Don't like Google's new sidebar? Be a pirate!

It's been a shamefully long time since my last post, but you can thank (or curse) Google for shocking me out of my complacency. You see, I've been a loyal Google user for pretty much as long as Google has existed. A long time ago, back in the early days of the interweb, when computers were powered by sabertoothed squirrels running around on stone wheels, I used a search engine called WebCrawler. It didn't have a fancy search algorithm, and was basically just a text match. But it was clean and simple, and because the web was a much simpler place back then, it mostly did what I wanted it to do. But then WebCrawler was bought by a different company, and played corporate musical chairs for a while, and the site suffered because of it. (And WebCrawler is still around, but as one of those search aggregators that grabs results from search engines like Google and Bing.) I started looking for a new search engine.

I tried Yahoo for a while, and AltaVista, and a few others, but none of them really worked for me for various reasons. Yahoo, in particular, grew ever more cluttered with things that had nothing to do with searching the web. And then I heard of this new search engine called Google. It was still in beta at the time, but it looked promising. It claimed to use back-links to prioritize search results based on popularity, and it was mostly free of the clutter that had been accumulating on the other search engines I'd been using. So I gave it a try. And in over ten years, I haven't looked back.

Until this week.

Apparently under pressure from Microsoft's Bing, Google has decided to "improve" the design of its search engine, and has been conducting an "experiment" in which it has been more-or-less randomly picking people to try out its new interface. I wasn't one of those people, and have been blissfully unaware of it until this week, when Google decided to roll out the changes to everyone. I used sarcastic quotes around "improve", because the change involves a new sidebar on search results that a) can't be minimized or removed, and b) duplicates the functionality of the inconspicuous bar at the top left of the page. And I gave the same treatment to "experiment", because the people at Google, in their wisdom, didn't provide these guinea pigs any way of providing feedback as to whether they liked the change or not.

The frustrating thing is that many of the people who are still using Google instead of Bing do so exactly because Google is everything Bling Bing isn't -- simple, streamlined, and elegant. If people wanted Google to be more like Bing, they'd just use Bing. I'm baffled by Google's logic here. And I'm apparently not the only one. Do a quick search for "google everything sidebar" and about 90% of the results will be pages complaining about the change, or asking for ways to remove it -- which you can't except by using an extension for Firefox or Google's own Chrome web browser (which is a bit ironic, I think). Those who use other browsers or who don't want to add yet another extension to Firefox are pretty much stuck with it...

...unless you're a pirate! (Or a hacker, a Swedish chef, a Klingon, or Elmer Fudd.)

Google is (for now, at least) still using it's classic, sidebar-less results page for non-English language, including the oddball English variants like "Bork, bork, bork!", "Elmer Fudd", "Hacker", "Klingon", and -- me fav'rite -- "Pirate". So if you hate the new sidebar but still want to stick with Google and don't mind a more playful interpretation in the presentation of your search results, just go to Google's Search Settings and pick a language of your choice other than plain English. And I don't know about you, but it's a pirate's life fer me. Arrgh!

What the frak? Sci Fi goes SyFy

It's official. The executives of the Sci Fi Channel are idiots.

The Sci Fi Channel, which is owned by NBC and has been gaining popularity in recent years largely due to the critically acclaimed Battlestar Galactica — of which the series finale is airing this week — has announced that it is officially changing its name to SyFy. As one article announcing the change put it, "In some universe, the name 'Syfy' is less geeky than the name 'Sci Fi'. Dave Howe, president of the Sci Fi Channel, is betting it’s this one."

And these are the same people who seem to think that professional wrestling is science fiction. Fiction, sure. But science fiction? Of course, the Sci Fi Channel has, since its premier in the early 90s, shown more than just science fiction. Fantasy and horror have almost equal airtime. But wrestling?

Why exactly do the Sci Fi Channel execs think this branding change is a good idea? Well, here's a quote from Sci Fi Channel president David Howe:

When we tested this new name, the thing that we got back from our 18-to-34 techno-savvy crowd, which is quite a lot of our audience, is actually this is how you’d text it. It made us feel much cooler, much more cutting-edge, much more hip, which was kind of bang-on what we wanted to achieve communication-wise.

So... The name is changing because that's how it's spelled by the lol-crowd? And they think this will somehow make them cooler? Yeah. I'm sure changing the spelling but keeping the same pronunciation will really make a difference in the minds of the people who weren't previously watching the network.

The fact of the matter is that no matter how you spell it, it's still Sci Fi. If the network wants to draw a larger audience, the best method would be to show more quality programming like Battlestar Galactica and the new seasons of Doctor Who, and less garbage like wrestling and most of the infamously unwatchable movies produced by the channel. Why, for example, did Sci Fi pass on the television rights to the Star Wars movies, allowing the Testosterone Channel (otherwise known as Spike) to pick them up? Why does the channel not show more movies like Alien, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Terminator, Back to the Future, Blade Runner, Donnie Darko, The Sixth Sense, The Thing, Groundhog Day, Twelve Monkeys, or The Exorcist? All of these would be a perfect fit for the Sci Fi Channel, but instead I see most of them aired on channels like Spike and USA Networks — which incidentally is also owned by NBC. Meanwhile, the Sci Fi Channel shows Alien Apocalypse, Alien Express, Alien Hunter, Alien Lockdown, Alien Siege — are we seeing a trend here? — and, of course, professional wrestling.

Science fiction can be cool, as evidenced by Battlestar Galactica and the previously mentioned blockbuster films. Changing the name of the channel in an attempt to seem cool or hip won't draw more viewers. Playing quality programming that targets its primary audience will. You don't have to be an overpaid network executive to see that.

Another great idea from Microsoft...

Noise Could Mask Web Searchers' IDs
New Scientist (03/07/09) Marks, Paul

Microsoft researchers say that adding noise to search engine records could protect Web users' identities, and that implementing such a technique would be a major step toward provable privacy. Records of Web searches are extremely useful to software engineers looking to improve search technology, and can provide valuable insight for scientists exploring digital search behaviors. However, attempts to make search data anonymous have been mostly unsuccessful. Microsoft researchers Krishnaram Kenthapadi, Nina Mishra, Alex Ntoulas, and Aleksandra Korolova say they have developed a safe way to release search data. The researchers propose publishing data associated only with the most popular queries, so that specific, rarely performed searches, such as for individual names or unique interests, cannot be used to identify people. The researchers also inserted noise into the data by adding digits to the data's figures. Korolova says that adding the noise gives the data provable privacy, and the amount of noise added defines the level of privacy that can be guaranteed. She says the added noise strikes a balance between guaranteeing privacy and providing useful data sets.

View Full Article

Ok... I'm all for privacy. One of the strengths of the Internet and particularly the World Wide Web has been anonymity in communication. Online, you're not young or old, male or female, white or black or Asian or Hispanic — unless, of course, you want to be. You're your ideas and beliefs, and the anonymity of the Web enables you to express those ideas without prejudice or fear of repercussions in the "real" world (unless you live somewhere like China or North Korea where Internet activity is actively monitored and the free exchange of ideas harshly supressed). Sure, there are always consequences to actions or words, but online those consequences are limited to heated exchanges of ideas and at worst social ostracism from a particular online community.

Because of the hodge-podge of technologies cobbled together to create the current Internet, most of which didn't have security as a priority, we've lost some of that anonymity. Companies and other organizations can glean a disturbing amount of data about our real-world identities and online activities from various sources, including the Web searches mentioned by the article quoted above. Security and privacy certainly need to be concerns in the design of future Internet technologies and our usage of current technologies.

But what is Microsoft's innovative answer to the problem of data mining Web search results? To withhold information and falsify the information provided. Genius!

The first half of this "solution" is nothing but common sense. If data mining of personal information is a problem, then the sources of that information should be particular about what information is provided, and to whom. On the consumer side, we implement this idea by not agreeing to Terms of Service that do not protect our privacy. On the provider side, organizations refuse to publish information that might result in bad press or a decline in customer confidence.

The second half of the so-called solution is profoundly stupid. Records of Web searches can be quite valuable to legitimate research. There's absolutely no point tp publishing these records if they're intentionally falsified. Falsifying the data renders it completely worthless to real research, while making it only somewhat less attractive to those who would use it for less noble applications. You might as well not publish the information at all. So how, exactly, is this a solution?

Way to go, Microsoft. I'm looking forward to your next big idea. By the way, how is that "Life without walls" ad campaign going? Because it seems to me that without walls you don't really need Windows...

Hybrids, shmybrids...

So I'm watching the Superbowl — more for the commercials than for the game — and I see a commercial praising the virtues of the GMC Yukon hybrid. Wow. For an extra $20,000, you can get 21 mpg in the city instead of 14 mpg. I can't express how frustratingly idiotic that is.

All of the Presidential candidates have been talking about "energy independence" and a few have actually mentioned alternative energy sources. And hybrids are a step in the right direction. I have one myself — a Honda Insight, which I absolutely love, and which gets about 50 mpg — but they are only a band-aid solution. Yet automobile manufacturers by and large seem to be focused on producing hybrids to the exclusion of other, better, solutions. Now we have a hybrid Yukon. What's next, hybrid school buses? Hybrid dump trucks? The usefulness of a hybrid vehicle is completely lost on large, heavy gas-guzzlers. A hybrid Yukon is little more than a balm to the egos of wealthy idiots who don't really care about the environment but feel that they should. So now they can drive their huge SUV beast and still brag to their wealthy idiot friends that they care about the environment because they drive a hybrid, even though they could do better by driving a non-hybrid minivan or sedan.

If we want to really help the environment, and truly become energy independent, we as a society need to demand that auto makers seriously devote themselves to the development of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, grid-powered electric vehicles, as well as the infrastructure to support them. We need more and better public transportation (even — or especially — if it is actually produced by the private sector), and we as a society need to actually utilize it.

And we need to realize how dumb the idea of a hybrid Yukon really is.

You don't have to be American to be an idiot

I think this article from the BBC speaks for itself... Just because a group of people have restrictions on eating pork doesn't mean they would be offended by the use anthropomorphic pigs in children's stories — unless they were enticing the children to eat them, I suppose, but that would be a whole new level of weird. I also noticed that none of the officials mentioned in the article seemed concerned that they might offend their Jewish citizens, even though they have similar prohibitions against consuming pork.

They may have more interesting accents, but government officials in the UK aren't necessarily any brighter than their American cousins.