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星期四, 四月 28, 2005

Business 2.0: 101 Dumbest Moments in Business 

It was so much fun reading the "101 Dumbest Momenets in Business" at Business 2.0's website. Some of the very cool stuff that relate to IT are:

#5
For more nostalgia, you can always check out your legal bills from the DOJ antitrust lawsuit.

"Microsoft has had competitors in the past. It's a good thing we have museums to document this stuff."Bill Gates, in a talk at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.
#7-9
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
In April, RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser—seeing his online music store struggling to compete with Apple's iTunes because it's not compatible with the iPod—e-mails Steve Jobs suggesting that he open the iPod to other purveyors of digital music. The e-mail is immediately leaked to the New York Times, which interviews a surprised Glaser. "Steve is showing a high level of fear," he says.

If you can't beat 'em, and you can't join 'em, encourage people to whine about 'em.Still peeved that Apple won't allow the iPod to play downloads from his online music store, Glaser launches an online petition urging Apple to open up. He quickly pulls the petition offline when he discovers that most of the signers have left strident pro-Apple comments.

If you can't beat 'em, and you can't join 'em, and you can't get people to whine about 'em...put out some half-baked software that forever alienates potential customers?Not backing down, Glaser offers a software hack that allows iPods to play songs purchased from Real. Apple blasts its rival for exhibiting "the ethics of a hacker" and warns iPod users that future updates to its software will render the Real songs unplayable. But it turns out that if Real is acting like a hacker, it's not a particularly talented one: Several Real customers report that the software fills their screens with ads and crashes their computers. In November an Apple software update blocks the hack.



星期四, 四月 21, 2005

Vint Cerf on Internet Challenges 

The co-inventor of the Internet, Vint Cerf, talks about Internet Challenges, ranging from vulnerable computer systems, to insure networks, to mobile security, to patch-hungry software, and so on. Vint Cerf and his partner Robert E. Kahn are believed to create the first TCP/IP protocol suite when they worked at DARPA.

What's really interesting is the question of "What is the science of computer science?". Fact is, in many places, CS programs have been a quick job training - Java/VB programming, a bit data structure and SQL, very superficial knowledge of OS, and you are done (oh, don't forget claiming you can do website development after you know HTML and Frontpage!).

These kinds of quick training apparently do not provide sufficient background for students to understand those challenges, let alone tackle one of them. But, what cares?


星期四, 四月 14, 2005

Automatic CS Paper Generator 

Some MIT students wrote a program to generate junkie CS research papers, and one of the papers has been accepted by the junkie SCI conference. see here. Actually the paper looks like real. Don't know who they put together those fancy but completely nonsense terms...

星期二, 四月 12, 2005

Google Maps + Real Estate  

Thanks to Google's web services API, google maps service has been integrated into real estate Listings.

If you have ever used MLS list web site, you may have some idea as to how bad their list mapping service is. I suggest the MLS people use Google maps, instead of the current outdated highly confusing maps.


星期日, 四月 03, 2005

Social Networking heats up 

I was invited by someone to join a social networking web called LinkedIn, which, as it claims, essentially builds an online social network of many executives, industry professionals, and of course head hunters. Other famous social networking sites are:

Friendzy

Orkut (Part of Google)

Friendster

Flickr (Part of Yahoo soon)

It looks like individual social networking sites are being integrated into other somewhat general purpose sites as part of the offerings. For example, Yahoo is likely to provide Yahoo online community services along with Flicr and the incoming Yahoo 360, which allows a user to blog, share pictures, get involved in collabarations, etc. Bottom line is, web based social networking software could be an effective way to extend user basis of these sites.


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