If Schmidt is such a good CEO, why change the setup?
Per the release, its about streamlining; the Page-Brin-Schmidt triumvirate has been essentially co-leading the company, and will continue to do so on major decisions, but on a day-to-day basis Page will focus on "product development and technology strategy", Schmidt will focus on "on the deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership", and Brin will focus on "strategic projects, in particular working on new products."
Provided you only use "widely-established" features. Which ones are those, specifically? Because they certainly have not made any commitment to reject backwards-incompatible features in general. Quite the opposite: they make it very clear that if they decide something is "broken", they will change it without warning. Hope you weren't relying on that "broken" behaviour.
Here's the thing: they've already been doing that with the HTML5 spec. The only thing that has changed with respect to the current work with the "Living Standard" approach is that they are taking out the process which results in updated "snapshots" exposed to the public while the major browser vendors, etc., are using drafts that are more recent than the snapshots.
At least, that's the change they've identified.
Hope you weren't relying on that "broken" behaviour.
Since the WHATWG definition of "broken" seems to be "incorrect documentation of what browser vendors intended to commit to support", code that relies on something they would consider "broken" almost certainly wouldn't work in most browsers, and often wouldn't work in any browsers, anyhow.
So even if you wrote very good code that was compatible across 99% of all browsers out there, a few years go by and you look like lazy morons that just don't care.
That doesn't happen unless the standard is accepting backwards-incompatible changes to widely-established features, which they've committed not to.
As for the backwards-incompatible changes, without version numbers you would really have no way to tell what you are doing anyways. Since you can't reference it by version number you would be forced to reference by a specific instance of a problem. The newest Firefox blah blah blah tends to have a problem with this, this, and this, and Opera v.x tends to have a problem with that, that, and that.
Which is what you have to do with features in the real world anyway.
It'll matter to web browsers, which will have to spend a lot more effort trying to figure out exactly how a page is supposed to be displayed, without version numbers.
Don't force me to guestimate how a web page I write today is going to behave in browsers 5 years from now
The problem this addresses is that, because the standards in fact are evolving now, the public snapshots are usually treated as out-of-date but the browser vendors and other major players, so coding to the publicized snapshots itself doesn't provide the most reliable method of assuring behavior today, much less 5 years from now.
A constantly evolving standard is bad news for everybody
The standard was, in fact, constantly evolving anyway, and all the browser vendors (and other heavily interested parties) were engaged in the process and doing pretty much exactly what they would do under a version-number-less process.
The only difference is that people that weren't deeply involved were dealing with snapshots that the major players were treating as outdated.
Since when did Google become the keepers of the HTML spec?
Google is not "the keepers of the HTML spec". Ian Hickson, who happens to work for Google, is the editor of the HTML5 spec. Usually, spec maintainers work for a firm involved in the area the spec addresses.
I think a randomly changing feature-set sounds like a bad idea.
In none of the discussion of this change has there been any indication that the WHATWG process for HTML will involve random changes.
HTML is supposed to be a standard, not something which just changes without any real control behind that.
There is a process, which is discussed in the WHATWG FAQ. The process just doesn't involve version numbers anymore.
People will still need to differentiate between implementations of HTML that have different features...
This presumes that future versions of HTML from the point of adoption forward have backward-incompatible changes. The solution to that is to minimize backward-incompatible changes.
The Google brand uses to be first-class. They were seen as invulnerable and omnipotent. Android has severely damaged that.
I see no evidence to support that claim.
And for what? To provide the core of Chinese and Indian feature phones? To sell 100,000 boutique Nexus phones every year?
To prevent any one non-Google company from controlling the mobile market, and to drive the features in the mobile market in a direction which supports Google's broader strategy for online services.
But don't expect them to be in your corner when Comcast wants to stream NBC at a faster rate than ABC shows.
Really, then why did the Conference -- when commenting on specific legislative proposals in the area rather than just listing general priorities for the coming year -- specifically call for "legislation to prevent companies which control the infrastructure connecting people to the Internet from interfering with the content which is distributed" and refer to the threat that without net neutrality rules in place "companies will use their control over internet access to speed up or down connections to Web sites to benefit themselves financially"?
I may be totally wrong here. But that is the impression the statement left me with.
I think the problem is that you are reading two sentences in a broad statement of all the Conference's legislative priorities and assuming that because it doesn't dive deeply into one issue that you care about (even though it doesn't dive deeply into most of the issues it addresses, because that's not the point of the statement), that the issue isn't one that the Conference has considered deeply and taken a firm stance on.
Every issue that is mentioned even in passing in this address is one that is mentioned because it has come up in recent years and been considered and addressed by the conference and remains an active priority.
I suspect that those bishops who understand the issue are in favour of network neutrality.
The USCCB's 2006 expression of support for net neutrality rules being incorporated into federal law would certainly provide a fairly strong basis for the conclusion that the conference does, indeed, support net neutrality as well as expanded consumer access, rather than conflating the two issues as some Slashdotters have suggested is the reason for the two sentences (one on access and on one neutrality) in the current statement.
They are are trying hard to refocus the argument from equality of suppliers to equality of consumers.
No, they are addressing both issues, and sloppy slashdot readers are assuming that because they mention one issue (access) in one sentence, when they address the other issue (net neutrality) in the next sentence, its really just a reference to the first issue, and not a reference to what they say they are talking about, even though the Conference has -- in contexts where they weren't brief points in a broader policy address -- directly called for net neutrality (and stated why it is important for the Church as an institution) previously.
They're alluding to equality of access (for example, subsidy to get penetration into rural areas at rates at least comparable to dense urban, and hosting on non-discriminatory basis to ensure freedom of --- in their case religious --- speech), rather than what Slashdotters mean by net neutrality.
Wrong.
The speech has two sentences about the internet. One is about equal access, which is one area where the conference has policy concerns.
Notice that legislation and federal regulations are nowhere in there.
Its two sentences in an address laying out "principles and priorities that will guide the public policy efforts" of the US Catholic Conference in the year ahead. They aren't going to mention "legislation and federal regulation" in every sentence, but that's what the speech is about.
We have a (mostly) neutral network. That's how it was built and how everyone assumes it works.
Yes, that's the way it was built and worked for quite a long time -- under the FCC's old open access regulations -- its also what it has drifted away from since deregulation, which is what created the push for "open internet"/"net neutrality" laws and/or regulations.
And the USCCB has previously called for net neutrality rules to be incorporated directly in federal legislation. The incorporation of a reference to the issue in this speech is a statement that the issue remains a policy concern for the Conference.
I am Catholic. When the Church speaks on scripture, it has authority. When it speaks of that which has nothing to do with the bible, as in net "neutrality" (really nothing more than Government control over private networks, there is nothing neutral about it) or "man made global warming" the Church has no authority whatsoever.
This is hopelessly confused as a statement of Catholic doctrine. The magisterium of the Church heirarchy is not certainly not limited to scripture (sola scriptura is common Protestant doctrine, opposed to the fundamental doctrines of the Catholic Church), instead, it extends to matters of faith and morals whether grounded in Scripture or Tradition or both.
Advocacy of "net neutrality" and "man made global warming" both lead to similar ends: the confiscation of private property directly (by taking it over) or indirectly (by telling you what you can't do with it via regulation), which I can argue violates one of the foudnations of Judeo Christian morality, the 10 Commandments, specifically "thou shalt not steal".
One can, of course, argue for anything, but to argue that any taking of private property for public use or restriction by public authority on the use of private property categorically contradicts Christian morals you must dissent from the teachings of the Catholic Church on faith and morals in the domain in which you are making the argument; particularly, you must dissent from the teachings on the moral aspects of private and public property articulated in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) which, recognizes the importance of private property rights but also states that they are constrained by the rights and obligations of public authority, and that "The right of private ownership, however, is not opposed to the right inherent in various forms of public property. [...] Furthermore, it is the right of public authority to prevent anyone from abusing his private property to the detriment of the common good."
Even sadder that this story suggests the Church is actually FOR net neutrality as we understand it today.
They are pontificating (sorry) about net ACCESS.
They have two sentences about the internet, one explicitly calling for "equal access to the internet" for everyone, and one explicitly calling for "true net neutrality" as essential for "a democratic society".
I think it is a mistake to assume that the second is merely a misphrased restatement of the first.
They totally miss the main points of net neutrality such as traffic shaping, throttling, or prioritizing your own traffic over competitive traffic.
I'm not sure how you can reach any conclusions about whether they get these details or not from the two sentences on internet issues in the broad "State of the Union" message.
But, if you look at previous messages that deal directly with the net neutrality issue from the Conference, you'll find direct statements of support for "net neutrality as we know it" going back several years, particularly the 2006 statement in which the Chairman of the Conference's Communication Committee calls for net neutrality requirements to be written into law (following the FCC deregulation of Internet access) because "Unless Congress requires telephone and cable companies to act as neutral providers of Internet access, as they had been required to do since the birth and through the spectacular growth of the Internet, those companies will use their control over internet access to speed up or down connections to Web sites to benefit themselves financially."
GOOG does not seem to have any revenue model for Android.
Google doesn't own Android directly, either, it only did for a very brief moment before transferring it to the OHA. Google bought Android and transferred it for, AFAICT, one main purpose -- to promote its existing web-based services (especially advertising) revenue sources by assuring that they weren't locked out in favor of walled gardens in the mobile computing market that was supplementing and to a certain extent displacing traditional PC-based computing.
There's quite a lot of Google revenue at issue, though given the indirect nature of the effect, its hard to assess exactly how much.
Of course, all the other OHA members have interests in protecting Android, too, and have their own resources and patent portfolios.
Actually I would like to suggest that Google's main approach and threat would be to counter the whole software is patentable paradigm in ways that the big three (Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle) will not want to defend against.
I would like to suggest that Google's main approach would be to counter the threat by assuring that Android, instead of being owned by Google, is owned by a "alliance" of companies that include people with, collectively, lots more patents than Google alone.
And, taken together, the companies that own Android -- the Open Handset Alliance (13 mobile operators, 20 handset manufacturers, 20 semiconductor companies, 16 software [the use of this term seems to include online services] companies including Google, and 10 commercialization companies) -- are significantly larger than any likely challenger to Android.
There is a reason that Google organized the OHA and transferred Android to it immediately after they purchased Android.
The FCC just ruled against network neutrality, not mandating it.
No, the FCC issued a Report and Order prohibiting fixed and, to a lesser extent, mobile broadband providers from blocking or discriminating against lawful content, applications, or services, and particularly doing so to favor services provided by the broadband provider themselves or their business partners. That is, mandating net neutrality.
And having a Comcast-NBC merger reduces diversity because there's fewer companies, duh.
No, it doesn't. Because NBC Universal was formerly a subsidiary of GE in which Vivendi held a 20% stake. Now it will be a subsidiary of Comcast in which GE holds a 49% stake.
The number of companies before and after the merger (and the number of those companies that are corporate parents and the number that are subsidiaries, and even the identities of which ones are parents and which ones are subsidiaries) is not changed by the merger, though which parent company NBC Universal is a subsidiary of has changed.
Anyhow, Obama specifically made states about maintaining diversity in ownership of outlets which this does not affect meaningfully (Comcast, pre-merger, is not a significant owner of outlets, while NBC Universal is.)
Not only that, but now Comcast will own a network which competes with other networks that it's supposed to deliver; how is that not a conflict of interest?
So what if it is a "conflict of interest"? Corporations having conflicts of interests are generally not illegal in the US.
[a programmer's programmer using VB] is like a gourmand's gourmand eating at mcdonald's.
That analogy does not suggest what you probably mean to suggest. You are probably confusing "gourmand" (glutton) with "gourmet" (connoisseur of fine food).
Slashdot Mirror
If Schmidt is such a good CEO, why change the setup?
Per the release, its about streamlining; the Page-Brin-Schmidt triumvirate has been essentially co-leading the company, and will continue to do so on major decisions, but on a day-to-day basis Page will focus on "product development and technology strategy", Schmidt will focus on "on the deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership", and Brin will focus on "strategic projects, in particular working on new products."
Provided you only use "widely-established" features. Which ones are those, specifically? Because they certainly have not made any commitment to reject backwards-incompatible features in general. Quite the opposite: they make it very clear that if they decide something is "broken", they will change it without warning. Hope you weren't relying on that "broken" behaviour.
Here's the thing: they've already been doing that with the HTML5 spec. The only thing that has changed with respect to the current work with the "Living Standard" approach is that they are taking out the process which results in updated "snapshots" exposed to the public while the major browser vendors, etc., are using drafts that are more recent than the snapshots.
At least, that's the change they've identified.
Hope you weren't relying on that "broken" behaviour.
Since the WHATWG definition of "broken" seems to be "incorrect documentation of what browser vendors intended to commit to support", code that relies on something they would consider "broken" almost certainly wouldn't work in most browsers, and often wouldn't work in any browsers, anyhow.
So even if you wrote very good code that was compatible across 99% of all browsers out there, a few years go by and you look like lazy morons that just don't care.
That doesn't happen unless the standard is accepting backwards-incompatible changes to widely-established features, which they've committed not to.
As for the backwards-incompatible changes, without version numbers you would really have no way to tell what you are doing anyways. Since you can't reference it by version number you would be forced to reference by a specific instance of a problem. The newest Firefox blah blah blah tends to have a problem with this, this, and this, and Opera v.x tends to have a problem with that, that, and that.
Which is what you have to do with features in the real world anyway.
It'll matter to web browsers, which will have to spend a lot more effort trying to figure out exactly how a page is supposed to be displayed, without version numbers.
Why would they need to do that?
Don't force me to guestimate how a web page I write today is going to behave in browsers 5 years from now
The problem this addresses is that, because the standards in fact are evolving now, the public snapshots are usually treated as out-of-date but the browser vendors and other major players, so coding to the publicized snapshots itself doesn't provide the most reliable method of assuring behavior today, much less 5 years from now.
A constantly evolving standard is bad news for everybody
The standard was, in fact, constantly evolving anyway, and all the browser vendors (and other heavily interested parties) were engaged in the process and doing pretty much exactly what they would do under a version-number-less process.
The only difference is that people that weren't deeply involved were dealing with snapshots that the major players were treating as outdated.
Since when did Google become the keepers of the HTML spec?
Google is not "the keepers of the HTML spec". Ian Hickson, who happens to work for Google, is the editor of the HTML5 spec. Usually, spec maintainers work for a firm involved in the area the spec addresses.
I think a randomly changing feature-set sounds like a bad idea.
In none of the discussion of this change has there been any indication that the WHATWG process for HTML will involve random changes.
HTML is supposed to be a standard, not something which just changes without any real control behind that.
There is a process, which is discussed in the WHATWG FAQ. The process just doesn't involve version numbers anymore.
People will still need to differentiate between implementations of HTML that have different features...
This presumes that future versions of HTML from the point of adoption forward have backward-incompatible changes. The solution to that is to minimize backward-incompatible changes.
You'll get pages that becomes invalid with time despite they were valid before.
That is a result of backward-incompatible changes, not the absence of version numbers.
The Google brand uses to be first-class. They were seen as invulnerable and omnipotent. Android has severely damaged that.
I see no evidence to support that claim.
And for what? To provide the core of Chinese and Indian feature phones? To sell 100,000 boutique Nexus phones every year?
To prevent any one non-Google company from controlling the mobile market, and to drive the features in the mobile market in a direction which supports Google's broader strategy for online services.
Both of which Android is doing quite well.
But don't expect them to be in your corner when Comcast wants to stream NBC at a faster rate than ABC shows.
Really, then why did the Conference -- when commenting on specific legislative proposals in the area rather than just listing general priorities for the coming year -- specifically call for "legislation to prevent companies which control the infrastructure connecting people to the Internet from interfering with the content which is distributed" and refer to the threat that without net neutrality rules in place "companies will use their control over internet access to speed up or down connections to Web sites to benefit themselves financially"?
I may be totally wrong here. But that is the impression the statement left me with.
I think the problem is that you are reading two sentences in a broad statement of all the Conference's legislative priorities and assuming that because it doesn't dive deeply into one issue that you care about (even though it doesn't dive deeply into most of the issues it addresses, because that's not the point of the statement), that the issue isn't one that the Conference has considered deeply and taken a firm stance on.
Every issue that is mentioned even in passing in this address is one that is mentioned because it has come up in recent years and been considered and addressed by the conference and remains an active priority.
I suspect that those bishops who understand the issue are in favour of network neutrality.
The USCCB's 2006 expression of support for net neutrality rules being incorporated into federal law would certainly provide a fairly strong basis for the conclusion that the conference does, indeed, support net neutrality as well as expanded consumer access, rather than conflating the two issues as some Slashdotters have suggested is the reason for the two sentences (one on access and on one neutrality) in the current statement.
They are are trying hard to refocus the argument from equality of suppliers to equality of consumers.
No, they are addressing both issues, and sloppy slashdot readers are assuming that because they mention one issue (access) in one sentence, when they address the other issue (net neutrality) in the next sentence, its really just a reference to the first issue, and not a reference to what they say they are talking about, even though the Conference has -- in contexts where they weren't brief points in a broader policy address -- directly called for net neutrality (and stated why it is important for the Church as an institution) previously.
They're alluding to equality of access (for example, subsidy to get penetration into rural areas at rates at least comparable to dense urban, and hosting on non-discriminatory basis to ensure freedom of --- in their case religious --- speech), rather than what Slashdotters mean by net neutrality.
Wrong.
The speech has two sentences about the internet. One is about equal access, which is one area where the conference has policy concerns.
One is about net neutrality, which is another area where the conference has policy concerns (which have been expressed more fully previously.)
"We need X. We need Y." does not mean "We need Y, and, when we say Y, we mean X."
Notice that legislation and federal regulations are nowhere in there.
Its two sentences in an address laying out "principles and priorities that will guide the public policy efforts" of the US Catholic Conference in the year ahead. They aren't going to mention "legislation and federal regulation" in every sentence, but that's what the speech is about.
We have a (mostly) neutral network. That's how it was built and how everyone assumes it works.
Yes, that's the way it was built and worked for quite a long time -- under the FCC's old open access regulations -- its also what it has drifted away from since deregulation, which is what created the push for "open internet"/"net neutrality" laws and/or regulations.
And the USCCB has previously called for net neutrality rules to be incorporated directly in federal legislation. The incorporation of a reference to the issue in this speech is a statement that the issue remains a policy concern for the Conference.
If you read the letter, you will see that it is NOT about net Neutrality. It is about trying to get net access to all, basically, the poor.
Well, no.
If you read the letter, you'll see that there are two sentences about the internet.
The first focusses on access, the second on net neutrality.
The USCCB spoken more directly of its support for net neutrality outside of bullet points in broader addresses on public policy, as well.
I am Catholic. When the Church speaks on scripture, it has authority. When it speaks of that which has nothing to do with the bible, as in net "neutrality" (really nothing more than Government control over private networks, there is nothing neutral about it) or "man made global warming" the Church has no authority whatsoever.
This is hopelessly confused as a statement of Catholic doctrine. The magisterium of the Church heirarchy is not certainly not limited to scripture (sola scriptura is common Protestant doctrine, opposed to the fundamental doctrines of the Catholic Church), instead, it extends to matters of faith and morals whether grounded in Scripture or Tradition or both.
Advocacy of "net neutrality" and "man made global warming" both lead to similar ends: the confiscation of private property directly (by taking it over) or indirectly (by telling you what you can't do with it via regulation), which I can argue violates one of the foudnations of Judeo Christian morality, the 10 Commandments, specifically "thou shalt not steal".
One can, of course, argue for anything, but to argue that any taking of private property for public use or restriction by public authority on the use of private property categorically contradicts Christian morals you must dissent from the teachings of the Catholic Church on faith and morals in the domain in which you are making the argument; particularly, you must dissent from the teachings on the moral aspects of private and public property articulated in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) which, recognizes the importance of private property rights but also states that they are constrained by the rights and obligations of public authority, and that "The right of private ownership, however, is not opposed to the right inherent in various forms of public property. [...] Furthermore, it is the right of public authority to prevent anyone from abusing his private property to the detriment of the common good."
Even sadder that this story suggests the Church is actually FOR net neutrality as we understand it today.
They are pontificating (sorry) about net ACCESS.
They have two sentences about the internet, one explicitly calling for "equal access to the internet" for everyone, and one explicitly calling for "true net neutrality" as essential for "a democratic society".
I think it is a mistake to assume that the second is merely a misphrased restatement of the first.
They totally miss the main points of net neutrality such as traffic shaping, throttling, or prioritizing your own traffic over competitive traffic.
I'm not sure how you can reach any conclusions about whether they get these details or not from the two sentences on internet issues in the broad "State of the Union" message.
But, if you look at previous messages that deal directly with the net neutrality issue from the Conference, you'll find direct statements of support for "net neutrality as we know it" going back several years, particularly the 2006 statement in which the Chairman of the Conference's Communication Committee calls for net neutrality requirements to be written into law (following the FCC deregulation of Internet access) because "Unless Congress requires telephone and cable companies to act as neutral providers of Internet access, as they had been required to do since the birth and through the spectacular growth of the Internet, those companies will use their control over internet access to speed up or down connections to Web sites to benefit themselves financially."
GOOG does not seem to have any revenue model for Android.
Google doesn't own Android directly, either, it only did for a very brief moment before transferring it to the OHA. Google bought Android and transferred it for, AFAICT, one main purpose -- to promote its existing web-based services (especially advertising) revenue sources by assuring that they weren't locked out in favor of walled gardens in the mobile computing market that was supplementing and to a certain extent displacing traditional PC-based computing.
There's quite a lot of Google revenue at issue, though given the indirect nature of the effect, its hard to assess exactly how much.
Of course, all the other OHA members have interests in protecting Android, too, and have their own resources and patent portfolios.
Actually I would like to suggest that Google's main approach and threat would be to counter the whole software is patentable paradigm in ways that the big three (Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle) will not want to defend against.
I would like to suggest that Google's main approach would be to counter the threat by assuring that Android, instead of being owned by Google, is owned by a "alliance" of companies that include people with, collectively, lots more patents than Google alone.
You are significantly larger than any spider.
And, taken together, the companies that own Android -- the Open Handset Alliance (13 mobile operators, 20 handset manufacturers, 20 semiconductor companies, 16 software [the use of this term seems to include online services] companies including Google, and 10 commercialization companies) -- are significantly larger than any likely challenger to Android.
There is a reason that Google organized the OHA and transferred Android to it immediately after they purchased Android.
Compare this to, say, writing an app using AppEngine and the lack of lock-in becomes clearer.
Given open source implementations of the AppEngine stack like AppScale and TyphoonAE, I'm not sure the comparison is as clear as you suggest.
so its essentially the same clearance if your in the army or work for a defense contractor
Which is pretty much irrelevant, since this isn't for a security clearance, and the issue wasn't about a defense contract.
Are you an ObamaBot or something?
The latter.
The FCC just ruled against network neutrality, not mandating it.
No, the FCC issued a Report and Order prohibiting fixed and, to a lesser extent, mobile broadband providers from blocking or discriminating against lawful content, applications, or services, and particularly doing so to favor services provided by the broadband provider themselves or their business partners. That is, mandating net neutrality.
And having a Comcast-NBC merger reduces diversity because there's fewer companies, duh.
No, it doesn't. Because NBC Universal was formerly a subsidiary of GE in which Vivendi held a 20% stake. Now it will be a subsidiary of Comcast in which GE holds a 49% stake.
The number of companies before and after the merger (and the number of those companies that are corporate parents and the number that are subsidiaries, and even the identities of which ones are parents and which ones are subsidiaries) is not changed by the merger, though which parent company NBC Universal is a subsidiary of has changed.
Anyhow, Obama specifically made states about maintaining diversity in ownership of outlets which this does not affect meaningfully (Comcast, pre-merger, is not a significant owner of outlets, while NBC Universal is.)
Not only that, but now Comcast will own a network which competes with other networks that it's supposed to deliver; how is that not a conflict of interest?
So what if it is a "conflict of interest"? Corporations having conflicts of interests are generally not illegal in the US.
[a programmer's programmer using VB] is like a gourmand's gourmand eating at mcdonald's.
That analogy does not suggest what you probably mean to suggest. You are probably confusing "gourmand" (glutton) with "gourmet" (connoisseur of fine food).