I work in technology sector. And I do round a clock, not only from 9 to 5. It is my bread and butter, it is my hobby, it is the fascination of my life. And with the current rate of change particular in information technology (IT), there is always something new to learn, to try, to talk about. I often post news, thoughts, and reviews. And when I do, this is the category I use.
Slashdot runs an excellent discussion on the topic of “What Did You Change Your Mind About in 2007?“. If you want to learn more about what people on the Web had changed their minds in 2007, try this Google search – plenty more there.
What did I change my mind about in 2007? Short answer: Google. Continue reading for the long version.
Continue reading What Did You Change Your Mind About in 2007?
My last post about Odnoklassniki.ru became the most popular post on this blog. It’s by far more popular than all the tips, links, and tutorials that I’ve written here, combined. It comes up pretty high in related Google search results and brings quite a bit of traffic. It also brings in some comments.
Most of the comments are from people who mistakenly assume that this blog is some sort of support forum for all the troubles they have with Odnoklassniki.ru, or, even, that this site IS in itself Odnoklassniki.ru. I am trying to limit those comments, since they don’t belong here. On the other hand though, there are some really insightful comments.
For example, Gennadiy Zaretskiy has recently posted a comment with the link to this article. Here is what caught my attention:
Foreign users constitute a significant share of the project “Odnoklassniki” audience. According to Mr. Popkov, about 20% of the traffic comes from abroad.
Wow! “20% of the traffic comes from abroad“. That seems like a lot. Odnoklassniki.ru web site is in Russian. Only Russian-speaking folks can make use of it. Also, the whole topic of the classmates is tied very much into specifically Russian users. So, does that mean that about 20% of computer literate (at least to some deree), educated (at least to some degree) young (mostly) people either live, study, or work outside of Russia?
That. Seems. Like. A. Lot.
It’s been a few times already that I heard the argument that “black people made no contribution to computer science“. I’ve also heard a few alternative versions, which were less or more specific, varying from “African blacks” and “no innovations“, to “black women” and “no contribution to science“.
Depending on the overall direction of the discussion, variation of the argument, and sensibility of the opponent, it can be very easy or rather impossible to reason. For example, an argument like “there is not one black programmer in the world” is pretty trivial to destroy. There are at least a few respectable Perl Monks of the black race. Over the last few years, I personally have been in contact (IM, email, phone) with a few black programmers and system administrators. On the other hand, a request for a name or a biography of a black computer scientist might be much harder. I am not very good with names and biographies, and I don’t know many scientist by name at all. Picking representatives of a certain race using my own memory is close to impossible.
So, I asked The Mighty Google for a few names and biographies, and it replied. Here are a few links that I picked from the results:
I have to admit that I was a little bit surprised by the low number of results. Finding the above weren’t very easy. Also, many links were very outdated. Sometimes I’d come across a quote that slowed me down before I could “sink it in”. Here are a couple of such examples:
one quarter of one percent (.25%) of computer scientists are black
from the “Computer Scientists of the African Diaspora” page, which seems to be from the 1990s.
Throughout the United States, there are only 32 African-American computer science (CS) professors.
from the “A Model for Department Diversity” article, which was posted in 2004.
I think that the above references are enough to convince any sane person that both science and innovation have benefited from black people. Whether the benefits were to the same degree as those of the other races is a totally different question. I am not going to debate it now, but perhaps I will come back to it later.
(NOTE TO MYSELF for when and if I do: consider that most computer science innovation is happening in the USA [obviuos, but citation needed], and that black people make only about 12% of the USA population [Wikipedia]. )
Remember the other time I was agreeing with Matt Mullenweg’s prediction of Microsoft opening sources of Windows by 2017? Remeber I wrote a list of bullets with my reasons? Remember the first one being:
Neither Microsoft in general, no Bill Gates are stupid. They are very much profit oriented. Whatever makes them more money, they’ll go for it.
Well, here is another piece of news that confirms that.
Quote #1:
Novell was paid a whopping $355.6 million by Microsoft in return for software licensing
Quote #2:
Microsoft purchasing 70,000 licences for Novell’s SuSE Linux enterprise server, which accounts for much of what Microsoft was paying for. Microsoft, in turn, then sells these on to its customers.
Quote #3:
“This is to bridge the divide between open source and proprietary source software,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the time, in what amounted to an abrupt about-face on his part given his previous criticism of Linux. “It gives customers greater flexibility in ways they have certainly been demanding.”
OK, open source innovation might be chaotic because it lacks direction. There’s no PR-department at ‘the Linux community office’ to ask what the current innovations are, what’s going on and what’s new. Instead of being lazy you have to find it out for yourself. Even someone who spends a part of the day reading news stories about open source software, finds at least ten innovative new programs he has never heard of in a list of 100 recommended open source programs (that’s what happened to me today). No, I’m afraid people who think open source doesn’t bring innovation and don’t see how the closed source model hinders innovation just failed their trendwatcher exam. Wake up, it’s 2008!
Here is an excellent post on how open source helps the innovation.