the market. In order to accurately predict what a stock will be worth in the future, you have to assume a certain level of stupidity in the collective valuation given to the stock by the market. And for that reason, stupidity is built into the system.
It's a crazy system that I personally think benefits the overall economic development of the market, but in a way that is pretty haphazard and subject to quite a bit of waste. I don't think there are any reasonable alternatives however.
... it's amazing that a company like Google, that has been on the stock market for only a few years, can have a market capitalization about equal to that of a technology powerhouse like Apple.
On the other hand, is there anyone in their right mind who thinks that Google will be as valuable after 30 years as Apple has proven to be?
I think Google is working purely off of inertia at this point. Like any company which has found itself in the position of owning a market, they are going to make money no matter what they do. I once worked for a financial company in New York that 'owned' a particular trading market (the after hours trading market) and they made money no matter what. They could all take a year off and they'd still make $billions. The result was a complete lack of motivation by anyone in the company to actually do anything, because what's the point when you're going to make money anyway? I see Google like that. They take pride in the pampering of their employees because it is a demonstration of how much money they have. Their employees aren't doing anything interesting and aren't motivated by the need to work hard to succeed, because Google is going to succeed, in the short term, no matter what. The employees are only sticking around because the benefits are so good, not because the job is so rewarding. I don't think this is a corporate culture that can be sustained.
By the way, I left the cushy financial company in New York after 4 months to go work for an internet startup (this was 1998 when that was really the thing to do) because I was so bored. The internet startup never went anywhere, but it was more exciting by far.
They're all just my opinions. I write comments in Slashdot because I enjoy the resulting discussion. You really should stop reading Slashdot comments if you are expecting them to all to agree with you.
I really am confounded as to why anyone would interpret someone else simply expressing their opinion as arrogance. The world must seem like a very arrogant place to you.
Well, I don't think I've really been hostile - no name calling like the poster I was referring to - but I definitely have been critical.
Why am I critical of Google? For two reasons, one of which I already pointed out in my earlier post:
1. They are bad for the software industry. I work in the software industry. I don't like the fact that Google has been disruptive to other companies, such as ones I have worked for, by luring away so much talent. Of course I know they have every right to do so, and of course I know that nobody left and went to work for Google against their will, but still... it irks me that one company can be so disruptive to the industry.
2. I think that all of the money being thrown at Google by the stock market and by advertisers could be so much better spent than on the frivolities that they have spent it on. So I feel like it's a waste of potential for our industry.
Obviously these are both just my personal feelings. I'm not looking to convince anyone else to share my opinions here, I'm just answering your question.
Have you been to Google's campus? It's one big party. It is a culture of complacency brought about by the egregious pandering to employees that Google's executives think makes them a cool company.
It's a case of far, far, FAR too much carrot, and far too little stick.
To answer your question, given a hundred other almost-as-good search engines, which is what we would have without Google, and which is what we had before Google, too.
I think that Google is definitely better than any other search engine. However, I don't think that it's so much better that people would be willing to pay for it. Thus, the only way Google can make money is off of ads (and also off of selling search engines for corporate intranets and other similar services, but these are far far less lucrative than their ad business currently is). And thus Google is absolutely dependent on the value of internet ads, which I personally believe, is a revenue stream that is going to be vastly reduced in the coming years as online advertisers stop spending as much on online ads.
Why the hostility in your post? I get the feeling that you have some kind of personal tie to Google. Maybe you work there?
I knew back in in the '97 - '99 time frame that all of the money being thrown at useless internet companies was going to come back and bite the industry in the end. I'm not looking for any kind of pat on the back here, because obviously alot of people thought the same thing.
I see Google kind of the same way. The stock market has thrown HUGE amounts of money at them. Online advertisers have thrown HUGE amounts of money at them. And I think that soon, this bubble is going to burst too. I feel the same way about Google as I did about the internet stocks of the late '90s. Vastly overrated, built on a business model that is not sustainable (in Google's case, online ads, which I honestly believe are going to tank hugely when advertisers finally realize the true value of online advertisements such as those sold by Google - and it ain't alot in my opinion), and wasting ridiculous sums of money on employee luxuries that only serve to create a complacent and unmotivated work force. And I think the result is going to be the same.
You may disagree with me, which is fine by me. Honestly I don't care enough about your opinions to attack you personally for them.
Just out of curiousity, how much would you be willing to spend for Google's search services?
I personally would pay nothing for it, and I think that most people wouldn't either. If Google's only way of making money - ad revenue - dries up, or is severely reduced (which I honestly think is going to happen in time), and the only way that they have to recover this revenue is to try to charge for their search service, then I can virtually guarantee you that they will fail. People will just use some other search service, even if it is somewhat inferior to Google's. And if that one can't be sustained for the same reasons, then eventually we'll end up back to the way things used to be, where there isn't a single dominant search service, and where the search engine business is hardly a business at all.
Well that is a good question. I agree that my statements do seem contradictory. What I think is that the online ad business is going to end up as another bubble; companies are going to wise up and realize that the money they pay for ads on web sites like Google's are not worth nearly as much as they thought, and the trend will be to a large reduction in money spent on ads. And Google will feel a big crunch because of this, and because they've spent so much money on so many frivolous enterprises, and fostered such a lacsidasical corporate culture, they will simply not be able to produce any new products or online services with the capability of recovering their previous levels of revenue. Eventually, they will become marginalized and irrelevant.
My choice of phrase - "crashing down" - is admittedly poor, since this is something that I don't think will happen all at once, but will occur over a period of time, 5 - 8 years or so.
I also started on AltaVista way back when it was useful. It was extra good because for a long time, an AltaVista search searched the web and usenet simultaneously, which back then, was a good thing because usenet actually had more content than the web.
I also use Google daily. However, I like to think about how much I value Google by how much I'd be willing to pay for their service. And the answer is, zero. I would just find some other way to find information on the web. How much would you be willing to pay for Google's search service?
* "Cuil" is a really dumb name. "Google" is a dumb name too, but at least its pronounciation is obvious to anyone reading the name. Can't say the same for "Cuil".
* It's unlikely that this new search engine even approaches Google in its comprehensiveness, or ever will
* Cuil has some weird bugs. I searched for my name, found a link to a Gallery page I have about my son's birth earlier this year, and they have a little thumbnail icon next to the search result for that. But it's a random map of the United States completely unrelated to the page it links to. Bizarre.
* Cuil's results come back more slowly than Google's (but this is from New Zealand, maybe it's faster from the USA), and their page re-renders in odd ways (at least on my oldish Firefox install) as results come in.
* Cuil seems to give the most favor to any page that has the word "is" after the search term. Invariably, the first result for almost any single word search will be whatever page starts out with "[Search Term] is...".
* Google is really bad for Silicon Valley. So many good software developers in SV got sucked in by Google. Too much of the top talent in the area is now working for Google, doing almost completely useless stuff, and it's not healthy for the industry. Is there any software company in the bay area that hasn't had at least a couple of engineers sucked away by Google? Are algorithms for pushing targeted ads and useless web applications that never get out of beta really worth depleting the industry of so many of its best? I predict that when Google comes crashing down (and it will - anyone who has seen the ridiculous excess of the Google campus cannot help but realize this), the net result will have been to set back innovation in the software industry a great deal, by tying up so many people who would otherwise have done something useful.
* For the above reason, I wish Cuil all the success possible, because I'd love to see some actual competition in the search engine world.
Trolling? I'm the only one who has even attempted to offer any kind of evidence for my position. Anecdotal evidence it may be, but at least it's something.
- The O.P. hasn't given any evidence to support what he said
Therefore, my 'rant' that he/she was just spouting bullshit, appears to be correct.
As to evidence that ivy league schools provide better education than the thousands of crappy state schools in the USA... do I really have to provide evidence of this? Are you really so stupid as to believe that there isn't a higher quality education available at a school with the prestige to attract the top researchers in their respective fields, and the money to back it all up? Here's a small amount of anecdotal evidence: I have interviewed lots of candidates for software development positions at a couple of companies. There is a very large difference between candidates from highly ranked schools (ivy leagues included) and those from unranked, high-school-level-2 state schools.
If Jobs really was suffering from a terminal illness, I would expect to see him grooming a successor. To the tune of, having someone else up on stage with him, so that if/when he decided to/needed to retire, the transition to the new figurehead would be smooth. I don't really pay any attention to the speculation about Jobs' health, because I am pretty sure that until we see him grooming a successor, he isn't planning on going anywhere.
Of course, I also pay no attention whatsoever to his presentations and press conferences, so I have no idea whether or not he actually *is* grooming a successor. But given that no one ever seems to talk about any personality at Apple besides Jobs, I feel pretty confident with the assumption that he is not.
Do you have any evidence whatsoever to support your rant? Have you perhaps attended both a state school and an ivy league school and are thus qualified to speak on this issue? I'm guessing that you have not, and are just spouting bullshit. Probably sour-grapes style bullshit, having never gotten into an ivy league school yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
Even though you don't seem to realize it, you are on the right track. All of those things that you mentioned are, in fact, addictive. Probably any thing that anyone enjoys is addictive in the sense that a person can become addicted to it.
So "addictive" is kind of a meaningless term; this fact is borne out by how easy it is for so many people to have such vastly different opinions about it (many, like you, simply refuse to consider that the term has any validity when applied to video games; whereas others are positive that it is meaningful).
I think that when people say 'addictive' what they really mean is, 'is acknowledged to have been a cause of addiction for a significant number of people."
Have video games reached that point? Well, that's clearly debateable. People like you would say no, the number of people addicted to video games is too few to constitute a recognizeable social problem.
I personally would say that video game addiction is not a social scourge yet, but, it's definitely more than a blip on the radar and is only going to get worse as game companies learn how to make more and more addictive games. Because I would imagine that it's every game designer's wet dream to have a game that millions of people can't help themselves but to spend money on. So over time the industry will just find ways to get better and better at making such games.
I personally have experience with video game addiction. All my life I have been addicted to varying degrees of intensity to video games. Perhaps the first significant addiction was to "Street Fighter" back in the 1990/1991 timeframe. I literally could NOT walk past an arcade that had Street Fighter without stopping in to play a few rounds. And if someone else was already playing - someone I could challenge and fight - forget it. I never once, no matter how hard I tried, succeeded in preventing myself from challenging another player when the chance arose. This was my freshman year of college and I had a single $50 bill in a hidden pocket in my wallet given to me by a family friend 'for emergencies'. I took that seriously and never intended to spend it on anything except an emergency - back in those days I had no credit cards and little money to my name, so this $50 meant something to me. I ended up breaking it and spending the whole thing on Street Fighter when I had no other way to play. It wasn't an addiction that was so bad as to significantly alter my life except in a few small ways such as this; I mean, I still did well at school and had a social life. But I definitely knew what it was to have a compulsion to play Street Fighter.
Definitely my most significant addiction was to Magic the Gathering Online in 2006. I started playing that game and got very hooked. I think it was very similar to a gambling addiction. I ended up spending over $2,000 on that game in 2006 and caused serious problems with my wife as a result. Several times I swore off the game, only to return when the urge to play again was too great. I used to play underneath the covers in bed (telling my wife that I was tired and needed to go to bed early) so that she wouldn't know that I was playing. I don't know how else to categorize my relationship with that game other than addiction. I would spend hours and many $$$ playing it. I would get very focused and exceedingly irritated if anything/anyone attempted to take my attention away from it. I hid my playing from family and friends. I neglected things that were very important to me, in favor of playing, always feeling terrible about it when I finally stopped playing for the day/night and yet always unable to prevent myself from repeating the same process over and over again.
Eventually, with the help of my wife's stern disapproval and watchful eye, I managed to quit playing that game. And yet to this day, the thought of cracking some packs for a booster draft game still is very enticing ... much like I imagine an ex-drug-addict might feel when they think about sticki
Perhaps so, but he does have interesting things to say and a very intelligent way to say them. That was one of the best interviews I have read in a while, because both the questions and answers were intelligent and interesting.
References, please.
If you think I'm going to type "allowed to fuck 6 year old" into Google to research your outlandish claims, think again.
I respectfully disagree. Which languages are easier to read and which ones are harder is of course obviously subjective. So maybe for YOU perl is easy to read. However, I myself have never, ever read or written (or written and then later read) perl code that was easy to read. There are lots and lots of very very small symbols which have very large effects on Perl code. Single characters can completely change the meaning of statements in perl. Sure that's true in many languages, but perl takes this problem to a whole new level.
Perl will die if people in general find it to be too troublesome to write and maintain. I personally have been in that camp for years and years. This article suggests that this is a global trend, and I say, good riddance.
C++ and perl are such different languages, that it's not really useful to compare them. They live in completely different parts of the programming language space. So it's not very useful for me to say that I find it much easier to write maintainable C++ code than perl code, even though it's true.
One thing that really disappoints me about C++ is the direction that it's been heading for the past 5 or 6 years - "template programming". In fact it's about as bad as perl in terms of readability and maintainability, but much worse for debuggability. I can't think of any programming "language" worse than C++ template programming. I stay away from Boost and really hate what it's doing to C++.
Your erection has a very active imagination.
Just admit it. You were wrong when you used the term "completely broken". You were exaggerating just for the sake of adding flourish to your post and this person caught you in it. Just admit it already.
I believe that md does have problems given your further explanations. But to say that it is "completely broken" when obviously many people use it and the other poster claims success for his setup, is just plain wrong.
It's because there is no fixed correlation between "monetary value of the company outside of the stock market" and stock price within the stock market. The price of a stock is set by the current collective opinion about what the future price of that stock will be - which itself can be predicted to be set by the collective future opinion of the future future price of that stock - if that makes any sense at all :)
Setting aside stocks which pay dividends, which can at least claim to have some definite value, stocks' values are purely speculative. Even if the company was liquidated, common shareholders would never see any of the proceeds, because holders of preferred stock would get it all (which is likely much less than their investment anyway).
While the overall trend of the market is to give money to companies most likely to add value to the economy, definitely there are many many "stupid" decisions made by the market. In order to accurately predict what a stock will be worth in the future, you have to assume a certain level of stupidity in the collective valuation given to the stock by the market. And for that reason, stupidity is built into the system.
It's a crazy system that I personally think benefits the overall economic development of the market, but in a way that is pretty haphazard and subject to quite a bit of waste. I don't think there are any reasonable alternatives however.
... it's amazing that a company like Google, that has been on the stock market for only a few years, can have a market capitalization about equal to that of a technology powerhouse like Apple.
On the other hand, is there anyone in their right mind who thinks that Google will be as valuable after 30 years as Apple has proven to be?
Great idea! Does that mean IBM will start paying YOU for licenses?
Does the data really have to be copyrighted for that to work?
I think Google is working purely off of inertia at this point. Like any company which has found itself in the position of owning a market, they are going to make money no matter what they do. I once worked for a financial company in New York that 'owned' a particular trading market (the after hours trading market) and they made money no matter what. They could all take a year off and they'd still make $billions. The result was a complete lack of motivation by anyone in the company to actually do anything, because what's the point when you're going to make money anyway? I see Google like that. They take pride in the pampering of their employees because it is a demonstration of how much money they have. Their employees aren't doing anything interesting and aren't motivated by the need to work hard to succeed, because Google is going to succeed, in the short term, no matter what. The employees are only sticking around because the benefits are so good, not because the job is so rewarding. I don't think this is a corporate culture that can be sustained.
By the way, I left the cushy financial company in New York after 4 months to go work for an internet startup (this was 1998 when that was really the thing to do) because I was so bored. The internet startup never went anywhere, but it was more exciting by far.
They're all just my opinions. I write comments in Slashdot because I enjoy the resulting discussion. You really should stop reading Slashdot comments if you are expecting them to all to agree with you.
I really am confounded as to why anyone would interpret someone else simply expressing their opinion as arrogance. The world must seem like a very arrogant place to you.
Well, I don't think I've really been hostile - no name calling like the poster I was referring to - but I definitely have been critical.
Why am I critical of Google? For two reasons, one of which I already pointed out in my earlier post:
1. They are bad for the software industry. I work in the software industry. I don't like the fact that Google has been disruptive to other companies, such as ones I have worked for, by luring away so much talent. Of course I know they have every right to do so, and of course I know that nobody left and went to work for Google against their will, but still ... it irks me that one company can be so disruptive to the industry.
2. I think that all of the money being thrown at Google by the stock market and by advertisers could be so much better spent than on the frivolities that they have spent it on. So I feel like it's a waste of potential for our industry.
Obviously these are both just my personal feelings. I'm not looking to convince anyone else to share my opinions here, I'm just answering your question.
Really? So rather than just using another search service that is almost as good, like Yahoo, you'd pay for Google?
Have you been to Google's campus? It's one big party. It is a culture of complacency brought about by the egregious pandering to employees that Google's executives think makes them a cool company.
It's a case of far, far, FAR too much carrot, and far too little stick.
To answer your question, given a hundred other almost-as-good search engines, which is what we would have without Google, and which is what we had before Google, too.
I think that Google is definitely better than any other search engine. However, I don't think that it's so much better that people would be willing to pay for it. Thus, the only way Google can make money is off of ads (and also off of selling search engines for corporate intranets and other similar services, but these are far far less lucrative than their ad business currently is). And thus Google is absolutely dependent on the value of internet ads, which I personally believe, is a revenue stream that is going to be vastly reduced in the coming years as online advertisers stop spending as much on online ads.
Why the hostility in your post? I get the feeling that you have some kind of personal tie to Google. Maybe you work there?
I knew back in in the '97 - '99 time frame that all of the money being thrown at useless internet companies was going to come back and bite the industry in the end. I'm not looking for any kind of pat on the back here, because obviously alot of people thought the same thing.
I see Google kind of the same way. The stock market has thrown HUGE amounts of money at them. Online advertisers have thrown HUGE amounts of money at them. And I think that soon, this bubble is going to burst too. I feel the same way about Google as I did about the internet stocks of the late '90s. Vastly overrated, built on a business model that is not sustainable (in Google's case, online ads, which I honestly believe are going to tank hugely when advertisers finally realize the true value of online advertisements such as those sold by Google - and it ain't alot in my opinion), and wasting ridiculous sums of money on employee luxuries that only serve to create a complacent and unmotivated work force. And I think the result is going to be the same.
You may disagree with me, which is fine by me. Honestly I don't care enough about your opinions to attack you personally for them.
Just out of curiousity, how much would you be willing to spend for Google's search services?
I personally would pay nothing for it, and I think that most people wouldn't either. If Google's only way of making money - ad revenue - dries up, or is severely reduced (which I honestly think is going to happen in time), and the only way that they have to recover this revenue is to try to charge for their search service, then I can virtually guarantee you that they will fail. People will just use some other search service, even if it is somewhat inferior to Google's. And if that one can't be sustained for the same reasons, then eventually we'll end up back to the way things used to be, where there isn't a single dominant search service, and where the search engine business is hardly a business at all.
Well that is a good question. I agree that my statements do seem contradictory. What I think is that the online ad business is going to end up as another bubble; companies are going to wise up and realize that the money they pay for ads on web sites like Google's are not worth nearly as much as they thought, and the trend will be to a large reduction in money spent on ads. And Google will feel a big crunch because of this, and because they've spent so much money on so many frivolous enterprises, and fostered such a lacsidasical corporate culture, they will simply not be able to produce any new products or online services with the capability of recovering their previous levels of revenue. Eventually, they will become marginalized and irrelevant.
My choice of phrase - "crashing down" - is admittedly poor, since this is something that I don't think will happen all at once, but will occur over a period of time, 5 - 8 years or so.
I also started on AltaVista way back when it was useful. It was extra good because for a long time, an AltaVista search searched the web and usenet simultaneously, which back then, was a good thing because usenet actually had more content than the web.
I also use Google daily. However, I like to think about how much I value Google by how much I'd be willing to pay for their service. And the answer is, zero. I would just find some other way to find information on the web. How much would you be willing to pay for Google's search service?
A few observations:
* "Cuil" is a really dumb name. "Google" is a dumb name too, but at least its pronounciation is obvious to anyone reading the name. Can't say the same for "Cuil".
* It's unlikely that this new search engine even approaches Google in its comprehensiveness, or ever will
* Cuil has some weird bugs. I searched for my name, found a link to a Gallery page I have about my son's birth earlier this year, and they have a little thumbnail icon next to the search result for that. But it's a random map of the United States completely unrelated to the page it links to. Bizarre.
* Cuil's results come back more slowly than Google's (but this is from New Zealand, maybe it's faster from the USA), and their page re-renders in odd ways (at least on my oldish Firefox install) as results come in.
* Cuil seems to give the most favor to any page that has the word "is" after the search term. Invariably, the first result for almost any single word search will be whatever page starts out with "[Search Term] is ...".
* Google is really bad for Silicon Valley. So many good software developers in SV got sucked in by Google. Too much of the top talent in the area is now working for Google, doing almost completely useless stuff, and it's not healthy for the industry. Is there any software company in the bay area that hasn't had at least a couple of engineers sucked away by Google? Are algorithms for pushing targeted ads and useless web applications that never get out of beta really worth depleting the industry of so many of its best? I predict that when Google comes crashing down (and it will - anyone who has seen the ridiculous excess of the Google campus cannot help but realize this), the net result will have been to set back innovation in the software industry a great deal, by tying up so many people who would otherwise have done something useful.
* For the above reason, I wish Cuil all the success possible, because I'd love to see some actual competition in the search engine world.
Anyway that's how I see it.
Trolling? I'm the only one who has even attempted to offer any kind of evidence for my position. Anecdotal evidence it may be, but at least it's something.
Yes, I have evidence to support my rant:
- The O.P. hasn't given any evidence to support what he said
Therefore, my 'rant' that he/she was just spouting bullshit, appears to be correct.
As to evidence that ivy league schools provide better education than the thousands of crappy state schools in the USA ... do I really have to provide evidence of this? Are you really so stupid as to believe that there isn't a higher quality education available at a school with the prestige to attract the top researchers in their respective fields, and the money to back it all up? Here's a small amount of anecdotal evidence: I have interviewed lots of candidates for software development positions at a couple of companies. There is a very large difference between candidates from highly ranked schools (ivy leagues included) and those from unranked, high-school-level-2 state schools.
If Jobs really was suffering from a terminal illness, I would expect to see him grooming a successor. To the tune of, having someone else up on stage with him, so that if/when he decided to/needed to retire, the transition to the new figurehead would be smooth. I don't really pay any attention to the speculation about Jobs' health, because I am pretty sure that until we see him grooming a successor, he isn't planning on going anywhere.
Of course, I also pay no attention whatsoever to his presentations and press conferences, so I have no idea whether or not he actually *is* grooming a successor. But given that no one ever seems to talk about any personality at Apple besides Jobs, I feel pretty confident with the assumption that he is not.
Do you have any evidence whatsoever to support your rant? Have you perhaps attended both a state school and an ivy league school and are thus qualified to speak on this issue? I'm guessing that you have not, and are just spouting bullshit. Probably sour-grapes style bullshit, having never gotten into an ivy league school yourself.