The Pensieve

Been installing various desktop search tools like the Google Desktop, Copernic (once free), Microsoft Search etc and after a few weeks / months of usage, eventually felt happier to uninstall them. One of the primary reason I need a desktop search was I needed a tool to quickly search for mails. I would seldom search for files on my machine. But one assumption that we need to keep in mind is that, these search engines are not exact. That is, the engines fetch you results, but they may not be comprehensive. The web crawling spiders that scour the web for data and index them, it is possible thet the server's index may be out of sync with respect to the actual web site as new data would have been posted after the spider index the content. In the Internet, sure, if you have a few sites missed out, it does not matter much. But desktop search apps seem to work in very similar lines. If at some time, for want of speed or to free up available memory, you stop indexing your mails or document...

Merry Christmas wishes to one and all! In other news, the partial Internet free days make me ponder on reliant we have become on these series of 'tubes' that send and receive data from various servers. This brings in light of the hassles that you may face when you become fully attached to online applications. My e-mail provider provides LDAP and is online-only. You have a plethora of online-apps that provide basic word-processing, do your taxes, view pictures and store presentations etc. If you have the cable cut, you loose access to everything. Telephone and credit card companies are urging their users to move online, to receive bills and statement alerts via e-mail rather than the traditional mail in the pretext of accessibility and saving the environment. I'm not against saving the environment, but most of us are moving towards a system where there is only one way to get informed about the various activities in life and if this one way gets disrupted, I wonder what woul...