Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - SF Says AdWare Bundled with Gimp Is Intentional (google.com) 5

tresf writes: In response to a Google+ post from the Gimp project claiming that "[Sourceforge] is now distributing an ads-enabled installer of GIMP", Sourceforge had this response:

In cases where a project is no longer actively being maintained, SourceForge has in some cases established a mirror of releases that are hosted elsewhere. This was done for GIMP-Win.

Editor's note: Gimp is actively being maintained and the definition of "mirror" is quite misleading here as a modified binary is no longer a verbatim copy. Download statistics for Gimp on Windows show SourceForge as offering over 1,000 downloads per day of the Gimp software. In an official response to this incident, the official Gimp project team reminds users to use official download methods. Slashdotters may remember the last time news like this surfaced (2013) when the Gimp team decided to move downloads from SourceForge to their own FTP service.

Therefore, we remind you again that GIMP only provides builds for Windows via its official Downloads page.

Note: SourceForge and Slashdot share a corporate parent.

Comment Re:Missing the key point (Score 2) 421

Uhh, precedent. Double the resources, double the ability. This is well known.

That is magical thinking. It has no place in proper engineering practice.

There are zillions of reasons that interfere with ability to work faster in larger problems - yet they can be summarized with the words "non-linear growth". Try solving the Travelling salespeople problem twice as big with merely twice as fast hardware, it will slow to a grinch.

It's not like AI is going to run on some unknown substrate.

We know the substrate of brain power, gray cells. This doesn't mean that we understand the way they work together to create intelligence. If we ever create an AI, it will be so complex that we'll likely be in the same situation with respect to how it works.

Comment Re:Missing the key point (Score 2) 421

"We" don't have to make one. All we have to do is set an AI towards self improvement/production of better AIs. THAT is where superintelligence comes from. All we have to do is make one that is an idiot savant geared toward AI design.

We do that with every new generation of babies, and it hasn't produced a super intelligence yet. What makes you think doing it ON A COMPUTER would make any difference?

Comment Re:Android source is a cluster fuck (Score 2) 434

No one else can because it will cause Google's CTS tool to fail verifying which won't allow you to ship with Google Play.

Conversely, if someone else built such system and it worked to keep all vendors updated, it wouldn't matter much that it failed to validate in Google's CTS. In that situation it would be relatively easy to migrate everyone away from Google Play -developers first, and users would follow- to an alternate app market supported by the maintainer of such successful system.

Now that I think of it, that would be the most likely way a strong contender might use to take control of Android from Google - in fact, that may be precisely what Microsot has in mind for their recent partnership with Cyanogen - the old Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

Comment Re:Google+ failed becuase it's GOOGLE (Score 1) 359

I don't want a nanny-search moving the things I'm looking for down the page. Just give me what I searched for, nothing more, nothing less, no "judgment" about what I want to see.

So you'd rather have a complete database dump of all the web pages that contain your search terms, in random order, to do your own filtering among petabytes of data each time you look for "what you searched for, nothing less"?

'Cause any time you use a web search engine that provides just a few results, there *is* a judgement involved of which ones should appear at the first page; and Google is in the place it's now because their judgement was much better than any other search engine at the time. Including "mobile friendly" is only adding one more criterion to their ordering that they think will work well for a majority of their users.

Submission + - WikiLeaks lets you search Sony's hacked emails (engadget.com)

rtoz writes: When a group calling itself the Guardians of Peace hacked Sony Pictures in late 2014, thousands of private emails and information about top executives, actors and Hollywood hotshots hit the 'net. The messages revealed pay discrepancies between male and female stars, and contained copies of films that hadn't yet seen release. Some of these emails contained racist and derogatory comments from Sony Pictures staff, including co-chair Amy Pascal, who consequently left the company in February. Now, all of these emails are available in searchable form on WikiLeaks. Anyone interested in digging through Sony Pictures' email archives can now search by specific term, sender, recipient, attached filename or email ID.

Submission + - WikiLeaks publishes The Sony Archives (wikileaks.org)

vivaoporto writes: WikiLeaks published on its site a full, searchable archive of the data leaked during the high-profile hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment last year.

Some of its 30,287 documents from Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) and 173,132 emails highlights SPE inner works and thoughts on matters like the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the case against Megaupload and the extradition of its founder Kim DotCom and the connections and alignments between Sony Pictures Entertainment and the US Democratic Party.

Comment Re:from the don't-be-too-good-at-what-you-do dept. (Score 1) 247

the only reason people use Google is that it provides better search results

See my other comment above - the only reason it provides better search results is because they have more people using it, so other players can't provide a better nor cheaper product with respect to search.

That is not inherently bad as long as Google remains a monopoly by having better quality and limiting it to web search. But if they use that advantage to compete at other markets (such as advertising) not by having a better/cheaper product, but by exploiting all those users achieved through their natural monopoly, applying anti-monopoly laws makes sense.

Comment Re:from the don't-be-too-good-at-what-you-do dept. (Score 1) 247

First mover advantage plus the effect that having the majority of users can improve the quality of their results (in fact Google was *not* a first mover in the search space, but now they are entrenched). In the internet, code is law, and Google has a good amount of defining many technologies in widespread use - and more importantly, the way to learn about them.

A few weeks ago I read an analysis by a Mozilla blogger (which I can no longer find) of how, now that pagerank is less and less useful due to link farms and spammers otherwise attacking their algorithm, search quality depends largely on analysis of search terms introduced by users and the results they find interesting. This is a chicken-and-egg situation for any competitor: you can only improve your results by having more users, but they won't come if your results are not better than the market leader's. This is a natural monopoly, but one created by network effects and thus of the kind that can only be displaced by a disruptive process, not by regular competition.

And there's a similar effect for advertising - if there's a natural monopoly over the space were all users reside, then you must advertise in that platform in order to have enough eyeballs. It's the same mechanism that produced a lock-in for Facebook and Microsoft platforms back in the day - you go there not because the product is better, but because you need to interact with everyone who is doing the same.

Comment Re:from the don't-be-too-good-at-what-you-do dept. (Score 3, Interesting) 247

In Europe we already tried allowing a winner-takes-it-all strategy where a very good leader keeps the monopoly over a (market/region/population), it was called an absolute monarchy.

It looks good for as long as the original manager (who reached the position as the best in a meritocracy) stays in place. It lasts for a generation, when the competent leader legates the role to their heirs, who may or may not be prepared to maintain the same level of quality service.

By that time, it is too late to displace the incompetent newcomers - all the network effects that entrenched the original leader as a monopoly are still in place and are too strong to overcome even when there are better alternatives, except by a disruptive process that redefines the rules of the game in full. I heard you Americans didn't like absolute monarchies? You should then understand the EU's position.

Slashdot Top Deals

The hardest part of climbing the ladder of success is getting through the crowd at the bottom.

Working...