The appeal here is that the course is free, ergo, _anyone_ with a basic internet connection can take it.
If you require payments, you then have credit card companies and Paypal restricting who (i.e. which countries) gets access to it.
Income from donations isn't guaranteed, and thus provides a weak incentive for universities to provide these kinds of courses. I'd also wager that donations would fizzle out as this sort of thing became more commonplace.
US Government grants would provide guaranteed incentives for American universities to offer these kinds of courses, which would educate your populace and bolster the appeal of your higher education institutions to potential overseas students. The latter point would lead to many knock-on economic benefits (e.g. immigrant students deciding to stay in the US).
(oh, but rabble rabble gubment rabble bad rabble rabble because this is HN where libertarian capitalists roam free)
The top 10% of this class would be ideal candidates for Google/MSFT/etc.
Besides students or government paying, there are several other business models that could be considered, including employers sponsoring in exchange for exposure to the best students.
That said, governments already subsidize education in many countries. We should be demanding that the investment get us a better return!
> The top 10% of this class would be ideal candidates for Google/MSFT/etc
I really wonder if this is true. I've looked at the text and it seems pretty intro-level. What would the certificate of completion look like on a resume?
Wait you are saying the key advantage of US taxpayers funding this is people overseas in paypal blocked countries (Libya, North Korea...) get it for free?
Not all people. Google has simply failed at building a quality community around Google+.
Edit: actually, it's not that they "failed," it's that they've completely ignored the importance of community building.
For example, the difference in quality between certain reddits is like night and day. This is all down to the way these reddits have nurtured their community and their values of quality.
HN is good in this regard too, although it's been slowly-yet-steadily declining due to pg's negligence of maintaining the community and managing its growth.
Google+ will probably succeed on its format alone (that is, the required application of circles), which will allow users to filter and select voices in their stream. But unless someone like Vic Gundotra steps in and puts some effort into community-building (like telling his follows to just +1 if you like the post instead of making a comment), it's going to really suck in public discussions.
You assume they ignored. The mere fact that those high profile Googlers actually create G+ accounts tells me that they are serious about community building this time around. And they actually managed to invite Taylor Swift in.
I'm not saying they're doing an awesome job. But they do care.
Should Google somehow run background checks on every advertiser to see if they're breaking some US law? (or other countries' laws?) What broken laws should justify removal?
Should this be before or after they allow them to advertise? If before, this would inconvenience the majority of advertisers who are legitimate. If after, should Google investigate every incoming report of illegitimate advertising? Or, how many reports should warrant an investigation by Google?
Regardless, can Google remove these Adword listings without legal issues (i.e. without risking being sued)?
Getting these scammers off the front page of search would be relatively easy - it can be solved algorithmically. They're probably working on it now, with their anti-linkspam initiative.
But I don't see how Google could get them off Adwords without employing hundreds or thousands of people to review advertisers, but this would create more problems of greater magnitude than it would solve.
They could crowdsource it to narrow the (retrospective) review process, but this would create a secondary market of advertising, which I doubt Google wants, nor users would want to deal with.
I can't think of a way for Google to solve this problem without creating larger ones.
It's the responsibility of governments -- not internet advertising platforms -- to police copyright law.
Google wants to be a useful search engine that returns relevant results. If they are returning links to malware/spyware/adware in exchange for money rather than linking to legitimate results, don't you think that is not only unethical but borderline illegal?
If Google's product is US then they are effectively selling US to the malware/spyware/adware fiends.
Google absolutely has the responsibility to return relevant, meaningful and SAFE results to its users. They already try and do that in a lot of cases. It's just that, in this case, they are getting paid not to.
"For AdWords and related programs such as Google AdWords Certification, if we receive a notice or otherwise have reason to believe that an advertiser's or client manager's site is infringing, we may remove the offender's advertising in compliance with the DMCA."
So, they already do this. The question is, whether or not the VLC team has submitted a complaint that meets their criteria.
My guess is that this is something the FSF should really get involved in, except they are probably too busy taking money from Google to talk up how "open" Android is to be bothered by a little pro-bono work from a hard-working group of OSS devs.
Google refuses to comply to some French law about logs retention because their servers are not in France. Why would it be otherwise in the opposite situation?
Fake anti-virus software, counterfeit pharmacies, counterfeit products in general, malware of all sorts. Google have been taking their money for years. They have the resources not to. That's pretty shitty behaviour that endangers their users in my book.
Google has billions in cash sitting around, I'm sure if they hired a few thousand people to deal with this problem that some significant strides could be made. This, however, may not be the most prudent use of resources (cash).
Not taking people's money doesn't get you sued. Amazon's scam-bots cancel legitimate vendors all the time because they 'smell funny'.
And nobody asked Google to background check - the offenders were reported, and Google whitewashed the report. That raises suspicious eyebrows because Google is making money off of the offenders.
>Yes. They get money from advertisement, they should check reports.
I don't see how one implies the other. Drug companies get money from selling ingredients for makeshift heroin, they should stop its use?
> CA, USA, of course.
And which laws? Should they block advertisers of euthanasia? Political groups? "Terrorist" groups? This is a very slippery slope.
> How do they solve spam on gmail?
No, if I were to submit many reports with different advertisers from different accounts, there's no way to detect that as spam. There's no comparison with email spam, which is a one-to-many medium.
>I disagree on Adsense, but agree on Search. Making money from illegal activities is illegal in most (if not all ) countries.
Why the distinction between Adsense and Search? Do they not profit from Search?
Google isn't making money via copyright infringement - it's only a byproduct of the actions of separate perpetrators. It's like Microsoft being held responsible for botnets.
> Drug companies get money from selling ingredients for makeshift heroin, they should stop its use?
No, but if they receive credible reports that Joe Drugdealer is is using their ingredients to make makeshift heroin, they should look into those claims before directly selling their ingredients to Joe Drugdealer in the future. That's a more apt analogy to the situation we're discussing here.
If you're that worried, you can delete your web history and permanently opt-out of Google Analytics using Google's supplied opt-out extensions for Chrome and Firefox.
They allow you to do things like that (not to mention data liberation efforts), which is the point the parent was making.
Their production processes are all about cranking out slightly-different versions of the same hardware/software combinations, as fast as possible, and market them as "new". Post-release upgrades are basically non-existent, even when bugs and problems are huge -- this was made very clear by the N97, but careful observers knew it from well before then. This phone won't have variations, the platform is commercially dead, so they'll just push it out of the door and forget about it.
Add to this that the Maemo/Meego line has historically been seen as "experimental" (i.e. by the time a device shipped, development had long moved on and backward-compatibility had been broken), even more so now that WP7 is the name of the game for Nokia, and you can see how little they'll care for this phone once they have your cash.
Yep, I know how they have been doing things. However, things like this http://www.developer.nokia.com/swipe/ux/ shows that they have done a bit of effort on this one. I don't believe they'll gain anything from cutting the support when they have come this far and actually delivered something which has selling potential in future too.
So, Europe needs less regulation on the low-end of town (small businesses) to increase international competitiveness, and the US needs more regulation on the high-end of town (big business) to decrease corruption and prevent anti-competitive practices.
Google doesn't block you from releasing your own apps, though. They don't use the Market to enforce their interests (and if they would there's Amazon's app market etc).
That's one line out of a 30 line post. Yes, but the issue is them competing with you (with regards to this iOS5) not them not allowing you to do the feature.
If you require payments, you then have credit card companies and Paypal restricting who (i.e. which countries) gets access to it.
Income from donations isn't guaranteed, and thus provides a weak incentive for universities to provide these kinds of courses. I'd also wager that donations would fizzle out as this sort of thing became more commonplace.
US Government grants would provide guaranteed incentives for American universities to offer these kinds of courses, which would educate your populace and bolster the appeal of your higher education institutions to potential overseas students. The latter point would lead to many knock-on economic benefits (e.g. immigrant students deciding to stay in the US).
(oh, but rabble rabble gubment rabble bad rabble rabble because this is HN where libertarian capitalists roam free)