Frank Bitterlich

Man, both that plane and that airline are just indecent.

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/08/emirates-super.html

Anybody buy me a ticket (first class, of course, how could I do without a shower on that flight?) say from Dubai to JFK?

Photograph by Kliefi. Some rights reserved.

“Alternative” is all the hype. So, of course, when Tom Costello and ex-Googly Anna Patterson created Cuil as an alternative to Google, everybody and their dog brought out the champaign. But the celebrations stalled quickly – it soon became apparent that indexing 120 billion web pages isn’t much worth if you’re not able to generate meaningful serach results from them. And spicing them up by randomly injecting porn images and other totally unrelated stuff apparently didn’t do the trick, either.

Try to search for my name, for example. While the first entry does indeed bring up my site, the shown excerpt contains text that is nowhere on my site, but Cuil makes it look as if it were. I don’t know no Helen, and I certainly wasn’t sitting with one in my living room. If Silke finds out, I’ll be in hot water - but not as much as this guy, I guess :).

And don’t get me started about confusing people by showing images that have no relevance at all next to the search results.

So it’s not such a big surprise to see that they didn’t even get their own name right. According the The Register, their agenda that “Cuil” were the Gaelic word for “knowledge” is complete bollocks. As it looks, “cuill” (close enough) is the Gaelic plural form of “coll”, which means hazelnut, and according to a legend, sid hazel nut is distantly connected to wisdom. Wow. Apparently their interpretation of that legend is as accurate as their search results.

But while I often tend to agree with the folks at The Register, I think in this case they’re wrong. Cuil isn’t pants. Cuil is nuts.

Updated 2008-08-06: Well, apparently they “fixed” their search index. Now a search for my name yields 1 (one) result.

Not bad for 120 billion indexed pages Or maybe they didn’t like criticism and kicked my site out of their index… how uncuil!

Update #2, 2008-08-08: TechCrunch has a good article about it, IMO. And someone has already created a rip-off mockery called Yuil, which was quickly renamed to “4hoursearch” (courtesy of the Cuil legal department?). The funny thing: It works 10 times better than Cuil… and you can download the source code.

Best electro/pop/ambient I’ve heard in quite some time.

After what could easily become the worlds most tragic storm desaster, with a death toll approaching the 20,000-mark quickly, the Burmese government once again shows its true face. They are killing people by blocking aid and rescue wherever they can.

The aftermath has pushed Myanmar’s normally secretive ruling military junta to ask for aid and release details of the devastation. However, the U.N. said its aid workers were still waiting for visas to enter the country.

(From CNN.com)

Still waiting for visas ? Where I live that is a criminal offence, neglect of duty to provide assistance.. I guess in their country it counts as politics. After all, who cares if some more people die by starvation or illness; it solves a couple of food problems, and if somebody asks, it was all a tragic natural event.

Next thing on the schedule is probably asking the international community for some monetary aid; after all, the governments luxury cars need some serious repairs.

These folks make me want to puke.

This is one of the most funny flightsim movies I’ve ever seen. Great work. Make sure to watch through the ending credits!