Anyone else think it looks like a pokemon ball with horns?
Actually it looks more like the sort of logo you'd find on an IM or P2P app (they all seem to be using that style of logo). It just looks amateurish.
On the flip side, the old logo (though fun) was terribly amateurish, and impeded taking the OS seriously. Then again, Linux was taken seriously in spite of the goofy penguin.
then Microsoft says it's going to release SQL Server Express for free
SQL Server Express is just the 2005 update of the MSDE, which has been around since SQL Server 7.
Of course Microsoft wasn't trying to fight open source - they were primarily trying to get developers to use SQL Server (and derivatives) as the data layer of their apps, instead of the traditional MS Access/Jet that was prevalent. Before it most developers would respond "I'm not making my customers pay for SQL Server", so Microsoft made the MSDE. They knew that many customers would eventually grow into the "real" SQL Server.
Yeah, Google gives us a lot more hits, but most of them are from villages in India or China.
While I think he commented on the low-cost labour clicking ads perspective, the primary focus was on the vast, worldwide network of zombied PCs. These aren't limited to the developing world.
And now, the same people are screaming about privacy rights, google's "monopoly" and evil public shareholder interests, and now you guys are using google's resources, infrastructure and all their hard work by ignoring cookies and blockings ads.
IT ISN'T THE SAME PEOPLE. If you can demonstrate that it actually is largely (or even moderately) the same set of people, then I'll eat some humble pie, but I really, really doubt it.
I recall some Canadian relatives discussing a bunker called the Diefen Bunker. I think they said it's a tourist attraction now. They give tours as if it were a museum.
It is however quite true that MS Office has much better support for the visually impared than Open Office. Several years ago Microsoft made a major push to ensure nearly every application they built had some Accessibility support.
OpenDocument != OpenOffice. I know a lot of people are correlating them, but the reality is that if Mass. goes ahead (and moreso if other states follow), Microsoft will support OpenDocument in Office (as they already pulled together with PDFs).
I wouldn't be surprised to find M$ money involved here. Sending forth those with the big sympathy bonus is in the 101 if every astroturfer and lobby professional.
No doubt there is a tremendous amount of astroturfing and lobbying going on. Microsoft really, really, really doesn't want the switch to Open Document to proceed, as it will serve as a bellweather that will guide other states as well. They're going to make it as painful as possible: Even if it does actually make it to implementation, it'll look like a lot of hassle to bother with. It really is remarkable how attentive everyone now is to a file format.
I'm waiting for them to pull out crippled children, or children with cancer, on behalf of OfficeXML. Maybe Single Working Mothers For OfficeXML. Adopted Children For ChoiceTM (so long as your choice is MS Office).
I'm guessing MSDN is going to be less swamped than FileForum, though the subscriber downloads are extremely slow at the moment as expected.
I downloaded both Visual Studio 2005 (it is not VS.NET anymore kids) and SQL Server 2005 from subscriber downloads in about 3 and a half hours - all 5.4GB of it. That was to a home cable modem connection. That's about 500KB/second for one single downloader, which is pretty damn good.
Is it just me, or does Level 3's ultimatum sound alot like an old fashioned protection racket? How is this any different from the Don sending someone to smash up someone's shop after the owner misses a payment?
No more than the Boston Tea Party was a protection racket. Standing up for your own self-interests isn't insidious or evil.
In this case Peer1 thought they were getting screwed and wanted out - the other party can either agree to new terms, or take advantage of a competitive marketplace and find someone else to do business with.
From the sounds of it (obviously based on a limited amount of information), Peer1 was getting shafted, and rather than it being a peering agreement where they cover each other's backs, they were being leeched while getting little in return. Supposedly they tried many other options to get a new agreement in place.
MS Office also had support for WordPerfect files. If you want to have the leading Office software you must have support for your competition. OpenOffice has support for Word documents so it comes as no suprise that MS would do the same.
Hello, my name is Rudimentary Software Marketplace Strategy and Economics. It's good to meet you.
Let me tell you a few things about myself, for I am a complex, varying sort.
For instance, if I'm an underdog trying to get into a new market, then I'll do everything I can to advocate and embrace "openness", be it support for all types of files, standardization, and so on. I'll beseach the big boys to open up, for the good of all consumers, and allow for a dynamic, competitive marketplace.
For instance let's say I'm an underdog in the instant messaging marketplace, I might say "Come on everyone, let's just be friends and work with open standards!".
Now if I'm successful with this scheme - hopefully really successful - by making it easy for other people to switch to my product, then I move to stage 2 - lock in. This is where I start doing whatever I can to ensure that someone else doesn't do to me what I did to them. I'll embrace and hide behind proprietary standards, I'll make it a bitch for people using different clients, not only technically but via FUD, and I'll constantly move the target to ensure that no one can catch up. Maybe I'll add a "conversion screw-up-ifier" to make sure that the user of more standard formats is an imperfect, painful experience.
The OpenOffice formats support only a subset of the funtionality in Word format
That's like saying that Firefox supports a subset of the functionality of IE because it doesn't support ActiveX.
OfficeXML isn't a superset of the OpenDocument contained functionality, it's just a different set that happens to have a large degree of intersection. e.g. There are areas where OfficeXML is missing functionality in OpenDocument.
OpenDocument has next to 0% market share
OfficeXML had a 0% market share (in fact in many ways it's not far from that - hardly anyone uses it), yet strangely Microsoft implemented that. Right - because they controlled it and it was self-serving...
OpenDocument Format is a legal mine-field
What a complete load of bollacks. Firstly, not only is OpenDocument far more open than Java ever was (or is), Microsoft got penalized for explicitly violating the terms of their agreement with Sun. This wasn't a "Oh noes! You put the curly brackets in the wrong place!" sort of violation, but an intentional campaign to undermine Java.
OpenDocument is a version 1.0 Spec
This is just ridiculous, and you're just padding up your UL to try to have a credible leg to stand on.
I don't know how in the world you got moderated up (I suspect it's some sort of compensatory thing, like "Let's show that we're not all anti-MS here!"), but your points are nonsensically both logically, and when compared against Microsoft actions in other areas and markets.
Microsoft is pushing OfficeXML for the sole reason that it gives them more control over the market. Customers are pushing for OpenDocument because they want more choice (which is counter to Microsoft's best interest). It isn't that complex.
The Slashdot effect might take down small personal servers on shared hosting (e.g. where there's 10,000 websites on one machine running at capacity), but it barely touches major websites. e.g. the current stats are that a Slashdot hit increases the visitor count temporarily by 18-20% on some major sites.
Whooopie.
It this case the problem is a lack of capacity (even though the link is directed at the problem), but I doubt Slashdot's herding compares with the continual massive herding in the blog sphere.
LCD may not be superior in all ways, but for the average consumer the small size is ideal.
Indeed, and this story really has very little to do with CRTs versus LCDs - It's a simple tale of a very large corporation that lost its way (I stopped buy Sony stuff because what once was an extremely high quality brand turned into an overpriced garbage brand) that's now spastically shifting around to try to regain its footing.
Even more ridiculous is the "SONY IS STOPPING PRODUCTION OF CRTS!" followed by the rather important disclaimer "at most of its plants". That entirely counters the headline, and it more accurately should be "Sony is scaling back CRT production", which seems obvious given how many computers, for instance, come with LCDs now, eliminating the need for such a glut of CRT supply.
Re:How did they cause these injuries?
on
Slacker or Sick
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· Score: 1
Bwahahaha. Brilliant. The best is that you didn't dumb it down by explaining the obvious.
Of course now you should expect a reply by some cluebian saying "Um...rats can't do that!"
Re:A good reason to stop reading Slashdot tonight
on
Slacker or Sick
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
The fact such a simplistic and single sided analysis
Simplistic....right. Single-sided -> Do you understand how debates work? You see, I don't have to make the case for every position. Of course you just pulled those trite sayings out of the standard play book.
How about those who don't agree all media should be subject to DRM to preserve the business models of such a non-essential enterprise
Bwahahahaha. Oh god, are you a comedian?
or those frustrated by the North American distribution cartel that keeps fabulous foreign movies out until they can be butchered at a higher profit via a local remake? You know, movie fans instead of consumers?
No need to stick to reality to justify your thievery either, is there?
Well with brillant reasoning like this coming from the Onion folks:
"Moreover, she wrote, The Onion and its Web site are free, so the seal is not being used for commercial purposes. That said, The Onion asked that its letter be considered a formal application to use the seal."
Here's a novel idea, instead of fannying about trying to stop people copying your films (which people always will), you join the 21st century...
The fact that this got moderated up is an excellent demonstration of how terribly broken Slashdot's moderation is, and how misdirected the Slashdot groupthink is.
This story is about screen pre-releases that are sent to industry insiders, often before the movie is even in the theaters. Basically it's a pirate's dream come true - perfect quality (no shoddy videocamera work), and it's a 0-day prerelease. It has nothing at all to do with consumer DVDs. Obviously they want to protect these. All of the standard anti-[anti-piracy] tongue-waging and moralizing is out of place here, as this has 0 impact on the everyday consumer (well - unless you're a 0-day thief)....make your films distributed on an internet download site, with a reduction of $2 on the cinema price.
Hell, why don't they make 'em free while they're at it! Then there's be no piracy!
To move to the topic of general piracy (nothing to do with the story, but it's what made several people strangely moderate up your post), and to generalize, there are two primary kinds of pirates: there are the hardcore pirates who think the world owes them, and it's their god given right to pirate DVDs (they'll have the long littany of reasons why they should be able to pirace. The most humorous is the paradoxical "movies and music are so terrible anyways, that they don't deserve my money"), then there are the everyday keeping-up-with-the-Joneses types. The latter kind is actually vastly more common than the former, and they pirate simply because they see everyone else doing it, and they don't want to be the sucker (the power of social proof and context).
For the latter half you just need some half-decent "make it some trouble" measures, as well as some legal deterrents. Already the RIAAs lawsuits have scared a large number of people away from the warez scene (which, incidentally, thins the herd and makes the hardcore pirates more visible), but even then the industry was tempered in that it said that it was only going after major distributors - if they randomly went after some guy who had one song or movie available for upload (usually inadvertently courtesy of their tool, as most keeping-up pirates just want to leech, get their stuff and get out), the warez scenes would absolutely dry up.
BTW: I can order most movies through my digital cable box, including new DVD releases. It's vastly easier than downloading one from the net. Does that satisfy your anti-piracy requirements?
I don't particularly want search results ordered by their attractiveness to unemployed twentysomething social miscreants any more than I want them ordered by spammers.
So very, very true.
I marvel seeing some of the comments on here that Google et all should pay more attention to the "social" sites. I've seen the results of places like Digg and Delicious, and if that's what groupthink gets us, then forget about it. I use, and love, Flickr, but their "interestingness" ranking could better be expressed as the "Flickr Popularity" - the people who spend all day in the Flickr forums are the ones with the "interesting" pictures, for instance. Virtually all social sites are like that.
I think google and the other search engines should start paying MUCH more attention to the bigname social bookmarking sites.
You have got to be kidding.
If people want to do the herd thing, they can go to those social bookmarking sites and skip search engines altogether. As it is I find most of the content there (speaking of delicious) to be absolutely terrible, superficial trash. Just because a group of people with a herd mentality all groupthink some trivial, superficial piece up doesn't mean that it's a valuable contribution (it's like getting Score:5 on here - there are a couple of terribly easy ways to get it everytime if you want).
Of course, any system can be gamed, but having the power to meta moderate the results helps with this.
A site like delicious is HUGELY gameable (and as it gains actual importance outside of the herd, it _IS_ being gamed. The evidence is overwhelming). Until we have a real, one-person-one-internet-identity system, that will be the way it remains.
As far as I remember, they designed Gmail and had no idea how to make money off of it
Remarkable if people really, truly believe this sort of nonsense.
Firstly, as a bit of context, Google is 99% an advertising company/1% a search company. You need to appreciate that having contextual information about content was necessary for advertising, and once you have that...well might as well make it searchable.
So here you have a company that makes the overwhelming majority of its income on contextually keyed advertising (things like search appliances have been a huge dud, and they actually have tough competition in that market), and they decide that they're going to make an online email application where they've have access to all of your email...
"Gee, Jim, our entire history and business model is based upon parsing a content sets corpus to get context and then presenting appropriately keyed ads, but thinking of this new online email service I'm just not sure how we're going to monetize this..."
Give me a friggin' break. They knew from day 1 that it was gold to know exactly the sorts of things someone is interested in and presented perfectly keyed ads. They provided a couple of cheap options (like POP3 access) because they knew only the "leader nerds" would use it (the people who push the service on all of their less technically aware friends, who themselves will live through the AdSense world) and it is like cheaply buying off their unofficial salespeople.
Plus they hadn't yet intended to go public in the early summer of 2004 when Gmail (Beta) was released. So they weren't acting on behalf of the shareholders best interest.
Of course before a corporation IPOs ("goes public") it does still have shareholders - in this case the VCs and investors, the original partners, and of course lots of employees. They absofrickinlutely developed gmail on behalf of the shareholder's best interests.
I really don't get what the big deal is - I have several gmail accounts, and I use them as throw away accounts. What's so great about them? Search? Big frickin' deal, there are plenty of tools to do that well. A half-asses replica of a rich app via the ridiculously "AJAX" BS? Yawn.
You have to remember that the newspeople in Toronto have no clue as to what happened in Québec unless they heard it in English. Despite the fact that it has been announced for several days in French they wouldn't know.
Ahhh...okay, so why don't you point to some French media confirming Quebec's change prior to this announcement. They surely have electricity and computers there, don't they?
"It is like two different countries with one having no clue what happens in the other. Québec is usually well informed as to what happens in Ontario but Ontario rarely knows what is going on in Québec."
Sounds like Quebecers need to pay more of their attention on their own province then, doesn't it? Or are you trying to foolishly say that Ontario needs to know more irrelevant details about Quebec's day to day grind?
The problem, though, is that Toronto thinks that Ontario is all of Canada, and Ottawa seems to agree.
Get that tinfoil hat back on.
Ontario is to the rest of the country like the US is to Canada - Other provinces moan and complain that Ontario isn't paying enough attention to them, or that Ontario makes some self-serving change without consideration for the other provinces. Amazingly you can substitute "America" for "Ontario", and "Canada" for "other provinces" in that statement and it is just as true.
The thing is this - here in Ontario, and especially in Toronto, there's a lot of people and a lot of issues. We tend to focus on our own issues. For whatever reason, the rest of Canada also focuses on Ontario and Toronto's issues - And then they blame is on us! It's like the Canadians that bitch about how Americans don't know Canadian politicians, but we know all of theirs. Sounds more like a focus problem on our side, but strangely that's not how other people see.
I marvel at a prior message in this discussion where someone moaned about the US pushing other countries around, and how we were being bullied into this change. What utter selfish bollocks: The US has the right to do whatever the hell they want with their time. If they want to go to a metric clock then they can. Our choice to follow is because that's the course of action that serves us best. It isn't being bullied any more than the US is being bullied by the sun.
Of course many (not all) in the rest of the country are just astoundingly ignorant in their paranoia. Countless letters to the editor about how Ontarians hate those hill-billy Albertans, for instance, penned by an Albertan. Funny, I've never heard anyone actually here express that. Endless nonsense about how we don't care about trade unless it affects Ontario - Then why the hell is everyone here bitching and complaining about softwood lumber and mad cow, and why is it the main topic of news for months?
This is not insane - it's a perfectly legitimate decision. It's VASTLY cheaper to change DST than to mandate higher fuel economy standards.
Are you kidding? I remember several years back I was comparing gas mileage between "Domestic" vehicles, and "Imports". Apart from a couple of brands (Hyundai), the imports won by a landslide - the Cavalier, for instance, used 25% more fuel than a very comparable Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla. _25%_ This is for a car that is on the road in the millions, and clearly it wasn't an economic reason because they were all priced within the same range (and are all made here in North America)
Is it true that most consumers don't care? Absolutely. But if you're going to talk about fucking with the clock to theoretically (I call bullshit on it) save energy, at least go after the low hanging fruit first.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone else think it looks like a pokemon ball with horns?
Actually it looks more like the sort of logo you'd find on an IM or P2P app (they all seem to be using that style of logo). It just looks amateurish.
On the flip side, the old logo (though fun) was terribly amateurish, and impeded taking the OS seriously. Then again, Linux was taken seriously in spite of the goofy penguin.
then Microsoft says it's going to release SQL Server Express for free
SQL Server Express is just the 2005 update of the MSDE, which has been around since SQL Server 7.
Of course Microsoft wasn't trying to fight open source - they were primarily trying to get developers to use SQL Server (and derivatives) as the data layer of their apps, instead of the traditional MS Access/Jet that was prevalent. Before it most developers would respond "I'm not making my customers pay for SQL Server", so Microsoft made the MSDE. They knew that many customers would eventually grow into the "real" SQL Server.
Yeah, Google gives us a lot more hits, but most of them are from villages in India or China.
While I think he commented on the low-cost labour clicking ads perspective, the primary focus was on the vast, worldwide network of zombied PCs. These aren't limited to the developing world.
And now, the same people are screaming about privacy rights, google's "monopoly" and evil public shareholder interests, and now you guys are using google's resources, infrastructure and all their hard work by ignoring cookies and blockings ads.
IT ISN'T THE SAME PEOPLE. If you can demonstrate that it actually is largely (or even moderately) the same set of people, then I'll eat some humble pie, but I really, really doubt it.
I recall some Canadian relatives discussing a bunker called the Diefen Bunker. I think they said it's a tourist attraction now. They give tours as if it were a museum.
Good research.
http://www.diefenbunker.ca/
It is however quite true that MS Office has much better support for the visually impared than Open Office. Several years ago Microsoft made a major push to ensure nearly every application they built had some Accessibility support.
OpenDocument != OpenOffice. I know a lot of people are correlating them, but the reality is that if Mass. goes ahead (and moreso if other states follow), Microsoft will support OpenDocument in Office (as they already pulled together with PDFs).
I wouldn't be surprised to find M$ money involved here. Sending forth those with the big sympathy bonus is in the 101 if every astroturfer and lobby professional.
No doubt there is a tremendous amount of astroturfing and lobbying going on. Microsoft really, really, really doesn't want the switch to Open Document to proceed, as it will serve as a bellweather that will guide other states as well. They're going to make it as painful as possible: Even if it does actually make it to implementation, it'll look like a lot of hassle to bother with. It really is remarkable how attentive everyone now is to a file format.
I'm waiting for them to pull out crippled children, or children with cancer, on behalf of OfficeXML. Maybe Single Working Mothers For OfficeXML. Adopted Children For ChoiceTM (so long as your choice is MS Office).
I'm guessing MSDN is going to be less swamped than FileForum, though the subscriber downloads are extremely slow at the moment as expected.
I downloaded both Visual Studio 2005 (it is not VS.NET anymore kids) and SQL Server 2005 from subscriber downloads in about 3 and a half hours - all 5.4GB of it. That was to a home cable modem connection. That's about 500KB/second for one single downloader, which is pretty damn good.
Is it just me, or does Level 3's ultimatum sound alot like an old fashioned protection racket? How is this any different from the Don sending someone to smash up someone's shop after the owner misses a payment?
No more than the Boston Tea Party was a protection racket. Standing up for your own self-interests isn't insidious or evil.
In this case Peer1 thought they were getting screwed and wanted out - the other party can either agree to new terms, or take advantage of a competitive marketplace and find someone else to do business with.
From the sounds of it (obviously based on a limited amount of information), Peer1 was getting shafted, and rather than it being a peering agreement where they cover each other's backs, they were being leeched while getting little in return. Supposedly they tried many other options to get a new agreement in place.
MS Office also had support for WordPerfect files. If you want to have the leading Office software you must have support for your competition. OpenOffice has support for Word documents so it comes as no suprise that MS would do the same.
Hello, my name is Rudimentary Software Marketplace Strategy and Economics. It's good to meet you.
Let me tell you a few things about myself, for I am a complex, varying sort.
For instance, if I'm an underdog trying to get into a new market, then I'll do everything I can to advocate and embrace "openness", be it support for all types of files, standardization, and so on. I'll beseach the big boys to open up, for the good of all consumers, and allow for a dynamic, competitive marketplace.
For instance let's say I'm an underdog in the instant messaging marketplace, I might say "Come on everyone, let's just be friends and work with open standards!".
Now if I'm successful with this scheme - hopefully really successful - by making it easy for other people to switch to my product, then I move to stage 2 - lock in. This is where I start doing whatever I can to ensure that someone else doesn't do to me what I did to them. I'll embrace and hide behind proprietary standards, I'll make it a bitch for people using different clients, not only technically but via FUD, and I'll constantly move the target to ensure that no one can catch up. Maybe I'll add a "conversion screw-up-ifier" to make sure that the user of more standard formats is an imperfect, painful experience.
The OpenOffice formats support only a subset of the funtionality in Word format
That's like saying that Firefox supports a subset of the functionality of IE because it doesn't support ActiveX.
OfficeXML isn't a superset of the OpenDocument contained functionality, it's just a different set that happens to have a large degree of intersection. e.g. There are areas where OfficeXML is missing functionality in OpenDocument.
OpenDocument has next to 0% market share
OfficeXML had a 0% market share (in fact in many ways it's not far from that - hardly anyone uses it), yet strangely Microsoft implemented that. Right - because they controlled it and it was self-serving...
OpenDocument Format is a legal mine-field
What a complete load of bollacks. Firstly, not only is OpenDocument far more open than Java ever was (or is), Microsoft got penalized for explicitly violating the terms of their agreement with Sun. This wasn't a "Oh noes! You put the curly brackets in the wrong place!" sort of violation, but an intentional campaign to undermine Java.
OpenDocument is a version 1.0 Spec
This is just ridiculous, and you're just padding up your UL to try to have a credible leg to stand on.
I don't know how in the world you got moderated up (I suspect it's some sort of compensatory thing, like "Let's show that we're not all anti-MS here!"), but your points are nonsensically both logically, and when compared against Microsoft actions in other areas and markets.
Microsoft is pushing OfficeXML for the sole reason that it gives them more control over the market. Customers are pushing for OpenDocument because they want more choice (which is counter to Microsoft's best interest). It isn't that complex.
The Slashdot effect might take down small personal servers on shared hosting (e.g. where there's 10,000 websites on one machine running at capacity), but it barely touches major websites. e.g. the current stats are that a Slashdot hit increases the visitor count temporarily by 18-20% on some major sites.
Whooopie.
It this case the problem is a lack of capacity (even though the link is directed at the problem), but I doubt Slashdot's herding compares with the continual massive herding in the blog sphere.
LCD may not be superior in all ways, but for the average consumer the small size is ideal.
Indeed, and this story really has very little to do with CRTs versus LCDs - It's a simple tale of a very large corporation that lost its way (I stopped buy Sony stuff because what once was an extremely high quality brand turned into an overpriced garbage brand) that's now spastically shifting around to try to regain its footing.
Even more ridiculous is the "SONY IS STOPPING PRODUCTION OF CRTS!" followed by the rather important disclaimer "at most of its plants". That entirely counters the headline, and it more accurately should be "Sony is scaling back CRT production", which seems obvious given how many computers, for instance, come with LCDs now, eliminating the need for such a glut of CRT supply.
Bwahahaha. Brilliant. The best is that you didn't dumb it down by explaining the obvious.
Of course now you should expect a reply by some cluebian saying "Um...rats can't do that!"
...(heavy breathing) ....turn...
...are you masturbating?
Ummmm...
The fact such a simplistic and single sided analysis
Simplistic....right. Single-sided -> Do you understand how debates work? You see, I don't have to make the case for every position. Of course you just pulled those trite sayings out of the standard play book.
How about those who don't agree all media should be subject to DRM to preserve the business models of such a non-essential enterprise
Bwahahahaha. Oh god, are you a comedian?
or those frustrated by the North American distribution cartel that keeps fabulous foreign movies out until they can be butchered at a higher profit via a local remake? You know, movie fans instead of consumers?
No need to stick to reality to justify your thievery either, is there?
Well with brillant reasoning like this coming from the Onion folks:
"Moreover, she wrote, The Onion and its Web site are free, so the seal is not being used for commercial purposes. That said, The Onion asked that its letter be considered a formal application to use the seal."
Interesting take on what "commercial" means.
Here's a novel idea, instead of fannying about trying to stop people copying your films (which people always will), you join the 21st century...
...make your films distributed on an internet download site, with a reduction of $2 on the cinema price.
The fact that this got moderated up is an excellent demonstration of how terribly broken Slashdot's moderation is, and how misdirected the Slashdot groupthink is.
This story is about screen pre-releases that are sent to industry insiders, often before the movie is even in the theaters. Basically it's a pirate's dream come true - perfect quality (no shoddy videocamera work), and it's a 0-day prerelease. It has nothing at all to do with consumer DVDs. Obviously they want to protect these. All of the standard anti-[anti-piracy] tongue-waging and moralizing is out of place here, as this has 0 impact on the everyday consumer (well - unless you're a 0-day thief).
Hell, why don't they make 'em free while they're at it! Then there's be no piracy!
To move to the topic of general piracy (nothing to do with the story, but it's what made several people strangely moderate up your post), and to generalize, there are two primary kinds of pirates: there are the hardcore pirates who think the world owes them, and it's their god given right to pirate DVDs (they'll have the long littany of reasons why they should be able to pirace. The most humorous is the paradoxical "movies and music are so terrible anyways, that they don't deserve my money"), then there are the everyday keeping-up-with-the-Joneses types. The latter kind is actually vastly more common than the former, and they pirate simply because they see everyone else doing it, and they don't want to be the sucker (the power of social proof and context).
For the latter half you just need some half-decent "make it some trouble" measures, as well as some legal deterrents. Already the RIAAs lawsuits have scared a large number of people away from the warez scene (which, incidentally, thins the herd and makes the hardcore pirates more visible), but even then the industry was tempered in that it said that it was only going after major distributors - if they randomly went after some guy who had one song or movie available for upload (usually inadvertently courtesy of their tool, as most keeping-up pirates just want to leech, get their stuff and get out), the warez scenes would absolutely dry up.
BTW: I can order most movies through my digital cable box, including new DVD releases. It's vastly easier than downloading one from the net. Does that satisfy your anti-piracy requirements?
I don't particularly want search results ordered by their attractiveness to unemployed twentysomething social miscreants any more than I want them ordered by spammers.
So very, very true.
I marvel seeing some of the comments on here that Google et all should pay more attention to the "social" sites. I've seen the results of places like Digg and Delicious, and if that's what groupthink gets us, then forget about it. I use, and love, Flickr, but their "interestingness" ranking could better be expressed as the "Flickr Popularity" - the people who spend all day in the Flickr forums are the ones with the "interesting" pictures, for instance. Virtually all social sites are like that.
I think google and the other search engines should start paying MUCH more attention to the bigname social bookmarking sites.
You have got to be kidding.
If people want to do the herd thing, they can go to those social bookmarking sites and skip search engines altogether. As it is I find most of the content there (speaking of delicious) to be absolutely terrible, superficial trash. Just because a group of people with a herd mentality all groupthink some trivial, superficial piece up doesn't mean that it's a valuable contribution (it's like getting Score:5 on here - there are a couple of terribly easy ways to get it everytime if you want).
Of course, any system can be gamed, but having the power to meta moderate the results helps with this.
A site like delicious is HUGELY gameable (and as it gains actual importance outside of the herd, it _IS_ being gamed. The evidence is overwhelming). Until we have a real, one-person-one-internet-identity system, that will be the way it remains.
As far as I remember, they designed Gmail and had no idea how to make money off of it
Remarkable if people really, truly believe this sort of nonsense.
Firstly, as a bit of context, Google is 99% an advertising company/1% a search company. You need to appreciate that having contextual information about content was necessary for advertising, and once you have that...well might as well make it searchable.
So here you have a company that makes the overwhelming majority of its income on contextually keyed advertising (things like search appliances have been a huge dud, and they actually have tough competition in that market), and they decide that they're going to make an online email application where they've have access to all of your email...
"Gee, Jim, our entire history and business model is based upon parsing a content sets corpus to get context and then presenting appropriately keyed ads, but thinking of this new online email service I'm just not sure how we're going to monetize this..."
Give me a friggin' break. They knew from day 1 that it was gold to know exactly the sorts of things someone is interested in and presented perfectly keyed ads. They provided a couple of cheap options (like POP3 access) because they knew only the "leader nerds" would use it (the people who push the service on all of their less technically aware friends, who themselves will live through the AdSense world) and it is like cheaply buying off their unofficial salespeople.
Plus they hadn't yet intended to go public in the early summer of 2004 when Gmail (Beta) was released. So they weren't acting on behalf of the shareholders best interest.
Of course before a corporation IPOs ("goes public") it does still have shareholders - in this case the VCs and investors, the original partners, and of course lots of employees. They absofrickinlutely developed gmail on behalf of the shareholder's best interests.
I really don't get what the big deal is - I have several gmail accounts, and I use them as throw away accounts. What's so great about them? Search? Big frickin' deal, there are plenty of tools to do that well. A half-asses replica of a rich app via the ridiculously "AJAX" BS? Yawn.
You have to remember that the newspeople in Toronto have no clue as to what happened in Québec unless they heard it in English. Despite the fact that it has been announced for several days in French they wouldn't know.
Ahhh...okay, so why don't you point to some French media confirming Quebec's change prior to this announcement. They surely have electricity and computers there, don't they?
"It is like two different countries with one having no clue what happens in the other. Québec is usually well informed as to what happens in Ontario but Ontario rarely knows what is going on in Québec."
Sounds like Quebecers need to pay more of their attention on their own province then, doesn't it? Or are you trying to foolishly say that Ontario needs to know more irrelevant details about Quebec's day to day grind?
The problem, though, is that Toronto thinks that Ontario is all of Canada, and Ottawa seems to agree.
Get that tinfoil hat back on.
Ontario is to the rest of the country like the US is to Canada - Other provinces moan and complain that Ontario isn't paying enough attention to them, or that Ontario makes some self-serving change without consideration for the other provinces. Amazingly you can substitute "America" for "Ontario", and "Canada" for "other provinces" in that statement and it is just as true.
The thing is this - here in Ontario, and especially in Toronto, there's a lot of people and a lot of issues. We tend to focus on our own issues. For whatever reason, the rest of Canada also focuses on Ontario and Toronto's issues - And then they blame is on us! It's like the Canadians that bitch about how Americans don't know Canadian politicians, but we know all of theirs. Sounds more like a focus problem on our side, but strangely that's not how other people see.
I marvel at a prior message in this discussion where someone moaned about the US pushing other countries around, and how we were being bullied into this change. What utter selfish bollocks: The US has the right to do whatever the hell they want with their time. If they want to go to a metric clock then they can. Our choice to follow is because that's the course of action that serves us best. It isn't being bullied any more than the US is being bullied by the sun.
Of course many (not all) in the rest of the country are just astoundingly ignorant in their paranoia. Countless letters to the editor about how Ontarians hate those hill-billy Albertans, for instance, penned by an Albertan. Funny, I've never heard anyone actually here express that. Endless nonsense about how we don't care about trade unless it affects Ontario - Then why the hell is everyone here bitching and complaining about softwood lumber and mad cow, and why is it the main topic of news for months?
This is not insane - it's a perfectly legitimate decision. It's VASTLY cheaper to change DST than to mandate higher fuel economy standards.
Are you kidding? I remember several years back I was comparing gas mileage between "Domestic" vehicles, and "Imports". Apart from a couple of brands (Hyundai), the imports won by a landslide - the Cavalier, for instance, used 25% more fuel than a very comparable Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla. _25%_ This is for a car that is on the road in the millions, and clearly it wasn't an economic reason because they were all priced within the same range (and are all made here in North America)
Is it true that most consumers don't care? Absolutely. But if you're going to talk about fucking with the clock to theoretically (I call bullshit on it) save energy, at least go after the low hanging fruit first.