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I snapped a picture on my way home last night. Go Steelers!

So there have been a few big stories in Search that I thought I’d comment on. I know it’s a bit late, but really, the Steelers are going to the SuperBowl, so I’ve been preoccupied.

First, it became known about the DoJ subpoenas. Essentially, the short version is that the DoJ subpoenas query log data from the four major search players (Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Google). Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL, seeing that this could be done without revealing any PII (Personally Identifiable Information), complied, thinking this was no big deal and not worth the fight. Google, after presumably dragging their feet and trying to get out of it, finally got sued by the DoJ to comply, and promptly vowed to fight this.

Unsurprisingly, everyone is even further in love with Google, and pissed that Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL rolled over. In particular, the main issue I see is that people are worried that when the government does come by and ask for this information that does contain PII, the three named will again roll over, whereas you know Google will fight.

The other fun bit is some choice quotes from Yahoo’s CEO, Terry Semal, and CFO, Sue Decker. From the CNET article:

“We don’t think it’s reasonable to assume we’re going to gain a lot of share from Google,” Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “It’s not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search. We would be very happy to maintain our market share.”

And comments by Yahoo Chairman Terry Semel after the company posted earnings results a week ago were even more shocking in their praise of the company’s chief rival.

“Frankly, Google has done a better job than us,” Semel told the Associated Press. “It’s like we built our house first and someone came along and built an even better house.”

Certainly, Yahoo’s now trying to back off that on their blog… but really, you’ve got quotes from the CFO and CEO… synchronized gaffes?

Here’s my take on both:

The subpoena — frankly, this feels like marketing and PR to me. Not to belittle it, it’s amazing marketing and PR. There’s a ton of paranoia and fear about privacy, and while most companies are saying they protect privacy, few are actually doing anything to demonstrate they are. Standing up to the government, even on something that isn’t really involving private information, is certainly one way to demonstrate that. And when your competition doesn’t do anything, well, it isn’t a surprise that nearly everyone sees that Google as a company that stands up for people and companies like Microsoft don’t.

Welcome to 21st Century Marketing. Simply put, what has been and will continue to be one of the most important assets for Web services, be it e-commerce or search, is trust. Amazon.com solved this early on with a lot of work on credit card security (they created the Credit Card Motel - cards check in but don’t check out, and had educated customer service to talk to you when you called). B & H Photo and Video managed to be (AFAIK) the only photo outfit in New York to gain trust… the rest (including Adorama, which does business with Amazon) continue to demonstrate why they’re not to be trusted. Google is standing up to the government. What does Microsoft do here? We issue security patches on Tuesdays and make you reboot your computer. Now there’s a warm fuzzy.

And for Yahoo… well, I have no doubt that a number of their team is focused on beating Google (and keeping us at bay) and being #1. But they’ve been pushing out a ton of stuff over the past couple of years — such as Yahoo 360, acquisitions of Flickr and del.icio.us, and so on. And they have gained maybe a point or two. So I wonder if Yahoo management is now looking at Search as a cola market — the market shares are pretty well set, and while you may see a point gain or loss here and there, what really causes market shift is a different segment — e.g. people choosing water over Coke OR Pepsi. And that’s what I think Yahoo means — they’re not going to be about search, they’re going to try and be about something else and get people to move that way. Now, I don’t think that’ll work, but then again, I work for the competition.

OK… so, I’m a Steelers fan in Seattle. The good news is that it’s all football all day, at least on KJR, and they’re talking about my Steelers. The bad news is that they’re talking much more about this local team for some reason.

Seriously, it’s kinda weird to be rooting for the opposing team, especially for the Big Game. During the regular season (and they’ve met I want to say 4 times in 10 years), who cares. It’s not like this is New York or Cleveland (or even Pittsburgh!) where you’ll get pummelled for rooting against the local team. It’s Seattle, the place where they outlawed “Yankees Suck!” shirts at Safeco. But I did get some looks yesterday when I wore a Steelers black & gold reversible pullover. Some guy wearing a San Francisco Giants hat said that my Steelers logo was the last thing he wanted to see.

Hey buddy — wrong season, wrong sport, wrong league, and wrong team. Don’t go griping to me about rooting for my AFC Champion Pittsburgh Steelers while you proudly proclaim your loyalty to Barry “ROIDS!” Bonds.

It’s gonna be a fun two weeks…

Today started off well, with my Pittsburgh Steelers stomping all over Jake “The Snake” and the Denver Broncos. What was amazing was how well the Steelers shut down the Broncos defensively — 3 turnovers on Jake (technically 4, but one was on a 4th and 10 and returned for no gain, so if it wasn’t a turnover on a fumble it would have been a turnover on downs) for a 34-17 game. Big Ben looked great, and The Bus didn’t fumble the ball. Awesome game.

My daughter and I went over to Safeway, picked up a case of Rolling Rock from Latrobe, PA, and headed over to our pal Dean and Kelly’s for the Seahawks game. They also handled their opponent, the Carolina Panthers, with ease.

And now… Steelers and Seahawks. Yeah baby…

Oh, and I’m rooting for the Steelers, if anyone had thoughts I might be jumping on the local bandwagon. Loyalty!

Ok… finally have some time to write about this today. Wow, what a game. Started off on a great note (going up 14 - 3 over the Colts)… then we started getting sketchy calls and craziness in the 4th quarter. Totally lame reversal of an interception, followed by this weird no-call when Pittsburgh flinched offsides and then Indianapolis moved off-sides. Somebody should have gotten called for something. And then the amazing defensive stand, getting the ball back on 4th and Goal… only followed by a completely uncharacteristic Bettis fumble, The Tackle by Big Ben, and finally a missed 46 yard field goal. Just amazing…

Next week: Steelers at Broncos… gotta love it!

So, I picked up a new box, as I mentioned. Got it all installed and configured, put in all the apps, activated everything, even added an extra 250G scratch IDE drive (’cuz raw videos take up some space) and a 3.5″ Linkskey card reader (so I can just pop in a CF or SD card and copy it… yay!).

Then, I come in Saturday, and it’s a dead box.

But, wait, it’s all RAID… it shouldn’t be dead!

I’m not sure if a disk died (they both seem to check out) or (more likely) the SiliconImage RAID controller is bad. Luckily, there’s also an nVidia SATA RAID controller on the box, so I’m trying that one, again loading from scratch.

Still a little annoyed that this was more or less all for naught, and that I may have to RMA the motherboard… it’s gonna be such a pain to un-build everything and then re-build it, not to mention the downtime. Bah.

So… the best laid plans of mice and men. And yet another reason why RAID isn’t necessarily the answer to everything (although you’d figure MB failures would be rare…)

Hey everyone,

Hope you all had some happy holidays!

I took some well-needed time of to rest and rejuvenate, and am now ready to get back into things. One of the things I did was I bought a bunch of components to build myself a new rig… my old one was getting rather long in the tooth (a dual 600Mhz Pentium job that was rather smoking back in the day… :). Some of the things I learned from that rig (which I purchased from the fine folks at GamePC) was that quiet is ultimately more important than power. The box is a small jet engine, and the white noise in my office is far too noticable. The other two boxes I have in there that act as servers are also far too loud IMHO, so getting another powerful, expensive, and noisy box wasn’t a good idea.

This time around, I opted for quieter and not cutting edge power. I’m not playing as many games as I did, so CPU horsepower isn’t the most important thing in the world. Also, it doesn’t make sense to get the fastest CPU around just to bottle it up with slower memory or disk (which, sadly, is invariably what you’ll do with today’s components). Your computer is only as fast as the slowest component (and to think I spent 6 years in grad school for that little gem).

So, here are the specs. Everything was purchased from NewEgg, which is rapidly becoming the Amazon of computers — good prices, fast shipping. Sadly they do seem to charge too much for shipping, but such is life.

PSU SEASONIC|S12-500 RT - Retail (Qty=1,Price=$129.00)
DVD±RW | PLEXTOR PX-716AL/SW RT - Retail (Qty=1,Price=$138.99)
CASE ANTEC|P180 RT - Retail (Qty=1,Price=$124.99)
MB ASUS A8N-SLI Premium NF4SLI 939 - Retail (Qty=1,Price=$163.00)
HD 160G|ST 7K 8M SATA2 ST3160812AS - OEM (Qty=2,Price=$194.00)
CPU FAN | ZALMAN CNPS 9500 LED - Retail (Qty=1,Price=$62.99)
CPU AMD 64 |3800+ ATHLON X2 939P RT - Retail (Qty=1,Price=$322.00)
VGA GIGABYTE GV-NX66T128 6600GT RT - Retail (Qty=1,Price=$119.99)
MEM 1Gx2|CORSAI Twinx2048-3500LLPRO - Retail (Qty=1,Price=$298.00)

Extended Warranty Fee: $0.00
Subtotal: $1,552.96
TAX: $0.00
Shipping and Handling Charge**: $34.47
Total: $1,587.43

I installed Windows XP Pro SP2 on the box. This was a bit of a pain, as I had to create a floppy drive with drivers for the SATA RAID controller and didn’t buy a floppy for the box (as I can’t remember the last time I used one). Oops. So I had to steal one out of one of my Linux boxes, as looks like the floppy drive in the GamePC box is dead. D’oh!

Other than that, everything is working just fine so far. I’m looking to pick up a couple of Nexus 120mm fans for some extra cooling (without increasing the amount of noise) and ordered a Linkskey card reader for a little under $20 ($13 + $5 for S/h… still better than buying retail around here) so I can easily read SD and CF cards. So far, so good!