Google knol vs Wikipedia

Well, another boring argument in favor of Wikipedia, you may guess. Right !

Since Google's announcement of its Knowledge project called Knol (strangely being interpreted as an unit of knowledge), I've been observing discussion regarding the motivation behind this project and whether it's going to be a Wikipedia killer in the near future. Most argument is in favor of Wikipedia and how it'd never be replaced.

Basically, knol articles are associated with authors, who supposedly know what they are writting about (well, don't Wikipedians all?). Readers then cast votes and comments on those articles. Many people can write articles of the same subjects, but only ones written by "experts" shall appear realiable !! Furthermore, to your suprise, there would be lines of ads appearing on the left or right side of each article as well.

Key differences between this and Wikipedia model is best highlighted here. The main point to take away is that a Knol does not represent "wisdom of the crowd", but a collection of Knols may probably do. It is also argued that Wikipedia would be benefit from the growth of Knol, because best information from Knol would find it way to a Wikipedia page somehow. Yes, content-wise, I agree that with Knol, Wikipedia will only get stronger. However, there is a subtle catch here. Search result. Now if I typed in a search in Google, which would come first ? My bet is on Knol, with the following reasons. One, G-men could easily tweak their PageRank algorithm so that their babies come top. Two, even if the G-men aren't involved, the nature of PageRank algorithm is also likely to boot Knols to the top, because they're linked from Google and probably cited from Wikipedia itself.

So, Google doesn't seem to be interested in providing a comprehensive encyclopedia online, but in pushing Wikipedia search results down the rank. The gain is that more people would click on Knol (ads equipped) articles first, hence generate more money for Google.

Order yourself a Wii for next year

Really, it's not my defense for being to lazy to queue up for a Wii this Christmas. Apart from the freezing weather outside, there's another reason to keep my money until next year.

An Isarel-based company revealed an exiciting new webcam - ZCAM which promises to transforms our gaming experience. Its beauty lies in the depth-detection which enables its to map our movement to the game environment seamelessly. Having never played Wii before, but I do believe that motion-sensitive controllers are main factors behind its success. With ZCAM, one thing for sure is that we don't have to hold any controller, it tires hands sometimes you know. Additionally, sport and shooting games can now make use of my entire body's movement and map that to the game's character. In other words, we can REALLY learn new sports by playing. There must be lots of more exciting games comming up .

Now I'll go hibernate till next year, dreaming of getting that Wii console for myself.

A hilarious funeral

Doesn't sound right, does it ?

The University of Manitoba recently held a proper funeral for its beloved mainframe. As sad as how the people taking part were, this cracks me up.

Now that is the right way to dispose your equipment: roses, hundreds of people and poem.

I must say it now takes much less than 40 years to get really bonded with your PC.

Gloomy future for security

Bruce Schneier and Marcus Ranum posted their depressing conversation about our gloomy future in 10 years. Being both experts in security and software, they seem to share the same vision of the future.

For the starter, Bruce pointed that in 10 year, if Moore's law still applies as it does today, our computing power would be about 100x. While technological capacity doubling every few years, the human factor remains constant. Unfortunately, it is the very weakest link in the security chain. Bruce predicts that there wouldn't be any new kind of security threats. The old threats (fraud, theif, assaults...) will be carried out in different/more effective ways with new targets. Marcus follows with the focus on inherent security issues of ever more complex and poorly-designed software. He concludes that attackers would even find it easier to break those systems.

The part I like the most is when they discuss how current trend of everything-is-a-service would continue and lead us to a very unsettled future. Computing will become utility and customers (us) will have to pay for these services (email, software ...). We won't have to worry about running and managing the software. Same thing goes for our online security, as the idea is for us giving (all) data to the service provider and they'll take care of it. To certain (substantial) extents, this helps to eliminate security problems at end-point. On the other hand, we then have to trust those providers implicitly. And it's just getting scarier when we realize that those service providers are fighting the same security battle as we are doing now. Nothing guarantees that they would win. Last but not least, if these services show profit, who would be sure that our beloved and full-of-talented-people-who-copy-confidential-data-to-CDs would not want a share of it.

The more I think about it, the better I see how this everything-is-a-service trend emerges from many different forms. ISP, Software-as-Service (SaS) are the most visible ones. Trusted Computing also has a flavour of it. Bruce and Marcus also mentioned iPhone. But they seemed to forget a very big name: Google.

Still, there's a rule of us always overestimating things in short term and underestimating them in long term. Let's hope that they are being a little bit too pessimistic