Monday, August 08, 2005

Yahoo passes Google

Daniel Terdiman:

When most people think of Web search, they think of Google. But Yahoo said Monday that it has completed a vast expansion of its search engine index and now encompasses almost double that of its main competitor.

Yahoo’s Tim Mayer said Monday on the company’s Search Blog that it now indexes more than 20 billion documents and images. That’s almost twice the 11.3 billion Google publicly says it currently spans.

Pirro’s made it official

Today Jeanine Pirro got in the race:

“I am running against Hillary Clinton because New York State deserves a senator who will give her all to the people of New York for a full term, who will not miss votes to campaign in (presidential) primaries,” Ms. Pirro said in a statement.

I refer back to my perfect storm post:

Hillary will blow her away… I was still working up in Westchester when all hell broke loose for Jeanine. She’s a rich downstate elitist Republican stereotype (NY version, so pro-choice) who one ups Hillary on every baggage point: Monica? Al Pirro has an illegitimate daughter they tried to deny for 3 years before a court-ordered DNA test stopped the lying. Impeachment? Indictment. Conviction. Lingering questions. [links died--darned internets--and I’m too lazy to go find them again]

I take no pleasure in Pirro’s personal problems. But they do work to mitigate issues that others might like to throw at Hillary. So now they can debate the issues.

As to the issue she raises in her annoucement quote above, I haven’t seen any recent polls, but I read the Quinnipiac Poll in May ("65% approval rating, 64% say she’s honest and trustworthy, 74% that she has strong leadership qualities, 65% that she cares about their problems") as New York Dems want Hillary in ‘08.

Participatory Culture

I’ll be trying this out:

On Tuesday, an organization called the Participatory Culture Foundation--an offshoot of the peer-to-peer activist Downhill Battle group--will launch the first beta version of its DTV software, an application that will collect and distribute independent video online.

Its first version, for Apple Computer’s Macintosh computers, will have the clean lines of iTunes, and full-screen video, all based on BitTorrent technology. Though most of the initial content will be video blogs and independent media, the group also has an agreement to distribute programming from former Vice President Al Gore’s new television operation, Channel.tv.

“We think that online video needs a home base,” said David Moore, the foundation’s director of outreach, explaining his group’s development project. “It needs an iTunes.”

Anyone will be able to publish into the system, by using tools the foundation already produces for turning video into fast-downloading BitTorrent files, he said. A Windows version of the software will be available later in the year.

Regular readers could be wondering what ever happened to my video blogging promise. In a word, TIME!

I’m old school, I want content consistent with what’s found here and that takes time. I’ve got a good amount of video, and more on the drawing board.

But the real time gobbler is finding out how to host it, deliver it and link to it. I’m still working on it; and looking forward to it.

PFLAG Statement on LIA/R

I missed the PFLAG statement on the release of Zach from a couple weeks back. If you already saw it, it’s worth reading again.

From an organization of “families who have faced these very issues in our own lives,” the statement says we must “give Zach and his family the space and privacy they need to deal with this situation.”

It also says that reparative therapy programs should not be allowed to “prosper unchallenged” and that the industry “uses disproved medical theories” and “preys upon those in pain and confusion:”

Mary Lou Wallner and her husband Bob know the damage of “reparative therapy” all too well. Speaking at a recent PFLAG conference in Bothell, Washington, Mary Lou told the audience that her reaction when her daughter came out was based on the teachings of Dr. James Dobson, a leading “reparative therapy” proponent. “I raised my kids on Dobson. I read his books and listened to his radio broadcasts for years. In December of 1988, when she was about 21 years old, my daughter wrote us a letter and told us that she was a lesbian. I flipped out and…the next nine years were pretty stormy. Then in February of 1997, at age 29, she committed suicide.”

“Looking back, I think a lot of it had to do with the way I taught her about homosexuality. I have since come to understand that almost anybody gets depressed if they can’t be who they really are.”

Like the Wallners, Zach’s parents and other parents considering “reparative therapy” only want the best for their children. However, PFLAG families and our allies must re-double our efforts to educate about the dangers and alternatives to this soundly discredited “treatment.”

Via Republic of T.