“The complaint says that Vista’s indexing service cannot easily be turned off and creates a drag on system resources when operating at the same time as rival indexers, like the one in Google Desktop Search. Google argues that this behavior is anticompetitive”

-via ars technica

Google is over doing it this time. This is absurd and the complaint will be throw out. Vista search performance and UI is better, if you using XP use Google desktop search, on Vista the in-built search is excellent. I see no reason why Microsoft should provide alternatives, it is their OS.

So they should give an option for every 3rd party app. that is out there? All that will be left is the core system programs and explorer, wait there will be a 3rd party explorer too! Rubbish!

Why is it when Microsoft adds anything to their operating system it’s anti-competitive, but when anyone else adds to theirs it’s a feature?

Well ask Google to provide search alternatives like ask.com and Live Search on their page or stop whining and start build their own freaking OS! I guess their ‘Don’t be Evil’ motto is still beta.

Ask.com’s recent relaunch seems to have built upon a prototype called Ask X.

If you look at the Ask X’s search field it is shockingly similar to Microsoft’s Live Search.

Mirroring the Search (Zoom) glass the other way round doesn’t really count as original design now does it?

Or is it the other way round?

A story which was #1 on Reddit’s homepage apparently loaded a Trojan onto your computer. The story titled “IN 1985 New Zealand eliminated agricultural subsidies. What happens next?” has now been deleted from Reddit after a Reddit user made other users aware of it by submitting the headline below:

Reddi users be careful. The current #1 item on the home page (about the New Zealand agricultural subsidies) loads a trojan on your computer. I just confirmed this on three seperate PCs. Click on the link to read more about the Trojan in the comments section. It does make you wonder how the story reached the front page in the first place!

Google News gave me such a terrible summary and definetly not related to the article. Looks like they are trying to integrate adsense to their news story? (jk)

A story that contained a HD-DVD encryption key was submitted to Digg. After it made it to the front page, the site moderators took it down.

Another user posted the number with the title as, ‘The number.Again’. It made it to the front page in record time. That story was taken down as well. Why?

“We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention.” (Digg Blog)

 What followed totally blew away anything that I have ever seen before. The power of the mob!

Digg was flooded with the HD-DVD stories containing the encryption key and 100 percent of the front page popular stories were on it. We all know how much Diggers hate MPAA and the RIAA and this censoring by Digg caused an uproar and a ‘revolt’. There was also a link made between HD-DVD and Kevin Rose’s Podcast, Diggnation. HD-DVD sponsors this podcast and many Diggers believe that this may be the reason Kevin caved in and moderated the stories.

Kevin Rose, usually loved by all his users has never seen this side of them. He is trying to win back the mob and this is what he blogged:

Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0

Yes! The encryption Key…

Here is what he had to say:

“Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…

In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Digg on,

Kevin”

I personally feel that a number cannot be a copyright infringement. It was the key that protected the copyrights and not the copyright itself! There are so many comments on Digg that I was p*ssing myself laughing. Everyone is trying to get the number up there on digg, let it be through submiting stories, via comments and even pictures! Click here for an example.

Wow! This is what I call the 21st Century Digital Revolt. I think soon the MPAA and RIAA will realise that DRM doesn’t work anymore.

A ‘Target’ Store sold an Elite too early. They are officially going to be released around 29th April ‘07 in the U.S.

(Picture Source)

“The Algorithm is banned from China.”

“The Algorithm is from Jersey.”

“The Algorithm Constantly finds Jesus.”

“The Algorithm killed Jeeves.”

You might have seen these lines on billboards in the US and wondered wtf do they mean? Even I don’t know wtf they are supposed to mean but it is a bizzare advert campaign by Ask.com in which they kill their own mascot Jeeves?

I searched for “The Algorithm Constantly finds Jesus.” on Ask.com and I did not get any meaningful results but when I Googled for it, I did get a few good results. So I can safetly declare that The Algorithm can’t find The Algorithm or The Algorithm needs to find a new Ad-Agency!

Drop me a line via a comment or email me: d [at] liveandbeyond dot com if you know the purpose or logic behind these ads.

Oh, wait! I am talking and blogging about Ask.com and did a search too, so is that the purpose? Mission accomplished!?

I was on Gizmodo today and the layout was all over the place and messed up. On IE and yes on FF too. (Worse on IE)

A few Screenshots:

All the entries made on April 9, 2007 appear twice along with Gizmodo Banner and header adverts. The cloned entries at the bottom seem to be all jumbled up, especially on IE 7. Is this just on my PC or yours too?
Okay, back to blogging…

(Another reason to switch to Firefox? It renders well even when the layout of the site is screwed up!)

Someone decided to have fun with the king of Thailand and YouTube got banned from the whole country.

Here is the link to the video that caused the ban. The video now seems to have been removed by the uploader (or by YouTube?)

So, now that it is gone, will Thailand unblock YouTube or leave the ban in effect?

psst.. anyone got a spare copy of that video? Upload it to Google Video, will that get it banned too? Ridiculous!

If YouTube is still blocked in Thailand you can use YouTubeProxy to access your lonelygirl15 videos.