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Archives: October 2004
Tue Oct 19, 2004
Exponentially-Bad Election Tricks...
It's a bad enough idea on its own to round up people to go out and get potential voters of a certain political affiliation or just a certain ethnic background or economic class to register to vote. Then you get people trying to get people who might only vote Democrat or Republican, and it's a mess and stupid.
It's a really bad idea to have those people make up names like Mary Poppins, George Foreman, and Dick Tracy as registered voters.
It's a tremedously-bad idea to pay one of those people going out to collect names, who is then making them up, with crack-cocaine.
And of course it's a national scandal when the person who payed the guy the crack-cocaine is a representative of and working on behalf of the NAACP.
And it's sheer, clear misfortune when the man arrested to forging the voter registrations and being paid in crack-cocaine during a presidential election has the first name of... you guessed it... Chad.
Welcome to Toledo, Ohio's, the NAACP's, and this presidential election's nightmare.
-- Primis.
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Mon Oct 18, 2004
RSS/XML Doomed to Failure?
RSS/XML is one of those things you either love or hate. This is probably because it's really not a critical component to the online experience. Instead, it's merely an enhancement to the experience. In that regard, RSS is a success. It's a wonderful tool to keep tabs on blogs and sites that might not frequently update. I personally use it to track a small number of sites and blogs of friends. These sites may only update once or twice every few days, and it's a handy way to be reminded if in fact they are updated and I maybe missed it.
It's for this reason I usually try and make sure to mention the XML feed for this site when it comes up. Which is worse, having slightly less traffic because someone isn't checking the site daily because they can track it via RSS (and thus will only visit if updated), or have visitors finally give up and barely visit at all? In my case it's a no-brainer. I'm not pushing advertisements or anything on this site, so even though the more traffic the better, I'm not terribly concerned with forcing site visitors into anything.
However, RSS/XML feeds for large sites just don't work. Headlines change too quickly, and one cannot keep tabs on them when it's only checking every half hour to hour for new headlines. Things change too quickly, and there are just too many headlines to sort through. It's a mess, and sites really dislike if you set your reader to check too often, because of the load it places on their servers.
But that's not the only problem...
More...
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Thu Oct 14, 2004
Google Desktop Search Has Potential
Google has launched the beta of their Desktop Search tool. The tool hangs out in your system tray, brings up a normal Google search box, and then can currently search files in Outlook/OE, AIM Message Logs, HTML files, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and raw TXT files. It then presents the search results in typical Google fashion, including thumbnails when appropriate. Google does this by indexing your HD's contents in the background when idle. If you've ever tried to do a file search in WinXP on a large, clogged hard drive, you'll understand how this could save time.
The Email Threading feature is actually the most-interesting part of it, probably. When it finds search results in OE or Outlook in can present them in a logical threaded fashion, making it easier to find the info you need and jog your memory about the entire convo.
The Desktop Search also lets you view cached webpages, which may not seem like a very big deal until the one time you desperately wish you could view just that.
Keep in mind, this is only a beta and Google plans to add many more file-types in as the project progresses along, and has asked people to contact them with further suggestions. Google clearly seems to be wanting to beat Microsoft's improved FileSearch capabilities, embedded in Longhorn, to the punch and it'll be interesting to see where it is in comparison with the promised Longhorn WinFS system's search capabilities.
Is this a tool most people need to worry about? Maybe not, I don't know how often the average user need to do filesearches. But power-users may find it interesting and helpful. I know even as organized as my hard drive is, I still lose stuff from time to time. The program is still fairly lean and in beta, so don't expect miracles. Also if you're paranoid about files on your system, I suppose you'll be scared to death at the thought of a tool indexing your files in the background. However, I have to admit you'd better get used to the idea because the next generation of filesystems will have this anyways.
This has got some good potential though, and to me personally with the amount of .TXT and .XLS files I have anymore (I blame my EHM leagues 100%), it'll be great to have, and even better once more file-types are added to the indexing. It's amazing how quickly the Google Toolbar became indispensable for most people once they began integrating it into their browser. I would say this is the first major tool since then that Google's cooked up for the average user...
-- Primis.
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Tue Oct 12, 2004
What We Have Wrought...
Have you read the news lately? No, I mean the news aside from the whoring around that we're calling a presidential election. Yes there are, in fact, things taking place in this world and country outside of the upcoming presidential election, despite what news media and people-with-too-much-time-on-their-hands-and-not-enough-hobbies (hellllloooo political analysts!) would have you believe. I'm talking about the REAL news, the notes of disturbing things that take place in our backyard everyday that threaten all sanity, that are buried all because John Kerry was holding an ear of corn outside a bus window.
So... congratulations, everyone, on legislating and politically-correct-ing ourselves into a society as ridiculous and fascist as the Taliban.
OK, so maybe I'm stretching it a little bit. No, we don't stone people to death for publicly honoring fallen friends or supporting cancer research. Not yet anyways. We just punish them in every other imaginable way -- execution is probably still just a little ways off.
More...
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Tue Oct 05, 2004
NASCAR Taking Control of Its People
I've always found it staggering that when an athlete like Jamal Lewis of the Baltimore Ravens agrees to a plea bargain that involves him spending time behind bars, that his employer (the NFL) would somehow see it fit that a 3- or 4-game suspension should suffice as a penalty.
Or that Excessive Celebration (ie Joe Horn pulling out a cellphone, Terrell Owens pulling out a Sharpie) results in a penalty assessed on the kickoff, and that the touchdown stands. Removing that score is about the only-surefire way to keep athletes from making idiots of themselves, because do you think they REALLY care if a 15-yard penalty is assessed on the kickoff? They're not on the field then, so what does it matter?
Well... NASCAR, of all organizations, seems to take a very different approach to things.
For those of you that missed it, Dale Earnhardt Jr. won at Talladega this past weekend to take the points lead in the series. During a live, post-race interview on NBC, Junior accidentally dropped the "S" Word.
NASCAR's response? Not only did they fine him $10,000, NASCAR also took away 25 of his series championship points -- thus costing him the series lead with the season winding down shortly.
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