I followed the whole google china thing and was not upset that much. I did expect google to behave like this.
But a press release like this in a blog is just too much. That’s calling everybody to drink the cool-aid. Some people will do.
I will not. Google is a big and greedy corporation. They make billions right now. They could have afforded the high route, and they choose deliberate not too. Instead they come up with a phony press release. All those smart people they hired in the last years will not leave. Their stock options will keep them. But this marks the time when google stopped being cool. I think that google is evil.
Google censors it’s results in China. Lately I have been googling allot for a current project. Installing things on linux machines means that you have to have access to all those how-to’s boards forums. Allot of linux technology exists in China and everywhere in the third world. How about calling the next redhat release not ‘tettnang’ but rather ‘democracy’. Or sprinkle those ‘bad words’ in your source code. Everybody who will filter would cut himself of a significant amount of information. The chinese boom is fueled by technological information available so freely. By merging ‘bad terms’ into the things they need to read you essentially break filtering. No matter how eagerly google will comply: Either you censor and loose lots of information for your business or you give up on the censor stuff and deal with the realities of history. Their choice really.
Right now the chinese have the cake (free information on technology) and eat it too (cencorship)
The headline reads that there will be a 5th TV network. “That’s odd” me thought, after all wasn’t TV mass media. Wasn’t mass media the part of our surroundings that would give up attention space to the onlsaught to personal communication?
Reading into this release it turns out that UPN and “The WB” will be merged into a new TV channel. So yes, there is one less. It all makes sense. Funny how they spin the story though.
… that we have learned that whale vomit is valueable, yahoo gives up on competing with gooogle and what George Lucas sold for 10 Million to finance a divorce is now worth seven Billion dollars.
So, yes, this is a strange day.
ok, this is getting ridicolous:
Google stock opened at 407.38 this morning.
Now they are at 427.50
In other words the value of Google has been increased by 5,955 Million dollars during today.
If you assume that market cap is the same as the value of a company.
So many billions lately. In the Wall Street Journal from this weekend you can read page 16 an interesting story about Steve Jobs. No, not about the iPod or how brilliant he is.
In March his 10 Million Apple shares vest. That would be 800 Million by today’s price.
What’s there not to like?
Well, according to the WSJ, Steve sold shares in 2003. Lot’s of them. When the stock price was on it’s lowest point in five years. He lost 2.5 Billion by doing that.
What is it with four letter acronyms?
RIAA
MPAA
AACS
The last one I had never heard of. The “Advanced Access Content System” is a brainchild of everybody who is involved in either one of the upcoming HD disk systems.
DVD came with DSS copy protection. Since 1999 it has been hacked. DVD was a success for everybody involved. Despite the fact that it’s copy protection wasn’t working.
The job of the AACS is to make sure that this will not happen again. The digital connector for both Blue-Ray and HD-DVD are HDMI which is more or less DVI with added copy protrection via HDCP. Yes: 4 letter acronyms spell TRBL.
Since there are no actual devices yet to hack the xxxx institutions still live in the the phantasy world that their content will be save and their maginot-like system will work this time. For the first time.
But then there is the ‘analog hole’. They feel they need to close that one real fast.
According to this press article the solution will be that all players will down sample their analog output to 960×540. That’s a quarter of the original 1920×1080 resolution. Many existing HD displays don’t have digitally-kosher-drm-compliant HDMI inputs yet. That’s what you get for being an early adopter: your image will be downsized and then upconverted in the display again. Yes this probably much like a normal DVD at that point. But since you are an early adopter you gonna buy a HD DVD AND Blu-Ray player anyway. Right? Hey, come back here. Early adopter: your friends in the industry need you now more than ever …
The real tragedy is, that this crippling will not cure the issue. There will be hacks for HDCP. And pirated content never cares about quality in the first place. People will continue to ‘get’ a pirated movie. Maybe those four letter institutions should have a look at their enemies first before they punish the people that pay their bills (again). Pirated content exists because it is easy to access and/or cheaper. NOT because it features more pixels or samples. Most of the time it does not.
So our friends at the AACS just made the whole thing more complex, added a little bit to the price of the every player and made probably lots of people with non HDCP screens pretty unhappy. For zero gains. Brilliant!
Ars Technica comments on the same matter.
Ferrofluid Sculptures by Sachiko Kodama
Beat’s a lava lamp
The BBC has an widely discussed article about google out. It does not contain any real news, and it’s tone is missing the point.
But they write that Google’s ad revenue was one point five billion US$ in the quarter ending in September. According to Wikipedia has 5,000 employees. Let’s stick with that number here even though they might have hired a couple hundred more people in the meantime. Probably smart ones.
Those numbers come down to the simple fact that google makes 100,000 US$ in earnings per month and employee. That feels profitable to me.
No wonder the telcos become greedy.
Their cause is lost though.
The internet is not an aqueduct.
It’s the content that matters.
TCP/IP is so commodizied that it will always be cheap.
Worst case somebody comes up with a hack to mesh wifis together. [kidding]
Afer six years I updated the method software site. It is interesting how times have changed. Back in the day I put allot of efforts into navigation and menus. There was allot of content.
It all is gone. The world is full with plugins. Now I believe that you can sell software easier if you cut to the chase. All that thoughtfull navigation and documenation seemed not to help it seems. I still have to answer emails about details when people want the software.
So in case you happen to have an image integration system from the Autodesk Advanced Media Devision aka Discreet aka Discreet Logic flying around in your backyard: Now you can purchase software much quicker.
Sponsored is the whole update by the nice person that leaves his Wifi open so that T-Mobile can shove it.
Or maybe it’s my local Starbucks itself is providing this: They certainly would make their 30 US$ a month for the DSL
back on extra lattes that they can sell since Wifi is free and not stupid in the store.