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Good point.

This will never work.

Unless you happen to think the open directory project is particularily successful.
http://dmoz.org/

Truth is, when you put one, or even a few editors in charge of something, most of them are biased, then they eventually tire of whatever they've been put in charge of (unless they're getting PAID for their efforts.)

Wikipedia's strength is in the effortlessness with which new talent can get involved in the process.

I wonder what the turnover rate is on wikipedia for people who edit/enforce accuracy of well established pages...

• When your tag contains more than one word, separate them with an underscore, rather than a hyphen or a space

Doesn't DMOZ already do something like this? http://dmoz.org/

Problems:

• There are too many websites, changing too rapidly, for volunteer raters to keep up. It's too labor-intensive. In a narrow area (like, say, hotels) it might work, and it's been done.
• Inducing people to work for free for a profit making company may be illegal. AOL got into trouble over this years ago.
• It didn't work last time (see "Magellan search engine"). Dead and forgotten, the Magellan search site is still up but the search box no longer works.
• There's already the Open Directory Project.
• It's highly vulnerable to spam and manipulation. The people most interested in the rating of X will be the promoters of X.
• IBM has several patents on this.

Before anyone gets too excited -- there are plenty of public-domain editions of Mozart. This is just one particular edition that's going to be available online for free. There's actually a huge amount of PD sheed music available at Mutopia. The nice thing about the Mutopia stuff is that it's in a format that's editable using free software (Lilypond). For instance, I've taken some Mozart horn duets and arranged them so my daughter and I can play them on violin and viola. Because it's in Lilypond format, it's easy to transpose, arrange, whatever. If all you want is digital scans of PD editions, there are various sites that will let you download scans for free. One thing that seems a little goofy about the NMA thing is that they make you agree to use this web site only for personal study and not to make copies except for my personal use under "Fair Use" principles of Copyright law as defined in this license agreement. Uh ... fair use is an exception to copyright. Hell, I can copy a Britney Spears CD and call it fair use.

Bully tactics involving a dispute over this or that piece of Internet real estate are nothing new - but historically the item in dispute has usually been a domain name rather than something like a search engine ranking.

I am reminded of the WIPO decision a few years back where they declined to transfer "armani.com" to the trademark holder Georgio Armani, deciding instead to leave it with A.R. Mani, a Vancouver small businessman who had used it for years. Ultimately, I am certain he decided sell it to Georgio Armani for a healthy sum, but it is nice to know that these things do not always come down on the side of the big corporation (the bully in this case).

Honestly, I stopped using Yahoo when the original beautiful user-supplied index became a pay-to-link operation. Soon, instead of cool little places you'd never heard of that had something unique to offer, it was nothing but an index of larger commercial sites. Many interesting sites I still had in my bookmarks that I knew were still active disappeared from the index, and Yahoo failed to answer even the plainest on inquiries about the index. Anything they did after that I ignored. And of course, then Google pretty much obsoleted all the other search engines (which Yahoo was not, it was a tree-structured index), and then finally the open directory project came along and replaced what Yahoo used to be good for.

So... if bits were paper, Yahoo is what would wrap my fish.

They come from dmoz (or, more accurately, from Google Directory, which is their local "mirror" of dmoz - last time I checked it tended to be out of date).

Whenever possible, Google uses the DMOZ description for the snippet shown in the results.

Where did they get that text from? It's not anywhere to be found in the source. Did they cheat? Or are they just tricky?

They got it from the Google category at the Open Directory Project at dmoz.org, mirrored at directory.google.com. Google is a user of dmoz.org data but has completely de-emphasized that as of late.

It's actually against the dmoz license agreement to use their data without a link back to the source, but nobody seems to care.

Where did they get that text from? It's not anywhere to be found in the source. Did they cheat? Or are they just tricky?

They got it from the Google category at the Open Directory Project at dmoz.org, mirrored at directory.google.com. Google is a user of dmoz.org data but has completely de-emphasized that as of late.

It's actually against the dmoz license agreement to use their data without a link back to the source, but nobody seems to care.

You can volunteer your time to do this for free at The Adult Branch of DMOZ [warning: adult content] once they get back up and running after some catastrophic server issues...

This looks interesting

I think you should be able to find something here.

BTW, GIYF.

The combination of google and wikipedia has sort of done what Netscape Open Directory was trying to do 10 years ago. Open Directory still exists, but it's kind of fallen by the wayside. In fact, their server doesn't even seem to be up right now, but you can still read the wikipedia article :-).

In any actual implementation of google's page rank algorithm, you need to start by seeding it with some set of pages, and then it can spread out from there. Theoretically it doesn't matter what seed you start with, as long as the web is one topologically connected piece. But in reality, it's going to converge a lot faster, and be more reliable, if you start with something that's a good seed, and IIRC open directory was one of the seeds they did originally start with. Regardless of how google actually implements the algorithm today, the stability and convergence of the page rank algorithm is probably aided a lot by having a "backbone" like Wikipedia in the structure of the web.

The problem with Open Directory, in my experience working on it, was that it wasn't fun. It was just kind of a boring task you had to take care of every week. They also had a very hierarchical system of editors, and some of the editors higher up in the chain tended to be pushy, impatient, and arrogant. Wikipedia has done a better job of focusing on fun, and making everybody feel equal, so they've succeeded in harnessing a lot more dogs to pull their sled.

However, link spam has become a big battleground on Wikipedia as well. On the most important articles, there tend to be plenty of people who are keeping an eye on the external links, and if someone adds an inappropriate one, they'll delete it right away. But on less significant articles, there tends to be a ton of link spam, which nobody ever deletes.

There's so much talk on Slashdot of Microsoft abusing their stolen monopoly. Yet we've handed Google one. People blindly swear allegiance to them, defending their more questionable actions that if another company perpretrated, they'd certainly condemn. Honestly, when did last use another search engine? When Google's broken, are you even able to find one?

We don't all use Google all the tyme, as the stats from wiki you posted show. Sure I may use Google most of the tyme but I also use other SEs as well, like About, Alta Vista, Open Directory, and Mooter. About has good sections on Anthropology and Archeology as well as Photography, all of which I am interested in. Actually it was when I searched Google in these that I found them, Google returned them. I've found Alta Vista is good for science and technology, better than Google in some areas. And when Google doesn't give me what I'm looking for Mooter and the Open Directory sometimes will. I don't use Gmail either, instead I use Yahoo! Mail.

One of the LCD-screen iMacs is definitely a good idea. Ideally some extra RAM and a copy of Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) put on it make for great computing. Otherwise, throw an open source OS such as FreeBSD or Linux on there.

Oops, I'm describing one of the many micro distros out there (I forget which one, but I have a feeling it was derived from muLinux). Damn Small Linux (DSL) is a step above these micro distros - a little more robust and a little heftier (weighing in at a whopping 50 MB and 128 MR RAM I think). For your case, I think just about any stable tiny (or micro) distribution that supports PPP should do. Some more tiny linux distros here.

I've had this as a far off plan for my area for quite a while, but by running across this a few days ago I've found some pretty good advice. (Still digging through it actually) I'm even thinking of going after it before the end of the year now.

And since you're in the Chicago area and I'm in the Kansas City area where you wouldn't be competition, I thought I'd offer you this list of cafes to help in your research.

I've already established a succeeding computer repair and consulting operation so this is going to be an add-on to it in a city where there is nothing to do for entertainment except start smoking. (Or go out and ride a bike, but who does that anymore.) I'm also expecting training classes to be a popular use of the computers, maybe even a dedicated lab style room for that and business/copy,print use. Plus, having a projector in there means renting out the _room_and_equipment_ (reducing the legal issues of gaining public viewing licensing) for people to watch movies/tv events as another source of revenue.

What I'm seeing overall is not to focus on it being a business working to draw money out of people's pockets, but rather focus on building a social environment where people will continue to come back, be willing to freely spend their money, and bring other people to experience it. (of course, spend too much on decor that's not useful in bringing in anything to help pay for itself is no good either.)

Best of luck.

Our IT department actually found one through TIDF. They found the "best fit" for us for free, and quoted us a price that was slighly higher than the one found on the website. So out IT guys got the name from TIDF then went to the other firm, told them they were referred by TIDF and signed up. (It was net mass btw - it is pretty pricey, but the support is great and we don't back up much data).

Me? I've only personally used mozy and while I liked it, it fails your requirement of linux compatibility (which is why I dumped it for my own little homebrew NAS). There is a lot of advice all over the internet listing online back up souces, but make sure you personally know the referrer before you trust them with your backup source (i.e. don't trust me).

that portal does exist: dmoz

If you use Google, you have to wade through tons of paid ads that will bite you on the ass if you click on them ( www.google-watch.org ) . Google is the worst. Check out clusty.com! By example, type in "troubled teens" and up will come page after page of "bootcamps". The only search engine that had results I would consider "relevant" is via http://dmoz.org/ - I'm gonna keep an eye on that search engine!

Is there something about the ds opera browser that should not make it possible to play games like the ones on websudoku.com and http://dmoz.org/Games/Video_Games/Browser_Based/ ?

No flash support?

There is a real chance that this browser can be more than a novelty and may open up even more games to the ds. Does no one else see this? If so I can't say that I've seen evidence on any of the video game review websites. Is there something about the ds opera browser that should not make it possible to play games like the ones on websudoku.com and http://dmoz.org/Games/Video_Games/Browser_Based/ ?

A project with people adding sites to an index? You mean like the open directory (http://dmoz.org/ or even http://www.google.com/dirhp)
That's definitely the solution. I can always find exactly what I'm looking for with Open Directory, but not with Google.

Give me a break. Maybe you just need to learn how to search? Or maybe you should click the little link at the bottom of your bad search results that says "Dissatisfied? Help us improve." You won't find that at Yahoo.

Like DMOZ?

Or you could try Teoma (owned by Ask), Exalead (an up and comming French search engine with a number of cool features), GigaBlast (a suprisingly good search built pretty much by one man!) or Wisenut (a search engine owned by Looksmart).

Another good idea is to use one of the Meta search engines. Personally I think Clusty (created by Vivismo) is the best and from your persective has the advantage of not using Google data. Otherwise many people swear by Dogpile (you can switch off Google as a source for results).

Also, many people forget about directories like ODP, which for certain subjects and topics work better than search engines. And whilst on the subject of internet community created resources, more often than not I find the answers I need on good old Wikipedia.

You know it is funny, for a website obsessed with alternative Operating Systems and browsers we don't hear much about alternative ways of finding information. It seems like many people here think the web would impload if Google disappeared. Yeah they are cool and have had some nifty ideas but it is actually suprisingly easy to get by without them.

Sorry bud, you're looking for DMOZ, not Google. DMOZ employs a whole buncha editors to assess sites for quality, content and relevance. That isn't Google's game.

"People do it better."

During the dot-com boom, I forgot search was important and let Google take over my core franchise.

Since when was search ever Yahoo's core franchise? It started off as a way to share the founder's bookmarks online and evolved into a hierarchical link categorization system. Then it added portal features and tacked on a search engine. But http://www.dmoz.org/ is much closer to their original "core business", and even http://del.icio.us/ is much closer to what they do than Google is.

I'm not even sure they had a general Internet search box before they went with Google in that capacity, and they only got into developing such a thing after purchasing Inktomi in 2002 (well after the dot-com boom).

Google's search competitors were other search engines, mainly Lycos and Altavista (Lycos being the older of the two and the first widely used general search engine, Altavista being the predominant search engine by the time Google was in the field).

I agree with your confusion about how TLDs are actually assigned. The big ones can be bought by anyone and there is no real structure. However, I want to bring to your attention the ODP (Open Directory Project).

Editors on that website take weeks (more realistically months) reviewing websites carefully submitted to the different sections to be posted. Now the ODP is run for free by volunteers, but there is a point.

Think about what would happen if this exact same process took place for TLDs. Why would a company want to be put in charge of assigning domain names if the cost of reviewing a request for a TLD (let's pretend a week worth of work) overtook the price when selling the TLD. The prices of these domain names would rise, and then only well-established companies would be able to afford them, and then the Internet would turn into some kind of entity where only the rich can afford space on it. It's exaggerated, but it might have happened.

We are in the times in which the people have to protect each other. And we all are the people, and the ones that are against the people are the powerful that will not take into consideration peoples rights.

What NSA is doing is an abuse, but the people that communicate through the internet are very vulnerable to abuse, not only by the governments, but also by mafias and groups of a diversity of allied criminals, some of them acting with white gloves.

Internet is today the field for criminal activities. In the last few days I have been receiving an enormous amount of emails which were fake from ebay, pay pal, the Netherlands Lotto etc... trying to get from me my password to this accounts. And some of them looked so good that could be mistaken by the real thing, but users of the internet that engage in criminal activities disguise themselves in anonymity that internet provides.

Our communications throuh the internet are surveiled since time immemorial by NSA, and a wealth of information about us can be collected and may be collected. And this is a great danger to the people, and no law protects us these days.

What about an internet between authenticated and identified users... so that the majority of internet users that don't mind to be identified because they live in a free country and at the same time, not being engaged in fraudulent activity or criminal activity don't mind to inter-communicate with other identified and authenticated members of the net. Why should anyone want to be anonymous if not engaged in criminal activity?

This is my point. We should suport the institutions, companies and private people that support the target to bring privacy and security within identified users when using the internet to communicate This is the case of a company called Amteus.

Now, once in communication with an identified user, which is properly authenticated, then you provide privacy, so... unless you want to make it public, nobody can access your communication because it is properly secured and encrypted. i.e. it travels in a closed envelope and it is unlawful to open it, and it is being between identified and authenticated users that trust each other. Otherwise, not only the governments with their NSAs involved in their own practices will snoop on us, but gangs of gangsters will easily intercept our communications, phishing like the email I have received will only be the beginning. I am starting a website to support this kind of approach.

This requires legislation, but also requires technology. Like the one developed by Amteus. But there are many other.

I hope that the people with vision that have given to the internet a view that will promote freedom and cleanliness, like John Perry Barlow will help this company to succeed in a very honorable project.

It is very distressing these days what is going on with the Internet. Hopefully companies like Amteus Plc that are bringing a technology to overcome this problem of snooping, spam, phishing etc.. will survive attacks from those that hide behind anonimity.

Ramon Leonato

Those weren't shipped, they were planted by the B.L.O.

That was far too brilliant to attribute to poor QC at Mattel, which appears to be the case with the preview DVD's.

You know, that whole "Land Bridge" thing seemed fishy to me ever since I heard about it as a kid. Is this evidence further support for the so-called multi-regional theory of human evolution?

You're query string gives me no results with the default safe search on...

Now that we both have it turned off ... Do a GIS with this query string: "boobies"

Holy shit, Google is a porn search??@! Google is porn-related!!!~ You also get some birds too, damn that double meaning. I guess you could try queries like "porn" (sweet, genitals within the first 8 results!) or "tits" to avoid the pictures of actual boobies.

Either way, I made a distinction. A blog about porn (with thumbnails and links to porn apparently) is surely porn related. However... my words were (not that it matters, nobody reads slashdot): "I don't know that Bomis [that's right, the site, not Bomis Babes, the blog] can be called porn-related any more than the Internet can be called porn-related. Further, Bomis is no more a search engine for porn than ODP is a search engine for porn." (The post I was replying too wasn't referring to Bomis Babes, look at the url the Gp provided.)

So again... if you didn't believe me: http://dmoz.org/Adult/Image_Galleries/

Is Open Directory Project "porn-related" or "a search engine for porn"? Well yes, in the same sense that anything that can be used to search or index the web is.

I can't believe I took the time to re-iterate a self-evident post. Cheers.

Isn't this the same as DMOZ?

I don't know that Bomis can be called porn-related any more than the Internet can be called porn-related. Further, Bomis is no more a search engine for porn than ODP is a search engine for porn.

http://www.bomis.com/about/bomis_faq.html

What is Bomis.Com?

Bomis.Com is an Internet ring index and portal site. We index web pages into Bomis Rings. We also offer features such as free email, weather, news, and email discussion lists.

This is actually a good argument for using directories like dmoz or class-specific search engines that are weeded regularly.

An unoptimized site is the equivalent of Spanglish. Yes, it's written in a way the audience can understand, but it isn't written with proper Spanish grammar. So, going through a site and making all the verbs and nouns agree and removing all of the slang is really all optimization is:

-make it valid HTML
-add your metatags
-link to other valid sources of similar data
-get them to link to you
-add yourself to http://dmoz.org/

While, yes, I admit that the skill is in getting the site to be standards compliant while not breaking the design, and in knowing how to write the best metatags, anyone offering anything more than that might as well be selling the Brooklyn Bridge.

I'd argue that raw numbers don't matter with respect to Yahoo. I mean sure, they're paying a whole lot in bandwidth and all, but their site is so cluttered that I never have any idea what I'm looking at. There could be ads for free hundred dollar bills and I wouldn't even notice.

I can't tell you how many times I've gone to yahoo to find their directory of sites and given up and gone to DMOZ instead.

Talking about light Linux distributions: there is a list of so-called tiny Linux distributions in the Open Directory Project web site (aka DMOZ).

The list is available at:

Open Directory - Computers: Software: Operating Systems: Linux: Distributions: Tiny
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Operating_Syste ms/Linux/Distributions/Tiny/

Talking about light Linux distributions: there is a list of so-called tiny Linux distributions in the Open Directory Project web site (aka DMOZ).

The list is available at:

Open Directory - Computers: Software: Operating Systems: Linux: Distributions: Tiny
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Operating_Syste ms/Linux/Distributions/Tiny/

Date and Fabian Pascal have been fairly clear that it's an actual company - they've discussed the owner's name, which I don't recall, I'd have to look it up on my hard drive somewhere [Steve Tarin, apparently, is the inventor and owner, I've just looked it up].

According to Pascal, Date has seen a working implementation of the TRM, and is writing a book about it tentatively entitled "Go Faster! The Transrelational Approach to DBMS Implementation."

The company name is Required Technologies Inc.,
39141 Civic Center Dr. Ste. 250, Fremont, CA 94538 Their Web site remain "under construction".

The patent for TRM is United States Patent 6,009,432. There is also the patent application: United States Patent Application 0010000536.

There is also a resume of one Vincent Poydenot who described his employment with Required Technologies as Vice-President of Software Development. He describes a 15-man development team which developed a full implementation for Windows NT 4.0 in Visual C++, with a port to Solaris and Linux.

Links for the above here http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Databases/Relat ional/Implementations/Required_Technologies//

An ad for programmers to work for the company when they were apparently in New York is here:
http://www.codeguru.com/forum/archive/index.php/t- 188697.html/

According to Pascal's DBdebunk Web site:

"Not only had Date been exposed to a working TRM implementation - a prototype built by Required Technologies that included update and disk operations - but so have other highly respected database researchers and implementers. Moreover, several potential customers ran their own benchmarks against this prototype using their own real-world data and their own live complex queries. The results were extraordinary. In every case, TRM delivered orders-of-magnitude performance improvements over existing RDBMSs, in a large dynamic disk-based environment. These results can be demonstrated to anyone seriously interested in TRM....

Not only does the prototype implementation of TRM (referenced above) still exist, but also a full-blown commercial disk-based updatable RDBMS based on TRM (with standard SQL, ODBC, JDBC, and third-party tool interfaces, plus all standard subsystems) is nearly complete."

The above was as of January 2005. Back in late 2004 Pascal was describing "large transactional databases with subsecond response." Note that these were not in-memory databases but disk-based.

Apparently there is some legal or financial issue involved that is threatening the owner with "having his company taken away from him", according to one reference. They claim the guy has been fighting tooth and nail to resolve the issues, but there hasn't been any recent info.

I would have assumed the whole thing would have been resolved by now in most cases, unless the people involved are waiting for some court case.

I have now found a post on Curt Monash's blog whereupon he apparently - I say apparently because I have no idea whether his information is correct - debunks the entire project and the company:
http://www.dbms2.com/category/memory-centric-data- management//

Fabian Pascal's response on Curt's blog:

Monash knows zilch about TRM. But then he knows zilch about RM too,and lack of knowldge has not stopped him ever before from generating crappola. In fact, he is not even aware of how ignorant he is.

Nonsense indeed, but the only one is from Monash.

Unskilled and unaware of it. Typical american.
Comment by fabian pascal -- November 14, 2005 @ 12:41 pm

There follows a ton of incredibly acrimonious comments between Monash and Pascal in which both accuse the other of various incompeten

you mean http://www.dmoz.org/ ?

Here are some interesting links :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-relationship_m odel

http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Databases/Relat ional/Model/

http://www.dbasupport.com/
http://www.datamodel.org/
http://dbforums.com/
http://sqlzoo.net/
http://databases.about.com/library/glossary/blglos sary.htm

and finally I stumbled upon these db design *useful* tips :
http://www.republicoftech.com/aic/dbclass/db_desig n.html

just my 2 halalas,
Obad

While Google is the *best* commercial search engine it completely ignores the most useful information that can be found through the "Invisible Web" research.

Sure if you wanna find this or that web site or quick info, Google is great. But when you want to find something truly meaningful that you can use as reference, try http://lii.org/ or http://dmoz.org./ Of course this requires subject search (much like going to the library) and recognizing the set of terms you want to find. I just discovered http://www.factbites.com/ is a decent search engine Web site that digs through other "invisible web" sites to deliver results.

People really have to get out of this "Google or bust" mentality if they want to get any real research done.

If you're *really* desperate for a commercial search engine, just go with www.dogpile.com it compiles searches from yahoo, google, jeeves and MSN Search.

ps: PageRank flaws are considered "GoogleHoles" coined by Steven Johnson
http://slate.msn.com/id/2085668/

The Open Directory Project

I would think the significant volunteer work done towards creating a freely-usable (with attribution) ontology of the web would be useful for a project such as this, even if the actual *content* wasn't.

The same for use in WikiPedia, actually... hmm.

yeah, or http://dmoz.org/ mirrors

List of PHP Frameworks

By the way, it's interesting how a thread about PHP frameworks turned into a thread for Ruby-on-Rails zealotry. I won't knock Ruby, but if PHP is good enough for the Wikipedia, Yahoo! and Friendster, it's good enough for me. There's nothing wrong with wanting to become a guru in one language (that happens to be in the top five in popularity!) than becoming a jack of all trades.

where every website indexed is 1) sumbitted by multiple people as usefull, and 2) checked by someone at google to be sure it is not spam, and 3) there is a web form to indicate a website does not belong

Have you heard of The Open Directory Project?

Also, why does this matter since the Mozilla Directory is already open?

I thought it was Open Directory Project.