I'll preface with saying that I am 18 and I support lowering the drinking age, but there is a fallacy that needs to be pointed out. A common argument is that if you are old enough for the army then you should be able to drink. This is an illogical argument. The reason why 18-21 year olds make good soldiers is why they make bad drinkers-- their decision making ability is not fully developed and they have not matured completely. There are great arguments for lowering the drinking age, but the fact that 18 year olds can join the army or be drafted is not one of them.
The point isn't how great their decision-making capability is (or not). The point is that we've regarded them with enough decision-making capability to do lots more harmful things than have a few beers on Friday night.
And it's not just the army. Being able to vote is one of the most powerful choices we allow citizens (I'd vote firearm ownership as #2) It wouldn't make sense to trust people to elect leaders and not with alcohol.
The problem with your comment is that you don't really grow up until around 35 or so. I don't see anybody making the case to raise the drinking, driving, and voting age to that age. The goal isn't to wait until you reach some level of decision-making ability, it's to be consistent between various freedoms that are available to you.
And the young have always fought wars. As it should be. When you get older, it's not that you somehow get too smart to have duty or honor, it's that direct war-fighting is a very boring activity punctuated with extreme athletic moments. 45-year-olds simply wouldn't survive long enough to be worth the training you'd give them.
In any case, my point isn't that people should receive some benefit based on maturity. It's just the opposite. We live in a society where kids at 12 can have credit cards, at 16 can drive, etc. It's perfectly fine, imo, to allow people to do things while they are still immature to some degree.
The "guy who makes the rules" is the guy who votes. That's people 18 years and older.
The reason alcohol is regulated while lots of other things aren't (hey, tree-climbing isn't safe either) is because it's easy to regulate and it has easily quantifiable impacts on those who use (abuse?) it and those around them. "Good judgement" more generally can't be regulated and can't be so easily quantified (or even identified, if you're a politician).
And re: 45-year-olds - there are less of them in combat for very practical reasons:
a) they've already retired (45-20 is 25, and most people join younger than 25)
b) they're promoted into ranks that don't get into direct combat.
I think the notion that a 45-year old would have a lower survival rate is just silly, unless you've got some particular set of facts to back it up.
Well, if 18 year olds are good soldiers because they aren't fully mature, why not allow 14 year olds to be soldiers? Or 8 year olds for that matter... after all, as African warlords have shown, even a small child can be a great soldier with enough cocaine.
I suggest you capitalize on your studied profession (music). Music and programming is an uncommon set of interests, and if you can talk about the parallels you see between them, it can really set you apart. Picking up a certification or two wouldn't be a bad idea. Also, your qualifications for any type of technology job are completely experienced based. Assembling your projects into a portfolio as a supplement to your resume would be a wise move.
And as a side note, I would definitely avoid jobs with titles like "PHP Wizard". It's a personal opinion, but I wouldn't want to work for an employer who expects me to work magical miracles with PHP. I'd prefer someone who has a good understanding of the realistic capabilities of programmers. I might be totally off base here, but it's my opinion.
Basically that Google is aware they are using robots in conjunction with AdSense and despite the fact that Google understands this is an art project, Google has to defend its AdSense program as well as its advertisers from harm. Based on the material on the web site itself, Google believes the GWEI people give the impression that their project is violating the AdSense TOS. Google will unequivocally defend its rights and this generally includes shutting down the AdSense accounts of violators. Google also reserves the right to take additional action.
I.e. not quite a takedown letter. More like "we're watching carefully".
If they don't get the issue of Knol pagerank sorted out soon, they are going to be hit with a massive anti trust lawsuit. And they are going to lose.
I'm curious as to why everyone is so surprised that this is happening though. It already worked like this with blogs hosted through Blogspot and websites hosted through Google Pages.
If they don't get the issue of Knol pagerank sorted out soon, they are going to be hit with a massive anti trust lawsuit. And they are going to lose.
I certainly hope not. Google, as a private company, should be free to display whatever they want in the search results. Once we start litigating and mandating search placement it becomes a no-win situation. If site A is placed above site B, site B sues. If site B is above site A, site A sues.
There is certainly solid legal ground for arguing that Google giving preferential search results to itself is an anticompetitive practice. It would be different if Google didn't control the vast majority of the search market, but it does.
Let's say there is a phone book company that pretty much controls the entire market. Google's actions are akin to the phonebook company only listing businesses that it owns in the main pages, while listing everything else in an appendix. Anticompetitive practice, to be sure. The phonebook company might argue, "Well since we are so tightly integrated with out own businesses, it is much easier to index them. Our competitors ending up in the back is simply an unintended side effect". Possibly true, but it's not going to fly in court.
To be honest, I don't care if Google is giving preferential treatment to Knol. But please, establish some plausible deniability. The speed in which Knol is being indexed is far too obvious. I think it would be a damn shame if Google were to lose its hold on the search market because of a lawsuit.
Google Maps is also integrated into the Google search. Any time it detects that you've entered a mappable location it provides a Google Maps link. If this feature were removed by, say, a lawsuit by Mapquest I think that Google would become less effective, and everyone would suffer as a result.
That's just my personal opinion, however. I had (and still have) no objection to Microsoft bundling a web browser and media player in Windows, and yet they've been hit by antitrust charges.
This is certainly much less significant then giving preferential page rank. Google controls what over two thirds of people see through search. If it doesn't appear on the first 3 pages of a Google search, exposure is very limited.
It's a shame that my original comment got voted down (didn't even know you could do that). I'd rather people share their opinions rather then voting down; the topic is worthy of discussion.
I really don't mind bundled software either. In fact, I don't mind preferential treatment being given to Knol. What I do mind is Google opening itself up to a lawsuit. A significant lawsuit against Google would have large negative effects in my opinion. I'd just like Google to show a little bit more discretion.
Problem is that Google's not artificially proppingp those blogs and they're not hosting ads by default and collecting revenue from them. Also, when you create a blog, you own the content.. not so with Knol.
5.1. No Google Ownership of User Content. Google claims no ownership or control over any content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through the Service. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any content you submit, post or display on or through the Service and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate.
Three major problems that I see right off the bat:
1.) Quality of Search-- In order to be successful, the quality of their search must be at least as good as Google (obviously it much more helpful if it's better). As many have noted, this clearly is not the case right now, and slightly complex queries such as "Linux search and remove multiple files" return zero results.
2.) Revenue Stream-- As noted above, it is going to be difficult for Cuil to break into the search market because they have to achieve such a high quality of search. But even if they are successful breaking into the market, how are they going to generate revenue? An Adsense like program? That's just another thing that they would have to do better then Google, and I just don't see both things happening.
3.) Overcoming Inertia-- Even if Cuil addresses 1 and 2, the moment of inertia of an average Google user is very high. Google has the best web mail available on the market, and along with all the other services Google provides, people will be reluctant to switch their searching to Cuil because everything else that they do will still be through Google.
I don't mean to be negative, and more power to these guys for taking on an area of the web that most people are afraid to even look at. But I guess I would say that if I were to plan a startup, I would probably pick a more advantageous slice of the market (probably one that doesn't exist at the time of planning). At the same time, you have to play your strengths as a programmer, and it seems like thats what the Cuil team is doing.
One big part of quality of search is figuring out which sites people click on when they search for something and making that result more relevant. I can't imagine Cuil not doing that, and over time their results will probably get a lot better. Considering they started off with no data like this, not bad so far.
I'm not impressed so far. A search for "linux find and replace multiple files" returned zero results. On google it returns 280,000. Further reducing the query to "find and replace multiple files" and "find replace multiple files" still return zero results.
I usually just put my email into an image and leave it at that. As previous people have said though, it is only a matter of time before your email gets on some lift. Ultimately it all comes down to the quality of your spam filter :-).
