Posts by Nick Kew 2841 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jan 2007
No, the reverse.
Google's success is down to giving the users (that's us, when we search) what they want.
What's best for the public is what's best for Google. Because if Google ever loses sight of that it becomes just another Yahoo.
There's a whole industry devoted to putting useless crap between users and what they want. It's called SEO. Google is right to resist it.
Q: Why is google dominant?
A: Because it gives us what we the users want when we search!
Q: Why do spammers complain to competition authorities about google?
A: Because google makes efforts to put its users needs ahead of the spammers desire to dominate.
Q: What would happen if the spammers were to win?
A: Google would lose its edge as a search engine, and the world would have to re-invent it or suffer.
p.s. I speak as someone who suffered from Yahoo's genuinely discriminatory behaviour in pre-google times when Yahoo had all the mindshare among journos, and hence among the vast numbers of newcomers to the 'net. Let us be glad that's consigned to history!
I paid £500 for a pocket-puter[1] and £210 for an e-reader. Both run Linux and support a wide range of e-book formats, but there's only one I'd choose to read them on. The 6" e-ink screen is its value.
[1] Known to some as a smartphone. But my real smartphone is a different device, that happens to be smaller and lighter to carry around, much more comfortable to hold in the hand, and has a far better battery life.
Is it just me who would like a Boris-bike when crossing London from one station to another?
When you get a train ticket valid via London, it includes a tube journey to connect the mainline stations of your arrival and departure. Or you can walk it – some connections are not unpleasant (for example, Victoria to Paddington is 40 minutes and largely across the park).
Now London has Boris-bikes, we have at our fingertips an altogether more pleasant alternative.
So, rail companies and TFL, when will you start selling via-London tickets that offer the option of one journey on a Boris-bike as an alternative to that tube journey? You know it makes sense!
First .uk domain I accessed the net from wasn't .uk. It was in JANET form, starting with uk.ac. Switched to [....].ac.uk in about 1991.
Before that, forms of address were provider-specific. I recollect in the late '80s - when networks ran on infrastructure like 'prestel' and 'telecom gold' - an address in telex form for my online self.
Get a decent X11 platform, and you have a far better set of editing shortcuts for free. No need for different applications - like an office suite - to go around reinventing that wheel.
If M$ windows 2000 instead of Office 2000 had got generic, cross-application facilities, it could've caught up with 1990 leading-edge technology.
Would you stand for an Apple, RIM or Nokia phone that could only use Bing and not Google?
I certainly wouldn't, and I don't think that's just because I'm a geek. Can't see Apple, RIM or Nokia going out of their way to alienate what is likely a majority of all smartphone users.
Nokia has alienated me with the N900, but that's cockup not conspiracy. And I love the E71, not least because google fits well even into its small screen.
Why have you listed corporate bigcos, but omitted others including the EFF and ASF from your list?
Open Source folks may not have the means to fight patent battles on our own behalf, but can sometimes lend expertise to support someone who is fighting the pirates. The ASF has submitted an Amicus brief to the US supreme court, and I understand EFF is also involved.
I've tried a similar experiment, leaving the macbook at home and living with the pocket-puter (Nokia N900) alone for an event like FOSDEM. Like your ipad, it's a compromise and makes some things much harder to do.
But sometimes it's also very liberating to know you can last the day without having to find a power outlet. And there are times - like when you find standing-room-only - that a laptop would be impractical and a handheld device is the only sane option.
Bottom line: I'll continue to leave the laptop at home for certain events. But only on a time-limited basis: sadly I don't think I could take a full week on the pocket-puter alone. At least, not without a proper keyboard and screen from which to access it!
So every Word macro has to be signed? Yeah, right.
If he means it, that's interesting. We've all hacked up a scripting framework at one time or another[1]. So you sign $yourlanguage to let it run. But how will Intel's hardware know when the data being read by $yourlanguage is in fact a script being executed?
Though sceptical, I wouldn't altogether dismiss it. Fifteen years on from when Perl's taint-checking for untrusted inputs showed you *can* make a clear distinction between safe and unsafe use of data, it's about time someone broke new ground.
Guess this means we'll need a sign-it flag in every compiler, and "save as signed" in every text editor that might be used for an executable script. Well, erm, they must surely have thought through how developers work, mustn't they?
[1] Is that still true for younger folks who have grown up with Larry's or Guido's and other such little hacks at their fingertips? I suspect it still is!
Just one datapoint: I have two instances of Nokia/OVI maps. On the N900 (maemo) it's very annoying and barely usable. On the E71 (symbian) it's great, despite the much smaller screen. Wouldn't surprise me if some of the others showed big platform differences too.
I've no idea why the maemo version should be so f***ed up. Particularly annoying given there's no google maps app for maemo either.
About nine or ten years ago (i.e. when I had a car), I once got stopped by them at about 2 a.m. - one of my rear lights had gone. One of them was busy checking up on me while the other talked. The mobile device he had was clearly able to check my registration number against the details at DVLA. Fortunately they let me go on my way[1] after checking up on me.
So either Devon&Cornwall have renounced technology, or (far more likely) this story is not all it claims to be.
[1] To Tesco - it was December and I couldn't face the shopping crowds at any normal time of day.
As a one-man business in 1999, I was able to sign up to accept payments through Worldpay (now owned by RBS). Yes, I had to convince them I was real, but that was actually *less* of an ordeal than opening a bank account with some providers (like Egg, for instance) who go OTT in asking for proof of identity. Not a problem to go it alone either, but it seemed more cost-effective to outsource the service. And if I can do it, then so can anyone half-serious about running a business!
The Big Barrier (and cost) to accepting payments online is UK law. If $biz fails to deliver and does a runner, the creditcard provider is liable to pay up, so it's no wonder small businesses have to pay a risk premium!
I trust this is the legacy of the profligate do-everything government we've just got rid of, and that the current government is busy plugging money leaks like this even as you discover them ...
It's just occurred to me, the analogy between the government's task with public money and BP's with its oil! Each will be happy if it can reduce a colossal flood to a manageable flow of waste ...
Payment processing is easily outsourced, avoiding the need for any extra red tape.
IIRC, there was quite a checklist to go through back in the late '90s when my company first accepted creditcards. We took the line of least resistance and outsourced to Worldpay. At the time their fees (including the bank's charges) were the same as the bank's charges alone would've been if we'd done it ourselves, making the decision a no-brainer. I expect their economies of scale helped, along with the extra perception of security of a big provider open to audit.
The best news is tightening up on housing benefit. That'll help push rents a little lower for the priced-out who don't get benefits. And house prices too, as lower rents make them that little bit less attractive to property pimps. But still nothing to incentivise owners of empty properties to bring them into use (or rather, penalties on hoarding).
The other good news is of course the reductions in corporation and employment taxes.
Now we just have to wait to hear what's getting cut!
The Oz stats are indeed available online - I already posted www.cyclehelmets.org, one of whose patrons and editorial board is Oz's leading expert on the subject - Dr Dorothy Robinson. Her 2004 paper presents a detailed overview of the real-life evidence from both Oz and NZ.
Executive summary (bearing in mind that the year the law was first introduced coincided with other "road safety" laws).
* Cycling head injuries fell dramatically (there's your evidence).
* Pedestrian head injuries fell by almost exactly the same amount (the nearest thing to a control group)
* Cycling numbers also fell dramatically, so head injuries per cyclist actually changed very little, in sharp contrast to the pedestrians.
Novell under current management is a decent corporate citizen.
But it's value to IP pirates who think SCO had a good idea but just messed up execution may now be a lot higher than its value as an honest business. Indeed, there's evidence of that already: see for example http://bahumbug.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/fear-novell-or-buy-novell/
El Reg posts two classes of report on smartphone usage:
(1) with Nokia in clear top spot
(2) with Nokia absolutely nowhere
Could that be because noone agrees on what the smartphone market actually is, and some reports just exclude Nokia (clearly nonsense) while others lump in every Nokia handset as a smartphone (ditto)?
These articles would be more meaningful if we knew what you were really talking about!
Apple's is a niche. A big niche, and a good one to have (huge margins), but nevertheless a niche of consumer-oriented devices and apps, somewhat similar to the wii's niche.
The ipad suggests they're very happy with that niche, and expanding it in directions where they're strong. That's pretty much the strategy that first brought us the iphone, when they extended their long-established desktop and laptop lines to a pocket-size device.
That's not to say Nokia has the mainstream to itself, with challenges coming from many directions. And you're right, it must hurt to see someone so meeja/PR-savvy as Apple occupying such a profitable niche ...
My E71 is about 15 months, and shows no signs of flagging. Still a good week between charges when it's just on standby/light use.
Trouble with the E71 is, the hardware is so good you feel spoiled for anything else - including some of the much more expensive devices like N90 or you-know-what. If only they could combine that with maemo and a decent range of apps.
I'm (sufficiently) well aware of the rules. I just thought the whole notion sufficiently preposterous not to call for further comment.
And yes, it would in principle be like Oracle buying Sun (you don't get to be a hundred-billion-dollar company by under-utilising your assets)! Except, Sun's stockmarket performance made it a ripe takeover target, whereas ARM is quite the opposite.
It's showing a gain of about 180% on the price I paid in 2008. That's because the price absurdly undervalued the company. Part at least of that rise is an obvious correction.
A takeover target is usually an undervalued company. If ARM were still 80-90p, a bidder offering £1.50 to get it on the cheap might get eager takers ....
Mapquest??? This is pure sleight of hand. Mapquest was never market leader in anything but a tiny market, irrelevant to many of us. Google maps is immeasurably superior. Awareness spreads naturally, just as awareness of the search engine spread in the first place, back in the late '90s!
You might just as well blame google's original rise on google's monopoly!
Universal product search? Again, users want what works. Experience tells us that shopping sites like kelkoo that make/made efforts to appear in google search results are a massive waste of time. Whereas google's results are genuinely useful, by virtue of google's long-standing concentration on what the end-user wants taking precedence over what the advertiser wants.
If google is ever prevented from tweaking its algorithms to thwart spammers and special interests - including the entire "SEO" industry - it loses its value to consumers and becomes just another Yahoo. And if people wanted that ... we could vote with our feet right now!
BTW, is this "Shivaun" for real, or is it just someone's attempt to transcribe "Siobhán"?
Meanwhile ... those who really know how to turn a mass of disorgnised information into something useful will just get on with the job. Most obviously Google. But in the UK, our own Autonomy also seems to making a considerable success in a non-web-centric world.
Fortunately for them, government's track record supports laughing off any new competition it might sponsor.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
