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There has been plenty of talk going around about the new layout for Google search results page. There is even a way to create the correct cookie and view the new page before it’s official release. Unfortunately, I’ve not had time to mess with baking any Google cookies recently so I’ve been content to read what others have to say on this subject.

Just a few minutes ago, a friend of mine — a friend on dial-up — asked me to download Blender for him. So i did a normal search in Google for “blender” and found myself looking at the new results page. I checked Digg.com to see if anyone had posted any news about an official release from Google and found nothing.

I’ve attempted to duplicate the result in MS Internet Explorer and could not. I dug deeper and found that I do have a cookie from Google, but it doesn’t match the one that has been floating around blogs all over the net. Rather strange if you ask me. Even more perplexing is that my laptop, using FF at a local coffee shop does not return the new results page for the exact same search. Just another mystery from the fine folks at Google.

• Digg.com
  • Digg.com Search
• Blogs
  • Roho’s Diary
• Flikr
  • Google Search Altered with FireFox Alpha

Tuttle, Oklahoma, located just south-west of Oklahoma City, successfully turned a minor web server problem into a national fiasco.

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The issue exploded when city manager Jerry A. Taylor emailed the development team from CentOS demanding that CentOS stop hijacking the Tuttle city web site. Johnny Hughes, a lead developer for the CentOS Linux operating system replied that CentOS was not a hacking program, but an operating system, and that Taylor should speak with his IT department about properly configuring the city’s web server.

Apparently that answer didn’t suit Taylor who went on to threaten Hughes that he would “…file a complaint with the FBI.”

Hughes displayed what some might call valor and extreme patients as he continued to explain that CentOS was an operation system not a hacking program. In total 17 emails were exchanged between the two men. Finally, Hughes decided to do some research and responded to Taylor with very specific details on who the city’s web presence provider was, his web server’s IP and who to contact. Taylor then replied stating that it was in fact not CenOS’s problem, that the problem was resolved by their Internet provider and that:

I am sorry that we had to go through the process and accusations to get the
problem resolved. It could have been resolved a lot quicker if the initial
correspondence with you provided the helpful information that was
transmitted in the last messages.
~Jerry Taylor to Johnny Hughes

There are two morals to this story.

1. Just because something happens that we don’t understand, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions and threaten people.
2. Try to have the patients of a saint like Johnny Hughes.

As all good stories go, there is more… The Register, a British news site, picked up the story on March 24th. Reporter Ashlee Vance sent a request for comment to Mr. Taylor but did not receive any response. Taylor did however email a marketing team member and had this to say:

I do not follow instructions that show up when a website that I am not familiar with appears on my computer and I do not think anyone with experience would do so either. Once the Centos site appeared on four computers at one site I contacted our web service provider. The web service provider did not know what could cause the problem and had never heard of “CentOS”. I then contacted the internet provider’s local office and was told that they did nothing to cause the problem. I checked the building’s server and found nothing relating to CentOS on the server. I was then left with only the web page email address to contact. I asked for the strange website to be removed because it blocked my City web site and I could not post public information. I only got help after threatening to contact the FBI.

Now I am being flooded with emails from CentOS users that after knowing the answer say the problem was simple. I think this is unjustified and would like for this to stop. Your website should provide useful information and be a credit to the IT world. I do not believe it should be used to incite the users. Your attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.
~Jerry Taylor to The Register Marketing Team

• City of Tuttle
  • City of Tuttle Web Site
  • City Manager Jerry A. Taylor
• CentOS
  • Entire Email Conversation
  • Type of Configuration Page Taylor Was Complaining About
• The Register
  • Oklahoma city threatens to call FBI over ‘renegade’ Linux maker
  • Oklahoma man asks Reg to turn off the internet

If you have ever witnessed a total solar eclipse, or even a partial eclipse, you know what an awesome experience it can be. But what would such an event look like from space?

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Well the boys and girls at NASA know, and even took an awesome picture.

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The shadow of the moon falls on Earth as seen from the International Space Station, 230 miles above the planet, during a total solar eclipse at about 4:50 a.m. EST March 29. This digital photo was taken by the Expedition 12 crew, who are wrapping up a six-month mission on the ISS. Visible near the shadow are portions of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea and the coast of Turkey.
~NASA

As Creative Notice’s popularity grows the number of concurrent users grows. Fortunately I’m blessed to have CN hosted on a killer server with two awesome connections to the Internet backbone. But I thought it would be prudent for me to take some preemptive precautions to be sure my readers can access CN content quickly.

Today I added automated site caching to the Word Press core that powers CN. Natively WP creates each page a users sees on the fly, that is to say each time a page is viewed WP requests the information from the database and templates and creates the page right then. Now, using caching, WP creates a static representation of the dynamic page and displays that to readers.

This dramatically reduces the amount of processing the web server must do per each request.

• WP-Cache

Star Trek fans all over the world are well aware that Klingon, a language spoken by the fictional Klingon race, has been added to the list of official languages. The reason behind this is that the author actually used linguistics rules to create a full featured language for the television series.

This fact sounds a bit more myth than reality when you first hear the news. However there are people throughout the world that actually speak Klingon as a second language.

Enter Google Klingon, the official Google search engine rewritten in Klingon.