Technically Speaking

Maybe you’ve heard about the “next generation” search engine, brought to you by the people who designed Google? The new search engine, called Cuil (pronounced “cool”), debuted yesterday, and in my opinion, it didn’t live up to the hype.

What was the hype? Cuil claims that it indexes far more web pages than does Google, but I don’t know that I  believe them. My first search in Cuil was a vanity search for my own name, Paul Pehrson. I was intrigued by the results window, which puts results in three columns with more information about each search result, but my blog, and my writing portfolio were noticibally absent from the results. There were lots of things that talked about me, but not my websites. I even did a search on site:paulpehrson.com and found no results, so Cuil simply isn’t indexing my site, which is being indexed by all the four major search engines.

Cuil reportedly got in excess of 30 million dollars in venture capital funding (pretty good, in today’s economy), but the results don’t feel as relevant to me (but I’m biased because my main presence on the web has been excluded). TIME published an article today that reports that Cuil had so many visitors yesterday that Cuil’s servers crashed, returning no results for a time. They also report the following:

Cuil has a distinctive, if old-fashioned, approach to indexing websites. Instead of ranking them based on popularity, as Google does, it focuses on the content of each page. That may make sense in theory — after all, the most popular restaurants, for example, rarely serve the best food — but it is precisely the model that Google broke away from in order to give users more relevant results. That could explain why a Cuil search on “insomnia” directs the user to the American Insomnia Association rather than to the Wikipedia entry on the subject pulled up first by most other search engines.

And I’m not the only detractor. Here is a list of headline articles today:

• Why Cuil is no threat to Google (TIME)
• Google is Cooler than Cuil (Motley Fool) (Say this one out loud)
• Ex-Googlers launch Cuil, but maybe too early? (ZDNet)
• Cuil is cold (Network World.com)
• Google-Wannabe Cuil: Worst. Launch. Ever. (Silicon Alley Insider)

That’s not to say that there aren’t some benefits to Cuil. The interface is clean. I like the results layout. TIME reports that Cuil’s privacy policy will make privacy rights groups very happy. But all that isn’t enought to get me to use a search engine unless I can trust the search results to be complete and relevant.

So it’s back to Google for me. Cuil just didn’t cut it. Makes you feel a little sorry for the investors, doesn’t it?

I don’t wax political often on this blog, but when I heard this morning that the United Kingdom is preparing to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2007, I asked myself the following question:

Does this have anything to do with Prince Harry’s planned deployment to the region? Or is it simply a political move to allow Tony Blair to bow out on a high note with the UK citizens?

Probably a bit of both, don’t you think?

[Going back to minding my own business and not commenting on politics...]

In general, I don’t wax political on this blog, and this isn’t an effort to do so. However, I do believe in the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, including the freedom of expression protected in the Bill of Rights.

That’s why I just don’t get this story.

Didn’t follow the link? That’s ok. I’ll summarize. The town council of Pahrump, Nevada decided last week to make it illegal to fly a foreign flag without flying the United States flag above it. This particular piece of legislation is targeting Mexican flags in the town of Pahrump, and I think it sets a bad precedent.

What’s wrong with somebody flying a foreign flag? It doesn’t necessarily mean any disrespect to the USA; it may simply be an expression of nationalistic identity and cultural heritage. I lived in Brazil for a while, and when I was in college, I proudly displayed a prominent Brazilian flag from my apartment window. It’s not that I don’t love the USA. I just celebrate Brazilian culture by showing their national flag.

I see this particular issue as discrimination against foreign nationals who want to fly the Mexican flag as a celebration of their cultural identity. Even if the town council disagrees with the expression, it should–in my opinion–be a protected form of expression. It doesn’t hurt anybody. It just allows a person to be proud of their differences that make them unique.

In some ways, this is similar to an experience I’ve encountered in my hometown. Near the train station I use daily, there is a biker shop that flies a prate skull-n-bones flag above their establishment. I hate it. I think it is disrespectful and celebrates anarchy instead of celebrating the government that protects us and our freedoms. I wouldn’t choose to shop at a store that flies a pirate flag–but I still believe that the shop owners should have the right to fly one.

I believe that people should be able to fly whatever flag they choose, even if it isn’t the Old Glory that I love.

Part of the protected freedom of expression includes allowing people to do their own thing, even when you disagree.

This is the time of the year that we all agree to live the same lie. Well, I don’t know that we agree to it, per se, as much as the lie is forced on us by the government.

No, I’m not talking about tax season, although that might be an interesting discussion. No, instead, I’m talking about daylight savings.

Last weekend was the time where much of the United States changes their collective clocks forward an hour. Somebody told me it was in an effort to conserve energy. Whatever.

You know, my body knows its a lie. When the alarm clock started blaring at 6AM (really 5AM, but since we’re all going along with the government on this one, we’ll just use DST times, instead of standard, or, um, REAL times) this morning, my body refused to wake up and get going. Nope. I couldn’t get up a minute before 7:30. It just wasn’t possible. Then I felt bad for sleeping in. Like its MY fault??

I sound really bitter, which isn’t true at all. In fact, I prefer daylight savings time to standard time. I just don’t like the SWITCH from standard to DST. It seriously takes me a week to fully adjust. It’s like jet lag without leaving home.

In any case, we’ll keep living the lie so we can have more hours of daylight in the evening, which will conserve energy, which will save the rainforests, effectually saving the world and making you a hero.

New party line: “Save the world. Support DST.”

Like I said. It’s all a lie.

I don’t post about politics much, but this post is more of a history lesson than a politically-motivated post. I received the following message as an internet forward, but before I posted it here, I checked around to see if I could verify its authenticity. The website TruthorFiction.com verifies that this account is a faithful retelling of a speech that US Navy Captain Dan Ouimette gave in 2002 and then again in 2003. Captain Oumette was, at the time, the Executive offiver of the US Naval Air Station at Pensacola Florida. He has since retired.

____________________________________________

19 Feb 2003

America WAKE UP!

That’s what we think we heard on the 11th of September 2001 and maybe it was, but I think it should have been “Get Out of Bed!” In fact, I think the alarm clock has been buzzing since 1979 and we have continued to hit the snooze button and roll over for a few more minutes of peaceful sleep since then.

It was a cool fall day in November 1979 in a country going through a religious and political upheaval when a group of Iranian students attacked and seized the American Embassy in Tehran. This seizure was an outright attack on American soil; it was an attack that held the world’s most powerful country hostage and paralyzed a Presidency. The attack on this sovereign US embassy set the stage for the events to follow for the next
23 years.

America was still reeling from the aftermath of the Viet Nam experience and had a serious threat from the Soviet Union when then, President Carter, had to do something. He chose to conduct a clandestine raid in the desert. The ill-fated mission ended in ruin, but stood as a symbol of America’s inability to deal with terrorism. America’s military had been decimated and downsized / right sized since the end of the Viet Nam war. A poorly trained, poorly equipped and poorly organized military was called on to execute a complex mission that was doomed from the start.

Shortly after the Tehran experience, Americans began to be kidnapped and killed throughout the Middle East. America could do little to protect her citizens living and working abroad. The attacks against US soil continued.

In April of 1983 a large vehicle packed with high explosives was driven into the US Embassy compound in Beirut. When it explodes, it kills 63 people. The alarm went off again and America hit the Snooze Button once more. Then just six short months later a large truck heavily laden down with over 2500 pounds of TNT smashed through the main gate of the US Marine Corps headquarters in Beirut. 241 US servicemen are killed. America mourns her dead and hit the Snooze Button once more. Two months later in December 1983, another truck loaded with explosives is driven into the US Embassy in Kuwait, and America continues her slumber. The following year, in September 1984, another van was driven into the gates of the US Embassy in Beirut and America slept.

Soon the terrorism spreads to Europe. In April 1985 a bomb explodes in a restaurant frequented by US soldiers in Madrid. Then in August a Volkswagen loaded with explosives is driven into the main gate of the US Air Force Base at Rhein-Main, 22 are killed and the Snooze Alarm is buzzing louder and louder as US soil is continually attacked. Fifty-nine days later a cruise ship, the Achille Lauro is hijacked and we watched as an American in a wheelchair is singled out of the passenger list and executed. The terrorists then shift their tactics to bombing civilian airliners when they bomb TWA Flight 840 in April of 1986 that killed 4 and the most tragic bombing, Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 259. America wants to treat these terrorist acts as crimes; in fact we are still trying to bring these people to trial. These are acts of war…the Wake Up alarm is louder and louder. Read the rest of this entry »