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20050111 Tuesday January 11, 2005
Google Grab Bag Life

For some unknown reason, I found a bunch of interesting Google tidbits:

  • Ad-less Google - Get the same search results without all of the ads (and the summaries). You can also try the Scroogle interface, made by the folks at Google Watch, an anti-Google group.
     
    Is this a good idea? According to this Register news story, Daniel Brandt, of Google Watch, has a serious bug up his butt about Google's privacy issue. While the whole cookie/privacy issue is worth discussing, I don't feel that Google is unfairly profiting from "free" content, as Brandt claims. He seems to be missing that point that while the content provided to Google is free, the service they provide has value, so they are entitled to collect that value. Information is worthless if you can't find it, and Google (and other search engines) make that possible.

  • Google finds webcams - More than a week after the the story "broke" that Google could find unsecured webcams, some, but not all, have been secured. Google still finds thousands of pages with webcam controls in them, but my unscientific survey says about 1 in 10 is operational. Almost all seem to be in Japan and most point towards boring things like the street outside a building.

  • There was one more thing, but Google has become tiresome.

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January 11, 2005 06:49 PM PST Permalink | | del.icio.us technorati slashdot digg reddit facebook stumbleupon

Firefighters Rule Life

Firefighters have always been heroes, well before 9/11, but this story just continues to prove the point. Pictured at left is firefighter Alberto Ortega carrying a six month old baby across a river after they were both tossed out of a rescue raft. You can read about it here (it's the second rescue described in the story, not the tragic one), but to really appreciate it, you need to see the video. Sadly, I can't find a video feed on the web, so if anyone else has one, please post it in the comments.

What is impressive about the video is that Ortega manages to hang on to the baby, get upright, and then start walking through very deep, and very fast moving water. He's got both arms around the baby so he's only using he leg strength to keep upright. It's seriously moving stuff.

The baby suffered mild hypothermia (i.e. cold), but is expect to recover.
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January 11, 2005 12:54 PM PST Permalink | | del.icio.us technorati slashdot digg reddit facebook stumbleupon


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