So I wanted to create a QuickTopic today, but I couldn’t remember my password. So I told the site to send me my password. It didn’t. Anyone else had this problem? Update: QuickTopic will send you your password … eventually. I’m probably going to get about 13 copies of it when it’s all said and done.
Adrian Holovaty has posted the transcript of an email interview he did with a Business Week reporter on the effect of BugMeNot on newspaper web sites. His response to her questions about how to deal with BugMeNot was to suggest simply not requiring users to register before viewing content. Novel idea. Update: Here’s the article.
So I just noticed that now that I’ve installed Google Desktop on my computer, when I use Google to search the Web, results of the search on my local computer are noted at the top of the search results as well. That is seriously cool, and it doesn’t seem to slow down the search at all.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a late adopter when it comes to hardware. I finally set up a wireless network a couple of weeks ago, and today I hooked my Tivo into the network. Now it’s finally time to start playing with the Home Media features of the Tivo. I’m sure online scheduling will come in handy one of these days.
President Bush has issued a “no draft” pledge, but the signs are increasingly obvious that the Army (and Marines) are stretched beyond thin. I read today that the Army is shipping the unit that serves as opposing forces in military exercises to fight in Iraq. There’s no doubt that they’ll do an excellent job, but it says something about the general lack of resources in the Army that they’d ship this unit to Iraq. People worry about President Bush invading another country if he’s reelected, but it looks more and more every day like the military just won’t be prepared to engage in such an activity anytime soon. It’s going to take some time to reconstitute itself after Iraq is pacified or abandoned. ...
The Web seems to be abuzz with talk about Jon Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire today. Wonkette has the details. You can download the episode via BitTorrent here if you missed it like I did. Update: I just downloaded the segment and watched it, and I found it mostly sad. I think Jon Stewart found it pretty sad as well. He couldn’t get the clowns on Crossfire to even engage him in a substantive discussion about what it means to have a substantive discussion. Most awful was Tucker Carlson’s attempts to play gotcha with Stewart with regard to his John Kerry interview. Stewart had plenty of good lines, but he seemed deeply pained by the whole experience, and I felt pained by it as well. Oh, and Tucker Carlson is a clown. ...
I realized something important when I watched the debate on Wednesday night. I just internalize and gloss over my assumption that politicians almost never say what they mean. It doesn’t even bother me any more. I’m not sure if that’s a mature world view or a horribly cynical one. Let me give you an example. When John Kerry says, “I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman,” I don’t believe him. I think he’s saying that because he thinks it’s what will get him elected. And to tell you the truth, I don’t even really fault him for it. Sure, I’d prefer to see him stand up there and tell us what he really believes in his heart of hearts, as they say, but politicians who do that don’t get elected. They get laughed out of town. People claim to want the unvarnished truth from politicians, but politicians are nearly always punished in the polls when they say what they really think. But I think this explains President Bush’s appeal to his most ardent supporters. They think that President Bush is one of those mythical politicians who just says what he believes without considering the political consequences. I feel sad for them. ...
Over at Manageability, Carlos explains where Google’s desktop searching application finds the data it indexes. Turns out, there’s already a repository for the data that Microsoft collects – Google is just accessing it. That explains why Google searches files associated with Microsoft applications, and leads me to think that it will perhaps be a long time before they add support for data from other applications, and who knows when there will be a Mac version of Google Desktop. (I don’t think never is a bad bet.) ...
Someone just sent me a link to Google Desktop, a tool for searching files on your own computer. The obvious question privacy watchdogs will ask is to what degree it communicates with the Google mothership. OK, I’ve installed Google Desktop. It’s really, really fast. Really fast. The computer I installed it on doesn’t have many documents other than source code, but it searches that source code really quickly. Installation is a breeze. It runs a local Web server and has a browser-based interface that makes the desktop application look like just another Web page that Google serves up. It will search Outlook and Outlook Express mailboxes, but I use Thunderbird. I assume that they’ll add support for other forms of mail storage shortly. It also caches and indexes AIM conversations, I assume it’s proxying your AIM connection, but I’m not sure. Google Desktop seems to work fine with Firefox, but one of its capabilities is enabling you to search Web pages you’ve previously visited, and that capability seems to be IE-only for now. A pity. ...
By the third debate, things start getting pretty redundant, don’t they? Looks like Bush just had his “timber company” moment of the night. He called his opponent a liar when he was telling the truth. I’m sure somebody else will have Bush’s quote on Osama bin Laden any second now. Bush is now attacking Kerry for promising to spend too much money. The guy who presides over the biggest deficit ever. Well, I ran out of steam fast. Our neighbor came over to watch the debate and I didn’t want to geek out too badly in his presence. ...