20080728
Nothing Cool about Cuil - Click!
The Press has been bragging about Cuil (pronounced "cool"), a search engine created by a few people from Google hoping to get rich like their former employer.Cuil claims to have a database three times larger than Google, but the search still has alot of bugs.
Where Google has an Image search, Cuil does not. Cuil links images with artcles, images that do not match with the article. For example, a search for Bushido Hacks does not fetch BushidoHacks.com has the first result like it does with Google. Cuil claims that it is because it looks for pages that are relevant not popular. BushidoHacks.com seems pretty relevant. Searching on Ask.com would confirm Google is right.
Cuil claims to not track users like Google does, as if to state that Google is an Orwellian juggernaut (bitch!). While Google has grown from a sucky search engine to an outstanding search engine with services better than Yahoo! (I'm still pissed at them because they deleting my Geocities pages), Cuil seem to pull up all the instance of my name in the worst places. For instance, they pulled up the old avatar that I used on Weebl's website before they banned me. (Weebl's website has a very, very low tolerance for shenanigans. I think it was because I sent them the Goaste image on April Fools Day. At least I didn't Rickroll them.) Then their are the instance where my name shows up in user profiles. Bad Cuil!
Being a fan of various comics, manga, and video games, Cuil failed to find anything relevant. For example, one of my favorite Metal Gear Solid parodies is Metal Gear Yotsuba by Skaijo. Google found Skaijo's DeviantArt page. Ask found her NewGrounds page. Cuil found the internet community 4chan (NSFW!). My dog could search better than Cuil, and she can't even stay in the back yard without a leash.
But Cuil does have a couple of good features. A newspaper-like layout. Related Search Widgets. But even with all that, Cuil will more than likely go bust if the tech industry runs into a bubble situation.
If Cuil wants to work, it needs to realize that searches were not based on popularity in the first place and that its goal of relavance is way off the mark.
Labels: google, imho, internet, tubes, websites
posted by Bushido Hacks 7/28/2008 11:15:00 PM (0) comments top
20070304
Y2K7
Thanks to your elected leaders, both current (i.e.: George W. Bush) and past (i.e. Al Gore), computer programmers have a new problem, seven years after Y2K and thirty years before Y2K37. (That's when the UNIX clock runs out. Better do something about that, Linus.)Ever since Bush took office in 2001, politicians on both sides of the asle, especially those with something to hide, have tried to manipulate contol of the technology than is suppost to catch criminals (especially the elected ones) and make elected representatives be more honest (espeically the dishonest ones).
Ever since the tape recorder logged Richard Nixon's involvemant in the Watergate scandal, dishonest politician and lobbyists have been pushing more legislation to make Big Brother watch citizens more that their leaders.
While it is reasonable in this day and age to put security cameras in some places like inside shops, busy intersections, buses, and other places where a large number of people congregate, we never see these things inside the offices of public officials. If they can wire tap our phones and log our public internet records, why can't we spy on them?
While these questions should be addressed, it seems more suitable to ask the EFF.
Looking back since 2001, the FBI New York field office was destroyed on September 11, 2001, containing the largest collection of confescated devices created by hackers going as far back as the 1960s.
In 2002, the PATRIOT Act allowed the government to warrentlessly spy on citizens. It doesn't say anywhere to my knowledge that citizens can't sequester the government's privaciy, although common sense would excuse the part of the government that is truely defending this country. What kind of fool would brag about war stragegies that help our troops who risk there own lives to protect this country and to help opressed people in countries that do really like us but are fortunate that we are there to help them and to let them know "I didn't come here to serve the leaders of my country but to serve the people that I love just as you've struggled to serve the people you love."
Which brings us to 2003. I don't think I need to explain a whole lot about what happened that year. War was declared. As much as our country though they were doing the right thing, we actually screwed up. On one hand, we took out Saddam. On the otherhand, we created more problems than we solved. On top of that, just about everyone who had a passion or interest in history worldwide was pisted. Of course our adminstration wasn't going to be lectured by a bunch of history professors, archiologists, scholars, museum curators, or any smart people. Never mind the fact that despite all the troops we sent into Iraq, the leaflets we dropped out of the sky, and the fact that there were even generals at CENTCOM who knew that there is much more in the Middle East that sand and oil. But would it have killed someone to protect the Iraq National Museum of Natural History? Like a special ops team? A phone call? A box of locks to secure the doors? Nope, our leaders were too busy watching Saddam's 23 gold palaces. Thanks to our leaders, nearily every artifact that could tell us about the Cradle of Civilization has been lost, damaged, stolen, or destroyed. Even the Mongolians knew to protect certain places back when they invaded Baghdad in the 16th century. This was also the year gas started costing over $2 per gallon. Who needs an honorary presidential pension when you can steal money from people who have to work for theirs? Let's also not forget the lost of one of the space shuttles due to an underfunded space agency that our country likes to brag about but never supports.
In 2004, there really was no election. John Kerry never intended to win. That would betray his fellow Skull and Bone brother, George W. Bush. Kerry is no hero. When you join the armed forces, you sign a commitment to serve your country, NO EXCUSES! Bush got his daddy to write him a note. Kerry shot himself in the foot, then scraped himself twice. Kerry and Bush are no Vietnam Veterans. I don't see them in black vests, riding motorcycles, working down at the VFW hall, or going to The Wall to rub a crayon on a piece of paper over somebody's name. This was a set up. Another four years of misery. This was also the year that thanks to the Hollywood Elite, the Christian conservative-run FCC cracked down on censorship after an intentional accident during the superbowl and some F-bomb by some old-as-dirt musicians. Thanks for the mamories, you stupid rich people!
In 2005, Hollywood and the media (now known on this website as "the virus") continued to show signs of foot-in-mouth syndrome espeically in the midst of a myriad of disasters. A tsunami in the Indian Ocean in late 2004. A destructive hurricane season that lasted well into the beginning of 2006. The piss-poor response by our government to provide help to a city that was destroyed. While fear-mongers shouted "global warming" and racism, the government once again turned a blind eye. Starting that year, many cities and states began to develop new programs for disaster response, especially greater support for people in low income areas. It was this year, that we learned that the adminstration would leave us to die if the unthinkable happened. We made a statement that if they wanted to preach about how life was sacred yet start wars and let people drown then we weren't going to go down without a fight.
In 2006, elections occured. Stem-cell research (SCR) was approved despite the kicking-and-screeming response of the uberconservative and the hypocritical federal government. When the results came in and SCR got the go ahead, opponents claimed that we didn't know what we were doing or that we were confused. It is bad enough they call the scientist who work on this stuff murderers, but to call the people who know that life begins when sperm meets egg not when boy meets girl stupid should anger anyone who is religious. I'd gladly go back to church if it wasn't for the people who forced their believes upon me or violated their own canon laws. When I go to church, I want don't want to look at some protestor waving their framed fetus-in-a-womb posters. Meanwhile in 2006, Al Gore's head continued expand rivial that of nimrod conservative talk show host Bill O'Rielly. While their egos continue to throw off the Earth's axis, the St. Louis area was hit with three separate storms that knocked out the power in most of the area for over a week. If you want to know what life is like in a post-apocalyptic world, try going without power for nearly a week while the mercury is over 100 degrees or below freezing. Gas topped $3 per gallon, but there were no pumps to fetch it. This was also the year we learned the Internet was not a big truck, but a series of tubes. The inbred intelegence of the telecom industry does not see technology in terms of zeros and ones but a check with a lot of zeros.
So far this year, the egos of the "global warming" campaign continued to get stuck under overpasses as Gore got an Oscar, gas continues to hover near $3, the PS3 and Microsoft Vista suck, and thanks to the federal government's inability to conserve energy, use Abrams tanks that get less than one mile per gallon, and because they've punished California for using more clean renewable energy, we now have to spring forward two weeks earily and fall back two weeks later.
"That doesn't sound like a big deal. You made me read all that to tell me about changing my clocks?"
Wrong! This has much more to do than just clocks. Computers now have to update their timekeeping software because of a bill passed by the federal government extending daylight savings time by four weeks.
That 400 point drop in the stock market last week wasn't because of Far East financial problems. It was stock investors covering their ass because they haven't downloaded any software patches to be Y2K7 compliant. There have been several upgrades to Linux and UNIX time zone data, but no announcements by Microsoft or Apple about their software. Not to metion, no major corporations who home brew their operating system have made any announcements. So what are banks going to be doing way earily on Sunday morning around 2AM? Probably not paying attention to the cyber-prowlers taking advantage of the earily shift in time. I suppose we will find out next week.
Labels: business, dogma, fud, imho, linux, politics, rage, stlouis, tech, thevirus, tubes, weather, windows
posted by Bushido Hacks 3/04/2007 10:57:00 AM (2) comments top
20070218
Hillary doesn't have a snowball's chance
If you still believe that Hillary is going to be our next president, you don't know Barack Obama.While Mrs. Clinton is rasing money from the Hollywood A-List this weekend, Obama is in the South.
I mean, why would anyone want to vote for a woman who has fought to promote legislation to ban videogames, used the news media in her state to start a moral panic against Obama's race and religion, write books about things she knows little about, and yet she wants to play "supermom" for this country.
I could care less about Obama's race, religion, or the length of time he has had in political office.
But the last thing this country needs is another W.A.S.P. in the oval office.
Obama '08!
Labels: games, imho, movies, music, obvious, politics
posted by Bushido Hacks 2/18/2007 04:15:00 PM (0) comments top
