OT: Python popularity rises sharply!

holger krekel pyth at devel.trillke.net
Sat Feb 8 17:26:21 EST 2003


Peter Hansen wrote:
> I haven't seen anyone pointing out the obvious _real_ reason for
> Guido's proposal on the ternary operator (and I hereby vote +1
> for anything that reduces the use of the ([a] and [b] or [c])[0]
> crap, but -1.2 on the counter-intuitive order of elements in
> the proposed syntax, for a net vote of -0.2).
> 
> Recently Python has been dropping in the polls, with languages 
> such as LabVIEW and even Clipper encroaching on its territory.
> 
> With the release of new PSU technology which is able to measure the
> popularity of a programming(*) language based on advanced metrics
> including the number of unique posters in the last month's worth
> of posts to a newsgroup, it is suddenly more important than
> ever to make sure that activity remains high in the newsgroup.
> More than that, activity by many lurkers must be encouraged,
> so that frequent posters don't reduce the measured popularity
> with their useless and annoying babble.

> [explains in detail the background of this true assertions]

this is but one part of the picture.  The recent PSU strategies
try to hide something else which is even more pervasive.  And
of course they use Python for it as it is clearly the best
thing for the job:  One "Google" to rule them all. 

Luckily i managed to get the following interesting observations
past their brutal email-crippling bot.  But this may be the last 
time i succeeded against the ever-increasing power
of the PSU/Google bots. 
 
Let's start with a simple question:

How does google get the incredible amount of money they need? 

They have 12000 server nodes (and increasing) running
and must have quite a some IP-traffic bill.  
They have some brilliant minds and programmers (using 
Python, sic!) on their payroll doing research,
programming and maintenance.  They are cataloging
more and more content. And fast.

And some small text-ads and some companies using their
technology are going to pay for all this?  
You godda be kidding.  

So let's add a second simple observation.  They have
damn good search technology and everybody is keen
on getting their content into google.  That's right:
everybody tries to get content into google *by their own*. 

Now ask yourself who is most interested today in having
significant information about everything? 

Right, that would be certain agencies who officially have 
projects longing for "Total Information Awareness", even.  

So, of course they decided early on to put a couple of 
hundred-millions into obtaining enough control of the
technology.  

In return they

 a) get as much information as possible (because
    everybody even wants to have it in by themselves)

 b) make everybody addicted and thus especially keeps
    free developers from developing their own solutions 
    which might not be accessible to them

 c) efficiently encourage finding the most scalable
    technical solutions. 

 d) build an unprecendented power structure across the net

 e) can add their huge amount of data and files to have a 
    really nice searching facility about everyone. 

There is no doubt that these agencies have the money and 
the interest to use Google for sorting out the huge amounts 
of data they want to gather.  

It's an easy step towards net-wide domination and control. 
Face it. 

And of course they don't officially tell us about it
because then we would have every reason to be scared 
and might even try to do something against it.  So it's better
to make us friends with this nice "Saruman" aka Google. 

This "google conspiracy" is about as founded as the 
(currently unfashionable) "bin lad** conspiracy".  
I'd say believe both or None. 





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