Bing!

Doesn’t it sound funny to your ears? Or are they trying to pull a Google here? The irony is, I don’t think Google ever sounded funny in anyone’s ears. One of the reasons might be that it’s been a household term for years now.

By the way, just in case you missed the “big” news, Bing is the latest search engine launched by Microsoft. I remember the days when there used to be something called an MSN Search. When it was rechristened to Live Search, most didn’t pay attention. Maybe that’s a good-enough reason to come out with a name which will become a crowd-puller—because it’ll ring a bell (in your ears). Like Google? But only, it’s Bing! I can understand people exclaiming “Bingo!” every time they find something they’re looking for. But, Bing?

Anyway, like everyone else, I also tried Bing! (Sorry for repeating the word too many times—as I already said, it sounds funny to my ears )

When you go to Bing.com, besides the search engine bar, a user gets a random picture (of some significance) with information tagged to it. Good call… but I wonder how useful this idea is considering no one would stay on the homepage of a search engine more than what he takes to enter the keywords for the information he’s looking for.

This is exactly what Google understood years ago—there should be bare-minimum elements on the homepage that doesn’t distract the user from what he’s looking for. Remember the other search engine giants from the 90s—AltaVista, Lycos, Excite, et al? Where are they now? Most of them would try to bombard the user with information right on the home page, without paying much heed to the fact that user a is here, in the first place, to search for something. You got to provide that service first!

Let’s talk about the core matter here: search! Try and enter the term “Linux” in it. Do the same on Google also. Compare the results. Notice the difference?

I mean, what the heck are certifications and events doing on the first page of Bing’s search results? There’s even a link for “Linux on Laptops”! OK, so there is Ubuntu too. But, what about Red Hat and Debian? Also, compared to about.com’s definition of Linux, isn’t kernel.org more important?

It’s the search algorithm that you’re using, mate. Gotta improve it, a lot! Until then, decorating your homepage and asking users to install Silverlight if they want to check out the older home page backgrounds from your archives won’t help you one bit. Because, that’s not at all what “search” users will be looking for when they land up at Bing, if at all.

An intelectually-stimulating discussion I had with a friend from school, whom I saw online after three goddam years. Couldn’t have kept it to myself, so following is the transceipt, where PG is my friend and ML is, of couse, who else?

PG: …I have been a part of the core technical architect team for our business vertical and was one of the guys looking after our interactions with open source initiatives. I know that though the idea is noble but the motivations hardly are. But I myself stand strongly behind OS…

ML: hmm… the OSS ideals are more about business… noble it is if you look at it from the view point of FSF — fsf.org.

PG: No I understand the fact that profits make the world go round. I don’t deny it. But I wish that it wasn’t the case. I don’t demand ‘copyleft’ but I do wish there were more apaches and mozillas.

ML: The fact that copyleft makes good biz sense is what Mozilla and Apache proves. Some of the companies not hit by the global melt down are the OSS giants like Mozilla, Red Hat, et al. RH still reported hefty profits in Q4 2008

PG: Mozilla, Apache aren’t copyleft. We have been using their libraries under their licenses for ages in our group for commercial copyrighted software. I think their concept is that “Let ideas be free”. And I believe in that. If people make money off it thats a side effect. And what I am not happy with is how some companies just work towards the side effect. [That said,] I don’t strictly agree with fsf. They say ‘free as in freedom’ but then they say ‘but not unless you agree with us’. Thats not cool in my books.

ML: They simply say a software is free as in freedom if it gives the four freedoms.

PG: And which are?

ML: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html … Why do you think Mozilla and Apache licences aren’t copyleft? Just because you can use MPL and ASL licenced code with proprietary code? …It’s even easier to do it with BSD-licensed code. That’s how Apple’s Mac uses the FreeBSD userland tools so “freely” in their restrictive OSX systems. But BSD itself is a copyleft license.

PG: Hmm. Well my take on it is a bit different. How would you define copyright?

ML: oh ok… correction… MPL qualifies as weak copy-left license. ASL and BSDs are non-copyleft free licenses …Good lord this is a good discussion… I generally look at everything from the GPL point of view.

PG: Yep. Thats exatcly my perspective. I disagree with GPL because you can’t claim freedom and then say, I quote: “Copyleft is a general method for making a program or other work free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well.” Heck thats a restriction. Not freedom in my books. You can’t require things off of freedom

ML: Well freedom of speech doesn’t give you the right to go and abuse your neighbour or make false claims about them. That’s [certainly] a restriction. Or a very good example is in a free country although you’re free to do anything you see fit, but you can’t kill people as you see fit. Cuz that sort of freedom would give rise to chaos… GPL is a simple tit for tat license. That’s one of the reasons, Linux (the kernel) is miles ahead of a BSD kernel when it comes to features. Although BSD is arguably older than Linux.

PG: Well I don’t deny that GNU works. And I like what linux stands for as much as the next guy but the way I see it GNU says: “Here’s how to make noodles. You can make them for free and add whatever you like to them. But if you make “noodle soup” you have to allow others to make it for free too. Or else you can’t make noodles.”

ML: Where is that from? Anyway the point of freedom is whatever freedom you have, others should have the same freedom too. So essentially a non-copy left free license although gives you the freedom to remix or reuse it in your code, but then denies your users the same amount of freedom. That’s taking away freedom. A free society can’t work under those terms. Just like freedom of speech doesn’t give us the right to abuse our neighbours or for that matter anyone. …So, that noodle quote essentially means: pass down whatever freedom you had while making noodles to the recipients; otherwise, you’re denying them the freedom that you enjoyed.

PG: Look at it this way: Freedom needs to apply to the licensing too. The original author of the work under GPL was free to license it under whatever license they wanted. Hell they are even free to relicense their work if they want. Why take away that freedom from licensees? To be free to create is important but is the ability to do whatever you want with what you create freely is important too right? I dont think I tell someone ” Create what you want, you are free to do so. But only use it this way or else …”. Abuse is a crime. Ofcourse you cant hurt anyone in what you do. But other than that there should be no restrictions on what one does…

ML: That’s a smart thing to do… otherwise, you see companies like MS lifting freely available code, e.g. BSD’s TCPIP stack, and rolling it out as non-free software. Which means you take stuff freely from the community and give nothing back. That’s how BSD is kinda slowly evolving, because Apple is not giving anything back to the community… while Linux is evolving pretty fast. Because the licensing is making IBM, Oracle, Novell, or any other traditionally proprietary company give back. That’s softa like the ultimate free market economics. And the point to note here is you only have to give your contribution back if you release your binary to the public. If you use it in-house, it’s all yours.

PG: But then its GNU’s purpose to restrict usage of what they have created. They only want it to benefit the people they identify as worthy. Well MS does that too. MS says “he who pays me is worthy”. GNU says “he who redistributes under my terms is worthy”. Well call me a nitpicker but I don’t think that’s freedom. Neither has the right to use that term. As I said, I understand its all for profits, for MS money, for GNU contributions.

ML: It’s not GNU alone… all the big shots are in the licensing committee, including Oracle, IBM and co., with whose policies FSF most often disagrees with. But they all agree that these must be the best terms. GNU’s “he who redistributes under my terms is worthy” incidentally agrees with the 6 freedoms offered by constitutions to its citizens too.

PG: Well thats right I admit. Let me chew on that and come up with something:-). I gotta go sleep. But I am really enjoying this discussion I am having with you. This issue is pretty close to my heart. Lets continue it sometime. Maybe if you are online tomorrow?

Sure as hell, we will!

Kidnapped! I haven’t read this R.L. Stevenson book, but I know a similar plot.

…so, you kidnap a guy and ask one of his aides for ransom. This is how a typical telecon goes:

Flaming Dragon dude: We are Flaming Dragon. Speedman is with us now. For 50 million, you will get him back.

Les Grossman: This is Les Grossman. Who is this?

Flaming Dragon dude: [agitated voice] This is Flaming Dragon.

Les Grossman: Okay. Flaming Dragon. Fuckface. First, take a big step back and literally fuck your own face. Now, I don’t know what kind of pan-Pacific bullshit you’re trying to pull here, but Asia, Jack, is my territory. So whatever you’re thinking, you better think again. Otherwise, I’m gonna have to head down there, and I will rain down an ungodly fucking firestorm upon you. You’re gonna have to call the fucking United Nations and get a fucking binding resolution to keep me from fucking destroying you. I am talking scorched earth, motherfucker. I will massacre you. I will fuck you up.

[Hangs up the phone!]

Les Grossman: Could you find out who that was? Go.

That’s Tom Cruise, the studio executive behind Tropic Thunder.

Boy, September 14, 2008 is also gone! My last post here was on December 14, 2007. That makes it 9 months since I disappeared, huh? Oh well, a lot has changed in these last nine months—most importantly, I’ve got married! It’ll be five months on the 29th of this month. Who would have thought I would be hitched, eh? Kudos to me wife—the kid has a lot of patience to be putting up with the likes of me. Well, what can I say? She’s a great human being—yeah, and that’s not just because she married me of all people; but because she actually is. And, to add to that, she’s great fun to be with. By the way, that’s her on the post titled ‘imagine’.

Anyway, I haven’t been around because of a few things: didn’t have time, forgotten that I had a blog,  busy cribbing that I don’t get time for this shit anymore, etc. Got a good spanking for the wife, so back here!

So, what else is new? Nothing much, really! I still swear by music and free software. Oh and I have a new computer finally, too. It’s an assembled one. Did quite a good amount of reading up before getting it glued. Reason I didn’t go for a branded PC was because: first, I didn’t wanna pay the Winduhs tax; second, didn’t find a good enough AMD configuration to choose from the lot! Well, I dunno why, but had been wanting an AMD for the past one and a half years now. Wife had an AMD too, and she was pretty satisfied with it. Sys admin dude at work had good things to say about it too. So, I went ahead and got an Athlon X2 5600+, with each core capable of clocking at 2.8GHz. With 2GB of RAM, I’ve been happily VirtualBox*ing for a couple of months now.

By the way, in case you didn’t know, there’s a new version 2 of VirtualBox out there for grabs. [Just in case you dunno what VirtualBox is, don't expect me to spoon feed you—there's a reason I've provided you the hyperlink somewhere already.] Anyway, since I’m not really one of those geeky dudes out there, I have always been using VirtualBox over para-virt stuff like Xen. Boy, Xen is a pain for the lazy folks, hi!

For those who knew what system I used to use, would recall how I used to be a big PCLinuxOS fan. Well, that’s also past—have gone back to Mandriva, which is what I run on my work laptop. And here at home I’ve been primarily using openSUSE 11—simply, because I get to try out the latest KDE 4.1 builds. However, as soon as Mandriva 2009 comes out next month, I’ll be sold.

Anyway, I just downloaded the Amarok 2beta, but it kept crashing on me. So, thought of updating the whole KDE 4.1 stack—had v4.1.0, and now in a few minutes I shall have v4.1.1. Yes, I know, it’s only rock n’ roll. But I like it! Yes, I do. Anyway, lemme go play with for a while now! Adios!!

Oops okay! It’s already been an hour since midnight. But I got late… umm… blame it on KDE 4 RC2 man — it’s addictive! I’ve been playing with the desktop since yesterday evening, and what can I say? It’s quite classy to say the least. I installed it on my openSUSE 10.3 work laptop, and it shines like hell. I mean, okay some things aren’t working as you expect em to, but I can already tell it’s one of the best things that’s gonna come out of the Free Software world. Thanks asiego and all the others who are responsible. You make us users’ day.

Adios!!

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Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

(C) John Lennon

That’s her, by the way!
Adios!!

The song’s called Sentimental. Great song. And, awesome drumming. Swap says he read somewhere Neil Pert likes the drummer of Porcupine Tree, and I guess I kinda have an idea where Neil comes from.

Names already decided: Dolores and Keith. Standby names for the next two: Janis and Roger. But I’m having second thoughts. How about Ani and Neil? I’ll let her pick the names. Oh well, anyway…

freed.in rocked! So, am eagerly waiting for foss.in. BTW, “dot in” rocks, no? You can put a dot-in after anything and it actually makes a lot of sense. Anyway, where was I? Yeah, apart from the fact that Anesthetize is perhaps the best song in Fear of A Dark Planet, I think there’s a thin line between music and Free Software. Illusion and reality? Yeah, well… I don’t need to think about it. Both of em have some sort of connection, isn’t that’s why I got into the later? What’s the connection you ask? It’s all about ‘Freedom’ and independence.

And I don’t want dependence. Adios!!

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Hey there’s an interesting post by Aaron Seigo available here, which talks about how this is not 1997 anymore. For me it’s not 2002 anymore. In fact, when I’m made to work on Winduhs (yeah I picked that from Raj Mathur, I like totally copying stuff when I like it) I go like: ‘OMG this system is so primitive.’

So anyway, I played with KDE 4 beta 1 for a while today, and it was quite fun. I can see now how it’s gonna be a killer desktop once the final version is released. (Even that GNOME zealot Puthali might just finally switch. Yeah flame me for all I care, GNOME is sucky!) Anyway, many of the things aren’t working as they should yet. Then I’m not sure whose fault it is, as I pulled the stuff off Feisty-backports. Anyway, most of the stuff are working. By the way, Dolphin, the new file manager, rocks! Good job guys.

Okay, so I am listening to Pantera since I flipped in the evening and I dunno it’s weird, shredding calms me down I guess (tho I’m not really into Megadeth and the like). So I’ve been smoking and using her lighter to lit the ciggies every hour or so. It’s a pretty cool lighter, hi! (Okay its a regular lighter. But I think it’s cool, so sue me!) Anyway, all of a sudden I hear Planet Caraven, and I was like what the fuck is Sabbath doing in a Pantera album? But it wasn’t Sabbath. And the cover was just perfect. Good job guys!! Mushi’s bro Wasim got me into Pantera, it just took me a concert video to get into em. Wonder what’s up with Wasim. He’s a nutcase (in a good way) n’ keeps playing guitar all the time. And then would watch a video and try to figure out what the hell the guitarist is doing. and then try it himself. Oh and he’s way too cute too, even Mushi agrees. So all u chicks out there can watch out for him when he makes it big. lol!! Off the record: I’d a crush on him too.

Okies, me outta here! Adios!!

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Oh little beam
Splitting the fog and the dirt in between
Oh simplify
Like a problem you try to work out in your mind
I would almost have to ask you
It’s clumsy when said
So give me a spark I can look for instead

Photo by Tyler Craft, available under CC-by.

You gotta love this trio. Haven’t heard em? Please go to The Woods and check out the Night Light. And if it becomes all too much, you may as well Call the Doctor.

And here’s something interesting about the band itself: Both [Carrie] Brownstein and [Corin] Tucker played guitar. Although Sleater-Kinney had no bass player, both Tucker and Brownstein tuned their guitars one and a half steps down (“C# tuning”), and Tucker’s tone and style enabled her to fill the same role as a bass guitar.

FYI: The drummer in the picture is Janet Weiss. Adios!!

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Knock! Knock!!
Who’s there?
It’s me!
Me who?
They call me Flock and I’m a Social Web Browser.
Good call!

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