nanairo

That is a good point... though I really don't like either choice. :D

Yep, I can see them getting excited data mining people's social networks. However before they do that they need to get the social network...

Personally I think we shouldn't move away from the concept of: URI <=> resource, just for some short-term gain. I think that metaphor will be a lot more useful in the long term.

What we may do, and to be honest it's starting to happen already, is to get rid of the address bar as an always-visible user interface feature. It could just be an overlaid window for those times when you actually want to type in the url (or if you jus want to check its value) that disappear once one click enter. And to be honest this is already happening in mobile phones where space is limited.

The breadcrumb idea, especially if as customisable as the author suggest, should be done in the site... which we already can do.

he he... I do that often for Wikipedia... even though I don't get why Wikipedia hasn't implemented a nicer looking URL (in particular removing the middle /wiki/). :(

What was the historical reason? I know that originally the actual domain name was written from "largest" to "smallest": com.google, for example.

I find my perfectionist side slightly annoyed by the current form, but then if we ever change it we should move to year-month-day too, and putting the currency symbol after the number, and use decimals everywhere (no more hours but centi-days ^_^)... oh well, I guess the world is nice because it's imperfect. :)

For a start we should try to get rid of all those www: that will be the greatest help. The rest should be pretty easy: a website can always set a forwarding link so that, say: www.cocacola.com/offer goes to the page of the actual offer.

I am not sure about that. Though I do think there is a certain feeling of elitism within Google, like all the brightest people are inside (which to be honest it's probably a pretty good assessment). So I am not sure how much they can get the very real but very (intellectually) shallow world of social networks.

Googlers seem to love to tackle hard problems (e.g. Wave and Instant search) but social networks are not a hard problem from an engineer point of view.

True... though "clone it and eventually users will come" was Microsoft strategy, wasn't it? :D (ah, Microsoft, if you had only patented it! ;P ).

But I'd be careful to consider Google vs. Facebook a done deal. Yes, Facebook has only one service... but Google gets all its money from ads, a Facebook could potentially have a much better profile of its users than Google. If Facebook starts chipping at Google's ads de-facto monopoly, it will really hurt Google.

It will be a good fight for sure. :)

Personally I am more worried of a big company dominating more than one space. Say, I'm happy with PS3 to beat Xbox 'cause Sony is not a threat anywhere else, but Microsoft got the Windows/Office monopolies.

I am happy with Apple being strong in iPod/iPhone because they are weak in PCs. And I am happy with Google being strong in search, and Facebook and Twitter having the social network market.

If we got a Facebook killer from Twitter I'd love it. But from Google? I think they got enough fingers in enough pies for the time being. :)

I feel a bit sad for Rails (yes, I know he will continue contributing, but I doubt it will be anything close to what he did in the last few years, when that was his main job).

But he seems a great guy and he deserves all the best. Good luck in your next endeavour.

Oh, you should fix wikipedia then: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton

which is based on this: http://www.cbo.gov/budget/data/historical.pdf

as confirmed by factcheck.org: http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/during_the_clinton_adm...

Actually this was (from the site you linked) show positive saving too (though I am not sure if it's relevant): http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&...

Could it be because you sent data for gross change in debt? Or maybe because those numbers include the extra interest rate paid by the debt (i.e. the government started saving, but the debt was so huge that the extra interests from the previous year compensated for it?).

Dunno, I am just trying to put the two pictures together.

Oh, I definitely agree that their impact was weakened by the exclusivity... for a start because Android would have been less popular.

My guess (and it's purely that) is that the deal was extended (maybe one year... dunno) in exchange for the iPad deal. Not a great move, I agree.

Finally, I agree MS stands in a strong position too. But not Google. As long as Android is open, and as long as there are many manufacturers of Android phones, you have a situation where the very few phone companies have an oligopoly on demand and hence have the upperhand: if Motorola doesn't play along, they can go to Sony, or HTC, or Samsung, or LG... and others are coming up soon. Then Motorola can either lose a lucrative business without little harm to the carrier or is forced to oblige.

That said if one particular brand would become the most appealing for some reason, that company would definitely regain some bargaining power.

Actually you can say "las juesas". :)

In Italian it is true that the last letter is not a perfect indication of gender... even for people's names (e.g. Andrea should be a male name). But it works pretty well. Not sure if Spanish is similar (i.e. there are exceptions) or not.

Nobody is arguing that American companies can't compete, or that America isn't a great country. But the UK was an innovator once, and so was Italy before it.

That said you could very well end up with a future with very powerful and very competitive american companies... in a country with no middle-class and a strong divide between managers and those with money, and the labour force with little privileges.

Edit: I think USA got to where it is for a certain pragmatism that it seems to have lost. Now ideologies (free market, socialism, God, etc...) seem to be all that matter, and society is suffering for it. GDP is not a good indicator of the society's wellbeing and even less is current GDP for tomorrow's society's. At the end of the day the richest man in the world is Mexican, but Mexico is hardly a first world country.

I'll take your word for it.

My impression of cause and effect was that it started pretty much from the beginning, when Obama tried to push for economic stimulus first and universal health service later.

And now the teaparty are a force to be reckoned... and their whole point is to have a small government, and they don't want stimuli or similar (as well as no health service).

But please tell me more. American politics is quite interesting. :)

But you are comparing apple and oranges. You are comparing Microsoft today with Apple in 2007. There were a _lot_ of people doubting Apple would succeed if they ever tried to move into the phone market. And carriers (at least in the US) had a solid grip on the market.

Nowadays the situation is completely different. Apple had showed that their vision of smartphone is successful: Microsoft (or Google) don't need to prove that anymore. Also carriers have lost a bit of their power, and are more afraid of ending up with a world controlled by one company than before.

The point of the exclusivity is that if it runs out in a few months as many expect, that's pretty much when the new MS phones will come out (give or take a couple of months). So I don't see what damage Apple made.

Why are SS and Medicare the biggest drivers? Didn't Clinton leave you with a surplus? And didn't he have to pay for SS and Medicare too? What's changed since then and now?

Anyway I am not arguing that big government are always the best. I am arguing that big government sometimes are. Or to put it another way I am arguing that SMALL government isn't always the best.

Obviously it's not a good idea. But I would imagine that the answer if you can't fill your pot holes is to raise taxes, not hope that the future will bring something better.

If during a boom you've cut taxes, why now that money is needed shouldn't you raise them again? Didn't Clinton leave office with a surplus? So if at that time you had a balanced budget, and now you can't even pay to fill your pot holes, and one of the reason is because of your massive cuts in taxes... wouldn't that suggest that to fix you books you need to raise them again?

Yep. I surely had high hopes on Obama. What's worrying me is how much opposition he has found and how much power he lost.

It was enough to talk about socialism and having a bigger governmental role, and people (on both parties) seemed to start distancing themselves from Obama.

If he doesn't succeed, I am not sure there will really be another chance in time to make a real difference (i.e. to keep USA as no.1... I have no doubt USA will continue being a rich country for a long time to come).

... or maybe that you did something right in the past.

By that meter then Nokia is doing things right too.

Either Roosvelt?

There's a certain irony in hearing someone from the Reagan government talking about China's fast train. If you so much as suggested something like that in the USA you'd be billed as a socialist and the program will be immediately scrapped.

Once the USA wasn't like this. Once it had a big government who looked after its citizens and did what no private investor could or would do.

In Australia the government is building fiber optics to all houses. In Europe governments are building a network of fast trains. In China government is building pretty much everything.

Are the Americans sure that they are backing the right politics?

Lol... ok so... at what point---oh wise one---do police pay become worth? Because the article speak of basically few officers and no detectives. And what happens if we don't find a better way to fill the holes?

The reason why USA has no money is because you keep cutting the taxes for the richest people and going to wars that you've got no money for... and when finally the shit hit the fan you had to throw money after bankers and companies.

This process usually takes two phases: phase 1, during a boom: "We've got plenty of money, let's cut some taxes" phase 2, during the crisis: "We've got no money left, let's cut some services"

You make it sound easy. Apple would have loved for nothing more than having their phone on every carrier. But at the time they were a nobody in the mobile arena, and not only was their phone a huge departure but they also wanted to keep the look and feel untouched and have the carrier implement some ad hoc changes for things like visual voicemail.

By the time Google had to make a deal, Verizon was seeing their customers moving to AT&T and needed something to rival the iPhone. Before the iPhone Verizon is said to have told Apple that its contract (to have a Verizon iPhone) were not acceptable. I doubt Verizon would have replied like that had the roles been inverted.

Anyway, the exclusivity will hopefully end soon. What will be your stance at that point?

I agree with the main arguments. Although as others pointed out this is mostly an american problem (though it still occurs abroad, but less so).

But I find this argument naive: "But this pipe dream is being crushed quickly. The carriers, after giving up ground initially, are fighting back. They are using Android’s openness against the company."

The point is: if Google hadn't done that, the carriers may very well not have supported it. Let's remember that although now we consider Android a strong contender, at the time Android was neither that strong, nor the only contender. I'd be ready to bet that other carriers supported Android as much to hurt Apple as because they knew they could control it.

Personally I'd go as far as to say that Google developed Android the way they did fully aware that this could happen: the bottom line is that Google doesn't make money from Android, and as nobody holds the market in the palm of their hand Google is happy... even though it may mean basically subsidising other companies fight against Apple (at the time).

Even if it were so, I find this kind of attitude damaging for society.

It's the same thing in Europe or the USA: nationalistic pride results in more expensive products, and people complain why they aren't cheaper. If instead they are cheaper but produced abroad they complain why they were not made in our home country, and why are we giving money to foreigners.

If the Indian government found that the only way to get a 35$ tablet was from a chinese company, kudos to them to do what's best for their society. A cheap tablet will be a lot more useful than the damage it will bring to Indian pride.

Yep, I think it won't work either (too many holes in their ban).

However I would have really wished for the University to use this chance to carry a proper experiment, gathering data, analysing them, etc. They are a university, after all! They got a chance to study the effect of the ban on people's activities and behaviour... why not try to collect some data?

It may be useless and too noisy, but still.

I am surprised about the number one: it seems to be the best from a purely checklist point of view. Yes, it has the most features but it has horrible battery, or that's what all reviews say. I would have chosen something else for the top spot.

Could you tell me a bit more about why you like data.frame? Is it not just a 2D matrix?

Are you referring to the strips on the old title bar?

True, but they were a _lot_ nicer. I remember at the time people complaining a lot about OS X look, including the stripes, and wanted the old look back. So I guess most of us don't feel like they are really the same. But I get your point.

As for the look of Snow Leopard vs. MacOS 9 and MacOS X 10.0 I'd say a lot has reverted back. The old one in particular used a lot of greys, which OS X at the beginning was trying to get away from ("Look, it's all colourful!").

So yeah, maybe I exaggerated when I said most of it, but you've got to admit that the look has moved back to the more subtle ways of Classic than the flashy ways of 10.0, no?