In an internal memo last October, Ray Ozzie, chief technical officer, who joined Microsoft last year, wrote, "Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges and it causes end-user and administrator frustration."

The trouble with Microsoft.

Windows Is So Slow, but Why? - New York Times

Acidus wrote:

At the end of the day, Google's Davidson says that his biggest worry is not for Google but for the prospect of bringing fresh innovation to the Internet. After all, if worse comes to worst, Google can pay AT&T or BellSouth to maintain its role as the Internet's dominant search engine. But the bright young start-up with the next big innovative idea won't have that option.

This is exactly my concern.

with reference to an article previously recommended on memestreams the service provided by AT&T is not providing pipes but rather providing a marketplace (a bazaar) in that context it is perceived on both sides of the atlantic that it is philisophically legitimate to maintain the market as a level playing field eg anti-trust (monopoly legislation) insider trading legislation
innovation is the engine of capitalism and requires a level marketplace
these threats are anti free market

RE: Who really gets hurt by 'prioritization' of the Internet

We're hearing tales of two scenarios--one pessimistic, one optimistic--for the future of the Net. If the paranoids are right, the Net's toast. If they're not, it will be because we fought to save it, perhaps in a new way we haven't talked about before. Davids, meet your Goliaths.

This is a long essay. There is, however, no limit to how long I could have made it. The subjects covered here are no less enormous than the Net and its future. Even optimists agree that the Net's future as a free and open environment for business and culture is facing many threats. We can't begin to cover them all or cover all the ways we can fight them. I believe, however, that there is one sure way to fight all of these threats at once, and without doing it the bad guys will win. That's what this essay is about.

Here's a brief outline of the article. If you want to go straight to the solution, skip to the third section:

*

Scenario I: The Carriers Win
*

Scenario II: The Public Workaround
*

Scenario III: Fight with Words and Not Just Deeds

Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes | Linux Journal

Acidus wrote:

Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems

Tom will be talking about some enhancements he is working on for Wikipedia at Phreaknic. Looks like this issue is only growing.

Ironically, the original poster suffers from having looked at a particular article at a particularly bad timeslice and gotten an ugly result. The present text of the Bill Gates article is greatly improved. Interestingly, this is exactly the sort of problem that my wikipedia talk looks toward addressing.

Furthermore, its important to understand what wikipedia is and what it is not. Wikipedia is not a replacement for a traditional encyclopedia. This does not mean it isn't useful. A famous engineer's cynicism is: Cost, Speed, or Quality, pick one. An Encyclopedia is a model that picks Quality. Encyclopedias are slow and expensive, but the results are good. Wikipedias are fast and cheap, and the results are not as good.

If you want to teach 11 year olds about the history of Greece, you don't want wikipedia. They may get bad information, they can't easily reference a particular revision (most people don't understand how to do that with wikipedia), and they are going to be exposed to poor grammar and poor structure at a time when you are trying to teach them how to communicate effectively.

If you want to learn about a terrorist incident that occured two months ago, an encyclopedia is of no use. You could turn to the press, but old press articles are hard to find, and Wikipedia is often a vastly more useful resource, because it presents information in a matter of fact way and often draws from a wider array of resources (including press reports which form a primary source material).

Wikipedia fills the gap between the bleeding edge of the headlines and the cast in stone of dusty reference materials in a way that no other resource can. The sooner people realise that every tool doesn't have to solve every problem the better they'll be at figuring out how to make their tools really succeed at the particular things they are well suited for.

it suddenly occured to me that as there needs to be a way of judging, other than the facility of editing it, the quality of ( or usefulness, or a variety of criteria) of articles on wikipedia.
how about a simple facility of voting for articles and obviously articles which consistantly score badly should pop up for review.
although should each edit deserve a fresh score or should past editions be included but weighted according to the edit
that way adding a comma won't remove a particularly good set of scores and thus discourage edits or adding a comma set to zero a deservely bad score.
plus a scoring system is in accordance with wikipedia's democratic philosophy and adds an element of meritocracy.
systems need feedback
plus different writers could get, like the reputation agent, different scores

RE: Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems | The Register

The Internet's primary oversight body approved a plan Wednesday to create a virtual red-light district, setting the stage for pornographic Web sites to use new addresses ending in "xxx"

Lauren Weinstein has observed that this may open pandora's box as conservative groups move to push content into this TLD and ban it. Legislatures will write laws requiring ISPs to block it, as well as requiring sites with certain content to be listed under it. Some sites which are clearly not porn sites but which have some content which may be inappropriate for children will be forced into this box under duress, and they'll fight back. And then there is the matter of interstate commerce. In sum, this is going to start a constitutional fireworks show.

Furthermore, I want to point out that ICANN is totally inept at choosing TLDs in general. I don't think that they should be allowed to do it. They have too much power to shape the internet, they are really not accountable to anyone, and they are terrible at it.

Consider .BIZ. Self respecting people do business, not "bizzzzzz." Bizzzz is what people who fence stolen goods do. No one uses that tld.

.XXX is simply a bad choice for a domain name. They should have used .SEX. XXX implies hard core porn. SEX is far more likely to be acceptable to a wider range of websites and I think would result in fewer legal battles. For example, sites about sex education would love to be listed under .sex, but would refuse to be classified as XXX. However, the conservative christians will want them clumped into the red light district so they can block them more easily, and so the fireworks...

Not to mention that .KIDS, which I think is a great idea, and presents fewer legal difficulties, is still considered a bad idea by ICANN. Obviously some people might have different opinions about content that is appropriate for the .kids tld, but the issue is likely to be less contentious as no one will be forced into the domain.

I actually considered applying for a position at ICANN, but I am not Joi Ito. Yet.

CNN.com - Stage set for '.xxx' Internet addresses - Jun 2, 2005

] In the next few months, after being patiently nurtured
] for 22 years, an artificial brain called Cyc (pronounced
] "psych") will be put online for the world to interact
] with. And it's only going to get cleverer. Opening Cyc up
] to the masses is expected to accelerate the rate at which
] it learns, giving it access to the combined knowledge of
] millions of people around the globe as it hoovers up new
] facts from web pages, webcams and data entered manually
] by anyone who wants to contribute.
]
]
] Crucially, Cyc's creator says it has developed a human
] trait no other AI system has managed to imitate: common
] sense. "I believe we are heading towards a singularity
] and we will see it in less than 10 years," says Doug
] Lenat of Cycorp, the system's creator.

It's about time. Cyc has been perported to be on the verge of taking off for five years now. It would be really exciting if Lenat's decades-long effort were to be successful.

New Scientist Whatever happened to machines that think? - Features

Google Maps is extremely cool. Great interface. The maps are very good, however they are missing a few things, such as the direction of one way streets. It also does not support Safari yet.

Google Maps

] The US military is planning to deploy robots armed with
] machine-guns to wage war against insurgents in Iraq.
]
] Eighteen of the 1m-high robots, equipped with cameras and
] operated by remote control, are going to Iraq this
] spring, the Associated Press reports.

] Mr Quinn says there are plans to replace the computer
] screen, joysticks and keypad in the remote-control unit
] with a Gameboy-style controller and virtual-reality
] goggles.

BBC NEWS | US plans to deploy 'robot troops' in Iraq

Many years ago (1995, I think), we were brainstorming new game ideas at my office. Under the "no idea is a bad idea" principle, I came up with a suggestion of a massively multiplayer morphing artwork, where each person in the game would be in charge of the color of one pixel, and teams would compete to see who could draw certain images (a bicycle, a house, a face, etc.) the most rapidly. I sort of envisioned it like a cyberspace version of those big sports stadium events where a part of the audience would all hold up cards in sequence, to make a design.

Well, my idea was greeted with near universal derision: "Ha! That sounds totally boring, no one would ever play that," (so much for the spirit of positive-reinforcement brainstorming, heh).

Anyway, my arch-critic from back then recently sent to me this link, of a "pixelfest collaborative artwork". It's not quite the real-time dynamic team-based thing I had in mind, but it's close enough to make me smile. :)

Feel free to add your own pixel!

- Elonka

Update: To see an animation of the 7000-odd pixels that have been placed so far, check here: http://haub.net/pixelfest/ . I found it especially interesting to see how certain people tried to "grief" the image early on with four-letter words, but then the community responded by erasing words as soon as they started recognizing them. Some interesting dynamics there. :)

Experiments - Pixelfest collaborative artwork

Decius wrote:
] ] Wikipedia is under criticism by its co-founder Larry
] ] Sanger who has left the project. He warns of a possible
] ] future fork due to Wikipedia's Anti-Elitism and he
] ] presents his view on Wikipedia's (lack of) reliability.
]
] I've been wondering when this was going to start. The "anyone
] can edit this" mantra has finally found some respected
] detractors. The question is, how do you decide who is an
] expert?
You don't have experts. Reality is decided by consensus. The right look at the world through their ideology so does the left and so do liberals. Fundamentalist Christians and Muslims view the world through a lens. We all sit in the mouth of the cave watching the shadows play on the walls and think we see the outside world.
I read Shakespeare and am told that he is a great writer. I read Shakespeare at University and make up my own mind as did my peers. Each generation makes up its own mind. Reputations ebb and flow with intellectual fashion. The cliche of Mozart and van Gogh not being fully appreciated when alive. These things take time to settle down and sometimes never fully settle down. Oliver Cromwell hero or villain? The expert is the alpha male/female of the tribe that everybody listens to, often a different person depending on the subject, and it is decided by consensus. Or alternatively the expert depends on which grouping within the tribe you ask. Different groups have different experts, different nodal points in the great cacophony that we call culture and civilisation, those individuals who, maybe only for that 15 minutes of fame, are perceived to most eloquently articulate a point of view held, perhaps only partly, by some group, or sub set of some group, within the tribe. Wikipedia is a forum, a thought space and I believe a valuable one.

RE: Slashdot | Wikipedia Criticised by Its Co-founder