As one would expect, there’s a lot of mindless buzz about the new “search engine by former Google employees” Cuil.com. They claim it’s the “world’s biggest search engine” and that it’s index is vastly larger than Google’s. They claim it’s indexing engine is “special” and far superior to Google.

How special? Cuil launched today, and promptly fell flat on it’s face. Hard.

A short lesson, among many today, for the people at Cuil. Don’t talk up your game until you’re positive that you can bring it. Otherwise, you just end up looking like a poser.

This is the actual headline from BBC News:

Lesbos locals lose lesbian appeal

Three residents of the Greek island of Lesbos have lost an attempt to ban the use of the word “lesbian” to describe gay women.

The residents argued that using the term in reference to gay women insulted their identity.
But an Athens court ruled there was no justification for their contention that they felt slighted, saying the word did not define the islanders’ identity.

Greeks often refer to the island as Mytilene, after its capital.

“This is a good decision for lesbians everywhere,” Vassilis Chirdaris, lawyer for the Gay and Lesbian Union of Greece, told Reuters news agency. 

Wow. Great job standing up for the important issues in the world. I assume we’ll see all of the same players next week in a story headlined “Sherbert is not ice cream - decisive win for frozen dairy enthusiasts everywhere.”

Some people have way too much free time and need a fucking hobby.

Here’s version 2 of my little Clear Recent Items OSX app, now called The Cleaner. It still quickly and easily clears the recent items from Finder menus, but now clears Firefox and Safari histories and even securely empties your Mac’s trash - all with just one click.

The Details

If Firefox is running, The Cleaner runs the Tools » Clear Private Data menu from Firefox, clearing out any items you’ve checked in Firefox’s preferences (Firefox » Preferences » Privacy » Settings). If Safari is running, The Cleaner wipes Safari’s browsing history as well and then moves on to clear all entries from Finder’s Go » Recent Folders menu as well as the Apple » Recent Items menu.

Finally, The Cleaner invokes the Secure Empty Trash command from Finder, which not only empties the trash, but “shreds” it by overwriting the deleted files with junk data. You’ve just trimmed 8 clicks down to 1.

Why do my browsers have to be running? Just to keep things simple. Chances are, you only use one or the other on a regular basis. There’s no need for The Cleaner to launch a browser if you don’t use it, and it would get rather annoying if two browsers launched every time you ran the app. So, if they’re open, they’re cleaned. If not, they’re left alone. If you’d like a version of The Cleaner that will clean closed browsers, let me know and I’ll whip one up for you.

I’ve been using The Cleaner on OSX Tiger, but it should do the trick in Leopard as well. If not, let me know.

UPDATE: tested on Leopard as well, and it’s working great.

Download

Drag The Cleaner into your dock, or invoke it with Quicksilver, then one click and all of your basics are clean

Important: access for assistive devices must be enabled for any Applescript to use your Mac’s menus. Turn it on in your System Preferences, under Universal Access.

download The Cleaner v2.0

If you use this, drop me a comment and let me know what you think.

Thanks to PixelPressIcons for making this pretty.

My government pisses me right the fuck off.

Ok, maybe “cripple” is too strong a word… unless, like me, you do a lot of audio recording and Shoutcast broadcasting, which in turn makes full and complete control of your system sound settings mandatory.

Dell “disabled the Stereo Mix/Mono Mix/Wave Out sound recording function” on laptops, with no prior notice to it’s customers. Apparently, Dell is even asking you to pay an additional $99 if you find out about it and call support to have it fixed. Gateway does the same shit. There is evidence indicating that both caved to RIAA pressure to cripple audio on these machines. What a bunch of dicks.

Here’s the article by way of Slashdot.

More reason why (1) I’ll never buy a pre-built PC and (2) will never run a Windows as my daily OS again.

Hi MSNBC, I’m glad you came to see me today. Take a seat. Thanks.

How are you? I’m fine — oh wait. No, I’m not fine. I’m pissed. I shouldn’t be pissed, but it’s so fucking simple and you just can’t seem to figure it out and it’s irritating me enough to call you in here for this little chat.

You’re not going to like hearing this, but… I don’t watch TV. I hate it, for the most part, because there’s such an abundance of utter dogshit on the air that it’s very difficult to sit through the endless parade of mind-numbingly stupid commercials just to watch a few minutes of an equally idiotic show. So, I don’t watch TV. Which means I don’t watch your shows either. That is, unless I can get shows as a video podcast or through something like hulu or Joost. These, I can stomach. I get my shows, they show me one commercial per break (tolerable) and I can watch it when I want. Simple. We all win.

Anyway, I don’t watch TV so I don’t get to see Countdown as it’s broadcast. You started putting the whole show into an audio podcast, and I was happy. I liked you for this, it earned you points. Then you decided to make the whole show a video podcast. Even better! I liked you even more for this and, more importantly for you, I was finally watching your show on a regular basis.

At least for a little while.

I was able to watch the Countdown video podcast three… maybe four times from beginning to end. Why? Because, for some reason, you - a TV network - can’t seem to figure out how to fucking record a TV show. That should include all of the audio and all of the video instead of only the first 4 minutes followed by 35 minutes of static. No. Can’t do that. It’s too hard for you, I suppose. Its been weeks, but you still can’t make sense of this technology stuff (do you recall what the MS in your name, MSNBC, stands for? I do). So what do you do? You just keep uploading the half-assed chunks of busted bullshit anyway and… what? Hope that no one would notice?

Well, I noticed the first time. And the second, and the third. At first I just thought you were settling in, getting used to this whole internet thing. Growing pains, learning curve and all that shit. The video was only half-available, or the audio cut out after the first 5 minutes never to return again… After the 10th time, I just got pissed. And here we are, MSNBC. Me pissed, and you in my office getting yelled at.

Yeah, I know it’s free, but “free” shouldn’t also mean “doesn’t work at all.” Do your techs need some cash? A tip or something to get their asses in gear to fix this, or maybe just test their work before publishing it? Because I would have flipped you a couple of bucks for the show, but now that I see how utterly impotent you are at putting together a simple podcast - no way.

No, don’t give me that “it’s complicated” bullshit. It’s simple. I do it myself on a regular basis and it’s not hard. Do you need me to send you a How-To guide? Or maybe a breakdown of the logic that should lead you remove a continually broken podcast from syndication until it’s working properly?

No?

Oh… so you’ve got a handle on all of this then? You do. Good.

Because if you don’t have it taken care of by this time next week, I’m going to have to let you go. I know, I know… you have kids and health insurance and elderly parents to take care of and blah blah blah. I guess that means you’d better get your shit together, huh?

You can go back to work now. We’ll talk again next week.

Call your representatives. It will take literally 45 seconds of your time. Enter your zip code here to find their phone numbers.

FISA on Wikipedia

Share this information with everyone you know (links below this post). Urge them to make a call and tell their friends to do the same.

And finally, the video below from Tim Ferris explaining what this FISA shit is all about and why you need to pay attention and do something about it.

What Every American Needs to Know (and Do) About FISA Before Tuesday, July 8th from Tim Ferriss on Vimeo.

Former Senator Jesse Helms, another bigoted, ignorant racist bastard who just happened to be an ultra-conservative Republican, died this morning. Normally I don’t make it a habit to spit on one’s grave before the body is even cold, but Jesse Helms is a special case for me, right alongside Jerry Falwell. Most people, even the ones we don’t like very much, deserve a certain modicum of respect upon death. Maybe not for very long, but the general rule of politeness is to wait at least until the body is in the ground. Or, as the late George Carlin said, 6 weeks. Carlin would wait 6 weeks before tearing a recently deceased asshole to shreds. Maybe he’d give Jesse Helms that same 6 week reprieve, but I won’t.

A Career of Bigotry

Over his 30 years in politics, Jesse Helms became notorious for his unabashed hatred of African Americans, gays and lesbians, and anyone else that didn’t fit the far-right conservative ideal. He lead the opposition against the creation of Martin Luther King Day, claiming King was a communist. He fought the Voting Rights act, and any desegregation. According to Helms, the University of North Carolina was the “University of Negroes and Communists”, and even went out of his way to sing “Dixie” to a fellow Senator, Carol Moseley-Braun, just because she was black. Helms told his friend in the elevator, “Watch me make her cry.” And he did. Jesse Helms fiercely opposed an amendment that would provide reparations to Japanese Americans that were sent to internment camps during World War II. And the list goes on, and on…

In Helms’ eyes, if you weren’t a heterosexual white Republican ultra-conservative, you were filth. You were subhuman, and he was unapologetic about it straight up to his death.

Some other choice comments from Jesse Helms:

“White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.”

“All Latins are volitile people. Hence, I was not surprised at the volitile reaction.”

“The New York Times and Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or a lesbian.”

Dead on the 4th of July

Keep in mind that this guy was, and is, a hero to the Republican right. It’s a safe bet that Jesse Helms’ supporters think it’s fitting that he died today - July 4th, Independence Day. They’ll say it’s symbolic of his “patriotism” and “service to the country”. I’ll agree that it’s symbolic, but for different reasons. The closed-minded old-guard is dying off - both literally and figuratively. The old, bigoted ways of thinking are running on borrowed time. The best leader they have to offer is an out of touch 72 year-old John McCain, who’s black, 47 year old opponent is kicking ass and taking names. I can think of no better way to celebrate the death of ignorance, bigotry and horribly outdated social policies than with fireworks and cheers for independence, on Independence Day.

Good riddance Jesse Helms, and thanks for your gift to the country on it’s 232nd birthday.

UPDATED: Check out version 2 here.

Maybe you’re privacy conscious. Maybe you’re a full-blown crazy person with a tinfoil hat. Or maybe you’re secretly into smurf-porn. Sometimes you want to clear the recent items and folders lists from Finder so that your mom/girlfriend/boyfriend/boss won’t be able to see that you were saving files named Gargamel-Smurfette_1-of-99.mov into a folder called giant pile of pr0n. Just for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re also a horribly lazy bastard. Four clicks is just too much effort for you to hide your shenanigans and thus keep your job/girlfriend/boyfriend. Don’t despair, my emotionally disturbed cartoon-loving friend. There is hope!

Here’s a little app called Clear Recent Items (cryptic, huh?). Drag it into your dock or invoke it with Quicksliver - use it just like any other application. It will clear your Finder’s Go » Recent Folders menu as well as the Apple » Recent Items folder. No more paranoia-induced carpal tunnel! Just one click and it all goes *poof*.

One of these days I’ll make a version that clears your browser cache and history at the same time. Until then, download and enjoy.

download Clear Recent Items v1.0

Oh, and get some professional help. I mean really, smurfs? That’s just sick.

Thanks to PixelPressIcons for making this pretty.

Funny, but not the least bit work safe (for language - sorry, no boobs).

We’re coming back from Moody’s Pub at about 11pm. The weather has turned to shit, it was really warm and humid and all of a sudden got cold and started raining heavily. As a result, the L is packed with other people who, like us, thought it would be great to take a walk to some bar with a beer garden and get shitty in the nice weather, but now have to take the L home rather than walk all the way in the rain. The L stops at the platform and the doors open. As people are leaving the train and walking by our car, we hear this…

frat boy being totally serious: “So, do you still want to pee outside?”

trixie girl behind him, drunk, but also being serious: “Yeesss!!!”