falien

um, the idea is to bribe everyone to join something rather than only having the people who are especially motivated by a special interest. Its like giving everyone $100 just for voting regardless of who or what they vote for.

I can replace "Republican" with "Baby-eater" in a description of the GOP platform and it reads just fine too, that doesn't make it any more true.

>can you account for the fact that in order to verify digests, the server actually needs to store the plaintext of the password, and not a hash?

That was my first thought too, but apparently doesn't have to be the case. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digest_access_authentication#Ad...

On the other hand, wikipedia also points out my other gut reaction to the article, which is that forms over https basically provide all the same advantages without most of the drawbacks.

There are two reasons those things make headlines: 1.They are uncommon and thus newsworthy. 2.They are sensationalist trash having only some vague relationship with reality.

Things could obviously be better, but there are trade-offs with living anywhere.

"Currently, the Gmail program is comprised of 443,000 lines of JavaScript, with 978,000 lines if comments are included. All of it was written by hand, he said." http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9178558/Google_to_use...

edit: "currently" with that article being published June 25, 2010

It would be bloat if, as the author irresponsibly implies, all it did was display the basic data of a single text message. In the case of that single instance for the author it may do that (I didn't care to look that closely), but it provides for much more to be possibly displayed, and much of that presentation can provide extra information to a viewer (or a machine for that matter). Also with modern javascript and html engine optimization, its not out of the realm of possibility that generating all of this every time is faster than only generating exactly what is required for each message.

They're not a product company. They're an advertising company. This may change, but that does not mean all their efforts should be put towards changing it. They're expanding and creating their existing market, while putting feelers into others.

by what metric do you argue that it has not caught fire in ways that are remotely possible based on past experience with browser market share?

Google's initial efforts were directed very much at RIM. RIM's guiding strategy never had anything to do with form factor. It was always to provide the killer experience for email, with special attention to corporate email. Android took a shot at RIM by focusing on gmail integration and a great email experience (including frequent polling to get the same effect as push email) to the detriment of other areas of the user experience. It didn't have a focus on corporate, but they also knew that more and more people were using traditionally personal email services for business purposes (and they did know immediately that it was necessary and were working on exchange support). While they still had room to improve the email experience, they provided what many considered the best mobile email experience from the G1 onward. They then continued to improve everything else in the direction of the industry bests, which yes included UI inspiration from iphone.

Also, the idea that early hardware used for developing software is any indication of the ultimate direction is ridiculous. Touch interface is one of the last things you're going to tack onto an operating system. Even if it is a core part of your user interface, you need to get all the underlying parts you never want the user to know about working first, and that is just alot easier with hard interfaces.

They're both software. Its easily conceivable that a non-moron could search for one and mistake it for the other. This case seems like an actual violation whose enforcement would be much more reasonable than most other disputes that have made the news the last few years.

They aren't saying either of those things. They are saying "show me sushi stockholm" which google interprets as "show me sushi in stockholm" and as far as google knows (and accurately as far as I'm concerned when I use google), any sort of searches explicitly limited to a known geographic area are best answered by a map of that area with search results shown on top of it. If you search for "getting sushi in stockholm" you don't get a map. The language that triggers a map as the first result is very specific and not limited to google. Individuals may find that they don't like the map as the first result for some queries, but as a company every major search engine as decided this is the best way to present certain results. Rail against it as a website owner or user all you want, but it is absolutely a legitimate practice.

Of course it is possible to have better results for certain queries. Is it even remotely plausible for google to reliably decide that? To my knowledge, not without solving some very difficult problems, which they may or may not have any motivation to do, but they are certainly under no obligation to do it either.

Note that to see this behaviour on other search engines, you may need to use US locations. Yahoo and Bing don't seem to recognize stockholm as a location.

Google is not presenting their own competing services in a biased way over others. They are presenting search results in context sensitive ways. Searching for sushi in a geographic location indicates you want to find sushi places in that area. A google map is the best possible way for google to present the information you want. Does a crowdsourced site completely dedicated to this tiny niche do a better job than google's algorithm? of course it does, but there is no way for google's algorithm to judge that for every query.

Search instead for "sushi review stockholm" and the cited website is the first result and there is no google map at the top, because the search does not indicate to google that the first priority is to simply find sushi places and nothing else.

Now if google was artificially placing gmail, or google docs, or any of their other service products that are not themselves presenting search results, above the competition for generic search terms; that would be a problem. The behaviour cited in the post is simply the best way for google to provide search results. Google maps is a core search technology, just like google image search, books, video etc. You can't use anti-monopoly rules to handicap the dominant product itself. Especially when all the competition (search providers) considers the same behaviour to be part of their core search service as well.

While I agree in general, my point is that this market is an exception (at least in the US, I have no idea what the situation is like in other countries). Universities are dying for an alternative to Blackboard that has some reputable company behind it. If google had a suitable product they would have to work hard and hold hands to get the first couple of major universities to deploy (not even that if the product was deployable rather than google hosted). After that faculty at other universities would begin quietly demanding relief from the bane of their student's and their instructional lives now that there was a justifiable alternative.

Its not, but if it was it would be because it had Google backing it. Lack of a known corporate support system is Moodle's weakness, and Blackboard's sole reason for success.

Google has the engineers and the legal department to take on Blackboard. If they took 6 months for a dev team with this as their primary task and were willing to have actual tech support they could demolish blackboard with a single sales rep in 5 years.

My problem with them is data entry, which google wants to let me take care of with my droid (and I'd love to). I have used search on a cable box exactly once because it was as much of a chore to enter the query and sort through the spectacularly awful search results as to scroll through all the channels trying to find what I wanted. And yet, every time I actually have something in mind I want to watch, I wish I could use an easy and decent search function. Then theres the possibility of hulu style "channels" which still give a buffet, but you get to stick to the sushi section of the buffet instead of having no discernible organization.

Lots of what google is trying to do has been done poorly and in half-measures before. A good implementation with all of them together has a ton of potential.

>The drugs scenario you describe is being acted out every day by the way.

Thats why I used it. And it makes those dealers criminals in the US. I didn't mean he was under US jurisdiction when he broke the law, I meant he broke a US law which had effect in the US where the law applies. The US acknowledges that he did not break the local law where he was at the time, but he was one half of an action (or actually I guess millions of actions) that was in violation of US law and took effect under US jurisdiction. I can't remember what it is called, but someone in a reddit or HN discussion a few weeks ago introduced me to the legal concept whereby being a party to such a transaction extends personal jurisdiction to include you. Since he was not breaking UK law he could not be extradited, but once he was on US soil he could be arrested for the crime he committed.

I was discussing at work the other day how I am what I described as an "internet libertarian" so I'm also opposed to all of those laws being enforced against actions on the internet, but I don't dispute the legal right they have to do it.

>it should not be a requirement of a business abroad to even be aware of all the laws and statues of countries where they are not based

Unfortunately, as with laws in most places (I'm not aware of any such places actually), ignorance is not a defense. While it may be taken into account while determining your punishment, it does not absolve you of guilt. The judge in that case specifically addressed, when a request for a lesser sentence was made, her belief that the defendant knew what he was doing was a violation of US law.

>My point of view would be 'absolutely not'.

From your explanation I take it you misread the question, and actually believe that this person should not be arrested (and should be immune). Lets take it to the extreme then, and suppose that I live in a country where hiring contract killers is legal and only the actually murderer can be punished. If I paid for someone in the US to be murdered, the US government should not be able to arrest me when I come to the funeral?

The internet does make it much easier to do business with people all over the world, and that should be taken into account when trying to apply local laws to foreign actors, but saying that a sovereign state should have no right to take action against people who violate their laws (in which part or all of the action takes place or has effect within their territorial jurisdiction) goes way too far.

Comparing Mountain View to China... wow, China must be alot smaller than I thought.

The current US government is older than the current Chinese government. Major pollution became a problem during the industrial revolution, which started in Europe and North America. And when did the Chinese people have any more human rights (not just better conditions, but a right to those conditions) than they have now?

I try to keep up with EU technology law, but I'm afraid I only keep up with specifics for individual countries when its widely covered. You can keep your hat on :P

Many things that our intelligence agencies do disturbs me as well, and in fact the policy on the NSA telecom cooperation case as well as other areas where I consider the government to be acting unconstitutionally are my biggest gripe with the Obama administration.

Back to marijuana betonsports: I still disagree. That type of betting is strictly prohibited, and while I think that law should be removed, it is a perfectly valid law to enforce, despite its being driven by a desire for tax revenue and a large dose of hypocrisy. The fact that the provider of the service is not in the US means that they generally will not be gone after as long as they remain outside the US (assuming they are not breaking their own country's laws) unless their own country agrees for some reason that they should be extradited. However once they set foot on US soil the US govt is well within its rights to arrest them. They did break a US law interacting with people under US jurisdiction. The appropriate marijuana comparison in my opinion, would be when a US citizen mail ordered marijuana from someone who is allowed to export it under their local laws. Ignoring any illegal actions taken by other people to get the drugs into the US, should the marijuana dealer be immune to arrest when they enter the US?

As far as the "must leave china" comments, I agree, and now I see why you made that comment. I sometimes tend to disconnect specific comments I want to respond to from the larger discussion, so please don't take any comments I made as implicit agreement with the people you're already arguing with. ;) And I'd tend to say that just about everywhere is much more towards the middle of the freedom spectrum than most people believe. Its just so much easier to think in black and white than all those greys that make up the real world.

Like I said, I don't disagree with most of your sentiments. However, the fact that it was ruled unconstitutional refutes your assertion that it is illegal in the US, when in fact that law itself was determined to be illegal. I'm well aware that free speech in the US is limited, but I'm not aware of any other such draconian limitations that have been determined to be constitutional in the recent past. I would be interested to know about them (or possibly argue with you about them :P) if you cite some.

While I'm painfully aware that the US is at a point on the spectrum far from what I consider to be ideal, that point is very much closer to my ideal than the point China occupies, and even the point most other western democracies occupy (that last was hugely disappointing to me when I realized it).

The comment that struck me as most intellectually dishonest was the parallel you drew between the arrest of the British(?) businessman engaging in business which is illegal in the US, with US customers residing and present in the US when the business was conducted, with the arrest of a US citizen and/or foreign provider of marijuana in which the transaction occurs completely outside of the US where they claim no jurisdiction. To be sure there are many cases in which the US Govt oversteps its jurisdictional boundaries and they are not hard to find, so I found that comparison to be questionable.

Lastly, I saw lower down in the comments that you volunteered your services to the OP and found it admirable, but I fail to see what that has to do with anything.

Edit: I'm also not sure why you're getting downvoted on valid comments, even if I don't agree with them.

All of the equipment is manufactured in China anyway... Why would they not sell to the Chinese government when the alternative is for the government to get the unbranded equipment that is manufactured when the factory is "offline". :P

um... last sentence of the introductory blurb: "The gag order was ruled unconstitutional as an infringement of free speech, in the Doe v. Ashcroft case.[1]"

I don't necessarily disagree with your sentiments, but alot of the arguments and especially analogies you're using in this discussion are intellectually dishonest.

I assume it would considering the close relationship Google and Mozilla have had in the past, and the fact that Mozilla should be very much ideologically behind this (assuming Google does open source it, as someone else said I'm not sure if Google themselves have actually confirmed this).

I believe the vast majority of youtube users still see the flash version though (even those who use browsers that would support the HTML5 version?), so that wouldn't matter as much.

Almost nothing is inevitable, and even things that are can be planned for to optimize your situation. I suppose it depends on your personality though, how you would end up dealing with the knowledge.

My guess is, at least in most places that disclaimer isn't what covers them. The disclaimer is to discourage the people who will stand at the customer service counter arguing for 3 hours to get their 5 pounds of steak for a dollar.

I'm not sure how the nexus one is doing, but before that the Droid was easily the fastest moving android device, and while its launch sales didn't rival the 3GS it was also US only and in a completely different landscape. That said it moved quite well and at the same price on contract (and I think off) as the 3GS. While the second part I think is probably true, with Droid users slightly less willing to make the small purchases, I don't think it has anything to do with affluence. Thats just the impression I've gotten from the numbers I've seen and my experience with people who own/want Droids vs. iPhones (actually about equal numbers in my circle).

From my reading I took it that the 5 pound voucher was not mentioned in the agreement, just something they would have gotten after.

Oh, from the original post I took it that it replaced your link with a scribd link (rather than adding a second link). I still think it is a questionable practice, but find it much less objectionable than I did at first.