After Dave Winer linked to my post about how the new beta of Google’s desktop search lacks support for indexing non-microsoft e-mail and browser history, someone criticised my rush to judgement.

It’s a fair-point that this is a beta, but what is the point of a beta, if not to be a subject for criticism?

So, while I may ultimately be very happy with the Google Desktop Search product when it is eventually released, I remain disappointed in the beta. Google cachet aside, in its current form it is no better for me than the desktop search beta MS previewed this summer. Both tie me to MS browsers and e-mail. The fact that the MS product is as yet unavailable really doesn’t matter, because I’m not going to use either of them.

Others seem to share my wait-and-see attitude.

So, Google has finally released their desktop search product. I’d like to get excited about it, but I just can’t.

Dave Winer seems pretty excited about the fact that GDS is basically a web application in that the UI is exposed through a local webserver. This is cool, as Dave obseves, “You can use it with any browser. Right on.”

Very cool, except that there is basically no reason I’d want to use it with another browser. GDS only indexes history on IE, and only indexes e-mail in Outlook and Outlook Express. I don’t use IE, and I don’t use Outlook or Outlook express. That leaves the filesystem indexing feature, which frankly isn’t that interesting.

Most of the stuff of interest locally is either stuff in my e-mail, or stuff i’ve already seen on the web and Google won’t touch that for people like me who use something other than the dominant browser and mailreader. Of course, it could be that some clever dev at Google had the presence of mind to index Firefox cache and Thunderbird’s mail, and their marketing people just aren’t mentioning it.

It makes sense for Google to be focusing on the biggest market. Still, its dissapointing to see Google ignoring the people who are probably most likely to embrace cool new technology and evangelize it. Very very uncool.

Informed Comment : 10/01/2004 – 10/31/2004

Juan Cole truly rocks. This essay details the ample evidence of Bush’s failures at waging any sort of successful war on terrror and ends with the folowing.

The Bush administration thinks the problem is rogue states. But the real problem is radical terrorist groups. Bush has done all too little about the latter. Most of the al-Qaeda officials captured have been taken by the Pakistani military, so that this vital task has actually been outsourced. But where the Pakistani military wants to coddle an al-Qaeda-linked group, like the Army of the Prophet’s Companions, it does, and Bush seems too weak to stop it. Bush and Cheney want now to overthrow Syria and Iran, pushing them into the sort of instability we have seen in Iraq.

If you were a company that brought in terror consultants to work on this problem, and after 3 years you saw the sort of results we saw on Thursday, would you really rehire them?

I wonder about the same thing. Earlier today, I was reading a slate article about who novelists were voting for. Most were planning on voting for Kerry. But of those who were voting for Bush gave reasons that I’ve heard coming out of the mouth’s of more commonplace Bush supporters — that he had a strategy to keep us safe.

This dumbfounds me. Bush’s strategy may be sound, but at this point, its abundanty obvious that even if the strategy is a good one, the exectution is absolutely terrible and shows no signs of getting better. Why would anyone want to give him a chance to make things worse?

Schneier on Security: RFID Passports

The Bush administration is deliberately choosing a less secure technology without justification. If there were a good offsetting reason to choose that technology over a contact chip, then the choice might make sense.

Unfortunately, there is only one possible reason: The administration wants surreptitious access themselves. It wants to be able to identify people in crowds. It wants to surreptitiously pick out the Americans, and pick out the foreigners. It wants to do the very thing that it insists, despite demonstrations to the contrary, can’t be done.

USATODAY.com – Plan to air divisive film raises questions

This article gives some insight into why Sinclair is taking such a big gamble.

They seem pretty damn vulnerable. Their investors are already annoyed by this stunt. They are laden with debt and barely profitable. A hit to their revenues will be a double whammy. It will hit their stock value, the two together will hit their debt rating which will increace their cost of borrowing, which will eat further into their bottom line.

Its obvious what needs to be done.

Anthony has the scoop on how Sinclair Broadcasting, the largest owner of TV stations in the US, is forcing its stations into running an two hour anti-Kerry ad two weeks before the elections.

It’s a bold step for them to take and a very risky one. I’d suggest the proper course of action is to identify their advertisers and organize a boycott, then follow up by informing the bank analysts that cover them about the risk to their revenues.