h84ru3a

This author sounds a little naive re: technology.

Perhaps he should examine some of the Facebook publicly available scans that have been done by "academic researchers", e.g., in South Korea. It is not rocket science to crawl Facebook.

Facebook's data is accessible. As is any website's back-end database. You are kidding yourself if like the author you think you can put something like Facebook on the public internet and have it be "private". If people with the skills -- and there are plenty of them; surprise, they don't all work at Facebbok -- put in the effort they can get the data. All they need is a reason/motivation to do so.

But let's have some more embarassing "tech journalism" (uninformed pontification) from a once respected journal. Put more nails in the coffin of the notion of "professional journalism".

Google is really good at seamlessly integrating the companies they acquire to give the appearance to users that Google develops much more than they actually do. The Google brand becomes synonymous with development that they actually did not themselves do.

TOPS-20

Autocomplete.

I think what he means is getting funded is commoditized.

But that will not continue indefinitely. And that is because eventually someone will want to know how the company plans to make money. When the company cannot tell them, they stop investing. And it spreads back up the chain. The whole thing collapses.

It's like a pyramid scheme.

I'll bet she was thinking of the data mining and analysis possibilities opened up by allowing users to input information in the form of "notes". Of course, that's just a guess.

I am afraid I do not understand the question as you have structured it.

If you can rephrase it, maybe I can give you an answer.

I may have been sloppy in my usage of the term "regulatory environment". Is that want you mean?

They made money in the past, as more and more users kept signing up and using the site (more new eyeballs on the display ads). We're looking to the future now. What happens when the number of new users starts to slow down? As a public company, there is increased pressure for it to perform and to grow. Increasing the enormous net worth of the CEO and some insiders and then gradually fizzling out is not, one would think, the objective of a corporation that goes public. The usual reason companies raise money through IPO's is to grow the company.

If you're with me in spirit, I take that to mean I'm not "wrong", I'm just unrealistic, a dreamer, etc.

I think web developers have a lot of power over how the web operates. Much more than marketing departments.

In the spirit of making money, I'm right there with you. Web developers have to eat.

But to think the matter of the web's usability, or unusability (what the blog post described), is out of their hands, and solely in the hands of marketing departments, I don't buy it. Marketing has the budget, they do not have the skills, or even the knowledge.

I see numerous examples year after year that show that both large and small companies do not have the first clue how stuff works or what the implications are on end users. Developers present them with a proposition and the company writes a check. When some egregious practice comes to the attention of the press, the companies often have no idea what they were even paying for -- they do not understand what was being done.

One need only look at SEO and the types of websites it produces. It's quite a stretch to try to hold marketing departments responsible for this state of affairs.

Let's look at this in simple terms. Let's look for evidence of a "business model".

Website becomes popular.

Website gets personal details from users: email, maybe photos, address, etc., plus it gets a list of "friends" for each user.

Website shows display ads.

(Website gives birth to games company. Games company goes public then loses half its value in two months.)

Does website have a "business model"?

Wait, we're not done.

Website monitors everything users do on the website as well as, to the extent they can, the other websites users visit, using web beacons scattered across the web (Like buttons, aka "Facebook Connect").

Website shows display ads.

Do we have a business model yet?

But wait, there's more.

Website goes public and raises a heap of easy cash.

Website acquires a web browser, produces a mobile phone and begins monitoring everything users do on the web and every conversation they have with their friends.

Website shows display ads.

Do we have a business model yet?

Or is this just lots and lots of spying, information collection and dreaming that this is somehow useful for business?

Display ads are not a business model that will grow a business, unless the business is itself a display ad company.

(And Google already acquired those guys years ago.)

The ideal to strive for is what we call the "Goldielocks effect".

Not knowing too little. Not knowing too much. Knowing just enough to get the job done.

In computing there will always be multiple solutions, and tradeoffs. What you want to aim for is "The simplest solution possible."

In my experience, this is really hard for most developers. Maybe the smart thing to do is find someone who makes it look easy and trust their judgment. Again, my experience is that most developers are reluctant to do this.

The question is not how much someone knows, it's whether they know "enough" to get the job done. Goldielocks.

I never said an optional GUI would hurt R. (I think optional GUI's are a smart idea.) I was referring to SAS and SPSS. They have mandatory GUI's.

In general, do marketing people know how to create websites?

If not, how can they even know what is possible to create using HTML, CSS, etc.?

If the answer is "they look at what the competition is doing," then how did the marketers at the competitor know what is possible?

It has to start somewhere. Who was behind the web back in 1993? Marketing departments? Are marketers the ones who know what can be done with HTML, etc., and what cannot?

If a marketing department asks a web developer to implement something that the developer knows will be an annoyance to end users, and then he decides to tell them it is not possible, does the marketing department not accept this answer? "Look, we know how to make websites, we know this can be done and we'd do it ourselves if we had the time, but we're busy doing marketing. Either you do your job and build this site as we ask, or we'll find someone else."

So, at some stage, some web developer somewhere makes a decision.

I remember reading the confession of a talented developer who wrote, using mini scheme, stealth malware to serve pop-ups. His skills were so good that he could disable all competing malware; the competition was helpless. The NY Attorney General later shut down his employer on consumer protection grounds. The developer was not typically an author of malware, and knew what he was doing was wrong, but his excuse for working with this outfit was that he needed a job.

Without that developer making a choice, the malware company would never have known it was possible to do what they were able to do with the help of this particular talented developer. The use of mini scheme, self modifying code and disabling all competing malware were not in his "job description". He showed them what was possible. And surely they loved him for it. But how about the users infected with the malware, who had to see his employer's pop-ups every day with no way to "turn it off"? What would they think of his work?

Just something to think about.

Are we sure that "=" and not "==" is the correct operator?

If "==" was appropriate then there would be no problem of ambiguity. And there would be no need for the clarification. Because meanings could never change with context. There could be no "misinterpretation". Only the truth table result of "false".

Which is more important in human communication: case-sensitivity or context-sensitivity?

Human communication is not a computer program.

It's web developers that are responsible.

It's a little like advertising perhaps. Advertising has become more of an art form than a tool. Awards given for achievement in creating ads are based on the perceived artistic value of an ad, not on its market effectiveness.

Web development is viewed as an art form by web developers. The web is not a tool to them. It's a canvas.

But the reality is that for many users in many cases, the web is a tool. They just want to accomplish some task, and they are not going to pay attention to artistic value.

Maybe a good example is Amazon. Many web developers criticise the site's design. But Amazon is doing just fine. Because users do not visit Amazon for an "experience". They visit it to buy things.

Maybe there should be two versions of every website: 1. an artisitic one aimed at "user experience" where the developer could display their design skills and 2. another aimed at getting some task(s) done, quickly and efficiently. The latter might follow some universal standard. No thinking involved in its "design", just following a spec.

The user could choose. The problem for the author of this blog post was she had no choice.

Wise words.

What's the sense in spewing out endless chunks of code when no one (even the authors later on) can take the time to read it and understand it?

Why not review the code that's already been written (like the open source code Apple and other walled gardens rely on to build their systems)? This is the sort of tinkering that will help us develop alternatives.

To find the doors, and build new ones, we have to read old code, not simply write new code.

Maybe price won't be the most important factor, as some commenters have pointed out. Maybe the more important issue is the use of an "open format".

I'd like to see "ebooks" that can be converted to plain text (and hence other typesetting formats). What are the chances of that?

I've sometimes wondered: Is there any country that has "free" dental care?

Walled gardens, which are just another annoyance in a long line of progressive manipulation of the computer user for profit, together with an increasing lack of responsiveness (despite ridiculously powerful hardware), drove me back to UNIX, assembly, FORTH and C. In some strange way I'm thankful for the annoyances of "modern computing" because I realised there is still so much more to learn about the "old stuff". I don't consider this move back to the old school to be "tinfoil hat", although it certainly can be used for that purpose. I just like being able to understand and control the machine, and having it be consistently responsive.

I can definitely sympathise with the OP. But I have little motivation to learn Javascript. It is a workaround to get a little control through the browser, but it is still browser-centric and has so little power relative to lower level languages. It is not a long-term solution to the problem the OP describes.

Maybe they do not trust the FPGA's being supplied to Wall St.?

Does Wall St. check for backdoors in hardware?

"investment community... limited in scope"

But how about the regulatory environment?

Maybe it might make a good base from which to launch a startup focused on reclaiming some standard expectations privacy for internet users, by using original internet peer-to-peer design instead of the prevalent "calf-cow" (client-server) model. Many, like the 60-something Harvard blogger who recently wrote about Facebook's flaws, are calling for an end to this design.

Consider the Skype example mentioned as one of Sweden's startup success stories. (And I believe he did eventually go to London for better access to capital.)

"Everything is expensive."

Does that include healthcare and education?

Given a choice between AAPL and AMZN as a source for purchasing "ebooks", which would you prefer?

From the Wire article:

"It was run by friendly Canadians who did not want to antagonize partners and customers by suing them."

Oh well, the patents have found their way into the right hands now so it's all good. Let the American-style antagonism begin.

"the belief that just because people could be evil, doesn't mean they will be evil"

You might attribute the problem to immaturity. Behold the attitude in this thread: finger-pointing.

A patent is not a right or an obligation to produce anything.

In truth, it is a right to sue others.

But surely, that is not how most patent applicants think about patents when they apply for them. We expect they are have intentions to produce something. We expect they will have products or services to sell or license.

People on the web discussing patents are apt to mention government-granted monopolies and pull out quotes from the US Constitution about promoting the progress of useful science and the arts.

Clearly, these people are not just thinking about patents as rights to sue: "If I obtain a lot of patents I can start threatening to sue other companies." They are thinking about companies that are planning to produce something and bring it to the marketplace, and the competition those companies might face.

But the IT industry is showing us that indeed there are people who are thinking of patents as rights to sue. Thye even think this somehow constitutes a legtimate "business". Because that is the ONLY way they are using patents. "Patent troll" is a term coined by someone in the IT industry. That's where it was born. It's proliferation as a "business model" is being led by a former Microsoft employee.

As is true of technology, a patent portfolio is not inherently "evil". It depends on how it is used. The IT industry is showing us how to use patents in the very worst way.

I call it immaturity. Steve Jobs throwing a hissy fit and calling Eric Schmidt from Burning Man about Android.

The problem is not patents. It is how the IT industry is using them.

Patent trolling as a business, which IV has proven is viable, relies on a precondition: patent litigation must remain expensive. In specific, it must be prohibitively expensive to determine whether each and every asserted claim in each and every patent asserted against an "infringer" is valid. This determination can only be done via patent litigation.

What happens if this precondition does not exist?

The patent trolling business will fail.

This is because everyone knows most, maybe even all, of the claims in the patent portfolios the patent troll has amassed are not valid. They are potentially worthless. Companies simply do not know which ones are valid and which ones are not. And it's too expensive to find out. So companies are willing to negotiate instead of engaging in patent litigation.

If we were to make patent litigation so inexpensive that anyone could afford to "call the patent troll's bluff", these ridiculous patents would never be filed for much less asserted. In other words, if we could have an inexpensive determination of what claims are valid and which ones are not valid, we could separate the wheat from the chaff. And these enormous patent portfolios would shrink down to size. Just the wheat. If there is any. It would be difficult to make hollow threats and engage in IV-style extortion.

It is only the expense of finding out whether a claim is valid (through litigation) that makes patent trolling a viable business.

Maybe patent lawyers managed to get the best of Myrvold while he was a CTO, and he believes by opening the gates for a vibrant patent trolling industry, he will make life easier for every technology company in the future. All they have to do is pay some protection money and their worries will be gone.

I can remember when SPSS had no GUI. It seemed much more responsive back then, running on a VAX.

If we can achieve bigger and better things by teaching a new generation of users how to use the command line again, maybe it's worth considering?

No, absolutely not. Totally unrealistic. Forget I mentioned it.

My favorite thing about R is that is has no GUI. To me it makes it more powerful.

But couldn't R have applications in business (industry)?

A businessperson once asked me about R after he read a non-technical article about it in a major newspaper. This person has never been in academia. Why was he curious? What could he possibly see in R?

I see R as a "disruptor" to the market that SPSS has had under lock and key for as long as I can remember. Perhaps statistics has utility outside of academics? Maybe R can give anyone the power of something like SPSS, for free.

Now what I want to know is how to convert "screenr" into a more open format. Can you convert to video? R is not dependent on a GUI. Maybe you could convert to screen(1) format, along with an mp3.

"programming would mean cooped up in a cube all day"

Unfortunately, I think for most programmers, it still does.

My guess is Atwood was once of them.

When I started to reach some sort "enlightenment" (series of epiphanies, ah-ha moments or whatever you want to call it) with respect to "programming" I found that I wanted to share my knowledge with others. I think I still have that urge now and again. (And even now I'd still be happy to show you or anyone what I've learned if they were really interested. However I must admit I've never had much interest in computer games or understanding how they work, and I prefer using Lua over Ruby.)

When I keep seeing these ridiculous blog posts like Atwood's I have a hard time seeing his sort of thinking as helpful to anyone (even himself). That's just how I see it. But then, what do I know? (A chorus of underappreciated programmers in cubicles responds: "Not much!" ;)

They're right. But so am I. In the grand scheme of things, none of us really knows much. That much, I do know. (Credit: Socrates)

I imagine you could use some idiosyncratic scheme; lots of different ways you could do it. Do blog spammers have time to customise their scripts for specific sites? Is it worth it? My guess is they tailor them to different types of popular blog software. And then have to hit a very large number of blogs. Sort of like email spammers have to send out enormous quantities of email.

I'm not an expert on spam, but doesn't almost all blog spam contain a working hyperlink somewhere? So what if you just instruct commenters who want to post links that they should leave off the http:// or break the url some other way. Then have your blog scripts automatically fix all such broken url's into working hyperlinks. What is the likelihood a blog spammer would post a broken url?