Traffic has been a nightmare recently, mostly due to the weather. But worse than that is the idiots who think that the way to solve that particular problem is to pass dozens of cars using highway on-ramps and off-ramps.

Yes, they get to pass 20 cars at once, but those 20 people have to wait just a little bit longer to get home. So you save yourself 60 seconds by stealing (and that's what it is, a theft) 3 seconds from me and 19 other people.

The police should really crack down on those idiots. A couple of $100 tickets will help drivers resist the temptation to be wholly inconsiderate to others on the road.

I might have a mental illness, I'm not sure.

I got addicted to Bachelorette. Thank god she picked the sensitive one over the pretty one. Good luck to them.

And I caught "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here". Well, first of all, they sort of stretch the limit of the word celebrity. OK, Chris Judd, who's only claim to fame is that he was married to Jennifer Lopez for 5 minutes? Melissa Rivers, the daughter of a third-rate celebrity? A playboy model who is Iain Ziering's (from 90210) ex-wife? Rod Stewart's ex-wife? Ok. "I'm related or once was married to a half-celebrity" is about to begin. I swear they're probably taping this on some back lot in L.A. The jungle does not seem real.

It's interesting that they're doing it live. That's all I can say about that.

This is the second week of the diet. The second week has been a lot easier -- I wasn't feeling faint at all this week. And I managed to keep my mind off food -- no cravings.

I still haven't lost much weight -- 5 pounds only. But perhaps the biggest lasting effects from this diet are:
- a better appreciation for fruits and vegetables (I hardly ever ate them before)
- enjoying the feeling of not being full
- I'll be more careful with snacks and late-night eating

I still hope to lose weight with this thing. I'll give it one more week -- if I don't lose any more weight, I'm dropping it.

Google: a Right or a Privilege?

A few years ago, I received a tip from a friend. "You should try Google", he said, "It's amazing." The reason why it was amazing, apparently, was how relevant it's search results were. "No matter what you are searching for, there is a good chance the first few search results returned will contain exactly what you're looking for."

I tried it myself, and I had to admit, it was amazing. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I used another search engine. Relevance rules.

I was not the first to discover Google, and I sure wasn't the last. Over the past few years, Google has surprised everyone by becoming the reigning king of search engines. Remember Altavista? Or Lycos? Or HotWired? What ever happened to those guys?

Google = Power
It goes without saying that a high ranking in Google can be worth millions of dollars in advertising and Web traffic. For example, the first Web site listed in a Google search result might expect to receive ten times the Web traffic of the site in the 10th position.

Other search engines realized this fact a year or two ago, and began selling placement in their indexes, sometimes to the highest bidder in an auction. In fact, Yahoo has stopped allowing free listings in some of its business categories. You have to pay if you want to get listed in their directory. Period.

So it's no surprise that people that run commercial Web sites work very hard to get high placement in Google. They play around with different keywords, meta tags, and Web page content to try to find the magic formula. Similarly, search companies such as Google keep their magic formulas secret, to ensure their indexes continue to return the most relevant results.

Search Results Have Become Serious Business
Recently, an Oklahoma-city based company filed a lawsuit against Google because it's Web sites appear to have been intentionally "bumped down" in Google's ranking system. They are suing, in effect, to force Google to rank them higher.

What makes this case interesting, though, is the type of business that has filed the lawsuit. The plaintiff in this case is a "Web site network" that claims they have developed a system that can fool Google into ranking sites higher in its index. They sell their services to Web site operators who want their Web sites to appear near the top of Google search results.

So let me get this straight, their business is that they can trick Google into ranking sites higher? And they are suing because Google caught on to that trick and is actually ranking those sites lower? Frankly, I don't see the problem.

Who Owns Search Results?
Sure, there are those that argue that Google has no right to alter its search results. After all, it should be a level playing field where every Web operator has an equal chance to be listed in Google. No one likes to see a game where the rules are murky, and can change at any time at the whim of an unseen judge. (Well, there are exceptions to that rule. People still watch "Survivor", even though those rules keep changing when the producers don't like the results. But I digress.)

Besides, allowing Google to arbitrarily decide which Web sites gets listed in their results and which do not gives them way too much power. Who knows... they could quietly begin to filter out opinions that they don't agree with (like this one), or perhaps skew results in favor of certain business partners. This is the "information should be free" argument - let search results be unbiased and unfiltered.

But the counter-argument is that Google is popular only because it returns relevant results. If some sneaky "Web networks" figure out a way to beat that system, Google will start to return results that are less relevant to its users (you and I). If anything, Google should be suing this Oklahoma-based company for attempting to reduce the value of its business!

Google is a private company who provides the Web-surfing public with an extremely relevant search engine. That means that they have to work hard to keep out the spammers who want to try and corrupt the results, and I for one am glad they do.

© 2003 -- Scott J. Duffy
Article can be reprinted as long as I get proper credit.

Rip. Mix. The Music Industry Gets Burned.

Technology presents some interesting challenges to the traditional application of copyright law. A fierce debate is raging at this very moment over the proper boundary between our rights as consumers and the rights of copyright holders. So why is the record industry still clinging to the old business model for dear life?

Like many people, I have an extensive DVD and CD collection. I would guess that over the past two or three years, I have spent more than $1,000 on DVDs alone. I'm one of those people who see a movie in theaters, and if I enjoy it, I'll purchase the DVD when it becomes available � movie studios must love people like me.

There are several reasons that make owning the DVD attractive for me:
* The ability to watch the movie any time I wish, as many times as I wish
* The extras included in the DVD (documentaries, commentaries, out-takes, etc.)
* The quality of the experience when played on my home television and stereo system

Movie studios have nothing to fear from me. My wife and I spend $50 on the movies that we enjoy when all is said and done (which if you think about it is still way too much), and the availability of movies for download off the Internet does nothing to diminish that for us. I've sampled some of the movies available online, and if the file sizes and download times doesn't get you, the poor quality of the video and sound surely will.

Unfortunately, what is true for the movie industry is not true for the music business. Despite how impractical it is to download a movie, it is extremely practical to download music. It's fast�a song can generally be acquired in only a few minutes. It's free�illegal but free. And the quality of the end product is better than what the music companies provide.

What? How can I say the quality is better? Well, think about it like this... If I download a dozen of my favorite tunes and burn it to a single CD that I can play in my car, is that not better than having to purchase a dozen CDs, and having to be my own record DJ while I'm driving, swapping CDs after every song?

But wait, you say. You can always purchase the dozen CDs, then burn your own compilation CD of those. That's legal, right? Well, no actually. You can't even do that. So you see, the current illegal method is actually a significant improvement over the way music companies currently allow us to be able to use their music.

So how can the record industry save itself, then, when their annual sales appear to be in a free-fall in recent years? What must they do to make money, and at the same time keep control over the distribution of their music?

Well, the answer surely must involve lowering the retail cost of music. $8.99 for a CD is more than reasonable, even considering the cost to develop the artists and produce the material. $18.99 for a CD is a rip-off, pure and simple. From what I hear, the actual artists actually get the short end of the stick anyway when it comes to the production of music.

More convenient methods for digital music delivery must also be there�it is certainly true that there is no incentive to buy a CD when there is only one or two good tracks. Most CDs are used for a month or two and then sit in the CD rack never to be used again anyway.

And the freedom to do whatever we wish with the music�burn our own compilation CDs, download to MP3 player, etc.�also must exist for this model to work. The music companies are currently experimenting with their own music download services that are still quite expensive and severely restrict what you can do with the music. That won't work.

It's up to the record companies to figure out how they can make a profitable business out of this. But digital music is here to stay�no lawsuit will stop it at this point. The only question is do we have to keep stealing it, or will you make it easier for us to acquire legally?

© 2003 -- Scott J. Duffy
This article can be reprinted as long as I get proper credit.

It's interesting to see the progress that is being made in anti-spam software over the past few months.

Check out this interesting approach. The project is called POPFile, and the software supposedly does a pretty decent job of detecting spam. Not only that, but there is almost nothing spammers can do -- there is almost no way to defeat it. The program classifies the emails I receive based on the statistical probability of certain words appearing in spam. At first, I need to "train" the software by classifying my mail as either spam or not spam. It does the rest. For instance, certain words (like viagra, debt, free, diet, etc.) appear mostly in spam, so when a new mail comes in, the software can make a decent guess of whether its spam or not.

What's interesting to me, is that in the last six hours since I installed the software, I have received nothing but spam. I'm finding it hard to train it to recognize my "personal" mail, because I haven't received any this afternoon.

Yes, that's a sad story in a way. Maybe I shouldn't filter out the spam... it might be too quiet without it.

The diet is all I can think about. I have a headache that comes and goes. Today I felt faint a few times, and couldn't keep my eyes open at work. I needed a serious nap between 1pm and 2pm, and that never happens to me.

But, I'm not going to quit yet. If it works, it is worth it. Hunger is an illusion I suppose -- it's a trick your body plays on your brain. For 33 years, that little trick has caused be to go down and grab a snack at 3pm or munch on some chips or popcorn at 10pm. You can be hungry simply because you're bored. My body has been trained to expect a snack 'whenever it wants it'.

Here's the rub. In the last two days, I have been eating nothing but healthy food. I had a lovely dinner of carrots, broccoli and hot dogs (without the bun). OK, there are those who would argue that hot dogs are not healthy. But the body needs meat -- in my case, all I ever usually eat is meat. Hot dogs are as good as a chicken breast or a slice of lean beef. Let me tell you though, those hot dogs were the best tasting hot dogs I've ever had. You don't understand the tastiness of food unless you subject yourself a bit of hunger every now and then.

I feel like Homer Simpson... Mmmm... Hot Dogs...

But I digress... I have been eating carrots, cottage cheese, string beans, beets -- man oh man. This is so not me.

Mmmm... carrots...

I started a diet today. This is my first actual diet. Man, am I hungry right now!

A few months ago, I tried changing my eating habits. I switched from regular coke to diet coke. Started adding low-fat milk to my coffee and even switched from sugar to sweetener. You know, it really had no effect. I was convinced that saving 500 or so calories a day would make a big difference. But in the end, nada. Zippo. Zilch. The big goose egg.

Then I started tracking my calories. Found this cool USDA web site, and was happily entering my daily food consumption. The site actually convinced me to eat a more balanced diet -- I would go down and grab an orange juice as my afternoon snack instead of a diet coke. Drinking 1 orange juice a day brought my daily fruit intake from 0% to a decent number (50%). That lasted about a month. Again, no effect.

So this new diet is crazy. I'm eating all these weird foods at odd times, some I never eat. I had peanut butter on toast for breakfast this morning, a can of tuna for lunch, and chicken, beets and string beans for dinner. That might sound like a normal meal to you, but other than the chicken, I never eat any of those foods. Beets aren't too bad actually, never even had them before.

How the heck am I going to last 12 hours until my next meal? I am starving...