This is amazing stuff. The description from the YouTube page says it best: “This Code Swarm provides an animated visual representation of the changes made to the Joomla! source code since 2005. The names that appear are the users who have made changes to the source code. The stars/highlights represent commits made to the Subversion repository. The histogram to the bottom left displays activity. Look out for the date displayed in the right hand corner.”
That “instance” floating around in there is me. Even without the “holy cow, that’s me!” factor, this is a wonderful visualization tool.
This one is simple. Keyboards need a key that means “swap the characters on either side of the cursor”. I type words like “htis” all too often, and I suspect I’m not alone. Instead of positioning the cursor, deleting a letter, moving the cursor, and re-typing the letter, how about positioning the cursor between the offending letters and pressing “Swap”. While we’re at it, make variations such as Control-Swap to switch the two letters immediately behind the cursor, and Alt-Swap to exchange the two letters at the beginning of the latest word.
What is perhaps most informative is this quote from the response “The Conference Board regularly produces custom research. Our guidelines for financed research require the design and method of research, as well as the content of the report, to be determined solely by the Conference Board.” [Note to conference board: that is how you cite sources.]
This quote suggests that they take full responsibility for the incompetence, sloppy methodology, poor fact checking, and many other faults in their work. They appear to either be completely disconnected from reality or to be fully aware that they have no credibility whatsoever.
Abstract: A site where users can post transcripts of videos and overly wordy articles. Users paste in the URL of the original source and get transcripts posted by other users.
Problem: Lots of people are posting essentially empty infomercial-style content – frequently in video formats – posing as useful advice. The problem is you have to spend effort sifting through various introductory remarks and claims before you can determine if the advice is of any actual use. In the case where the content is a video, this can be a frustrating waste of time.
Solution: Provide a way for people who have invested their time for little return to summarize any valuable content for others. Index the summaries by source URL so that additional software, such as a web browser plug-in, can find the short version automatically.
As an example if the original transcript reads something like this, in part: “Hi, this is Joe Hacker, the PC Performance Expert(tm). We hope you catch our weekly show and daily podcasts on…[blah blah blah]”, the transcript might read “To improve system performance, defragment your system disk on a regular basis with JK Defrag, available from www.kessels.com.”
Cveats:
The site will be subject to hackers and spammers who will post irrelevant content. Some sort of trusted user rating system is needed to ensure the spam is eliminated and best versions rise to the top.
There may be some copyright concerns with transcripts. One way to limit this is to restrict the size of the synopsis.
Ideas are cheap. Really. There are hundreds, thousands, millions of them floating around out there. Many of them aren’t all that unique. Most are so vague that they don’t even rate being called an idea [One of my favourites: “I’ve got an idea, let’s create an environment that empowers decision makers!” – that’s not an idea, it’s vacuous fluff.]
The vast majority ideas aren’t “good” for a variety of reasons. But even after you cull non-ideas and bad ideas, and remove the duplicates, there’s still a lot of good ideas. Lots and lots. Too many.
Edited 2020: Consumer Reports “archived” the articles referenced here when they stopped publishing Consumerist in 2017. Since they didn’t bother to put in redirects for their old URLs, the links have been broken for some time. Better yet, with the latest reorganization of this site, the internal link didn’t work because I didn’t bother to put in redirects either. Sad face. Now they all work again.
Since my Skype Fraud post is one of the most popular here, I thought I’d throw in a few references to some other similar tricks. This one is particularly funny:
We can only hope that one of these days the scammers just go out of business because everyone has enough information to spot them and waste their time. Not likely, but one can hope.
Probably everyone has seen a dozen of these by now. Usually someone has discovered some amazing way to make money, or to achieve something that makes money. He or she will tell you all about it, at great length on their seemingly one page web site.
Oh and what a page it is. Make $103,736 a month plucking chickens at home. Just keep reading and we’ll tell you how. Watch our fantastic headers show up in uppercase red text. Count the exclamation points! Look at how we make everything longer with our big borders and narrow copy area.
There’s even proof: here’s images of copies of the Big Fat Earnings.
And now testimonials. Joe the Plumber used this system and now has two houses and three vacation properties. Maybe you can even hear from Joe in a video. Regular folk who look like losers made money with this fantastic technique.
Here’s a link to get started NOW. But just in case you’re not convinced, let’s repeat the whole thing, saying the same stuff in a slightly different way.
Okay, let’s repeat that again. And again. Maybe even again.
Well if you got all the way down here you MUST be convinced, so save 50% or more in this time limited offer by clicking on this *special* link! Only a fool would pass this by!
And now you’re at the end.
Ten, twenty, thirty pages of essentially empty claims all jammed into one and dressed up in a loud suit. The only option for navigation is to the order page.
You’ve just been subjected to a Toilet Paper Pitch. If you printed it out, you’d get a long roll ready for what it’s worth.
Ever notice how these things read like those old five page double-sided direct snail mail pieces you used to have to wade through fifteen years ago? That’s because they’re direct descendants. They try to get you in a box, lead you through their pitch. I think the same cabal of old men is convincing people that this is the way to go in the web world and cranking them out at some ludicrous price.
At some point this pitch style must have worked for someone, because not a week goes by that I don’t see another variation on this theme. Style over substance, or maybe bullsh*t baffles brains, I’m not sure which.
But enough already. It’s tired. It’s lame. It’s not Web 2.0, it’s Web 0.5. It’s old. It’s done. It’s boring. Build a useful site instead… unless of course your product is crap. In which case TP is definitely the way to go.
Yesterday marks a significant milestone. A number of years ago I created a virtual abstract sculptural form that I’ve come to call “Infolds 1”. I liked it enough to start casually exploring the idea of turning it into a real object. Each time I looked at the problem it wasn’t easy. Even if it was possible, it wouldn’t have been cheap. So it never worked out.
A few months ago, I dusted the project off once again. Thanks to a series of Internet-era connections from Twitter and sculpture.net, I discovered that 3D printing technology had made it possible to create this form in metal and plastic. The metal process is still not inexpensive, partially because any metal isn’t inexpensive these days. But the plastic version is quite affordable.
Last weekend I finished the process of converting my design into an acceptable file format, uploaded it to Shapeways, and ordered it! In a week or two, I hope to see it show up in my mailbox. I’ll post photographs as soon as I can. This is all very exciting.
What’s even more interesting is that Shapeways lets you set up your own store, so now you too can order my art online, in three sizes. I hope you like it. Comments are welcome, but be gentle if you can.
On my main site I’ve also posted a longer article on the path that’s led me to making sculptural art.
One of the oddities of Sun’s acquisition by Oracle is that Oracle now owns the MySQL trademark. They also employ the largest concentration of developers who are familiar with the code base. What they don’t control is the code, and who they no longer employ is a lot of the key people who got MySQL to where it is. So what’s next?
From Oracle’s viewpoint, there are three likely scenarios:
Ignore MySQL, let the remaining team go, hope it dies.
Try selling it off.
Embrace Open Source and continue to improve mySQL.
Consider each of these options.
Oracle Ignores MySQL, Hoping for a Withering Death
There’s revenue associated with MySQL. It might be a trickle from Oracle’s perspective, but it’s more than enough to keep a good medium sized company running smoothly. Tens of millions of sites have absolutely no interest in moving to a new database manager, and there’s heaps of MySQL specific expertise out there now. The MySQL revenue stream isn’t going away soon. If Oracle tries this strategy, the MySQL code will soon emerge under a different name, and the resulting business will probably be all the more nimble for it’s passage through Sun and Oracle. Not a likely scenario but good for MySQL nonetheless.
Oracle Sells MySQL
Good luck. Can you say embarrassing writedown? Sun’s billion dollar acquisition of MySQL is right up there on the “WTF” scale, ranking with eBay’s purchase of Skype and Google’s acquisition of YouTube, all for stupid money. [Side note: M&A groups should refrain from hiring people who come out of the derivatives world.] Even then, name a buyer at any reasonable price. I can’t think of one.
Oracle Embraces FOSS
Initially this looks like we’re getting into geek porn fantasies. What can Oracle actually give MySQL that aligns with it’s corporate interests?
There are some patents, well past the end of their productive life, that Oracle could release. This could give MySQL a few neat features that would improve performance. But these are small incremental gains at best. There’s also no selective release here. Once those techniques are in a GPL code base, they’re up for grabs by any open source project.
They could dump lesser versions of various core technologies into MySQL in order to set up a smooth transition to their proprietary products. This would introduce a lot of the “bloat” that made MySQL so popular in the first place. I think we’d see more nimble forks appear in no time. Not a great strategy.
Then there’s the philosophical differential. The one thing that’s evident from my work with Joomla, and my observation of other solutions in the same space, is that success in open source is all about building a strong collaborative culture around the product. While this isn’t incompatible with running a profitable business, it is incompatible with the traditional “destroy the competition” approach. On the surface, capitalism in open source is not going to mix well with the capitalism as warfare.
Then there’s the culture clash of Alpha Geek versus Alpha Capitalist. For a good example of this we need look no further than a blog post from Michael Widenius. He writes “Mr. Ellison, you are undoubtedly a master tactician. However, thinking two moves ahead in the open source world is not good enough. You need strategy. Long term, meaningful, viable strategy. You need to think years ahead, not just to the next fiscal quarter.” There’s nothing quite like a bonehead mix of arrogance and ignorance for your first move. Anyone who thinks Oracle got to the position it’s in by purely tactical moves that look “two moves ahead” is clueless. Then the icing: Widenius closes with “I’d love to speak with you about it”. Well, consider condescending to picking up the phone, buddy. If you think Larry’s going to read your blog and give you a call, you might consider getting back onto your meds (or off of them, either way a state change is in order).
Beyond Strategy, what About Mission?
If you take a step back and look at the mission behind Oracle’s numerous strategic moves over the years, you see their overarching mission: destroy Microsoft.
What’s most interesting about this is that this ethos is also deeply ingrained in the thinking of many open source developers. It’s a small step from “freedom from proprietary software” to “freedom from Microsoft” because Microsoft is the biggest, most obvious first target.
So there is a possibility that despite the cultural differential, Oracle may be viewing open source as a strategic weapon. It’s also worth noting that along with Sun, Oracle gets the services of Johnathan Schwartz, who has demonstrated a crystal clear understanding of the open source model. As Mitchell Ashley notes in “Converging on Microsoft”, Oracle is now in a good position to strike at Microsoft at a time of relative weakness.
If Ashley is right, Larry Ellison will become an active evangelist for open source, using Oracle’s position to drive at the core of Microsoft’s space. I’m sceptical of this. I don’t think the enterprise world is ready to accept the idea of mission critical applications as open source, and I don’t think Oracle’s enterprise business is served well by this just yet. That won’t slow Oracle down one bit. Johnathan Schwartz can become Oracle’s open source advocate, speaking for that part of the business. Open source is walking its way up from the bottom, from compilers to operating systems, through servers and databases. At each stage it takes a little time to gain credibility and foothold, but the value proposition is compelling. If Oracle backs MySQL and proves that it is a viable solution in Oracle’s original space, then it not only helps them advance their mission, it helps advance open source.
Predictions
Either way MySQL – or at least the code that is currently MySQL – is going to come through this just fine. That’s the GPL in action: it’s simply not possible acquire and kill good code.
I think we’re going to see the third scenario. Oracle’s support of Sun’s open source technologies will be strong and unconditional. But this support won’t extend to their enterprise applications. Not until the market is ready.
Whether I’m right or wrong, we’ll see something happen quickly, within two quarters of the closing of the acquisition.
As either a younger member of the boomer generation, or an older member of Gen-X, I’m a member of a big demographic that seems to have a hard time understanding social media. The most common reaction I get to mentioning something on Facebook is “I will never have a Facebook account!”
I realize now that part of the bad reputation that social media has with middle-aged adults is due to the fact that most of these people are parents, and everything they know about social media sites has come from their kids.
This led me to a great insight. Good social media sites are malleable to individual users, and that’s what makes them so powerful. I am certain that my Facebook experience is vastly different from that of your average teenager’s, and that’s a good thing.
A middle-aged friend recently asked me about Facebook and Twitter, with the subtext “I don’t ‘get’ either of them.” I’ve reworked my response a bit in hope that it will be helpful to others:
The main purpose of Facebook is to get found by people you already know but have lost touch with, think of the people you would invite to a high school reunion. Simple as that. It’s also good for keeping up on the big stream of small things that winds up being news in a nominally mundane life. It works well if you’re not “always on” the net. You can pop in every week or so and catch up. If you ignore the clever little time-wasting applications and notification noise, it’s a useful tool. In short, Facebook is good at making an electronic link to people you already know.
Twitter is much more geared to making new connections and is really something for those of us who are “on the ‘net” most of the time. What it’s best at is finding new clever people, and getting breaking news. Information travels very quickly in Twitter, and to a large extent it’s filtered to the interests of the people you follow, which means you get more information about the things you care about. As a writer, it’s also superb at making you edit things down. The 140 character limit is brutal, but it enforces the practice of a clarity that can carry into other writing.
So how did I do? Is there anything else that “defines” these sites?
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