Google, Mian Mian, and Revisionism
December 17, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to Computerworld Asia’s “Chinese Author Sues Google over Book Scanning.” I visited China once and learned quickly that figuring out who is on first is tough. This write up is clear enough. An author—the popular Mian Mian—asserts that Google scanned Acid Lover without permission. There are several points in the write up that are fuzzy, maybe even fuzzy:
- The aggrieved author wants US$8,770
- The aggrieved author wants a public apology
- Chinese authors want Google to pay them when their books are scanned for Google Books.
The key revisionist passage for me was:
“Google earlier argued that they didn’t violate copyright law as they only displayed a small amount of text of my book, but I think their move has seriously hurt Chinese writers’ rights,” the paper [China Daily] quoted Mian as saying.
Not fuzzy, certainly wuzzy.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 17, 2009
Quick confession. This is a freebie. I wish I could get paid in yuan. I will contact the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission to point out this situation..
Content Guide
December 16, 2009
With the furor over copyright, I assumed that “free content” was going the way of the dodo. I was wrong. If you are looking for “free downloads”, you may want to take a look at “100+ Sites to Download Everything Online.” Some of the links struck me as quite useful; for example:
- Audio books
- Books and documents
- eBooks.
Useful post.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 15, 2009
I feel compelled to report to the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission that I was not paid to point out where an industrious person can dig for free content.
Are Google Users Ready to Step Up to Fusion Tables? Nah.
December 16, 2009
WolframAlpha and Google have a tiny challenge. Both firms’ rocket scientists and algorithm wranglers understand the importance of herding data. Take this simple test. Navigate first to WolframAlpha and enter a word pair. Try UK population. Now navigate to Google’s public facing Fusion table demo here. What did you get? How did it work? Do you know why the systems responded as they did? How do you improve your query?
My hunch is that few readers of this Web log can answer these questions? Agree? Disagree? Well, I am not running an academic class, so if you flunked, that’s okay with me. I think most people will flunk, including some of the lesser lights at the Google and at WolframAlpha.
Against this background, the Google rolled out an API for Fusion tables. You can get the Googley story in the write up “Google Fusion Tables API.” My view is that Google’s moves in structured data are quite important, generally unknown, and essentially incomprehensible to those who suffered through high school algebra.
My opinion is that this API will result in some applications that will make Google’s significant commitment and investment in structured data more understandable. If you are ahead of the curve, the Google is on the march. If you have no clue what this post means, maybe you should think about changing careers. Wal+Mart greeter is somewhat less challenging that the intricacies of Google’s context server technology.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 16, 2009
Okay, I rode by Google’s DC headquarters. No one waved. No one paid me. I suppose I report this fact to the manger of the Union Station taxi dispatchers. Nah, those folks don’t care that this is a freebie either.
Oracle and Open Source
December 15, 2009
Open source has a future in the enterprise. IBM has made its commitment to open source clear. I can license a mainframe running an open source Linux OS. I know that IBM has a revenue imperative; that is, the company takes technical steps in order to generate revenue. I suppose this means that IBM is pragmatic, and it suggests that open source in this one instance may not be “open” in the sense that some of those in the open source community understand the term.
The same can be said of other commercial open source “plays”. Some are positive. Last week in London, Charlie Hull, Lemur Consulting, explained his firm’s commitment to open source, the open source community, and Lemur’s customers. I like his approach.
When I read “Oracle Makes Commitments to Customers, Developers and Users of MySQL,” I found myself asking some questions. Why is the deal between Oracle and Sun Microsystems stuck? Why is their so much consternation about the MySQL database? Why is Oracle making public commitments to a governmental group half a world away?
The write up said:
No later than six months after the anniversary of the closing, Oracle will create and fund a storage engine vendor advisory board, to provide guidance and feedback on MySQL development priorities and other issues of importance to MySQL storage engine vendors.
User groups—particularly uncontrolled user groups—and advisory boards can become problematic. I have seen a number of user groups become focal points for certain issues in enterprise software. The recent shift to software vendor owned and operated conferences is one reaction to the uncontrolled user group.
In my opinion, I think a certain large software vendor will release an open source data management system that will undermine today’s commercial and open source systems. If and when this release takes place, I think the data management world will face significant disruption. In fact, the concern about MySQL could accelerate this disruptive action. I don’t think that Oracle will be able to “control” this “advisory board”. Control is a large part of a successful publicly traded company.
Furthermore, Oracle’s apparent inability to get this deal wrapped up may be the inadvertent trigger for an even more disruptive event. Will Oracle’s assurances be enough for the European Union watchdogs? My hunch is that traditional software vendors will find themselves bitten by their own business processes. Just my opinion.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 15, 2009
Oyez, oyez, I am delighted to report to Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Bureau (Justice)that I was not paid to write this statement about the lack of adaptability in large enterprise software companies. This is an explosive idea: open source and the enterprise.
Wave Goes Down Drain?
December 15, 2009
I read a suggestive article “Terminal Wave: The Google Wave Failure” by themilwaukeeseo. The basic idea is that Wave is going down the drain. The idea is that Wave has flaws, lots of them. You can read the article for the details of Wave’s inadequacies. A key point for me was:
No one can figure out how to use it effectively. It’s not that people don’t understand the basic notion of how to compose a WAVE, or even how to add in other people, but it’s not nearly as fluent as it was made out to be.
Several points:
- Wave is a typical Google service. It is not a commercial product. Wave is a demo, or, more accurately, a beta demo
- Google has a tough time thinking for the average Joe or Jill. Google is trying to make something usable for what Google thinks is an average Joe or Jill, not what an average Joe and Jill actually are
- Wave may be a part of a far larger data management system. Viewed this way, Wave may be the equivalent of a telescope poked from the Google submarine to see what life on the surface is.
My thought is that those who want to surf on Google may want to splash in the Wave. Learning to swim may be preferable to getting swamped when the big one rolls ashore.
Stephen Arnold, December 16, 2009
Oyez, oyez, I want to reveal to NOAA that this coming digital Wave was offered without compensation. Yep, another freebie.
Kngine: Web 3.0 Search
December 15, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to Kngine, not to be confused with Autonomy’s origin kinjin. I think both are pronounced in a similar way. Kngine (based in Cairo) is an:
evolutionary Semantic Search Engine and Question Answer Engine designed to provide meaningful search result, such as: Semantic Information about the keyword/concept, Answer the user’s questions, Discover the relations between the keywords/concepts, and link the different kind of data together, such as: Movies, Subtitles, Photos, Price at sale store, User reviews, and Influenced story. We working on new indexing technology to unlock meaning; rather than indexing the document in Inverted Index fashion, Kngine tries to understand the documents and the search queries in order to provide meaningful search result.
There is some information about Kngine’s plumbing in the High Scalability Web log. The system uses “semantic technology”. One interesting feature of the system is snippet search. The idea is:
Snippet Search results will consist of collection of rich ranked paragraphs rather than collection of documents links. Snippet Search paragraphs is semantically related to what you looking for (i.e. content what you looking) so we will be able to get what he looking for directly without open other pages.
Haytham El-Fadeel in his blog provided additional color about the search system. He wrote on September 4, 2009:
Kngine long-term goal is to make all human beings systematic knowledge and experience accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and organize all objective data, and make it possible and easy to access. Our goal is to build on the advances of Web search engine, semantic web, data representation technologies a new form of Web search engine that will unleash a revolution of new possibilities.
I ran a number of queries on the system. I found the results useful. My query for Amtrak provided relevant hits, some suggested queries, and a thumbnail.
You can contact the company at Info@Kngine.com.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 15, 2009
Okay, okay, someone fed me date nut bread this morning in the hopes I would write about their product. That did not work. I ate the date nut bread and wrote about this outfit in Cairo. I guess this shows that you can pay this goose, but the goose does what it wants. Honk.
Connotate and Its Landing Page
December 15, 2009
Getting leads and making sales is the name of the game for enterprise search vendors. I think I found an example of a search vendor using Twitter and a landing page to get leads. Here’s the tweet that I saw from a person posting as dnapoleo.
This bit.ly link pointed to this special landing page:
I found this interesting. I wonder, however, if this type of marketing will deliver qualified leads. Making sales today requires a heck of a lot of work. The cost and complexity of enterprise search and content processing systems seems ill suited for Twitter. A quick look at my Overflight service reveals that a balanced marketing plan is the approach taken by Autonomy, Coveo, Exalead, and MarkLogic, for example.
In fact, making sales requires a motivated sales force, brand positioning, resellers, Web logs, media campaigns using every trick in the sales books at Barnes & Noble, and client champions. It is December and cold out there. Sales heat is needed.
Contrast the Connotate approach to Google’s use of a paper wrap around to the free commuter newspaper, Metro. Google was pitching its Chrome “consumer” Web browser.
Connotate’s effort warrants watching. Now that AOL has repositioned Relegence.com as Love.com, I think some market headroom may become available for Connotate.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 15, 2009
Oyez, oyez, I am disclosing that no one paid me to write about Connotate’s possible tweet campaign. Who’s on first? Oh, I know. I am reporting today to the Farm Credit Administration. Grow those revenues, people!
What a Microsoftie Learned at MSFT
December 14, 2009
I wish this were a hypothetical. A “hypothetical” is one of those law school or business school conventions. Essentially, the players discuss an imaginary scenario, usually anchored tenuously to facts. “Stuff I’ve Learned at Microsoft” by Sriram Krishnan is not hypothetical. My hunch is that the blog post is a version of reality through the eye balls and other senses of the author. The core idea is that whilst working at Microsoft, practical knowledge moved from the company to the author of the Web log.
Just for fun, let’s take the learnings and then map them to some recent Microsoft products, actions, and services. This, of course, is a hypothetical, and I want you to enter into the spirit of the exercise. Put out of your mind the realities that make up * your * learnings about Microsoft. In the table below, the Sriram Krishnan’s learnings are in the left hand column and the addled goose’s learnings in the right hand column:
| Krishnan’s Learnings | Goose’s Learnings |
| Ask for forgiveness, not for permission | At least try it at European Union hearings. |
| (Most) Screw ups are OK | Consider Bob. Consider Vista. |
| Look for the line at your door | What if the person is In when she is out and out when she is in? |
| Code is king | What about the auto numbering feature in Word? |
| Lone wolf syndrome | Group-think produces products like SharePoint |
| Try out stuff | Hard to do when Apple products are not in favor |
| New team? Pick people over products | What if the people you want now work at Google? |
| Get out of your comfort zone | Create the Xbox and not address hardware failure rates |
| Ask the uncomfortable questions | Why did MSFT pay $1.23 billion for Fast Search & Transfer when actual revenues were in question |
| Go say ‘Hi!’ | If people are “in” |
| Praise in public, pull down pants in private | Comments about killing Google in the Kai Fu Lee affair |
| Best things are taken, not given | STAC compression |
| Don’t be an a**hole | See my write up about MSFT PowerShell cmdlets for Fast Search which is a dead link. |
I like these hypotheticals. We need more of them in search and content processing. For example, Microsoft’s enterprise search system scales in a cost effective manner.
Stephen Arnold, December 14, 2009
I wish to disclose to the Department of Commerce that I was not paid to write this goosely article. The commerce associated with products that do not work at advertised does generate a lot of dough. Too bad the goose does not know how to ride a gravy train without becoming the main course.
Governments, Data, Transparency, Threats, and Common Sense
December 14, 2009
A happy quack to the reader (one of two or three sad to say) who sent me a link to The Register’s “Gov Slams Critical Database Report as Opaque, Flawed, Inaccurate”. The idea is that the UK government has a bit of a tussle underway with an outfit called Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. The Trust published a report. The UK government says, according to the Register, that the consultants got its facts wrong. In my experience, this is the pot calling the kettle discolored.
Here are some links provided by my colleague in the Eastern Mediterranean basin:
- http://www.jrrt.org.uk/uploads/Database%20State.pdf see especially “Developing Effective Systems” pdf
- http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/docs/government-response-rowntree-illegal-databases-report.pdf
I think consultants get stuff wrong and I think governments get stuff wrong as well. This is the norm. The reason is that consultants don’t see government efforts from the government’s point of view. The government, on the other hand, has a tough time seeing consultants as much more than reasons to have another meeting. By definition, citizen facing data will be assembled with intent. By definition, consultants will be able to find fault with almost any data a government entity produces. When consultants produce data for the government and then the government makes those data available to citizens, then other consultants will rise to the occasion. In short, data, transparency, threats to the nation state, and common sense collide. Part of the landscape. Live with it, opines this addled goose.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 14, 2009
I wish to report to the manager of the US government’s Recovery.gov Web site that I was not paid to write this paragraph pointing out what seems obvious to geese living in Harrod’s Creek. Real humans may have another viewpoint. No problemo. I disclosed, didn’t I?
Trouble Looms for Enterprise Database Crowd
December 13, 2009
One of the developments I await in 2010 is the impact of open source databases in the enterprise. Most organizations don’t question the costs of their commercial databases. The big numbers paid to the IBMs, the Microsofts, and the Oracles of the data management world are grandfathered. A new president or CFO doesn’t try to cut these costs. The received wisdom is that the organization could not turn on lights or flush toilets without these blue chip, wind powered digital clipper ships of software. The reference to clipper ships is appropriate. When steam poked its smoking stacks into the fair wind, the end of the wind powered era had arrived. Codd databases are like these clipper ships. The RDBMS is clever but it cannot compete with newer technologies.
When I read “The New FOSS Frontier: The Database Market”, I thought about how sleek sailing ships ended up as scrap. The era of ugly, smoke belching steamers got the job done somewhat better, almost faster, and certainly cheaper. Those clipper ships could not stuff as much stuff in their holds as the chunky steamers. I have seen some slick RDBMS implementations in my time, but that time is drawing to a close.
As Tech News World’s article makes clear, the threat is not from the Google, although Google will almost certainly chose an inopportune moment to destabilize the database market. The threat is from open source databases. One of the comments in the article I found interesting was:
With Oracle dominating the commercial DBMS market, there is ample motivation for a community to create a challenger. Postgres has the breadth and depth of features to rival Oracle, and with commercial vendors (including EnterpriseDB) offering services, support, and the all-important one throat to choke, the database market is poised to be commoditized.
Then I noted this passage:
With a viable product available, a thriving community in place, and a market ready for commoditization, it is a safe bet that the database will be the next component in the enterprise to embrace open source, and it will likely see the success shared by Linux and JBoss. This is good news for all enterprise architects and project managers who have applications to build and a budget to balance.
In my view, the financial realities will force companies to look at grandpa and make some hard decisions. Anyone who has had to deal with an aging parent knows how difficult the decision to put grandpa in the assisted living facility. I think large organizations will treat their IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle RDBMS systems like grandpa. There will be some hand wringing but then it’s off to Sylvan Acres or whatever the facility is called.
With greater economic pressure causing more organizations to look at open source databases, I think the Google will use some of its nifty data management technology both in open source and more proprietary packaging to push the IBMs, Microsofts, and Oracles into more adrenaline pumping situations.
Should be interesting for this goose to watch from the cold, gray hollow in Harrod’s Creek. My pond will be more hospitable that the CFO’s office when she informs one of the legacy vendors that the good times are over.
Stephen Arnold, December 13, 2009
I wish to disclose to the National Park Service that I was not paid to point out that the article was written for free. My approach is similar to those national parks which allow a person to enter without charge. When one needs to stay overnight, then the cash register rings.
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