Data in One Location Does Not Exist
How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All? (Firesign Theater, 1969) In an online discussion, I said, "Any data that is in just one location doesn't exist." There were questions asked, off list, politely. (In English, "data" has come to be a singular/plural like "deer" or "fish". But that's not the point. Nobody questioned the singular data. Consider it a red herring.) The question was, "Why?" And the answer is that bad things can happen to good data. That was a plural "data", by the way.
Have you ever used an existing document as the basis for a new document and then, without thinking, saved the new document using the old filename? I have. Goodbye old file, unless you have backup. I did.
Have you ever formatted one of two disk drives in a machine, thinking that you're formatting the C drive and accidentally pointed the format gun at the head of the D drive, the one with all your data, time billing records, photos, and music? Yeah, I've done that, too, I'm embarrassed to admit. The only recovery is backup.
Ever have a machine just die? Been there. Done that. Recovered the data.
So far, I haven't had a computer stolen.
We did have a network-spreading virus/worm years ago when the "I Love You" messages circulated. That was May 4, 2000, and the message appeared to have come from someone at WTVN. We've become smarter since then and we've instituted more safeguards, but backup saved the day. A lot of people I know lost every jpg on their computer because that particular virus overwrote (among others) all jpg, jpeg, vbs, vbe, js, css, and doc files.
Files exist on fragile magnetic or optical media. The more copies you have, the less likely it is that you'll lose something important.
By the way: The Firesign Theater guys are still around.
Well, Isn't that Cuil?
I'm still trying to figure out how this could happen: A bunch of guys ("guys" is a generic term that includes women) leave uber-search-engine Google and setup their own search engine. They call it "cuil" (pronounced "cool") and they say that this is an old Irish word for knowledge. Not being an old Irish guy, I wouldn't know. But I wonder how Google could let some of its top talent walk out the door and set up a competing service. I mean, haven't these guys heard of non-compete clauses? Or do they take that "not evil" thing seriously? Or maybe they know it'll be a flop.
Cuil was so busy the first day (see above) that it wasn't able to handle all the traffic. The service earns a couple of demerits for bad planning. It came back to life later.
< I thought I'd search for Google just for fun.
Cuil's developers call it "the world's biggest search engine", but it comes up empty sometimes. What do they mean by the "world's biggest search engine"? "The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now," they say. "Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft." Cuil claims to have indexed more than 120 billion pages so far.
Here's a search for Microsoft. >
Ego-search time. I search for blinn. It shows me Blinn College, Blinn Communications, and Jim Blinn on the main page. OK. Pretty cuil. How about techbyter? Links to the TechByter website and to sites that have quoted me (Adobe, Sysinternals, TechTimes, and a few others.) OK. Something a bit more obscure: copyediting-l (a discussion group for editors). Bingo! It's got the group's website and links to lots of sites that reference it. I'm beginning to be impressed, but not with the business plan. This seems like an excellent way to turn a large fortune into a small fortune. The search engine business is mature and it's unlikely that Cuil will dethrone Google the way Google dethroned Alta Vista.
My tests were conducted on July 30, a few days after the Cuil launch. The first day's tests weren't so good because a lot of search terms that should have turned up something resulted in no matches.
< I thought I'd look for Columbus, Ohio.
Various other searches for more obscure targets produced either no hits or totally unrelated hits.
Cuil does have an interesting philosophy, though: "Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service, so our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies. Your search history is your business, not ours." With that kind of philosophy, it will be extremely hard to "monetize" the operation.
Well, that's a first glance. Let's see how cool Cuil turns out to be. So far the reviews, including this one, have been lukewarm at best.
Is the FBI Watching You?
Probably. And I can say that as one who has obtained his FBI jacket by filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request back in the day when the government actually considered complying with the Freedom of Information Act. What I received was a highly redacted (a/k/a "blacked out") copy of the FBI file that detailed the bureau's activities. ("Talked to XXXXXX who said XXXXXX." Real useful stuff. All places, dates, and names had been removed.) The final analysis was about all that remained. In a single sentence, the FBI had concluded that I was not a threat to national security. I haven't bothered to apply for a copy of the file recently, but given my opinion of the current administration, it's probably not very flattering.
So I was a bit amused when I received a message from "avalon@svkuh.cz" (Czech Republic or what John McCain would call "Czechoslovakia", which it hasn't been since 1990 when the Czechs and the Slovaks decided to go their separate ways.) I guess you get busy and you lose track of what's going on in the world when you're in the Senate. But again I digress.
The message from "avalon" said "F.B.I. can watch our conversation through Facebook". I suspected immediately that this was fraudulent because native English speakers would place a definite article in front of "F.B.I." and would probably omit the periods. (Closed circuit to "avalon": If you want to sound like an American, make it "The FBI can watch our conversation through Facebook." I'll still think you're full of fecal matter, but at least you'll sound like an American.
The link was to "SmartNewsRadio.com", which I would posit is an oxymoron. But I wanted to find out what SmartNewsRadio was. It seems to be registered to:
Rit Bush
david======@usa.com
+1.1019434343,
422co inc,
54232 po box,
New York,NY,US 16112
Reasonable?
Not exactly. 101 is not a legitimate area code for the phone number. In the US, we say "PO Box XXX", not "XXX PO Box". And 16122 is the Zip code for Bessemer, Pennsylvania instead of New York, NY. C'mon, creeps. It's easy enough to find out these things. At least try to make your scammer spams a little harder to spot.
And if I would visit SmartNewsRadio.com, what would I get? I wouldn't find (as the message promised) that "F.B.I. Watching Hezbollah in Facebook". I would instead find that my browser was attempting to launch an executable program that would try to take over my computer and turn it into a zombie. Maybe that's better than hate-radio the encourages lunatics to shoot up churches, but not by much.
Needless to say, I didn't follow the link.
Crazy Subject Lines
It seems that spammers have hired people who used to work for the National Enquirer or Fox News. In the past week, I've received spams with these subject lines:
- Breaking news: Aliens landed in Ohio.? - Watch the video
- Britney strikes again :) Watch.? - Watch the video
- Angelina Jolie naked video? - Watch the video
- Hilarious gayest acts? - Cute ducklings following in a line behind mother duckie, cute.
- Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are lovers. Video proof.? - WATCH THE VIDEO
- Britney and Paris having fun together. Watch.? - WATCH THE VIDEO
- Information - Interracial marriages - video? - More info (Why do I feel like we've regressed to 1950?)
- For: grok. Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are lovers. Video proof.? - WATCH THE VIDEO
- Rihanna naked video? - Watch the video
- Justine Timberlake gay video? - Watch the video
- Special issue of news from CNBC! Urgent Shocking News Usama Ben Laden!?
Ah, could you at least spell the creep's name right? - Special issue of news from Bloomberg! Urgent Dangerous News! Usama bin Laden(Osama bin Laden) one …
- You won Infinity FX45. Watch the video to claim it.? - Watch the video
- Watch yourself in this video man :) What a jerk you are really? - Watch the video
- FBI busts alleged Facebook? - FBI watching you http://StockLowNews.com
- Paris and Britney nude.? - WATCH THE VIDEO
- You won Infinity FX45. Watch the video to claim it.? - Watch the video
- Paris Hilton nude on the beach? - Watch the video
And on and on and on. The only people who would be fooled by any of these are people who are incapable of thinking, but sadly that's a large number of people these days.
Just because you read it on the Internet doesn't make it true.
Nerdly News
A Guy Named "Sue"
Maybe you've heard of Scrabulous, or maybe not. I know that a lot of people enjoyed the Scrabble-like game that was a part of Facebook until Hasbro filed suit and Facebook caved. No matter that the "knock-off" Indian version was far better than Habro's lame online version of the game. I'm one of those people who feels that it's worthwhile to protect intellectual property, but this case is enough to make me reconsider that.
Hasbro hasn't been able to create a decent online version of its game and its response, when a couple of guys from India created a better online Scrabble was to sue.
OK, I get it. Hasbro bought the rights to Scrabble. But these guys in India, brothers Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla, who created Scrabulous in 2005, had a better idea and then implemented it. I can't help but think that if today's IP laws had existed in the 1960s, we'd still all be driving cars with drum brakes. Disk brakes ("a way to stop a car") would have been considered an infringement of drum brakes.
IP rights have to be tempered by common sense. If somebody comes up with a better way of doing things, how can that infringe on the original?
And this week an Italian broadcaster sued YouTube. Mediaset says that Google and its video sharing site, YouTube, illegally used its material. The fitting judgment, says Mediaset, is 500 million euros. Mediaset is one of the operations owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. (How can the prime minister be allowed to continue to oversee the daily operations of the nation's largest media outlet? And tell me again about this "liberal media" that's supposed to control everything.)
According to YouTube, the company "respects copyright holders and takes copyright issues very seriously. We prohibit users from uploading infringing material and we cooperate with all copyright holders to identify and promptly remove infringing content as soon as we are officially notified."
Mediaset isn't alone though. Viacom, the English Premier League, the Scottish Premier League, the Tennis Federation of France, Cherry Lane Music, Murbo Music Publishing, France's TF1, and Spain's Telecinco have all piled on.
Mediaset offers a "sample analysis" that it says will show "at least 4,643 videos and clips owned by us, equivalent to more than 325 hours of transmission without having rights" were on YouTube as of early July.
What's Down at Apple?
John Boudreau of the San Jose Mercury News (the closest thing Apple has to a hometown newspaper) says that he sees signs that Apple will introduce some surprising new technologies in the coming year. "When Apple announced last week that it anticipated higher development costs in coming months, analysts cringed and the stock dropped. But tech heads rejoiced. Such a message often means new products are coming from the company."
Apple's stock has been hammered recently because there have been questions about the health of CEO Steve Jobs. This is typical silly short-sighted Wall Street claptrap. Do the geniuses on Wall Street actually think that only Steve Jobs can guide Apple? I have a feeling that had Shakespeare been writing today, he would have written "First, kill all the stockbrokers" instead of "First, kill all the lawyers." But again I digress.
Apple's chief financial officer, Peter Oppenheimer, spoke with analysts this week and told them to expect gross margins to drop from 35% to just 30% in 2009. Anywhere in the world but Wall Street, a 30% profit margin would be met with glee.
Oppenheimer's message was opaque. He said that Apple will be "delivering state-of-the-art products at price points that our competitors can't match." In plain English, that probably means something. In Wall Street jargon, it meant, "tank this stock." Translated again from Wallstreetish, it means "Wall Street is inhabited by short-sighted morons."
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