OOGLE has set itself some high goals, characterised by the aspiration to reach gigantic worth. After its initial public offering (IPO) a few years back, Google’s stocks (and thus perceived value) has gone through the roof, almost as though it was still a start-up company.

More recently, Google’s stock suffered two consecutive slams, but stocks recovered yesterday. The initial reactions were probably due to fear, energised by impbalance and slowed growth, as confirmed by Google themselves. Nonetheless, encouraging news continue to flow:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Web search leader Google Inc. aims to become a $100 billion company and said on Thursday that it plans to put systems in place to help reach that scale during 2006.

Bill Gates arrested in his younger days (photo in public domain)

Foreword: I syndicated Robert Scoble’s blog for a few months in the past, mainly in order to keep an eye on Microsoft’s ‘software politics’ and developments. I thought I would see the nicer face of an aggressive corporation, but I soon dropped it like a hot plate.

consider very few things to be “shocking”. There are very few things as adverse-to-logic and even shocking as Robert Scoble using Firefox and running his blog on WordPress (LAMP technology). This has been the case ever since his so-called ‘Net dad’ had weblogs.com sold out to VeriSign — a rather evil company. Scoble is a Microsoft evangelist, but he decided to practically infiltrate a world of Open Source. At some stage, it ended up badly.

Before Scoble became Dave Winer’s ‘surrogate child’, he wasn’t doing anything too admirable, but he was among the first people to blog. Then, years later, he would rave about ‘RSS this and RSS that’. It was Winer’s technology. Scoble only understands computers as a user, rarely realising the underlying issues in depth. He is no developer and no great writer either, yet his reputation and momentum, as well as being outspoken and critical of Microsoft while being paid by them is what makes him somewhat exceptional. His reputation is overrated.

When it comes to technology, I found that Scoble cannot tell his ass from his face. Microsoft employed him only because of his Web statistics. It is a public relations trick — companies buying readership (through popular voices) and promote propaganda to improve the Windows brand name and image. Microsoft had plans of employing many freelance bloggers to promote evangelism, using money. Scoble now runs on Linux and when I mailed him about it, he could only come up with a lame excuse about this choice.

If you seek a popular blog to aggregate, skip Scoble. It is an utter waste of time. Grossly overrated.

That’s 1,000,000 articles in one encyclopedia

After the arrival of Wikipedia for the iPod, a compact disc, or a memory stick, comes yet another important milstone:

The Wikimedia Foundation announced today the creation of the 1,000,000th article in the English language edition of Wikipedia. The article is about the Jordanhill railway station in Scotland, and it was started by Wikipedia contributor Ewan Macdonald. Wikipedia is a free, multilingual, online encyclopedia with 3.3 million articles under development in more than 125 languages.

Related items: Wikipedia Statistics, Wikipedia Introduces New Restrictions

In line with my recent inclusion of personal philosophy:

I try quite hard never to eat outside my house.

The intent is to minimise exploitation of others through labour.

Perhaps I simply dislike the notion of “classes” in society.

Without restaurants, you see, people would do what they have passion for.

Many waiters, waitresses, cooks (not chefs), and cashiers seem unhappy.

People at a production-line fast food kitchen feel imprisoned.

I would know because I worked at Burger King for a year.

I still believe that many of us could cater for our own culinary needs.

Having let my opinion be heard, I feel quite relieved, so thanks for reading.

Sidal, timely note: I am beginning to feel that I would rather blog about personal opinions at the expense of news items and some daily ‘geekery’ of mine.

Season of the playful penguins from Oyonale

INUX is spreading exponentially, or is at least nearing that pace. But how does the expansion work or what is it based upon?

One person learns Linux, thereby acquiring experience and knowledge (not necessarily expertise). It is a self-taught approach which involves a valuable learning curve. In turn, parents the friends, among other parties, get exposed and that ‘Linux knowledge’ is passed on. Colleagues form a more positive mental image — that which breaks preconceptions as to what Linux looks like (no bug-riddled applications and command-line stereotypes). That impression is then passed on, it propagates.

Knowledge is power. The ability to support the operating system of peers makes Linux adoption like an avalanche going down the hill. Knowledge and familiarity only needs that flame that lights it up and starts the domino effect. Linux will spread like fire as soon as it gains steady inertia. It is only a question of momentum and we are on the cusp of significant changes.

PAM is everywhere. It comes in different flavours and the way to chew it varies as well. This essay is not about meaty cuisine, but rather about the plague of the electronic age. Anywhere one has an opportunity to gain, spam will prevail. Several days ago, the MATLAB Web site got flooded by endless spam and many innocent contributers got false E-mail notifications, me included.

Spam should not be attributed to and associated with just E-mail. An initiative by AOL at al. to eradicate spam through taxation has most recently been criticised harshly. Genuine mailers begin to suffer financially, to make matters worse than the need to purge spam. This morning it took me approximately half an hour only to purge spam. As for the impact spam has on my life, I continue to tolerate spam through:

• E-mail
• Forum subscriptions with site addresses
• Forum messages
• Guestbook entries
• WordPress comments
• WordPress trackbacks
• PHP-Nuke links
• PHP-Nuke news submission
• Wiki
• Referrer spam
• Zombie attacks

I have set up cleanup/purging cycles in my schedule, with frequency dependent on severity. The chores at hand are still a very time-consuming activity and it gets worse by the day. I recently had a fierce argument over someone who used to comment spam. This involved someone who was possibly in cahoot with the spammer. Some spammers deserve a death penalty. If not practised law, then at least as an effective deterrent. Related item: WordPress Comment Spam Prevention

EVR the past few years I have grown closer to my older sister. We have always gotten along just fine. She is a wonderful person, yet sometimes ideaology gets in the way. Allow me to elaborate if I may.

We are both computer scientists, but she insists on using Windows. She has never tried anything else and her job involved programming for that platform. This observation was the next worse thing to me realising that had gone to interviews at Microsoft. She did that once several years back and once again more recently. If she worked for the ‘dark forces’, that could possibly lead to tension between us. I sure hope that the prospective employer and recruiters ‘Googled’ (or MSN’d) her name to discover she comes from a ‘wrong neighbourhood’. Her brother is a stubborn Linux advocate, though it may be irrelevant altogether.

Bottom-right, from left to right: Me, my father and my sister in our younger days (click for full-sized version but beware: 1.3 MB JPEG)