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Apr 14 2003
0

Windows full-text search.

Posted by | search engines | No Comments

Anil suggests using a RAM disk as a solution to Windows’ shabby ‘find’. Well yes and no – sure you want to have your search index in RAM, accessing RAM is 1000 times faster than disk access, but the main problem with Windows is the lack of a decent searchable index in the first place. The Longhorn version of windows will have full text search built properly into the filesystem. By the time that Microsoft release this, XML databases, or even better, graph based databases may make their efforts appear to be already out of date. A filesystem index is a perfect application for a native XML database. anil dash – archives

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Apr 11 2003
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Apple, a ‘Universal’ media company

Posted by | technology | No Comments

Vivendi is in deep doo-doo and so it is perhaps prepared to sell Universal, the worlds biggest music company, for the same price as its annual earnings, five times less than what it originally paid for it. But if Vivendi is in immediate trouble, this is nothing compared to the bottomless manure pit that the music companies find themselves in longer term – they market and distribute music, and digital music can leverage cheap viral marketing and zero distribution cost. The opportunities for music companies of the future are great, they could leverage the opportunities of digital media to create lean operations with high profit margins, but these companies will be smaller and the existing record companies would rather fight than go with the flow. When you are in a quicksand-like substance you shouldn’t fight against it – so deeper into the shitpile they go. With digital media there are…

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Apr 11 2003
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Google Ogle

Posted by | search engines | No Comments

“Google argues that SafeSearch is designed to err on the side of caution.” Report criticizes Google’s porn filters | CNET News.com Er… so what? Imagine if it didn’t err on the side of caution. Any system such as this is either optimized for relevance or retrieval, and Google’s is optimized for relevance. The best solution to filtering is an editor/software hybrid. Editors cost money, so the only practical way of dealing with this is to have site owners become incentivized editors and submit to a growing list of sites which wish to be removed from a software determined blacklist.

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Apr 11 2003
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Infrapundits

Posted by | politics | No Comments

Andrew Sullivan, in an OpEd for the Washington Times (the paper that is owned by the Moonies): “On the day Kabul fell to Northern Alliance and American troops, the lefty journalist Nicholas von Hoffman predicted disaster and quagmire for the United States in Afghanistan. In von Hoffman’s honor, I instituted the von Hoffman awards for terrible predictions in wartime.” With news that the Taliban is operating again in Afghanistan, IPS reports: IRAQ-U.S.: Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan “WASHINGTON, Apr 7 (IPS) – As senior U.S. officials promise to rebuild and democratise Iraq, citizens of that country might wish to consider the fate of nearby Afghanistan.” With every twist and turn in this 24 hours a day real-time reported war comes a knee jerk ‘I told you so’. Armchair anarchists and suburban warriors would be well advised to wait a little before jumping to conclusions. There are enough eggs to smear the…

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Apr 10 2003
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Saddam’s dead…

Posted by | business | No Comments

…or at least his trademark is: “Word MarkSADDAMS Goods and Services(ABANDONED) IC 016. US 038. G & S: comic strips, comic books,and related cartoon characters Live/Dead Indicator DEAD”

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Apr 10 2003
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Operation Iraqi Freedom video game

Posted by | business | No Comments

It is a game and it’s not over. The Guardian points out that Sony has trademarked ‘Shock and Awe’ for a video game. A search shows that the phrase is also registered for a firework company and even an underpants manufacturer! Yet more ambulance chasing with the trademark on ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’, also for a video game. “Word Mark OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Computer game software Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING Serial Number 78230280 Filing Date March 26, 2003 Filed ITU FILED AS ITU Owner (APPLICANT) Battlefront.com, Inc. CORPORATION MARYLAND 167Steadmans Landing Rd. Dover-Foxcroft MAINE 044263418 “ MediaGuardian.co.uk | Marketing & PR | Sony leads charge to cash in on Iraq

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Apr 10 2003
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Worst advertising campaign in history

Posted by | Uncategorized | No Comments

Ouch: “In an exquisite example of unfortunate timing, as the SARS epidemic rages in the Pacific Rim, magazine advertisements placed by the Hong Kong Tourism Board promote the city as a vacation destination that ‘will take your breath away.’” Thanks Adam The Smoking Gun: Archive

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Apr 10 2003
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Genealogists using DNA samples

Posted by | online genealogy | No Comments

One of the potential by-products from online genealogy, which has created a dramatic rise in the popularity of family history research, is rich family tree databases which will be invaluable for medical research. The combination of DNA tests and traditional research will help to fill in the gaps that have made the goal of a global family tree impossible. Online Genealogy may be the online application that is about to come out of stealth mode. It is the second most popular hobby in the US, is one of the most successful e-commerce areas and now the connection to life-sciences promises to make it much more lucrative. GoMemphis: Local

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Apr 10 2003
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Manufacturing dissent

Posted by | politics | No Comments

Nick Denton writes: “The problem with the anti-war movement is that most of its participants were more interested in protesting against authority figures in their own lives, and indifferent to the plight of the Iraqi people. They have no conception of what it’s like to live under a capricious totalitarian regime.” You could also say: The problem with the pro-war movement is that most of its participants are unquestioning of authority figures in their own lives, and ultimately indifferent to the plight of the Iraqi people. They have no conception of what it’s like for Arabs in the Middle East. But it is a statement that is both empty and destructive, a viral meme. It would be a sweeping generalization that would contribute to further unnecessary polarization amongst the reasonable majority. It would be manufactured dissent. nickdenton.org: Conversation with a sceptic

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Apr 09 2003
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Guns and Roses

Posted by | politics | No Comments

“I woke up beside a running sewer and did not expect the day to smell of roses.” Democracy speaks, and in Baghdad at least, the jubilation speaks volumes. Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage

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Apr 09 2003
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Game over?

Posted by | politics | No Comments

Iraqi Ambassador to th UN: “It’s Game Over” Whitehouse: “Its not a game and its not over” Two months ago. Whitehouse: “It’s Game Over” French Ambassador to the UN: “It’s not a game and its not over” Oh well the French are in agreement with one thing then.

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Apr 08 2003
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Open Standards are a bigger threat than Open Source to Sun, Microsoft etc.

Posted by | technology | No Comments

Kevin Werbach writes: “The best known open-source projects take advantage of established standards — Linux and Unix; Sendmail and SMTP; MySQL and SQL; Apache and HTTP; Mozilla and HTML. But then again, so do most of the proprietary applications these days. “ The odd one out here is Linux/Unix, Linux is a flavor of Unix, which is an archetype rather than a standard. Hair splitting aside, Kevin makes a profound point about the involvement of standards in a ‘networked’ computer environment: “Networked computing necessarily requires standards, because no one entity controls the whole environment.” In other words, the real threat to people like Microsoft may not be Open Source – but Open Standards. Microsoft had to compete with free browsers and web servers, by offering IE free and an OS bundled web server, but Linux and to a much lesser extent MySQL are a much bigger threat to Sun and…

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