I'd imagine that google has considered tag clouds far more deeply than Fortune's Dan Mitchell, well frankly I'd imagine they prototyped it even.

I'd further expect they vetoed tag clouds on the basis that any tag cloud they might produce can be better implemented by assigning the correct weighting for results.

In fact, you'll recall that google once offered "similar" results, which provided exactly what Dan Mitchell wants, but I'd imagine Google has good reason when they removed it.

In short, Google has already spent millions on the algorithm exploring exactly this algorithm via their similar button, which they ultimately discarded.

Btw, you'll also notice that Rick Santorum's wikipedia page comes up fairly high no matter how hard we try creating additional frothy content top push it down. Isn't this indicative that google has done a very good job identifying the two meanings of Santorum?

Get a PhD. Write more challenging software. Release it open source. Get hired by google if you burn out.

I always refuse the scan to insist on the pat down, but I suppose Ron Paul is old enough that a little more cancer won't hurt much.

Umm, a smaller population should mean a smaller number of extradition requests, sounds like the U.K. is being screwed by an order of magnitude.

Oh, I understand your point, a larger population means a larger number of rich assholes to take offense at your mostly harmless activities. Yeah, maybe that's possible, but I didn't check how many were bullshit extraditions. It might be Americans just throw a shit ton of people in jail for no good reason though. Occam's Razor.

DropBox also offers zero security. Isn't like he couldn't offer anything. He just chooses not to. Fucker.

I agree, that's actually my point, which you're taking the piss out of.

There is an awful lot of room for "not the best coder in the world" out there, javascript, access, whatever. And the more "not the best" we have doing useful stuff the more gets done, the less stupid stuff we good ones must do, and the more important interfaces offer basic coding friendly APIs for us to exploit.

In fact, I'm certainly "not the best" myself. I'm actually a mathematician by training. I love Haskell, C++, and Perl, but basically I learn whatever I need for whatever I'm doing, and then move on. I've never actually won at codegolf, but I've contributed useful insights even there.

There is an awful lot of need for javascript lackies so that real coders can do real work. bring em'. slap em' when they do badly.

Another web based mobile OS? Why bother? I'll stick with native-ish code, thanks.

Btw, I'm still running Maemo on my N900, but I'll upgrade to Android soonish. Android is good enough, open enough, and satisfies the moral imperative of offering good open source encryption tools, i.e. not worthless CALEA garbage like facetime or skype.

Yes, encrypting your traffic is now a moral imperative, look around, maybe you don't have anything worth hiding, but some guy on your ISP probably organizes occupy stuff or whatever.

Copyright laws evolved from the British crown outsourcing censorship.

Copyright has really always been about the powerful controlling the flow of information. Check out around 12min into Falkvinge's Google Tech Talk.

Originally copyright only applied to organizations because you needed money to own a printing press, but now that anybody can copy, they conveniently forget that disorganized copying cannot compete with institutionalized distribution, ala iTunes, and attack individual copying.

Is there any doubt why they're passing SOPA/PIPA this year? It's WikiLeaks, Hacktivism, the Arab Spring, the European Summer, OWS, the possible African Spring, and the coming stronger protests.