Slashdot Mirror

its all about http://www.askjeeves.com/ !!

The real issue comes when someone uses *GASP* another search engine. Yes, there are alternatives and this could justify them to block google due to their own, probably similar rules on keyword spamming.

Perhaps these are just very generalized search engine enhancement...but I think it's a new way of thinking that will become very important over the next decade as facilitating technologies mature.

Results:

So Yahoo is paying Salon to make sure everybody knows they are still in the search biz and don't you forget it... Sure that little search company Google is IPO'ing soon and everybody from Mamma to Ask Jeeves is having their stocks party like it is 1999, but don't you forget about good old Yahoo, I mean we have the deep web tech...

I asked Jeeves and got:

Refine Your Search
How do I cite references from the Internet?
Search for "Is the internet my source of knowledge?" on other sites:

sponsored by SMARTpages.com

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Google community when IDC confirmed that Google market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web searches. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Google has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Google is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by Yahoo's failure to renew its exclusive deal with Google.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Google's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Google faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Google because Google is dying. Things are looking very bad for Google. As many of us are already aware, Google continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Google search is the most endangered of them all, having lost most of its core affiliates. The sudden and unpleasant departures of Yahoo and AOL only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Google is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Google.com founder Sergey Brin states that there are 7000 users of Google. How many users of Verity are there? Let's see. The number of Google versus Verity posts on USENET is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Verity users. AskJeeves posts on USENET are about half of the volume of Verity posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Inktomi. A recent article put Teoma at about 80 percent of the search engine market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Google users. This is consistent with the number of Google USENET posts.

Due to the troubles of Google News, abysmal sales and so on, Google is going out of business and will probably be taken over by idealab! who operate another troubled search engine. Now Inktomi is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Google has steadily declined in market share. Google is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Google is to survive at all it will be among search engine dilettante dabblers. Google continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical p

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Google community when IDC confirmed that Google market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web searches. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Google has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Google is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by Yahoo's failure to renew its exclusive deal with Google.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Google's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Google faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Google because Google is dying. Things are looking very bad for Google. As many of us are already aware, Google continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Google search is the most endangered of them all, having lost most of its core affiliates. The sudden and unpleasant departures of Yahoo and AOL only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Google is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Google.com founder Sergey Brin states that there are 7000 users of Google. How many users of Verity are there? Let's see. The number of Google versus Verity posts on USENET is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Verity users. AskJeeves posts on USENET are about half of the volume of Verity posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Inktomi. A recent article put Teoma at about 80 percent of the search engine market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Google users. This is consistent with the number of Google USENET posts.

Due to the troubles of Google News, abysmal sales and so on, Google is going out of business and will probably be taken over by idealab! who operate another troubled search engine. Now Inktomi is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Google has steadily declined in market share. Google is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Google is to survive at all it will be among search engine dilettante dabblers. Google continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical p

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Google community when IDC confirmed that Google market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web searches. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Google has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Google is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by Yahoo's failure to renew its exclusive deal with Google.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Google's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Google faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Google because Google is dying. Things are looking very bad for Google. As many of us are already aware, Google continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Google search is the most endangered of them all, having lost most of its core affiliates. The sudden and unpleasant departures of Yahoo and AOL only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Google is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Google.com founder Sergey Brin states that there are 7000 users of Google. How many users of Verity are there? Let's see. The number of Google versus Verity posts on USENET is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Verity users. AskJeeves posts on USENET are about half of the volume of Verity posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Inktomi. A recent article put Teoma at about 80 percent of the search engine market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Google users. This is consistent with the number of Google USENET posts.

Due to the troubles of Google News, abysmal sales and so on, Google is going out of business and will probably be taken over by idealab! who operate another troubled search engine. Now Inktomi is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Google has steadily declined in market share. Google is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Google is to survive at all it will be among search engine dilettante dabblers. Google continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical p

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Google community when IDC confirmed that Google market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web searches. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Google has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Google is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by Yahoo's failure to renew its exclusive deal with Google.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Google's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Google faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Google because Google is dying. Things are looking very bad for Google. As many of us are already aware, Google continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Google search is the most endangered of them all, having lost most of its core affiliates. The sudden and unpleasant departures of Yahoo and AOL only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Google is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Google.com founder Sergey Brin states that there are 7000 users of Google. How many users of Verity are there? Let's see. The number of Google versus Verity posts on USENET is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Verity users. AskJeeves posts on USENET are about half of the volume of Verity posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Inktomi. A recent article put Teoma at about 80 percent of the search engine market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Google users. This is consistent with the number of Google USENET posts.

Due to the troubles of Google News, abysmal sales and so on, Google is going out of business and will probably be taken over by idealab! who operate another troubled search engine. Now Inktomi is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Google has steadily declined in market share. Google is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Google is to survive at all it will be among search engine dilettante dabblers. Google continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical p

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Google community when IDC confirmed that Google market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web searches. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Google has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Google is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by Yahoo's failure to renew its exclusive deal with Google.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Google's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Google faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Google because Google is dying. Things are looking very bad for Google. As many of us are already aware, Google continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Google search is the most endangered of them all, having lost most of its core affiliates. The sudden and unpleasant departures of Yahoo and AOL only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Google is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Google.com founder Sergey Brin states that there are 7000 users of Google. How many users of Verity are there? Let's see. The number of Google versus Verity posts on USENET is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Verity users. AskJeeves posts on USENET are about half of the volume of Verity posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Inktomi. A recent article put Teoma at about 80 percent of the search engine market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Google users. This is consistent with the number of Google USENET posts.

Due to the troubles of Google News, abysmal sales and so on, Google is going out of business and will probably be taken over by idealab! who operate another troubled search engine. Now Inktomi is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Google has steadily declined in market share. Google is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Google is to survive at all it will be among search engine dilettante dabblers. Google continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical p

It's really frustrating. I went through Stanford at the height of the AI boom in the mid-1980s. I've met most of the big names in AI. I've worked in that area myself. Nobody has a clue how to do strong AI. At best, we now know a lot of things that don't work.

The expert systems crowd contained a lot of phonies. I realized that in the early 1980s. (A few years, and a few bankruptcies later, that became the conventional wisdom.) You can't get more out of an expert system than you put into it, and usually, you get out less.

Then we have the "hill climbers". Genetic algorithms, neural nets, and simulated annealing are all systems for broad-front hill-climbing in spaces dominated by local maxima. That approach only works if there's a usable evaluation function that tells you when things are getting better. Good evaluation functions are hard to come by for tough problems. Early enthusiasts thought that if they just ran a hill-climber long enough, something profound would emerge. Doesn't happen. Nobody has found a problem where just cranking a hill-climber for a long time makes something great happen. Usually, if you're not there in a few hours, you're not getting anywhere.

The classic approach of hammering everything into mathematical logic and proving theorems doesn't map well to the real world. Formalizing real-world problems is very hard, especially if you don't know the answer in the first place.

The model-less reactive-behavior stuff works fine for insects, but hits a wall as you try for more complex behavior. Compare Brooks' insect robots with his Cog project.

Natural language understanding is still lousy. In a narrow area, or with a big database, you can fake it (try Ask Jeeves), but you're searching, not understanding.

Out of all the work on AI has come many useful engineering techniques. But strong AI looks further away than it did 30 years ago.

The few people still making real progress are mostly game developers. They need AI, or something like it, to run their worlds. That's worth watching.

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Google community when IDC confirmed that Google market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web searches. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Google has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Google is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by Yahoo's failure to renew its exclusive deal with Google.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Google's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Google faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Google because Google is dying. Things are looking very bad for Google. As many of us are already aware, Google continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Google search is the most endangered of them all, having lost most of its core affiliates. The sudden and unpleasant departures of Yahoo and AOL only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Google is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Google.com founder Sergey Brin states that there are 7000 users of Google. How many users of Verity are there? Let's see. The number of Google versus Verity posts on USENET is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Verity users. AskJeeves posts on USENET are about half of the volume of Verity posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Inktomi. A recent article put Teoma at about 80 percent of the search engine market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Google users. This is consistent with the number of Google USENET posts.

Due to the troubles of Google News, abysmal sales and so on, Google is going out of business and will probably be taken over by idealab! who operate another troubled search engine. Now Inktomi is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Google has steadily declined in market share. Google is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Google is to survive at all it will be among search engine dilettante dabblers. Google continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Google is dead.

Fact: Google is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Google community when IDC confirmed that Google market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web searches. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Google has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Google is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by Yahoo's failure to renew its exclusive deal with Google.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Google's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Google faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Google because Google is dying. Things are looking very bad for Google. As many of us are already aware, Google continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Google search is the most endangered of them all, having lost most of its core affiliates. The sudden and unpleasant departures of Yahoo and AOL only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Google is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Google.com founder Sergey Brin states that there are 7000 users of Google. How many users of Verity are there? Let's see. The number of Google versus Verity posts on USENET is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Verity users. AskJeeves posts on USENET are about half of the volume of Verity posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Inktomi. A recent article put Teoma at about 80 percent of the search engine market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Google users. This is consistent with the number of Google USENET posts.

Due to the troubles of Google News, abysmal sales and so on, Google is going out of business and will probably be taken over by idealab! who operate another troubled search engine. Now Inktomi is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Google has steadily declined in market share. Google is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Google is to survive at all it will be among search engine dilettante dabblers. Google continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Google is dead.

Fact: Google is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Google community when IDC confirmed that Google market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web searches. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Google has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Google is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by Yahoo's failure to renew its exclusive deal with Google.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Google's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Google faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Google because Google is dying. Things are looking very bad for Google. As many of us are already aware, Google continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Google search is the most endangered of them all, having lost most of its core affiliates. The sudden and unpleasant departures of Yahoo and AOL only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Google is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Google.com founder Sergey Brin states that there are 7000 users of Google. How many users of Verity are there? Let's see. The number of Google versus Verity posts on USENET is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Verity users. AskJeeves posts on USENET are about half of the volume of Verity posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Inktomi. A recent article put Teoma at about 80 percent of the search engine market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Google users. This is consistent with the number of Google USENET posts.

Due to the troubles of Google News, abysmal sales and so on, Google is going out of business and will probably be taken over by idealab! who operate another troubled search engine. Now Inktomi is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Google has steadily declined in market share. Google is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Google is to survive at all it will be among search engine dilettante dabblers. Google continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Google is dead.

Fact: Google is dying

It is official; Netcraft confirms: Google is dying.

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Google community when IDC confirmed that Google market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web searches. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Google has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Google is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by Yahoo's failure to renew its exclusive deal with Google.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Google's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Google faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Google because Google is dying. Things are looking very bad for Google. As many of us are already aware, Google continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Google search is the most endangered of them all, having lost most of its core affiliates. The sudden and unpleasant departures of Yahoo and AOL only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Google is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Google.com founder Sergey Brin states that there are 7000 users of Google. How many users of Verity are there? Let's see. The number of Google versus Verity posts on USENET is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Verity users. AskJeeves posts on USENET are about half of the volume of Verity posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Inktomi. A recent article put Teoma at about 80 percent of the search engine market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Google users. This is consistent with the number of Google USENET posts.

Due to the troubles of Google News, abysmal sales and so on, Google is going out of business and will probably be taken over by idealab! who operate another troubled search engine. Now Inktomi is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Google has steadily declined in market share. Google is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Google is to survive at all it will be among search engine dilettante dabblers. Google continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Google is dead.

Fact: Google is dying

It is official; Netcraft confirms: Google is dying.

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Google community when IDC confirmed that Google market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web searches. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Google has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Google is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by Yahoo's failure to renew its exclusive deal with Google.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Google's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Google faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Google because Google is dying. Things are looking very bad for Google. As many of us are already aware, Google continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Google search is the most endangered of them all, having lost most of its core affiliates. The sudden and unpleasant departures of Yahoo and AOL only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Google is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Google.com founder Sergey Brin states that there are 7000 users of Google. How many users of Verity are there? Let's see. The number of Google versus Verity posts on USENET is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Verity users. AskJeeves posts on USENET are about half of the volume of Verity posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Inktomi. A recent article put Teoma at about 80 percent of the search engine market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Google users. This is consistent with the number of Google USENET posts.

Due to the troubles of Google News, abysmal sales and so on, Google is going out of business and will probably be taken over by idealab! who operate another troubled search engine. Now Inktomi is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Google has steadily declined in market share. Google is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Google is to survive at all it will be among search engine dilettante dabblers. Google continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Google is dead.

Fact: Google is dying

Sometimes I can't figure out WHY people refuse to research themselves.

This might be a good question, "Where did all the hand-held scanners go", but, you can learn about the whole history in a few hours of seraching on the net.

(no other search engines give you real answers, but i guess you could Ask Jeeves

Their best known product is My Real Baby, manufactured by Hasbro around 1999-2000. It's basically a baby doll with Furby-type software. Rated "Worst Idea of the Year" by the Alliance for Childhood. It's not even that original; Baby Think it Over, the anti-teen-pregnancy doll from hell ("requires real care on the part of the student, including feeding, burping, rocking, and changing diapers"), has been around for years, but at a price well above the toy level.

This whole direction is way too much like Eliza. Much of the AI field, having failed at tasks that actually require doing something successfully without human assistance, now seems to be focused more on faking it. You've all seen Ask Jeeves, and obnoxious "virtual customer support reps". Those are pathetic.

There's some good work going on, but this isn't it.

I'm thinking AskJeeves.com has a few words to say about this, as well.

Let those guys duke it out, but I asked Jeeves about it anyway, and got a pretty good chuckle.

All American first semester physics students maybe. In our neck of the woods, you'd maybe expect a history student, or an English major, to know the difference between furlongs and fortnights, but certainly not a physics student ;-). Oh, and that stupid tagline: the only reason I added it was in order to keep with the style of your original post, and gather a couple of funny points in the process ;-)

(but apparently the guys at NASA did not)

And neither those at NIST ;-) And a google groups search reveals that the "is pound a force unit or a mass unit" question is a very common discussion topic, with apparently most discussions coming to the conclusion that it is indeed a unit of mass.

And if you didn't know, looking it up is cheating :)

The only reason I looked it up was in order to use US units. Indeed, initially this was not meant to be a flame about US versus SI units, but rather a flame about using coherent units (...although it has now become a flame about US versus SI...).

From the Teoma search page:

"Teoma delivers three types of search results Web Pages: Authoritative sites relevant to your search term. Web Pages by Topic: Top result pages are grouped based on their topics. Experts' Links: Pages contain directories of links for related general subjects."

Okay, great... but where's the "advanced search" option (such as Google's, at this page)? I know this is a "beta version" of the Teoma site; maybe their advanced search functionality isn't ready for prime time just yet. Or, maybe I've got it all wrong... do they believe their engine is good enough to eliminate the need for advanced search functionality?

Also of potential interest are a couple of links at the bottom of each search results page. These links let you try your search on AskJeeves.com or DirectHit.com. As I understand it, they're gunning for Google as their biggest competition, but it seems somewhat odd that they'd include links to what most people (at least people I know) consider to be inferior search engines instead.

Just a couple of thoughts :).

It is well understood that the more times you see an image, the more likely you are to purchase its related product when you are wandering down the store aisles, wondering what to purchase. You've had the moment when you're standing in front of seven different brands of raisin brans, and you opt for one or another, little calculating that the one you purchased was simply imprinted upon your brain more times in recent advertising.

Google strides like a valiant and noble knight, a Don Quixote on a mission from heaven, to clear the mindscape of all those lurching, fragmented thoughts: "buy me!" "buy me!" "buy me!"

Like a gift from another universe, where things are cleaner, and evaluated by merit rather than popularity, Google presents an elaborate algorithm for sorting websites into fields of clarity. So insightful is their methodology, other larger search engines have bowed to this upstart. Even the mighty Yahoo, the first big engine on the 'net, has Google under the hood. So do a dozen other search engines, and thousands of sites who have turned their proprietary search functions over to the agile Google churner. AltaVista, Lycos, metacrawlers, and a few other great ones keep the American principle of competition solid, yet here we behold the miracle of Google.

We programmers watched Google come from behind, for we needed a relevance-based engine long before anyone else did: we had to have it so we could put it in the hands of others who needed our services; we were developers: we knew the information was out there, and were willing to spend hours tracking it down. Somewhere along the way, we'd stumble across this small search engine called Google, and discover that it turned up amazingly relevant searches, time and time again. No advertising. Quick.

So we bookmarked it, then we earmarked it, and finally we began to deliver the most precious kind of advertising which can be earned: we told our friends about it. And we delighted in the lack of advertising. Truly a geek's machine; sleek and relevant.

We watched the Internet bubble come crashing down around its own self- exuberance; we all know at least one programmer humbled by the rapid withdrawal of venture capital.

And so we watch Google carefully now, knowing that it is still bearing fruit for its venture capital investors, yet also knowing that our economy is continuing to draw inward, and as carefully as we form our sentences regarding the future of our welfare... we hold our breath when we visit Google each day for its wealth of free, friendly, and advertising-free three billion interrelated facets of information.

We watched Google handle the September 11 tragedy, worried that it might spark them into becoming a news portal, since their cache ability made them compete with sites like CNN which were swamped with 50,000 hits per second... and we saw Google come out cleanly, building on the crisis in a noble, not-capitalizing-on-the-crisis, manner. Now you can visit Google and find current information; it's a portal, yet ever so quietly, since there are no advertisements. Portals have become synonymous with a barrage of advertising, so what do we call this gallant creature who will not stoop to capitalism?

It's just a humble search engine: A search engine which points the way into a future with a clean mindscape. We may not all make it there; spammers prove that they'll come into such a future kicking and screaming for attention, and since we know that we all have to arrive together or else we none of us can arrive, we tolerate them.

Yes, we hold our breath each time we visit Google, lest they make that sad plunge into our noisy world instead of rising above it. And we are continually surprised by the improvements which they are making. These are not trivial improvements, simple cosmetic additions; one by one they have expanded our notion of how powerful a search engine can be, how it can nimbly reach into the deepest crevices of the Internet and produce a slew of relevant information on obscure topics. Search within groups. Search for images. Search only for images which are wallpaper sized from sites in Europe and are black and white.

The essence of the Internet, the information revolution, has somehow been bestowed upon the novel minds working for Google. We look at their job offerings, and yearn for the day when we can deserve such benevolence as to work for Google. Certainly only the best of the best work for Google (or id). They play hockey in their parking lots, and eat catered food every day. Ah, there we begin holding our breath. We like to have fun at work, but too much fun is a sign of venture capital.

How do they do it, how do they keep going, and going, and going without losing integrity by selling ads or trying to do too much? Google quietly inspires us to consider a world without advertising. Oh, they take advertising alright, yet look at it: it's extremely targeted, intended to be relevant to the searcher. With a thick black line separating advertising and content. No advertiser images. None of this irrelevant barrage. Looking for a new ISP? Here's twenty links, and over here in the corner, ten folks who've paid us money to be listed when you search for ISPs. Google drew a distinct line between the advertiser content and their own content. And they steadfastly looked toward our needs when they tolerated no images. Text- based. Get the information into the hand of the gentleman while he needs it, and trust that he will come back later with a thank-you note in hand.

Well, here is one thank you note. I hold my breath each time I visit Google, and I use it extensively, and have for years. I was Googling when Google wasn't yet cool, and I'm delighted to see it surviving. I hope they remain solid in their condition of accepting no image-based advertisements, and pray they will continue to inspire us with clarity on the concept of what it means to serve.

The cache concept, now firmly entrenched in the way we conceive of the Internet, is perhaps the greatest aspect of the information revolution: You once published a site, but now it is defunct. Or your site is presently being slashdotted or DOS'd. No problem, visit the Google cache for the site, and there's your info, as clear and sometimes quicker than the original version. The folks at archive.org have taken this idea and run with it, yet I must admit the first time I realized how profoundly differently we were going to be processing information in the future came when I understood what Google was doing with their cache. I prayed then, and the prayer was answered, that the cache would not be shut down because of re-publishing rights issues. Now Google has enough momentum that it would take an act of Congress to shut off their caching.

Take a look at Google. Unlike most companies with bold pretty mission statements hiding inner corruption, Google somehow matches their ten operating principles with immediate proof. They do it right; they work hard for their money.

• Goto/Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool
  
• 7Search Keywords
  
• Word Spot
  
• Word Tracker
  
• Search Terms
  
• Search Engine Report
  

Cyc is basically a big encyclopedia of common-sense statements coupled to a simple inference engine. There may be uses for such things, but they're not anywhere near intelligent. What you get out is not much more than what somebody else put in. Sort of like Ask Jeeves.

Crowded? If you put every human on the planet in Texas, everyone would have more square feet of space than you have in your dorm room. Don't get out much, do you?

I don't believe you, not even a tiny bit. According to Britannica, Texas is 266,807 square miles. That's 1,408,740,960 square feet. According to Ask Jeeves, the world's population is currently at 6,127,565,379 people. Dorm rooms are usually about 10 feet by 12 feet and are designed for two people, which works out to about 60 square feet per person. Without going into exact calculations we can immediately see that there would be under a square foot per person which directly contradicts your statement that each person would have more room than he does in his dorm.

Now if you take everyone on the planet and cram them into Ontario, Canada... There is signficantly more breathing room! Ontario occupies 412,581 square miles, or 2,178,427,680 square feet. That's almost twice the square footage per person. Ontario is only the second biggest province in Canada... Kinda puts Texas to shame considering it's twice as large!

Let's expand to the entire U.S. If you were to cram every person on the planet into the United States (3,679,192 square miles, or 19,426,133,760 square feet) you end up with a mere 3.17 square feet per person, or about 1/20 the room you'd have if you were in his dorm (assuming he has an average dorm room as given above).

Texas is the biggest state, sure... That don't mean shit when you're talking about six billion people though.

For as long as Windows allows .exes to run without user-intervention, these incidents will continue to hit the press. Windows needs a file-system that allows a umask 177. Actually, since 9x only respects the last field (other), that's pretty irrelevant, anyway.

These incidents come and go and in 3 months, another virus will take down several thousand Win PC's and we'll read about it on ZDNet, but, the desktop will still run Win-something.

Since it's not going to change any time soon, I'll silently chuckle at these little outbreaks hoping my e-mail never chmods anything +x without my permission. As far as this being a black mark for Linux; hardly. The only ones paying attention to that element aren't Windows users, anyway. >:)

Linux rocks!!! www.dedserius.com

I Asked Jeeves, and found a nifty Mass Conversion Calculator. It claims that 244 grams is approximately 8.6 oz, or a little over half a pound. Hmm, weighs about as much as two quarter pounders from McDonald's (without the cheese, of course, since I'm allergic). It still seems kinda heavy to tote around in one's front pocket, but with that many features, sure! So what if only half of those many features work in my area!

Aciel
aciel@speakeasy.net

I'm sorry, but you're an idiot and you don't know what you're talking about

Just some of the sites using css.

1. Altavista - There is a big whomping style block right at the top of the source.
2. AskJeeves - There is a linked CSS document, plus a style block definition.
3. Adobe - Even has javascript to customize style sheets according to platform and browser.
4. AOL - 4 lines into the source and look! a style definition.
5. AT&T WorldNet - You have to wade through some javascript, but you'll see it.

That was just the A's. Please think before you spout such blatant misinformation as this.

Ask Jeeves, of course...

Try Rusted Root, or Root Canal - those might help.
--

Ask Jeeves!

Mike Roberto
- GAIM: MicroBerto

Microsoft has put considerable research effort into natural language parsing. That work resulted in the grammar checker in Microsoft Word, which really does parse and diagram sentences. So they should be able to produce a client-based query system without any trouble. They could probably make it launch the appropriate Microsoft product to do something for command-like requests, too. I wouldn't expect anything complicated.

This sort of thing has more promise for voice input. It makes a lot of sense for portable devices. Typing text into tiny keyboards has go to go.

What computers really need right now is a DWIM (Do What I Mean) interface.
AI isn't up to the job yet. DWIM was originally a feature in Interlisp, and Gosling claimed that although DWIM sometimes did the wrong thing, it never did anything bad (i.e. non-undoable.) One day I typed "EDIT" when in a mode where EDIT wasn't meaningful, and DWIM spell-corrected it to "EXIT", throwing me out of Interlisp and losing the workspace. That's the trouble with letting a DWIM system actually do anything. Probably today's closest equivalent of DWIM is Ask Jeeves, which is notorious for doing the wrong thing, but which operates in a context where doing the wrong thing doesn't cause harm.

In other words, you should be able to communicate with your computer in some way that makes sense to you, and it should translate your request into something that makes sense for it.
Not good enough. The computer has to have a sense of the consequences of its actions before it can be allowed to act on its own. This is one of the major problems in computing today. Go think about that problem for a while in the context, say, of system administration.

3d interface
Have you ever tried to get anything done inside a gloves-and-goggles VR system? I've tried six of them, starting with Jaron Lanier's original one, and they all suck. It's like trying to build something while wearing mittens. Autodesk played around with VR early on, thinking that it would be the next generation in CAD. It wasn't. An early goal was to get to something comparable to an Erector set in VR, and that's still out of reach. Even high-end 3D animation is almost invariably done with three planar views and one 3D view on-screen. Even though the better animation systems let you draw in the 3D window, few animators do.

If you think online navigation by moving around in a big 3D world would be a great idea, check out Worlds.com, which has such a world. Works OK, but the experience sucks. Moving your avatar around a big 3D space turns out to be a lousy way to shop, let alone look up information.

Do I need an ISBN?
If you want to make any sales to bookstores, you need to have an ISBN. If you want people to be able to find your book in the Books in Print directory, you need an ISBN. If you are publishing a book, odds are that not having one will do nothing but hurt your sales.

Why not just Ask Jeeves and be done with it?

If it really is copyright infringement to re-serve someone else's webpage in an altered state, then www.askjeeves.com is infringing with its search result pages. When you click to go to a search result, it still looks like you are at AskJeeves. Of course if you read the text it says they are not affliated. I find this type of alteration more offensive than a user-requested translation of a web-page.

Actually asking Jeeves almost any negative question about himself brings about a snappy response.

Actually asking Jeeves almost any negative question about himself brings about a snappy response.

I asked Jeeves that question and judging by the answer/questions I'd bet Emacs:

Where can I find help with Emacs?
Where can I find information about Emacs?
Where can I download the Web browser Emacs?
Where can I find FAQs on Emacs implementations?


--

The problems with Ask Jeeves are two-fold:

1) They only have a few paid editors who try and compile the list of questions and answers
2) They in general only provide a single link to a question that they already know the answer to. Big companies provide big money to make sure that their resource is listed first/exclusively and these big sites are not always the best sources of information. For instance the questions "Where can I buy an Ethernet cable" should take you to a site like Pricewatch and not to CompUSA in order to get the best deal.

The Open-source community can solve this problem easily. We allow anyone who wants to to submit question-and-answer pairs, and then we allow end-users to vote (or should we call it moderate?) on which answers are best suited to each question. Thus, the system grows as a result of its users activity, and is not really subject to editorial control. Even less editorial control that Slashdot, believe it or not.

So, here's my question. I am currently too busy with other projects (although one of them such as enzyme.sourceforge.net, the engine that backs Catalyst Recruiting has a lot of related code) to really speahead and maintain this project. I have, however, purchased the domain names that will be necessary to make it work: askgneeves.com (this time the N is silent). Anyone out there interested in working on it? Anyone think it's even a good idea? Is someone already doing this? I think that pretty soon we could have an open-source product that would be useful to 90% of the clueless users out there.

Is Jeeves well endowed?

The answer is way to geeky/funny.

-Davidu

Does Multics live on, conceptually, in the AS/400? I heard that it uses segments, and a "memory is disk is memory" permanent storage scheme ala multics. Does anyone know more aobut how OS/400 works?

...

Amusingly, AskJeeves returned "Dementia -neurological diseases and disorders - more resources" when I asked, "how is os/400 related to multics"

I wonder how many sites with the title "Cookie Recipies" actually contain nasty hardcore porn.

In my experience, deceiving site titles are actually less problematic than they used to be.

A year or two ago it seemed like no matter what query I entered into Alta Vista, one or more pages with innocent titles would pop up which, when selected, would display a message to the effect of "Site moved, redirecting..." or "Site moved, click here", the 'moved' site being porn. Blecchh. Typically a server would have simply hundreds of these bogus-forward pages.

I haven't seen one like that in a while. I suppose upstream providers started putting the smack down on deceptive sites, or perhaps Alta Vista started filtering those sorts of pages out. If the latter, that's a sort of filtering that, while I don't support, I also don't mind, since there are oodles and oodles and oodles and oodles of other search engines out there and you aren't limited to using one search engine like you're limited to using the connection you've got.

Ask AskJeeves "What is the population of Holland, Michigan?" and you get this result. Short version: 30,745 in 1990.

(Strangely enough, if you ask them "Where can I find chocolate chip cookie recipes?", you get back a bunch of porno links. What's up with that?! ;-)

Ask AskJeeves "What is the population of Holland, Michigan?" and you get this result. Short version: 30,745 in 1990.

(Strangely enough, if you ask them "Where can I find chocolate chip cookie recipes?", you get back a bunch of porno links. What's up with that?! ;-)

Eric has definitely arrived! Whenever I don't know what something is, I just check askjeeves. ESR is there as a TLA is all it's glory.

I remember a year ago, hearing ESR speak at my local LUG. And, yes he's still asking the question "how many people write software for a living?" What particularly impressed me from his talk at our LUG was his comment that he "wanted to be known for his TLA." Well, his desire certainly has come true and asking Mr. Jeeves "Who is ESR?" certainly got me the right answer.

Way to go, ESR!

Eric has definitely arrived! Whenever I don't know what something is, I just check askjeeves. ESR is there as a TLA is all it's glory.

I remember a year ago, hearing ESR speak at my local LUG. And, yes he's still asking the question "how many people write software for a living?" What particularly impressed me from his talk at our LUG was his comment that he "wanted to be known for his TLA." Well, his desire certainly has come true and asking Mr. Jeeves "Who is ESR?" certainly got me the right answer.

Way to go, ESR!

The previous comment to this one states that X-Files is not sci-fi. I just did a query on What is the X-Files on askjeeves.com. The response I got is that the X-Files is ... the FOX network's sci-fi series.

Gee, when will slashdotters check the validatity of their responses before posting them. So, now, whether you realize it or not you're part of the "sci-fi/hacker/nerd" cult(ure) that ESR talks about if your watch the X-Files. Hey, if you like the show you should be proud of it.

2600.com is blocked my my company's proxy! Anyone know why? We use some third party database - not sure which one. They blocked www.askjeeves.com last month. Value for money database, eh?