This is not only a great infringement on our freedom as citizen of our respective countries, but also if allowed to pass freely a big step in the wrong direction for governmental power. True that the core of the document has been released, however its amendments and unique additions by particular countries are censored for fear of retribution and retaliation. Our inalienable right to free speech in most free countries are at risk, and by doing nothing we only encourage big government, and even government that transcends borders. Which is why I ask you all to do your part, review the facts, and act. Comment back, dispute my claim, prove me right provide evidence, be proactive and send a letter to your member of parliament or congressman. But please don’t do nothing.

I don’t mean to sound like doomsday is coming, but I do want to warn that the first step to losing your freedom is not asking the right questions and demanding answers from government, especially when they work in secrecy.

The New Face of Search?

Bing has now been with us for a little over a month now, and I was excited to hear about Microsoft’s latest offering. Something over the past couple years at Microsoft changed, as I’ve gone from strongly disliking their products to being able to actually use them in my day-to-day life. An example of this is the Windows 7 Release Candidate, which runs fantastically, and so far has been much more stable than my previous Windows XP and Vista experiences. Whatever they are doing culture-wise over at the Redmond campus seems to be working though.

As much as I would like to give Microsoft credit for their Bing offering, I am reminded by the shadows of their previous release: the MSN Network and Windows Live Search. Both of those products left a terrible taste in my mouth and I found them to be incredibly user unfriendly. It has taken years for Microsoft to finally get it right, and it seems that they have in a big way.

The first thing I noticed was the clean interface. I want to say Google-like, but there is a distinctive design use there that separates it from the competition enough to be called unique. But it isn’t the colour scheme that I’m particularly interested in; I’m much more interested in the search results and feature capabilities. On those two topics I was pleasantly surprised by the relevance and clarity of results provided. My measure of usability relies on two things: how simple of a search I can do to retrieve the content and how relevant that content actually is to my needs.

Now, I have been using Google for years, I think I started when I was maybe 14, after I got tired of dealing with the poor returns of the heavyweights of the time: AltaVista and Ask. I used Google once and was hooked. Bing almost did the same thing for me as Google did to the previous reigning champions: it got me interested in my search results again. With their snippets of information beside each search, the cleanliness of the results page and most importantly getting me to my relevant content fast. It perplexed me how much I actually enjoyed using their service, and as of right now I use Bing as my default search provider.

Now I don’t tend to use many of the other services provided on a regular basis, such as image search and news group search, but from the little I use the services, I say that they are at an equal trade off: Google is a little faster, whereas Bing has a few more nice UI features. That being said, I don’t really consider those categories when I am comparing the two engines.

Overall, I have to say yes, Bing must be a real competitor to Google, since it seems to be swaying quite a few users back the Microsoft way, even for a short while. Also based on the fact that Google seems to be alert to this new competitor is interesting, as shortly after Microsoft began to see success with Bing, Google announced their entrance into the desktop operating system market. Now if that isn’t a knee-jerk reaction to Bing, then I don’t know what is. It will be interesting to see how these two giants battle it out over the next year or so, and it will also be interesting to see what people have to say about their experience with this new search competitor.

The MPAA... So Much Hate

There, now I feel much better being in the (1,1) column of this binary table of information love. Either way, share your comments on your beliefs about the internet.

Fantastic audio and video mashup of the song ‘Stand by Me,’ which started off as a basic recording of of a street artist, and as the authors collected more samples using just a laptop, camcorder and microphone from different groups around the world, it just became this masterpiece. The world may be smaller today with modern technology, but sometimes it is for the greater good.

The paper details research that other individuals have done into the sustainability of file systems in various environments, and I relate them to their importance to flash memory. File systems are going to need to undergo a drastic redesign in the next few years if we are to provide faster technology that can handle higher bandwidth media either locally or through network storage. I also included a short section on DIY information for flash storage solutions out of simple USB enabled flash memory that would allow an individual to obtain speeds faster than traditional hard drives. The scope of the material is limited, but I will be posting a tutorial in the near future in relation to how to mount yourself a flash RAID out of your USB keys as well as recommended file systems for the fastest access times and wear leveling. For more information, I have posted the paper in my repository under ‘Papers’ and it is free for all to read, use and critique. If you have any comments, feel free to leave them below. Also, a follow up on my Web 2.0 concepts soon to come.

 
I have been into following all these Web 2.0 news bits lately so closely that I am slowly becoming a part of them. I have begun Twittering (as you may have noticed from my side bar, quite a nice addition I might add) as well as am an active member on a variety of Web 2.0 sites. I have been getting engaged in them to figure out how they do it, what makes a company like that successful.

As a developer, I would love to create something in my spare time that other people find of use, and thus I am considering working on my pet project to include a variety of features that are Web 2.0 friendly, maybe create a mashup of a few services. Aside from the great personal experience, a new service might have the potential to actually help people enjoy the web to its fullest. The service is going to be based around the movie information and review site, however I am looking at going with tighter integration into other services, such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and others. Will this work? Will I ever get around to putting myself into programming mode? Do I have the skills to do something like that? Those are the questions, and I can say the answer is yes, but not right now. Exam season is creeping up again, and I need to concentrate on those. Have fun coding, and look for some new code and papers in the repositories.

And for all of you people who check the repository, I uploaded some of my older code, including the first iteration of the video game (well, the original iteration called Invasion) which was written in VB.Net! Which is incredible, and is kind of surprising that the code holds together. I had learned VB.Net in a week before starting the project in high school! I never knew I could learn a new language that quickly, though looking back, its obvious I hadn’t mastered it. I forgive myself though, considering it went from an idea to a finished product in under 3 months! I am pretty proud of that fact, and you can find the entire original project package at the subdomain http://invasion.deanpearce.net/ in all its original completion glory!