THINK how much simpler shopping would have been if it were not for that opaque ’99 cent’ (or pence, or whatever) system. Aggregation of numbers should have not become an arduous task involving the combination of many small chunks of money (typically negligible coinage) like 49 and 99 cents. It can become mentally confusing and exhausting as a matter of fact.

Riddance of this deceiving system has great potential if conducted and enforced by a court of law. This simplifies banking and accounting too. Yet again, businesses might argue that it drives away customers elsewhere, so eradication of the system must be mutual and global, through lawmaking. Meanwhile, we are all bound to fall victims to the illusion that we save money. We only lose our minds.

VER three years ago I started with a personal site, which was quite profession-inclined. I used it for placement of my CV and was pleased to have had something that was beyond a notorious “blog” — a quickly-growing phenomenon at the time. But nowadays almost everyone has a homepage; everyone including my 9-year-old sister. She has a site/section that comprises a few pages. It was in fact updated with her by my side just a week ago.

Returning to the issue at hand, I felt reluctant to add opinionated opinions on a variety of issues without global consent (e.g. politics, software politics, atheism/religion). The ‘blog’ component of the site bridged a certain gap. Also appealing was the professional layout and base structure of a modern CMS, which required little maintenance other than composition (and of course comment spam purging).

The new blog spot had plenty to offer. Suddenly, rants and raves finally have their deserved place; Any opinion fits under a suitable category, even a new one sometimes; There are no limits in terms of scope; Readers are often those whose interests intersect with the author’s; The blog serves as somewhat of a diary. It is also a gateway to my work, research, my family and it neatly organises thoughts and progress chronologically. Any arbitrary thought and idea can somehow fit without any context, so rich site content can rapidly be added. This is not the case with a contextual, hierarchical site that chooses a theme. It is even the case with a single open forum, where the audience congregates due to common interests.

In blogging, anything goes. This may results in frivolous domains (or subdomains) with incoherent content, but as long as the author is happy, who is to object? With blogging emerges a clique of on-line friends and colleagues. It encourages involvement and mutual support. It also helps you help others, not only receive and digest information. The elements of Web 2.0 (Hype alert! Duck down) involvement promotes all of that.

Here’s to another year of joyful blogging!

Related item: “I Searched the Internet and all I Got was this Lousy Blog”

The infamous Google cookie

Google have once again hit some big headlines. The context is often a negative one.

• Napster To Be Acquired by Google?
  Peer-to-peer is in question; Specifically, one of the father applications, wgucg put piracy at the hands of the common man. What was that slogan again? “Do no evil”?
• Newspaper Lobbyists Take Aim at Google News
  This comes after book scanning and some subsequent court battles. It revolves around Google’s scraping of content. This probably peaked with their snatching of UseNet content, which goes a few decades back and predates Google itself. Another similar lawsuit was recently unfruitful, as the court titled Google’s content delivery a case of “fair use”.
• Google Working on Desktop Linux
  Commercialisation of Linux (no exception to Red Hat and SuSE). I do not like the sound of that, yet I hope that they at least extinguish Microsoft after endless rumours about Google O/S and the recent Windows Distribution (software pack) from Google. Google’s affinity for Linux has been known for some time. Some false speculations about Google Linux were shattered recently too.

In relation to older news

• Google Toolbar v.4
  No controversy here, but I still abide by my belief that GoogleBar is better, among combination of other tool/searchbars. Google recently began to forbid greedy requests for search results from their Web interface, after years without any such restrictions imposed. Third-party Google toolbars are badly affected by that.
• Poor Spelling Beats Google’s China Filter
  The censorship of results in China has been discussed to death in the media. It was criticised across the blogsphere while I was away on holiday. Typos have always been a soft spot for search engines. I once noted that typos have SEO potential

More related items (primarily Google in a negative light):

• Search Engines and Biased Results
• Google Finally Invade Sites
• The Google Cookie
• Death of Privacy
• Search Engines and Spying
• Dangers of RSS Sitemaps
• Google and Pet Peeves
• Google: A Monopoly?
• Google Blind to Controversy

UPDATE (1/2/2006, 7:49): Google denies plans to distribute OS based on Ubuntu (Goobuntu)

UPDATE (1/2/2006, 7:57): Google Denies Napster Tie-Up, Music Store Plan

Refusal to accept deceit

EN, just like women, tend to show their strengths while hiding the weaknesses. It is a rational choice. Be smart and you will wish to boast about it. Chess clubs and advanced literature and among the destined venues, attractions or vocation. Be strong and you will probably wind up spending a lot of time at the gym. Social people (or extroverts) are more talkative, so they are inclined to go out more.

The same principles apply to one’s appearace. Guys can opt for long sleeves, short sleeves or no sleeves. Shorts, jeans and even baggy pants are all acceptable. Girls endowed with nice legs will go out in skirts. Girls with an attractive figure expose their torso nowadays, or even their arms. Those with large breasts often use their cleavage as a ‘weapon’.

The conclusion of the matter is that one’s exposed side — that which we are most aware of — hides the downsides and boasts glory. Never be misled by the cover or even be demoralised by impression made by peers. The neighbour’s lawn looks greener for a reason.

EARCH engines are constantly finding new ways to improve their performance. While there are many methods involved, some of them are less ethical than others. Think of the following perplexing scenario: Refinement of one’s results by means of crawling and utilising the opponents’ data, which is ‘exposed’ to everyone. In legitimate cases this is known as “harvesting” or — put negatively — ascribe to it the connotation of “scraping”. The root of the idea is use of search engines to improve and refine results of another. Scroogle and Webcrawler, for instance, are dependent purely on this concept. There is a cyclic trap here, too. Search engine ‘poisoning’ comes to mind.

Think of MSN using Google Directories or Google using del.icio.us, which is a social linkage database that is now owned by Yahoo. Moreover, directories like DMOZ are non-profit, yet they are often open for use (or misuse) by profit-making companies. Link bases like deli.ci.us (owned by Yahoo) have the potential of refining results. As they are publicly available, could anyone truly restrict rivals from accessing and using the potentially valuable data? These links are contributed and managed by the public and have no prescribed copyrights. The depth of exploration for search engines does not seem to be limited, which is worrying.

There seems to be a certain ethical and legal border where image crawling and serving them within frames (Google Images) become questionable, let alone public forums, UseNet included (Google Groups). This by all means refers to Google Images and Google Groups, quite exclusively even. How deep should one be allowed to crawl the data in existence and how should it be attributed to the source? To dare is to win, but often this leads to demise which is catalysed by public opinion. There is no doubt as to whether company acquitions are intended for more extensive data collection, assuming that information, if obtained even in the form of spying, is available. Information can become powerful, but it has a cost which is often the death of privacy.

As I carry on with my drivel on the infiltration of search engines, I also discover the belated arrival of a European search engine.

In his New Year’s address outlining his administration’s plans for 2006, French President Jacques Chirac focused on plans for a European search engine to rival US internet companies such as Yahoo and Google. Some of the top tech labs in France and Germany are reportedly working on the ‘Quaero’ (Latin for ‘to search’) search engine.

T was only a few days ago that I came to ponder an interesting fact: I have never,ever in my life paid for a piece of software. I have never paid for a Web service either. I had some computer games bought for me as a gift while I was a teenager, or even younger than that. I was primary using freeware as a child and I do not think it ended up quite so miserably, despite my habit of relying on free and/or Open Source solutions.

The are a few exceptions to the above statement. Admittedly, I may have bought computers that had Windows pre-installed and thus a licence paid for. Anything commercial that I ever use nowadays, the University pays for (MATLAB which runs on Linux, for example). My Web host pays for cPanel too, I presume. Palm handhelds which I have owned have some programs bundled, but I never purchased any softwere for this platform where so much is already free.

Is it all something to take pride in? I do not believe so, but the observation is an interesting one nonetheless. Frankly, I can never recall pulling out a credit card for software purchase or a paid service on Web. On the Internet, if I ever pull out the CC numbers, it is for groceries, various items (primarily gadgets) and Web hosting bills. Never have I paid for a licence key or a binary file.

Bottom line: expensive proprietary software is not a necessity. That, however, is not what commercial software vendors would have you believe. Freeware and Open Source software are their greatest enemies and, given experience and orientation, they can achieve anything. They also have the merit of being transferable and readily available in abundant numbers.

‘You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

ARTICULAR behavioural patterns (exclusively in humans) can become rather intriguing. In support, for instance, sometimes you give people an honest answer and that answer is not what they were wishing to hear. They then attempt to challenge your analysis, of which you are certain. Hopefully for them, eventually this analysis will be changed or at the least softened. The adamant mind does not permit for inner conflicts.

Finally, that ‘status-quo’ suits their wishful thinking, so the answer becomes a reality or sometimes stands, at least in their own stubborn minds. It is a deliberate obfuscation of the truth, from which many are fearful. This explains many bad habits and detriments in society: design choices, war, smoking.

Let us learn to listen, to accept and to embrace.