I wonder if "boring" here just means "clear." I had a great case of this yesterday. We were reviewing a piece of code by someone that could have been better with a basic algorithm change. It did most of the right things but in the wrong order, sometimes on the wrong data, and did one major piece probabilistically were specific computation wasn't intractable.
The coder wasn't completely getting our explanation, but the code was so "boring" or "clear" that we opened up an editor, copy-and-pasted some blocks around added a few if statements and expected it to be basically functional. This was a complex algorithm and a complex change, and we offered provisos that we didn't know what that function returned so a "not" might have to go in front, and a variable name would have to be changed and one piece was going to have to operate on a new key in memcache, but it was basically there.
The point is, the code was so well-written that we could read it well enough to do this never having seen it moments before, and our resulting chopping was clearer to the original coder than 20 minutes of histrionics on a whiteboard full of formulae. That's how it should be. :-)
And for any haters in the crowd, it was all in Perl. So much for "write-only" complaints. :-)
In my coding, I'm starting to think it's better to write code that is wrong and clear than "right" and unclear. Because then you can understand it quickly when you come back to correct it later (note: including correcting the "right" code, due to bugs, problem change, etc).
It was great to see Paul make the very first connection that I made upon hearing the news. The deal had to be absolutely fantastic for the founders otherwise some portion of the best wouldn't take it. Having looked at the deal, it looks like it qualifies.
I agree with wave that it looks like something that should have worked so far, and one can presume they're getting better at what they're doing and hopefully will have a better economic environment for these current startups.
It doesn't violate someone's right to free speech or any other right for a company to fail to provide a service to them. A company having to provide service to some particular entity only violates one set of rights - those of the company.
Luckily, no-one's rights are at issue and no-one's going to be forced to do anything.
It's a simple question of whether people want to support a company that acts in ways they don't approve of. A boycott is simply voting with your wallet. There's no rule that it's only right or just to boycott if laws have been broken. I'd be surprised if more than a tiny minority of boycotts were based on corporate behavior that wasn't 100% legal.
I agree with everything you say here. I only take issue with claims that Amazon was violating someone's right to free speech. I no more think people shouldn't boycott Amazon if their dislike of Amazon's decision makes them not want to use their service than I do that Amazon should provide hosting to someone if they don't regard it in their interest to do so.
Calling it a violation of free speech waters down the impact of the phrase as it covers real governments doing it with real violence. I went to college during during the height of the political correctness bubble and was exposed to nuts who called holding a door open for a woman "rape." I couldn't imagine any more crass or insensitive action with respect to real rape victims.
It sounds more like this: "If Amazon is wrong for refusing service to someone that is hosting potentially-controversial content, then that implies that no hosting company can refuse service to such a person. I.e. that person is 'untouchable.'"
This seems to cross lines with the 'Affirmative Action'-type arguments: that in an effort to 'make up' for past wrong against black people we are making it impossible to refuse X (where X could be employment, etc) to a black person, even if the reason isn't because of their skin color.
{update} I was only attempting to clarify what I thought that the parent poster (gp to this post) was getting at.
My wife, suspecting that there is no such thing as inborn rather than developed talent, ran an experiment. She took something she was terrible at even after some fiddling -- drawing. She sucked at it. Her stick figures weren't very compelling.
She set out to learn how. Over the span of about two years with a lot of work she got to be amazing at it, and painting as well. She now all the time hears how she has such an amazing (previously undeveloped) talent.
Not at all! For the reason that google explained on the blog, it is a dumb response to remove or penalize this particular company in the wake of the media froth. The admirable and responsible thing to do is to figure out how to make the thing work better in general to cover the hundreds or thousands of similar cases not in the New York Times.
This issue is complex and I don't have great overall answers. It isn't clear how search results should bias based on sentiment. (That's discussed on the blog and here.) One thing I am sure of is that I respect discovering a result they consider bad and looking at the algorithms that caused the result and I don't respect deciding that you got egg on your face for the results of your algorithm in this case and jiggering the results.
Of course, we don't know that Bing didn't come up with algorithmic improvements, but the comment you're replying to isn't refuted in any way by the fact that the result has disappeared (or greatly diminished) in Bing. To the contrary, in addition to my bias to agree with the OP on Google / Bing, when one company says, "We've taken a look, made small improvements already that have some impact, and we're looking to make more" and the search result simply disappears in the other case, I'm inclined to take that as specific evidence of the former doing the better job.
You can't argue that Microsoft didn't respond quickly, because there has been a change in Bing's results. The original comment asked "how long until Microsoft addressed this problem?", and it appears that Microsoft has now addressed it, so the point that the comment made stands.
The fact that Microsoft may or may not have addressed the problem by "jiggering the result" has nothing to do with it. There is no evidence one way or the other.
You may be deeply suspicious of Microsoft's behavior, and that's perfectly fine. Let's just be clear about what we're saying. It would have been more direct to say "Microsoft may have responded quickly, but I bet they just cheated."
> and the search result simply disappears in the other case
Except that the search result didn't disappear on Bing. it had the same behavior as on Google.
You seem to have a bias to assume that Google did something algorithmic and Bing just hand crafted the search results based on absolutely no facts at all:)
The most common thing I see from such people is a desire to break off and do whatever is being done at their current company, but to do it right instead.
The coder wasn't completely getting our explanation, but the code was so "boring" or "clear" that we opened up an editor, copy-and-pasted some blocks around added a few if statements and expected it to be basically functional. This was a complex algorithm and a complex change, and we offered provisos that we didn't know what that function returned so a "not" might have to go in front, and a variable name would have to be changed and one piece was going to have to operate on a new key in memcache, but it was basically there.
The point is, the code was so well-written that we could read it well enough to do this never having seen it moments before, and our resulting chopping was clearer to the original coder than 20 minutes of histrionics on a whiteboard full of formulae. That's how it should be. :-)
And for any haters in the crowd, it was all in Perl. So much for "write-only" complaints. :-)