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Searching for root of two evils

By CompiledTimes technology Staff

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Is Microsoft tweaking a result on its MSN search-engine beta?

As of Friday, an MSN search (beta.search.msn.com) for the phrase "more evil than Satan" returned the Google home page as the first result. Back in 1999, Google made news when its engine returned Microsoft's Web site as the top result for the query "more evil than Satan himself."

Google professed innocence at the time, saying the results were legitimate. Microsoft said the same Friday.

"These results come from our algorithms, not from humans," a spokeswoman said. The same search on four other search engines — Ask.com, Dogpile, Yahoo! and Google — returned articles from CNN.com or from the Search Engine Watch Web site.

Meanwhile, news reports last week said the MSN search beta encountered glitches after its Thursday debut. Isn't that the point of being in test mode?

Halo goes apolitical

Joe Staten, cinematics director at the Bungie Studios team that created the "Halo 2" video game, irked a few supporters of President Bush recently when he was quoted in an Entertainment Weekly article as saying, "You could look at (the game's story) as a damning condemnation of the Bush administration's adventure in the Middle East."

Data on data Nearly one-third of wireless subscribers in the U.S. are expected to be using wireless data services by the end of this year, contributing to annual revenue of $4 billion. Source: Yankee Group

That generated so much criticism on Free Republic, a conservative Republican discussion site, that Staten posted a response there last week saying the game's story was nonpartisan.

Staten said the Entertainment Weekly reporter left out his closing statement: "Look, you can read anything into the story that you like — call (it) a damning condemnation of the Bush administration's adventure in the Middle East, for example. But you'd be wrong."

Three Xboxes?

Microsoft could be planning three versions of its next Xbox game console, said a report from Web magazine The Inquirer.

Two Xbox systems — one with and one without a hard drive — are tentatively scheduled to debut next fall, the report said, and a hybrid Xbox/PC that runs Windows is expected a year later.

The Inquirer said the source of its report was a slide from a presentation Microsoft gave in the U.K. this year. Microsoft would not comment on the issue Friday.

Bubble rising

Red Herring is back in print after what the magazine is calling an 18-month "hiatus."

The magazine was a hot seller during the dot-com days, when the media helped fuel the bubble. Red Herring says its Nov. 15 cover story, called "Venture Capital Gets its Buzz Back," features the "slow but steady resurgence of the venture capital business."

Glad to have you back, Red Herring.

Mad at Madison Ave.

A group of "fatherhood activists" is upset at Verizon Communications for airing a television commercial portraying a befuddled father who tries unsuccessfully to help his tech-savvy daughter with her homework on the computer, according to The Associated Press. In the ad, the man's wife tells him to leave the daughter alone and go wash the dog.

Glenn Sacks, host of a weekly radio show that airs in Seattle and Los Angeles, recently asked his listeners to complain to Verizon about the ad, the AP reported. Sacks writes on his Web site: "It is tremendously damaging to convince a boy or a girl that his or her father is an idiot or that fathers are worthless."

On the record

Acquisition: Seattle-based Qpass has acquired Altamedius, a payment-technology developer based in Dublin, Ireland.

Download, a column of news bits, observations and miscellany, is gathered by The Seattle Times technology staff. We can be reached at 206-464-2265 or biztech@seattletimes.com.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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