The only concrete use case you've offered “is unlikely to deliver substantial gains to the industry when compared to alternatives” such as shared databases, which don't require any costly consensus algorithm.
The fix works only for Firefox-based browsers, because it makes use of inline script tag filtering[1] which does not work on chromium, because it does not support `beforescriptexecute`[2]. The work around for Chromium-based browsers is to wholesale block inline script for the page, at the cost of probably breaking some functionality on the page.
I regularly hear that if I could install it on my own server argument and wonder if you think you can handle security and administration much better than someone who's paid to do it. I, for one, can't and would not want to waste my time on it.
I agree that is a good point. Perhaps it is a technology that would be better off not existing?
Security aside, one of the fears I have isn't necessarily against hackers, but against legal entities making use of the private information illegally, in addition to Greplin selling "me" in a very compact and precises manner to whoever they want.
Even if you trust that your own computer or server is more secure than Greplin's servers, your communication with others will be indexed on instances belonging to the people you communicate with as well.
So the question even for the seasoned computer security expert that want to use a distributed Greplin variant is: Do you trust your friends and colleagues to have better security on their home or work computers than Greplin can achieve with dedicated work?
With a distributed system it would still be a non-trivial task to protect against a dedicated worm or trojan that infest the network and traces paths to other Greplin users after stealing all the data from each instance.
Since the data is social and each document in many cases concerns more than one person, it might actually be a less complicated task to achieve sufficient security in a central location.
There's security breaches all the time on systems that are set up and maintained by people who are 'paid to do it'. I don't think that's a the best possible signal. People who are able to install complex software (something beyond wordpress-ease of install) are possibly more capable than many 'paid to admin server' admins. Not all, of course, but being paid to do something doesn't indicate 100% competence.
Likewise, someone installing something on their own machines for privacy concerns can be said to have more vested in keeping things secure than the person who's only doing it for their job, maintaining a server with thousands of bits of data on it.
If you solve an unknown problem (ie. an issue nobody is concerned about) you will have a very hard time to market it and show people how they need it.
There were solutions for this Internet thing 50 years ago, even if it's hardly imaginable today. If the problem you are speaking about is communication we had that 2000 years ago, in form of smoke signals. It sucked and was dog slow but it was not an unknown problem.
The author procures a scenario in which Google is going to collapse rather sooner than later. The last numbers I heard from Google reported an upwards trend in revenue [1] and with their recent additions like Google +1 [2] and Google Connect [3] I don't see them ‘miss the big picture’. Am I missing some serious tech scene scoop (genuine question)?
I guess that caused more trouble for your dad than it did for the shop owner, economically at least. Plus he would probably brag about your dad to other shop owners. (I agree that just doing the job for free is no solution either, but do not have any better retaliation, except for proper contracts and court claims, in mind.)
Courts are not a solution to most problems. You spend hundreds just to get started with fees, serving the other side, then the time back and forth to court over and over with the other side continuing the case. Now it is 6 months later and maybe the court will decide in your favor or maybe the court will decide that you didn't do the work as specified by the client (even if you did).
Even if the court decides in your favor, all you have is a judgement. You still have to collect. If they didn't pay before, why would they pay now? With a judgement, you have a better chance of getting your money, but not any better chance of getting it quickly. It may still take years (this from someone who's been waiting 2.5 years after filing a lawsuit to have my case heard - courts are really backed up).
"Only 8 percent of those winning plaintiffs collected, court records show. Officials say some plaintiffs might not have notified the court, so as a backup test, the Times contacted 39 winning plaintiffs. Eight -- 21 percent -- said they had been paid.
Court officials nationwide confirm that whatever the real number is, it's low.
"Most plaintiffs would be better off taking their money to the roulette tables in Biloxi, Miss., and placing it on red," said Jimmy Dye, a collections lawyer who works throughout Florida. "They'd certainly have more fun." "
Go on Judge Judy or something. The TV shows will actually pay you if you win.
Depending on just how big the unpaid invoice is, in some states small-claims court is an option; it's cheaper and quicker usually. Here's a list of each state's limits for a small-claims-court suit: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/article-30031.html
This a route I took last year for a client. I self represented and the clerks at the courthouse were friendly and helped where they could. In North Carolina, the cap for small claims action is $5000. Once my case was heard, it took 10 minutes between the start and a judgement in my favor. From start to finish though it took two months so as to serve a summons properly and allow time to appeal the judgement.
It helps if you've received checks from the company previously and can give the bank account information to a sheriff to collect for you.
Hundreds? Maybe in small claims court. If you are talking about more significant amounts, plan on at least $5 - 10K in fees just to get in front of a judge.
While true there might be a slight portion of outcome bias -- the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made (source: List of cognitive biases, Wikipedia) -- involved in that analysis.
That search engine is still Google’s most important and profitable product, to my knowledge.
While I agree that its search engine is its most popular product it is not profitable in its own right. Google claims that "advertising revenues made up 97% of our revenues" in its Q3/2010 filings and that means advertising placed through AdSense/AdWords on other sites too:
We derive most of our additional revenues from offering display advertising management services to advertisers, ad agencies, and publishers, as well as licensing our enterprise products, search solutions, and web search technology.
> I haven't came across anything I need them to do that hasn't been covered in some plugin somewhere.
If you cannot name at least 5 things you dislike about the tools and languages you use you're either in the honeymoon period, or irrational. --Jesse Noller
The ideas brought up on that site are frequently gamed in the pickup scene.
Crash 'n' Burn is the practice of trying impossible sets (ie. girls) with the assumption of being rejected. If you are sure you will blow it big time, you can as well do and learn something from it.
Another tangentially related technique against rejection angst is the Three Seconds Rule which mandates you talk to some stranger before thinking for too long (which is really a different, short-term approach to the Rejection Therapy game).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2020.101298