Slashback: Start, Trash, Explain

Slashback tonight with more on the Microsoft start page project vis-a-vis Google's similar one, a wee $40 million slap on the wrist for Amazon over shopping-cart patent infrigement, new animals for the CodeZoo, and a strong denial that WikiPedia has announced a more stringent editorial policy. Details on these stories and more, below.

What's done is done, and in a certain order. MSN.com general manager Hadi Partovi writes:

"A few days ago I read your Slashdot post about start.com.

Thank you for the promotion :-). Meanwhile, I wanted to make sure you know that the work we've been doing on the start.com project actually predates the Google personalized page. I manage a tiny incubation team that has been building start.com since November, and it was first live on the Web in February, 3 months before Google released their personalized page. Of course we are missing some capabilities that Google has, and vice versa. It's a tight competition. But I'm emailing you because our team takes a lot of pride in its innovation. You may point out at a lot of place where Microsoft is following competitors, but if you track the functionality and UI changes that the companies have made over the past 6 months, this has clearly been a place where Google has been following Microsoft's lead.

(Our main engineer on the project has written a bit more about this to respond to your post.)

Anyway, I'm not sending this to be defensive. Heck, I have a lot of work to do to bring an innovation culture to the MSN organization and in many areas we have our work cut out for us. But I guess I want my small incubation team to get credit for being the leading innovators on this one small product :-)"

Thanks for the note!

Always clean out the trashcan. dotpavan writes "The Register and Cnet have this report about Kai-Fu Lee not cleaning his recycle bin at his previous workplace and now MS has stumbled upon some interesting document, which shows that Google anticipated the MS move, and had planned top put him on a leave of absence or have him as a consultant to thwart any attempt of MS getting him back."

Amazon Settles Patent Suit For $40M theodp writes "In today's SEC filing, Amazon.com disclosed it will pay $40 million to settle an e-commerce patent infringement lawsuit that was reported earlier on Slashdot. The terms of the settlement also provide for dismissal of all claims and counterclaims and grant Amazon a nonexclusive license to Soverain's patent portfolio."

29+36 more = 65 vector drawing apps. Anonymous Coward writes "There were many useful comments made for 29 Vector Drawing Programs. After incorporating most of them, the revised column has 65 Vector Drawing Programs."

And each after its own kind. chromatic writes "As seen on the O'Reilly Radar and announced at OSCON 2005, CodeZoo now lists Python and Ruby components. CodeZoo is a human-edited directory of useful, well-maintained, and redistributable software components in various languages. (Slashdot previously covered CodeZoo's launch.)"

The chair recognizes Mr. Wales for a point of clarification. brajesh writes "There has been news on Slashdot and others about Wikipedia announcing tighter editorial control. It seems that everyone jumped the gun. Jimmy Wales, a founder of Wikipedia, has clarified his stance on the idea of freezing stable content on Wikipedia. Apparently, [Jimbo writes] 'I spoke in English, and this was translated to German. Then the German was translated back to English, and then translated again into the Slashdot story.' Also, 'There was no "announcement." We are constantly reviewing our policies and looking for ways to improve, but we have not "announced" anything. We don't even really work that way ... if you know how Wikipedia works, it's through a long process of community discussion and consensus building, not through a process of top-down announcements.' This has also been covered on Ars Technica."

Google Earth not a security risk after all. mister_tim writes "In a follow-up to yesterday's story about ANSTO's request that Google censor images of Australia's only nuclear reactor, the Australian government has now come out and said that Google Earth poses no security risk. Australia's Attorney General has come to the view, also noted by many /. readers, that the Google images have been available for several years from other sources and add nothing to the existing publicly available data. Chalk this one up as a victory for common sense."

Competition == Good

[deutschemonte]

It's cool to know that MSN actually came up with that interface before Google. I mean, I hate MS and love Google just as much as the next /.'er, but tight competition like this is awesome for everyone involved.

Now if only we could get some nice eye candy from the Yahoo! folks.

proper destruction of documents

[aaza]

This is why shredders are so useful...

Apart from the fact that the one at my work has a "donations for hearing aid fund" on it (put on there by the guy who sits right next to it).

They're great: they turn whole pieces of paper into lots of tiny things this big -->.<--

Encyclopedias are meant to be edited

[anything lemon]

If Wikipedia wants more credibility, then they need to start freezing some articles. At least the most controversial ones, which as you know are terrorized by vandals and agenda-pushers.

hmm

[d34thm0nk3y]

Amazon Settles Patent Suit For $40M theodp writes "In today's SEC filing, Amazon.com disclosed it will pay $40 million to settle an e-commerce patent infringement lawsuit that was reported earlier on Slashdot. The terms of the settlement also provide for dismissal of all claims and counterclaims and grant Amazon a nonexclusive license to Soverain's patent portfolio."

Those who live by the sword die by the sword.

Even further legitimizes this behavior....

[rolfwind]

Amazon Settles Patent Suit For $40M theodp writes "In today's SEC filing, Amazon.com disclosed it will pay $40 million to settle an e-commerce patent infringement lawsuit that was reported earlier on Slashdot. The terms of the settlement also provide for dismissal of all claims and counterclaims and grant Amazon a nonexclusive license to Soverain's patent portfolio."

Wow, I depressed, $40M will only further strengthen the incentive on this patent behavior - I wish amazon stuck it out. Not that I care about amazon that much, but it only raises the barrier of entry for the little guys - especially on stupid shopping cart technology.

FYI Soverain held patents on "shopping cart" technology.

Here's another article on it:
http://news.com.com/Amazon+pays+40+million+to+sett le+patent+dispute/2100-1030_3-5829193.html [com.com]

Amazon being sneaky...

[RexRhino]

It seems like Amazon is up to something sneaky by paying for this frivolous pantent portfolio, when Amazon surely has the legal clout to fight this kind of thing.

Big companies like Amazon can afford to pay for these patents, but small companies cannot. They are losing money by paying for these things, but if they raise the cost of doing buisness beyond a certain point (if everyone has to pay millions to use patented technology in order to run an eccommerce site), they can knock out a lot of competition. There will be no chance for the mom and pop store selling used books can hope to compete with Amazon, because they won't be able to afford the startup cost or liability.

I think a lot of big companies are encouraging this abuse of patent laws in order to squash competition from smaller companies who don't have a few million to spare.

Re:Wrong comment?

[value_added]

The comment that Hadi Partovi points us to as a comment by his main engineer doesn't seem to be the right one...

Maybe you're looking for the post that begins with:

(I posted this as a new topic earlier. I hope I don't end up in karma hell for re-posting it as a reply like I should have...) ... I work on start.com and am one of the 3 folks on the team ...

And ends with:

I noticed one of the posts mention that we use a cookie. Yeah we do, we use it to index your settings on the back-end. The last thing we wanted to do was slap on a huge LOGIN TO PASSPORT page before you can even do anything since a) our target audience (you guys) would probably thing that was lame and wouldn't even try the site out and b) we use start.com too and *we* think that would be lame. We want people to check it out, kick the tires, give it a whirl, etc and a simple cookie works pretty well for now.

Reading the previous statement, I wonder whether Microsoft would be less generally reviled if such expressions of humour and honesty were more common.

Not emptying the recycle bin?!?!?

[everphilski]

... that's amateur! I mean heck, I was just interviewing for an entry level job and they wanted me to give them an email address that wasn't work related to communicate with. I mean, come on, if entry level employers are that sensitive, what is your million dollar arse doing talking to Google on a Microsoft computer?

(Obligatory Napolean Dynamite quote)
....Idiot!

-everphilski-

Empty the recycle bin???

[lost in place]

If you read the story, it was not a physical recycle bin, but the "Recycle Bin" on one of Lee's computers. Which makes it even more stupid that he would have such a document. If you're going to negotiate employment with a competitor, especially a potentially hostile/actionable move like this, for god's sake don't use your employer's computers to do it. Had Lee never heard of backup tapes or email scanning/archival? Amazing.

Hmm

[smoondog]

Not surprised that Austrialia backdown from the Google security claims. It sounded a lot to me like they were using that stance for political reasons, given the PR nature of the release (instead of a quiet request to google).

Yeh but ...

[A nonymous Coward]

Now some patent lawsuit company has $40M to go after other companies, and Amazon has even more incentive to enforce its own stupid patents. More swords will be put into play. This is not good.

Re:Amazon being sneaky...

[rolfwind]

I think that strategy will bite Amazon in the ass later - Walmart has a history of fighting ANY and ALL lawsuits against it just to discourage the next party of thinking they can have easy money.

With Amazon rolling over and paying these guys - who'll be next up at bat in order to get a few easy million?

Re:Empty the recycle bin???

[Black-Man]

Really... this guy is some genius being fought over by MS and Google?!? What does that say about those 2 companies.... sheesh.

Re:Encyclopedias are meant to be edited

[Prof. Pi]

I think the most positive thing WP can do right now is to eliminate the time-honored custom of allowing anonymous edits, and institute some kind of moderation system (yes, a la Slashdot)

Which would cause them to degenerate into groupthink (yes, a la Slashdot).

I've seen way too many cases in which posts that say little more than "X sucks" (where X is any of the usual things hated by the majority here) get +5 Insightful, while well-written posts defending X and presenting cogent arguments get modded down into oblivion. Meta-moderation fails due to the same groupthink. ("Yes, nobody intelligent or moral could really be defending X, so I agree with the moderator that it's Flamebait.")

Slashdot is viewed as heavily biased in many circles, and for good reason. If WP wants to be taken seriously, they should avoid copying Slashdot.

Re:Following your lead?

[JanusFury]

Um, did you click the 'show' link on the first revision?

Re:Competition == Good

[Breakfast Pants]

That isn't exactly true. The main innovation of the interface is the dragging. Google implemented the dragging of the items earlier than start.com. The guy from start, who sent in this slashback entry, even admitted it himself, saying "We did notice when google shipped their page in May and I have to admit we were like "darn, they have drag/drop before we do": http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157898&cid=132 29038 [slashdot.org]

Innovation you say?

[iCEBaLM]

I discount every blurb from a microsoftie when it has two or more instances of the word "innovation" contained therein.

This particular one has three.

Why does everything spoken by anyone associated in any way with microsoft have to have so many copies of the word "innovation" in it? I submit to you that their use of the english language is as "innovative" as they are, simple rehashes and reusing the same old tired components, perhaps rearranged in a different way, with nothing actually new.

Microsofties: quit using the word "innovation", it just makes you look like a drone in the collective.