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Have you tried Copernic Desktop Search?

I ran into this issue also since I have tons of pdfs and sometimes it can take a while to find that paper you remember that mentioned HylD or ZnO. I use the search client copernic http://www.copernic.com/ . It has a serious advantage over google desktop since it gives you this handy little preview pain which is useful when sorting through results. Since I carry everything around on a hard drive, I just have the program set to index that drive (which is set to always have the same drive letter). As for versions of the program, they kind of went in a bad direction with the 2.x releases and I kept using 1.6/1.7 for a while, but recently started using the current release, 3.x and it works like a champ. Good luck.

Since you only have one person that needs to access the files I would just use Desktop Search. Personally I like Google Desktop ( http://desktop.google.com/ ) & Copernic Desktop Search ( http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/index.html ). Here is an article reviewing some of them - http://lifehacker.com/400365/five-best-desktop-search-applications.

The main thing that you need to do is OCR the documents when you scan them in (You can convert non-OCR PDFs into OCR PDFs but I don't know anything that can search them before you put text in them). On Linux the two mains ones that I know of are Tracker and Beagle (http://www.linux.com/feature/143259).

I know these are not all open source or have ewb interfaces but they are really easy to use. You just put the files in folders and point the desktop search at them. Great for someone that doesn't know a lot about computers.

And lastly I can't say enough about the stability. While I still make monthly disk images of the C: drive and have 3 months worth to go back to in case of problems,I can't honestly remember the last time I had to use it.I do remember that it was several years ago and the cause was a buggy piece of software and not the OS. Contrast that to the yearly restore I do on XP to clear out the bitrot and get the speed back up. So IMHO Win2K really was the best MSFT has ever made. It has saved me a ton of money too since I just decided to upgrade my gamer rig with a faster P4 and a 7600GT AGP rather than build a new one and have the old rig replace this 8 year old Win2K Pro machine. Because despite its age this machine is just a perfect Internet box. I have a feeling I'll be running this trusty Win2K Pro machine for many more years to come.But that is my 02c,YMMV

I have three Windows machines in addition to my Linux machines (A 733Mhz Win98SE for DOS games, A 1.1Ghz Win2K Pro For a net box, and a 3Ghz WinXP gamer rig) and Copernic kicks serious booty on all three. I've tried both the Google and MS search and they both slowed the older two to a crawl, but Copernic runs smooth as butter and only uses 2.5Mb of RAM. It doesn't even glitch on the old 733 with its measly 320MB of RAM.

For those of you who haven't tried it, you don't know what you're missing. And for those who say they don't need search, I was the same way until I tried Copernic. Being able to instantly find the paragraph I'm looking for in over 1000 docs and PDF files makes life so much easier. Anyway here is the link

http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/index.html. And could someone please tell me what the trick is to make a link just show the name? I'm a hardware and OS guy, I'm afraid HTML just isn't in my skill bag.

"So far, my experience with Vista has been mostly positive. The intergrated search is quite useful and the re working of the explorer shell is a noticeable improvement."

Better than copernic desktop search?

MS have the free Windows Desktop Search for 2000, XP, & 2003, which gives most of what Vista gives, just not built in to the start menu. If you prefer a non-Microsoft solution, Copernic (also free) is good (that's what I use). At the enterprise level, I've heard good things about X1 (though that's *not* free). I'm afraid I don't know of any open-source ones.

"Your snide attitude is a bit odd - does it make you feel good?"

Slashdotters have a chip on their shoulders. Something about being taken off the breast too soon.

Any way here's my search engine :)

Here's one thing to keep in mind. The hidden web. Search engines have improved, but a lot of content is still inaccessable.

The caveat to this method is a limited number of letters that make sense for a given app (is CTRL+SHIFT+I for IRC or IE?), and no central location to view all of your hotkeys.

The caveat to this method is a limited number of letters that make sense for a given app (is CTRL+SHIFT+I for IRC or IE?), and no central location to view all of your hotkeys.

This is just Google finally doing what Other Enterprise Search vendors have been doing for years.

Any worthwhile enterprise search has been able to search across multiple data types and sources long before this "news" by Google.

-i

I use Copernic instead of Google Desktop. I used GDS until I got a new laptop for work. Then I tried Copernic. I'm not sure if it is any better than GDS. The one aspect of Copernic I really appreciate is that it isn't integrated into my web browser. It has its own search application that looks like what I expect an indexing application to look like.

There's some data which makes sense to have categorized. Say, work by client or project, music by genre/album/artist, photo by subject or date. But at some point you get to documents which you don't need to update often or plain just don't have their own archiving system. I stick all that stuff into a "Miscellaneous" folder which is then organized by month. It's sort of a giant junk drawer. The difference is that I remember when I worked on something and I can find it pretty easily. Anything else I can just use the OS's search or an indexed-search program like Copernic Desktop Search. It's not ideal, but it works for the time being for anything that can't be categorized.

As far as a "storage crisis" that can be resolved pretty easily. With $100 you can get 200+ GB hard drives if you know where to look. By the time you fill one or two of those up, 500 GB hard drives will be that much cheaper. Or, just get in the habit of searching for files over 20MB and deleting them if you don't think you'll need them again.

As long as we’re being cheerleaders for Google and Open Source, I think Copernic does a good job of indexing email. I don’t have any trouble finding old mail or anything else in the context I’m looking for. Maybe the NARA guys could develop a large-scale version of that and add some mechanism to associate certain messages with certain events or situations.

I tried out some of the desktop search engines offered lately by increasing number of companies. I needed to index and search both local desktop/laptop drives as well as network drives. Lots of our documents are stored on network storage. To decide whether the search engine works, I tested it by searching for 2 names that can be found inside PDFs and Word documents. All files containing the names were on the network drives.

I have evaluated search engines from Copernic, Google and MSN (Microsoft). Here are the results.

Short story: MSN toolbar is the best if it does not crash your machine. Others don't work.

Long story:
Best: Microsoft has released its desktop search engine (http://toolbar.msn.com/). I have it running on my laptop. It finished indexing one network drive in 2 days. It answers the queries perfectly.

However, MSN indexer crashes my laptop every 1-2 hours. :( I will try it on different machine to see if this is caused by some issue on the laptop. I wish I could fix the crashing issue, since I like the search engine a lot.

New version of Google desktop search (http://desktop.google.com/) now allows to index any drives and directories you specify. However it has indexed only part of the network drive in almost 2 months (!). It still does not find the names I am looking for in my tests. :(

Copernic (http://www.copernic.com/) search engine. After 5 months the search engine still does not find the results in my test cases. It claims to have finished indexing, so either their indexing is buggy or their software is. I gave up on it and uninstalled it.

Would have to see what Yahoo Desktop search does, now that you mentioned it.

http://www.copernic.com/ ?

No one has posted yet, so either /. is borked or you guys are all hard at work, heh.

Reading over their developer site (http://desktop.google.com/queryapi.html), it looks like the engine still listens on the same port the first version did, so I am guessing it still sits in the middle of the Windows TCP/DNS stack so that when you go to the normal Google homepage, you see the desktop search choice, and results from your own desktop. I would rather GDS run as a process that searches my drive, listen on a port for my brower to post a search to, and then dump the results back to a browser window. The page I linked basically describes that, however without installing, I can't tell if they still incorporate themselves into their internet site.

After playing with version 1 last year, I gave http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search /Copernic DS a shot, and have been happy with it. It's fast, has its own UI so it doesn't have to hook into how Windows talks to the web to let me use it, and it indexes IM conversations (athlough you have to manually point its indexer to your chat log directory). My main complaint in memory use. At my previous job, it could take up to 120 megs of memory. Here, where I have been for only 2 months, it uses around 35.

"How does it compare to Google's desktop search?"

The best desktop search engine I've used by far is Copernic Desktop Search. I was very disappointed in Google's desktop search utility.

I map all my most used programs to hotkeys - when I press ctrl-shift-F it opens Firefox. When I press ctrl-shift-T it opens thunderbird. When I press ctrl-shift-H it opens my home directory. When I press ctrl-shift-U it opens UT2004. I have similar mappings for Doom 3, Frag Ops, Air Buccaneers as well. I love it.

Since it is built deeply into the operating system, Spotlight learns about each new file as soon as it is created, saved or downloaded.

Copernic also has this feature as of version 1.5. It can index on-the-fly when using NT/2K/XP. If you are using Outlook, it will also index your emails on-the-fly. It supports Thunderbird, but sadly doesn't do the on-the-fly indexing.

Not to knock Spotlight as I haven't tried it, but there are other systems that can do on-the-fly indexing.

Ender-

Since it is built deeply into the operating system, Spotlight learns about each new file as soon as it is created, saved or downloaded.

Copernic also has this feature as of version 1.5. It can index on-the-fly when using NT/2K/XP. If you are using Outlook, it will also index your emails on-the-fly. It supports Thunderbird, but sadly doesn't do the on-the-fly indexing.

Not to knock Spotlight as I haven't tried it, but there are other systems that can do on-the-fly indexing.

Ender-

Makes finding files or email messages a breeze.

It now supports Firefox at the least.

Here is my alternative. It is called Copernic Agent. It is a desktop application that searches multiple search engines returns the results sorted by relevance. It will then let you further refine your search by searcheing aginst the actual pages in the result list. There is a free version that is crippleware. I bought the personal version and it was my favorite tool for searching job sites when I was unemployed.

what makes WinFS better than any of the other desktop search engines now available?

Google Desktop Search
Copernic Desktop Search
X1
DocYouMeant Hound
Find Files XP

or any of the other hundreds of file search programs on Tucows. From all of the descriptions I've read, it seems totally pie in the sky. One commenter said you would go to the games library and then click on quake 3 instead of going to c:\games\quake3. Who does that anyway? You go to Start->id Software->Quake or Start->Games->Quake if you've organized them. However, if nothing else, it will at least give Intel/AMD a reason to keep making faster processors. I just hope Microsoft doesn't monopolize the desktop search space in the process.

Why use the Google Desktop search when the new Copernic Desktop Search v1.5 beta has so much more?

Comparisons:
1) Searching text files (.java, .php, .c, .h, .) is simple with Copernic Desktop Search (even v1.2) while it is a downloadable add-on in Google.
2) Music/Video/Images are both searchable and *viewable/watchable/hearable* from within CDS while it was just added in a limited capacity in GDS.
3) Thunderbird and Eudora both searchable in CDS and Thunderbird just added in GDS.
4) Smart indexing of *network drives* in CDS 1.5 beta is totally awesome. It is amazing to see what you have instant access to on your corporate network in terms of internally searchable code files and business docs.
5) CDS 1.5 beta searches iTunes, QuickTime and OGG information (artist, album, etc) while GDS is likely more limited.
6) CDS 1.5 has targeted search (search email first, or files first, etc.) while GDS has been known to choose it's own path.
7) The GDS killer IMHO - preview of every major filetype is within the actual CDS search...like DOC, XLS, PPT, HTM, Email, code files and also highlighting search terms in different colors showing their context.

Prove me wrong after you download it and try it (for free of course).

The ability to search PDF's seems like it could be useful if it is actually searching inside the PDF. I haven't actually seen another Windows based tool do that[...]

Copernic http://www.copernic.com/ is a pretty nice program which can do just that. After GDS came out, I tried it, but one of the abilities which I needed, and which it didn't provide, was the ability to search within PDFs.
There are other things I don't especially like about Copernic, but all-in-all it's handy, and fast. I'll have to try out this new version of Google's search, though!

Did you start using it just because it had the Google name? I did, and after using it for a little while decided to see what else is out there. Turns out I like Copernic Desktop Search better, and so did many of the reviews I read. Google rocks, but don't forget there are others too, and they might even be doing it better! Not likely, but still....

http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search /download.html

Copernic's Privacy Policy reveals that, "Copernic Technologies, Inc. works with third parties that transmit advertisements to the Copernic Agent and Copernic Desktop Search product families and Copernic Meta."

Advantages of Copernic:

1. Google desktop search is strictly not for commercial use (For commercial use, you need to buy a Google appliance) (I wrote to them to find out if this prohibits any use in a commercial setting such as on an employer's computer and they did not reply)
2. Google desktop search does not index PDF files
3. Google desktop search does not do partial word matches (huge disadvantage when you have filenames which are just concatenated words with no spaces)
4. n GDS, you get to exclude folder that you do not want to index, in Copernic, you get to include folders that you want to index. I prefer the "index only when asked to do so explicitly" option.
5. GDS will not index mapped network drives except for files that you actually open and use after installing GDS
6. Unlike GDS, Copernic will index outlook email attachments also
7. Copernic gives a real time preview of the matched area as you highlight each search result line

I am sure GDS will be a great tool someday. For now, Copernic offers better options. And now that GDS is here, Copernic is free! Competition is always good for the end user!

-Adi.

Advantages of Copernic:

1. Google desktop search is strictly not for commercial use (For commercial use, you need to buy a Google appliance) (I wrote to them to find out if this prohibits any use in a commercial setting such as on an employer's computer and they did not reply)
2. Google desktop search does not index PDF files
3. Google desktop search does not do partial word matches (huge disadvantage when you have filenames which are just concatenated words with no spaces)
4. n GDS, you get to exclude folder that you do not want to index, in Copernic, you get to include folders that you want to index. I prefer the "index only when asked to do so explicitly" option.
5. GDS will not index mapped network drives except for files that you actually open and use after installing GDS
6. Unlike GDS, Copernic will index outlook email attachments also
7. Copernic gives a real time preview of the matched area as you highlight each search result line

I am sure GDS will be a great tool someday. For now, Copernic offers better options. And now that GDS is here, Copernic is free! Competition is always good for the end user!

-Adi.

Well, if we're talking alternatives then check out Copernic http://www.copernic.com/ A lot better than Googles deskbar - especially if you're moving your files around.

Yahoo! has licensed the X1 search software for Windows from tech incubator Idealab, in an attempt to compete both with Google's browser-based desktop search download, and the current leader Copernic.

Copernic already does everything this does, for free. It also searches web history, and supports Firefox.

Well, if we're talking alternatives then check out Copernic http://www.copernic.com/ A lot better than Googles deskbar - especially if you're moving your files around.

Maybe because Google doesn't actually have a monopoly in any of the product areas they compete in? Are you really going to argue that Google is the sole provider of email, online advertising, or desktop searching? The only area in which you may have a point is search engines (even though there are plenty of alternatives there, too). But guess what? It's not illegal to have a monopoly unless you use anti-competitive practices to acquire or maintain it. Since Google by all accounts has done nothing wrong, nobody is complaining.

copernic is going to charge for their desktop search...does this mean they're toast? or are the products sufficiently differenciated to leave room for a free one and a for-fee one?

meanwhile, copernic http://copernic.com/ has a server version too.

Copernic Desktop Search http://www.copernic.com/ is also free and pretty good too.

Hierarchical filesystems rely on users being able to organize their own data, remembering where they put it, and being able to navigate to it quickly. In reality, this has turned out to be a pain more than anything else. Not all files are easily categorizable, and not all users have their own schemes to keep their files in relevant places. Further, some files can easily fit into two or three different categories, but hierarchical filesystems only allow the file to exist in one place.

There have been numerous hacks to get around this problem: aliases/shortcuts, application and file launchers, the start menu, drawers, etc. Each way is essentially trying to overcome the limits of a hierarchical system.

When the internet was developing, top-level domains helped distinguish different types of content. Domains and sub-domains further helped. When those became too many to deal with, Web directories like Yahoo! became popular in an attempt to categorize and separate content. This is essentially a hierarchical filesystem for the internet. Then Google's innovation was that you didn't have to use a filesystem, you could just search the content and its relationships to find what you wanted. No filesystem is needed: you don't really need bookmarks or directories if you have Google, you just search for whatever you want.

Now, computing companies realize that the same idea applies to the desktop: the hierarchical filesystem is badly broken, and has been ever since people had to start inventing hack after hack to make it more tolerable. File searching was always a kind of last resort for OS writers. Microsoft focused all its efforts on making IE its filebrowser, instead of making a filesystem that's actualyl usable. Now companies realize what the next stage is: Apple has Spotlight, Launchbar, Quicksilver, and Butler; Windows has Google Desktop and Copernic; Linux has the always reliable grep.

It may take one of two more iterations of OSes, but I predict that when you boot up your OS, the first thing you see will not be a desktop of icons and a hierarchical filebrower. Your OS will have one simple interface: a search field. Just like Google's internet search, the OS will have one simply interfact. Only on the desktop, the OS can make the search results appear in realtime, categorize them more efficiently with metadata (which won't be spoofed in the same manner Web metadata was), and be able to launch or alter the files from the search results.

Things to look for: Apple's 10.4 Tiger OS now features Spotlight, but that finder search tool takes an auxiliary position in the UI. By 10.5, look for Spotlight to take the central position away from the Finder/Dock and become the primary instrument for using the OS. Launchbar has already done this to my computer-use habits, and I'm still using 10.3 Panther. If an when WinFS ever surfaces, look for it to transform the Windows desktop in the same manner.

There is already a free program that does this... Copernic Desktop Search. It lets you search PDFs also, and all text files regardless of file extension, and also searches the names and meta info of non-text files. It can run as a toolbar in your Windows taskbar. Quite customizable, and very fast.

Desktop searching is less useful than you might imagine. Truly losing track of a local document is not as common as, say, losing track of an image--now there's a hard search problem! This is where Google has the real edge over Copernic: http://www.copernic.com/ By integrating with their browser tools, Google causes every GDS search to automatically incorporate desktop results, rolled-up, at the top of the returned Google page. You see *both* local and global results for everything you look-up. This reinforces the utility of local search every time you use Google, where Copernic just sits there on the taskbar, waiting for the occasional use. So does GDS, but I'll wager you'll rarely use it. Compared to the number of times you web search and are surprised to see local hits incorporated in the return, local search will be insignificant. Reinforcement of utility is important to adoption. Even if you don't mean to, getting local drive results every time you Google will feel gratifying. Advice to Copernic: sell out to Yahoo now.

It also sounds like Copernic Desktop Search; I tried this briefly but wasn't overly impressed.
For just finding files in Windows try Locate. Works pretty well.

It can be downloaded here: http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search /index.html Some not so free ones are X1 Search and dtSearch.

• We need an ontology that will cover many if not all aspect of human experience. And this experience has been evolving dramatically and will continue to evolve. This ontology is probably a moving target. This task alone of creating the ontology has been, and is still the holy grail of AI and Knowledge Management.
• The amount of time we will have to invest in adding metadata to the data will dramatically increase over time. We will need a way to automate the filling of the metadata layer. This is where kicks in automatic image recognition and classification, speech to text, text summarizer and meaning extractor (Here, Copernic is is the right direction). Maybe the librarian profession will be the next hot job...
• Almost every application will have to adapt and inter-communicate. No big deal, RDF will probably become the new data bus anyway.

Hey guys, sorry for the repost! I know this is bad, no TERRIBLE netiquette. But it was attached to a story that only garnered 9 comments, but I really think that more people should know and think about this stuff. I hope the same thing doesn't happen to this story, or my name'll really be mud! :D



A couple of years ago at the last "HOPE" conference was the first time I heard of this idea of the "deep web". This year's shindig is happening July 9th through the 11th. I wonder if chosing those those dates was merely a coincidence this...

The topic was something called "Hacking National Security" in wchich the speaker, Robert Steele, first brought up this concept and mentioned what he described as a "deep web search engine" called Copernic. However, I've found that product (there is a free variant) basically queries a list of different search engines. This is not what I would consider a "deep web search" now that I have learned a little more about the term. But that was the first I'd heard of it.

Robert Steele can be forgiven for being a bit technically naive. Because his specialty is National Security and not technology. But he had a lot to say that was of salient interest to technology minded folks. Why else would he have had a panel discussion at a hacker conference?

What I learned from him is that search engines like google and others only are able to skim roughly 5% of the total content of the web. Everything underneath that 5% is the "Deep Web". This is what he claimed the global terror networks are using to communicate with each other. And, most alarmingly, that the NSA - Amerca's Information Processing branch of the government was COMPLETELY ill equiped, even ignorant of terror groups freely trafficking their plans on the web. Talk about our most "advanced" information processing governmental body! Note the lack of a CNAME entry in their DNS record! Don't forget the "www" now! yeesh! At any rate I read an interesting book about them way back in the 80s called The Puzzle Palace. But I'm sure it's way dated by now. I read it way back in 87. Did you know that they are roughly 3 times the size and girth of the CIA...and yet hardly any of the lay populace seems to have heard of them! I once dated a "know it all" (how do you ever learn anything if you already "know it all"?) bad-poetry, arty farty girlfriend who claimed that I was "making the whole thing up" when I tried explaining to her about the NSA! May I say again, "yeesh"? Literally COULD NOT convince her otherwise...I digress...

Now hold on a minute here! Just how dated would you suppose that book to have been? One of Robert Steele's pet peeves was the extreme datedness of NSA tecnology. Being a government agency (FLAGSHIP of intelligence agencies!) a good hunk of their computer technology dated back to the 70s. This was still the case as of 2002, mind you, and if I understood him correctly.

Now, another of his compaints was the lack of native speakers hired by the agency. That is, instead of hiring a native Pashto speaker, they will instead almost unerringly hire the "blond haired, blue eyed, cocky midwestern jock" (his words not mine)

Hey guys, sorry for the repost! I know this is bad, no TERRIBLE netiquette. But it was attached to a story that only garnered 9 comments, but I really think that more people should know and think about this stuff. I hope the same thing doesn't happen to this story, or my name'll really be mud! :D



A couple of years ago at the last "HOPE" conference was the first time I heard of this idea of the "deep web". This year's shindig is happening July 9th through the 11th. I wonder if chosing those those dates was merely a coincidence this...

The topic was something called "Hacking National Security" in wchich the speaker, Robert Steele, first brought up this concept and mentioned what he described as a "deep web search engine" called Copernic. However, I've found that product (there is a free variant) basically queries a list of different search engines. This is not what I would consider a "deep web search" now that I have learned a little more about the term. But that was the first I'd heard of it.

Robert Steele can be forgiven for being a bit technically naive. Because his specialty is National Security and not technology. But he had a lot to say that was of salient interest to technology minded folks. Why else would he have had a panel discussion at a hacker conference?

What I learned from him is that search engines like google and others only are able to skim roughly 5% of the total content of the web. Everything underneath that 5% is the "Deep Web". This is what he claimed the global terror networks are using to communicate with each other. And, most alarmingly, that the NSA - Amerca's Information Processing branch of the government was COMPLETELY ill equiped, even ignorant of terror groups freely trafficking their plans on the web. Talk about our most "advanced" information processing governmental body! Note the lack of a CNAME entry in their DNS record! Don't forget the "www" now! yeesh! At any rate I read an interesting book about them way back in the 80s called The Puzzle Palace. But I'm sure it's way dated by now. I read it way back in 87. Did you know that they are roughly 3 times the size and girth of the CIA...and yet hardly any of the lay populace seems to have heard of them! I once dated a "know it all" (how do you ever learn anything if you already "know it all"?) bad-poetry, arty farty girlfriend who claimed that I was "making the whole thing up" when I tried explaining to her about the NSA! May I say again, "yeesh"? Literally COULD NOT convince her otherwise...I digress...

Now hold on a minute here! Just how dated would you suppose that book to have been? One of Robert Steele's pet peeves was the extreme datedness of NSA tecnology. Being a government agency (FLAGSHIP of intelligence agencies!) a good hunk of their computer technology dated back to the 70s. This was still the case as of 2002, mind you, and if I understood him correctly.

Now, another of his compaints was the lack of native speakers hired by the agency. That is, instead of hiring a native Pashto speaker, they will instead almost unerringly hire the "blond haired, blue eyed, cocky midwestern jock" (his words not mine)

A couple of years ago at the last "HOPE" conference (this year's is happening July 9-11, this summer) was the first time I heard of this idea of the "deep web".

The topic was something called "Hacking National Security" in wchich the speaker, Robert Steele, first brought up this concept and mentioned what he described as a "deep web search engine" called Copernic. However, I've found that product (there is a free variant) is basically queries a list of different search engines. This is not what I would consider a "deep web search" now that I have learned a little more about the term. But that was the first I'd heard of it.

Robert Steele can be forgiven for being a bit technically naive. Because his specialty is National Security and not technology. But he had a lot to say that was of salient interest to technology minded folks. Why else would he have had a panel discussion at a hacker conference?

What I learned from him is that search engines like google and others only are able to skim roughly 5% of the total content of the web. Everything underneath that 5% is the "Deep Web". This is what he claimed the global terror networks are using to communicate with each other. And, most alarmingly, that the NSA - Amerca's Information Processing branch of the government was COMPLETELY ill equiped, even ignorant of terror groups freely trafficking their plans on the web. Talk about our most "advanced" information processing governmental body! Note the lack of a CNAME entry in their DNS record! Don't forget the "www" now! yeesh! At any rate I read an interesting book about them way back in the 80s called The Puzzle Palace. But I'm sure it's way dated by now. I read it way back in 87. Did you know that they are roughly 3 times the size and girth of the CIA...and yet hardly any of the lay populace seems to have heard of them! I once dated a "know it all" (how do you ever learn anything if you already "know it all"?) bad-poetry, arty farty girlfriend who claimed that I was "making the whole thing up" when I tried explaining to her about the NSA! May I say again, "yeesh"? Literally COULD NOT convince her otherwise...I digress...

Now hold on a minute here! Just how dated would you suppose that book to have been? One of Robert Steele's pet peeves was the extreme datedness of NSA tecnology. Being a government agency (FLAGSHIP of intelligence agencies!) a good hunk of their computer technology dated back to the 70s. This was still the case as of 2002, mind you, and if I understood him correctly.

Now, another of his compaints was the lack of native speakers hired by the agency. That is, instead of hiring a native Pashto speaker, they will instead almost unerringly hire the "blond haired, blue eyed, cocky midwestern jock" (his words not mine) with a degree from an Ivy League school in linguistics who has a generalists knowledge. What's wrong with a young PHD in linguistics tending to these matters? According to Mr Steele that even the best generalists knowledge will not catch the flavor or nuance of language spoken on the terror sites. What's lost in the translation? Not much...if you don't count our National Security.

Also according to him, the "terrorist community" (I know that's an over-used term in this day and age...please try to bear with me, here) knows this and thrives doing so.

One major point of contention he had wa

A couple of years ago at the last "HOPE" conference (this year's is happening July 9-11, this summer) was the first time I heard of this idea of the "deep web".

The topic was something called "Hacking National Security" in wchich the speaker, Robert Steele, first brought up this concept and mentioned what he described as a "deep web search engine" called Copernic. However, I've found that product (there is a free variant) is basically queries a list of different search engines. This is not what I would consider a "deep web search" now that I have learned a little more about the term. But that was the first I'd heard of it.

Robert Steele can be forgiven for being a bit technically naive. Because his specialty is National Security and not technology. But he had a lot to say that was of salient interest to technology minded folks. Why else would he have had a panel discussion at a hacker conference?

What I learned from him is that search engines like google and others only are able to skim roughly 5% of the total content of the web. Everything underneath that 5% is the "Deep Web". This is what he claimed the global terror networks are using to communicate with each other. And, most alarmingly, that the NSA - Amerca's Information Processing branch of the government was COMPLETELY ill equiped, even ignorant of terror groups freely trafficking their plans on the web. Talk about our most "advanced" information processing governmental body! Note the lack of a CNAME entry in their DNS record! Don't forget the "www" now! yeesh! At any rate I read an interesting book about them way back in the 80s called The Puzzle Palace. But I'm sure it's way dated by now. I read it way back in 87. Did you know that they are roughly 3 times the size and girth of the CIA...and yet hardly any of the lay populace seems to have heard of them! I once dated a "know it all" (how do you ever learn anything if you already "know it all"?) bad-poetry, arty farty girlfriend who claimed that I was "making the whole thing up" when I tried explaining to her about the NSA! May I say again, "yeesh"? Literally COULD NOT convince her otherwise...I digress...

Now hold on a minute here! Just how dated would you suppose that book to have been? One of Robert Steele's pet peeves was the extreme datedness of NSA tecnology. Being a government agency (FLAGSHIP of intelligence agencies!) a good hunk of their computer technology dated back to the 70s. This was still the case as of 2002, mind you, and if I understood him correctly.

Now, another of his compaints was the lack of native speakers hired by the agency. That is, instead of hiring a native Pashto speaker, they will instead almost unerringly hire the "blond haired, blue eyed, cocky midwestern jock" (his words not mine) with a degree from an Ivy League school in linguistics who has a generalists knowledge. What's wrong with a young PHD in linguistics tending to these matters? According to Mr Steele that even the best generalists knowledge will not catch the flavor or nuance of language spoken on the terror sites. What's lost in the translation? Not much...if you don't count our National Security.

Also according to him, the "terrorist community" (I know that's an over-used term in this day and age...please try to bear with me, here) knows this and thrives doing so.

One major point of contention he had wa

and for Linux - postfix, squirrelmail, screen, apache, mysql, squid, php, courier-imap, rsync, cvs - in no particular order

posted this list at my blog too - First Ten Programs

Copernic still exists... They offer a meta-searching APP called Copernic Agent, available in free and pay-for versions.

A few years back (1999) my wife stepped on our brand new notebook computer with a 15 inch LCD. Guess what--the LCD cracked--and this is when she only weighed 105, but I digress. I couldn't freakin' believe it. (At least the backlight still worked.) Removing many sticky hole-covers and small screws, I took apart the notebook and on the back of the broken display was a sticker with the Samsung part number. Google wasn't around, or I didn't know about it, so I used Copernic to search the web for a new LCD with no luck. Since I'm an electrical engineer, I called my local Samsung rep to get the datasheet and pricing. Even though the computer was only a few months old, Samsung had already discontinued the LCD and was on to version 2 with a different form and fit. I got the datasheet, but couldn't buy a new display. So I ended up sending the computer back to Dell for a replacement LCD and it cost about $850. Ouch! I wish there had been an online used LCD swap-meet back then. Moral of the story--don't trash your old but still working LCD's. At least give'em to some sleezy used LCD salesman to resell to poor bastards like me.