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When the question was asked for what might the icon be for "Your rights online" for evil patents, I was thinking about those old western pictures of the stereostypical short and fat snakeoil salesmen hawking his dubious warez from a soapbox to the unsuspecting public.

Know what image I'm talking about? Good for an icon? Unfortunately, old clip art depicting these sellers of modern science escaped several search pages of google and lycos turned up dry. Oh well...

Last time I checked, Lycos and HotBot were tightly partnered. Adding Altavista to the mix could be interesting, since I see Altavista and HotBot's search functionality essentially the same, and in fact I would guess they view each other as competitors...

Well, Lycos lists only one Bill Seiler in California, in Newport Beach. I called him, and he's not it :)

There are quite a few William Seilers, though, and some bills in other states.

I'm now looking for a homepage...

If you search for "excite" you get the use us page, but if you put in any other word, even if lycos filters it out, you get a valid search results page. For example "excite and", even though "and" gets filtered out.

Oh, and lycos can do whatever they want on their own machines. There are no search engine laws. Use whatever you agree the most with.

If you search for "excite" you get the use us page, but if you put in any other word, even if lycos filters it out, you get a valid search results page. For example "excite and", even though "and" gets filtered out.

Oh, and lycos can do whatever they want on their own machines. There are no search engine laws. Use whatever you agree the most with.

Then, what exactly is this link for?

Lycos seems to say, "We know about everything, we just won't tell you!"

-AP

Their section on search engines is still there, with all the normal ones listed:

http://dir.lycos.com/Computers/Internet/WWW/Search ing_the_Web/Search_Engines/General/

A couple of other things - they say "If you're still looking for Infoseek you can click here to search", but the "here" only reloads the page - duh! Also, they link to the wrong site - www.infoseek.com just redirects to infoseek.go.com.

Marketing droids. Jeez.

--

You're right.
I, for one, never need go to http://www.lycos.co.uk/ (where the blasted thing redirects me to - talk about wasting bandwidth with DNS lookups), simply because there's nothing of any interest on there.
OTOH, I do prefer to use FTPSearch and MP3search, both of which are not expressly linked off the front page.

To me, it says it all that the actual web-searching bit has been reduced to a tiny box at the top of the page.

On the positive side, I noticed the other day that it seems to have turned into a bit of a portal: the question is, too little, too late?

You're right.
I, for one, never need go to http://www.lycos.co.uk/ (where the blasted thing redirects me to - talk about wasting bandwidth with DNS lookups), simply because there's nothing of any interest on there.
OTOH, I do prefer to use FTPSearch and MP3search, both of which are not expressly linked off the front page.

To me, it says it all that the actual web-searching bit has been reduced to a tiny box at the top of the page.

On the positive side, I noticed the other day that it seems to have turned into a bit of a portal: the question is, too little, too late?

Same for me to the French language Lycos site.

First of all, it's odd for me, a native English speaker who happens to be living in France, to be automatically redirected to a French language page. But it starts getting to be annoying when I start out on the English page, search for Excite and end up on their Excite redirection page, which is back in the Lycos.com domain, do a search with the link on that page, and end up on the French language home page anyway!

Granted, it's hard for an English speaker to complain about the language content of the web (which must still be 90% English), but sheesh! If I start out specifying the language, shouldn't I at least stay in that language? Especially if it happens to be the original language of the site.

Same for me to the French language Lycos site.

First of all, it's odd for me, a native English speaker who happens to be living in France, to be automatically redirected to a French language page. But it starts getting to be annoying when I start out on the English page, search for Excite and end up on their Excite redirection page, which is back in the Lycos.com domain, do a search with the link on that page, and end up on the French language home page anyway!

Granted, it's hard for an English speaker to complain about the language content of the web (which must still be 90% English), but sheesh! If I start out specifying the language, shouldn't I at least stay in that language? Especially if it happens to be the original language of the site.

Brings me such delightful links as "START HERE: Barely Legal Teens".

After reloading several times my favourite was: "START HERE: for the best free ass pics".

I hope there aren't any kiddies with fragile little minds using Lycos to find pictures of our four legged friends!

Searching for "pussy cat" brings me a picture of "Spice Girls Kneeling in front of Planet Hollywood" (ahem). I'm not entirely sure the people at Lycos are entirely qualified to be performing word association for the world at large.
It is good for a laugh though!

It seems Lycos is filtering stuff out... for example, if you look at Lycos Home > Reference > Education > Directories-n-Resources > Search Engines Altavista, Deja, Excite, Yahoo! are not there... ok, maybe the "education" thigie has something to do with it... but Compu ters > Internet > WWW > Searching the Web > Search Engines doesn't list them either... they are stuffed in Lycos Home > Computers > Internet > WWW > Searching the Web > Search Engines > General.

This is sad, as I remember the first lycos versions, for which source code was available...

It seems Lycos is filtering stuff out... for example, if you look at Lycos Home > Reference > Education > Directories-n-Resources > Search Engines Altavista, Deja, Excite, Yahoo! are not there... ok, maybe the "education" thigie has something to do with it... but Compu ters > Internet > WWW > Searching the Web > Search Engines doesn't list them either... they are stuffed in Lycos Home > Computers > Internet > WWW > Searching the Web > Search Engines > General.

This is sad, as I remember the first lycos versions, for which source code was available...

It seems Lycos is filtering stuff out... for example, if you look at Lycos Home > Reference > Education > Directories-n-Resources > Search Engines Altavista, Deja, Excite, Yahoo! are not there... ok, maybe the "education" thigie has something to do with it... but Compu ters > Internet > WWW > Searching the Web > Search Engines doesn't list them either... they are stuffed in Lycos Home > Computers > Internet > WWW > Searching the Web > Search Engines > General.

This is sad, as I remember the first lycos versions, for which source code was available...

Hotbot is part of the Lycos network. There are several other sites including Sonique, Tripod, Angelfire, Wired, Hotwired, etc. Take a gander.

After not noticing that I'd been automatically redirected to the German Lycos site, and finding that I could find German Yahoo, Infoseek and so on, I wondered what all the fuss was about.

I then confirmed the "humorous messages" effect by going here US Lycos.

Are the people in America having fun, or are they being misguided.

Regards

I suppose it is in a company's interest to not support their competition, but this is a bit much. Or is it? Would it be reasonable for, say, the New York Times to write about the New York Post? Does that ever happen? (I can't say, I live in Alabama...). Or does the phone book mention competing phone companies? I would think so.

I wonder if such directory services are legally bound to represent information like this accurately -- clearly they aren't here, and it's easy to understand why, but how far can they carry it? If one advertiser doesn't like site so and so, will they block it from listings? This starts butting up on some important issues pretty quickly when you get into such matters. Is blocking access to a document a suppression of first amendment free speech rights? Good question...

Of course if we all just used Google to begin with, this problem might not happen in the first place. But that's just my unofficial, third-party, no-name endorsement of their fine service...

click here to search for yahoo on lycos You get their page asking you to please consider them first. Read through as tears come to your eyes. Then- after they're done pitching to you, they finally say, basically: "Okay, if you still want to search for Yahoo on Lycos, click here. Guess where this link takes you? Read through again as tears come to your eyes....

click here to search for yahoo on lycos You get their page asking you to please consider them first. Read through as tears come to your eyes. Then- after they're done pitching to you, they finally say, basically: "Okay, if you still want to search for Yahoo on Lycos, click here. Guess where this link takes you? Read through again as tears come to your eyes....

wow.

long? yes. well tought out? yes.

I work in the guts of a distributed object infrastructure project, so this is the kind of discussion that my fellow geeks and I would spend HOURS on if management didn't walk by that offten. I think you clearly see the empty spot on the scatter diagram you drew out there, and are obviously on the right track to fill it in.

I also think you're reinventing the wheel. (don't we all at some point? ;)

What you've described is the message passing protocols that existed before IPC. This is the style of programming that was taught by having to "run" your programs by carrying a shoe box of punched cards to the window by the machine room and giving it to an operator who would run it and give you back a stack of cards. This stack of cards of course might itself be a program which could then be fed back to the operator in one or more additional shoe boxes and the cycle began again.... I still write scripts that end by enqueing several more scripts for batch processing - and I WASN'T actively part of that era of computing. This style of communications is also still the big winner in the mainframe world of Transaction Monitors, ERPs, etc . . . look at IBM's hugely successful MQ Series for example. (here is a better read for the un-initiated.)

There are several implementations of frameworks for messaging protocols out there. One of my favorites in uni was the Paralell Virtual Machine architecture. Another was the Message Passing Interface. Many forms of paralell computation use the messaging model.

Messaging is also being brought into the Java world with JMS (no, not the great maker) the Java Messaging System.

wow. This is the kind of discusion that makes me proud to login to /. why can't there be more? Why aren't there? hrmm.

wow.

long? yes. well tought out? yes.

I work in the guts of a distributed object infrastructure project, so this is the kind of discussion that my fellow geeks and I would spend HOURS on if management didn't walk by that offten. I think you clearly see the empty spot on the scatter diagram you drew out there, and are obviously on the right track to fill it in.

I also think you're reinventing the wheel. (don't we all at some point? ;)

What you've described is the message passing protocols that existed before IPC. This is the style of programming that was taught by having to "run" your programs by carrying a shoe box of punched cards to the window by the machine room and giving it to an operator who would run it and give you back a stack of cards. This stack of cards of course might itself be a program which could then be fed back to the operator in one or more additional shoe boxes and the cycle began again.... I still write scripts that end by enqueing several more scripts for batch processing - and I WASN'T actively part of that era of computing. This style of communications is also still the big winner in the mainframe world of Transaction Monitors, ERPs, etc . . . look at IBM's hugely successful MQ Series for example. (here is a better read for the un-initiated.)

There are several implementations of frameworks for messaging protocols out there. One of my favorites in uni was the Paralell Virtual Machine architecture. Another was the Message Passing Interface. Many forms of paralell computation use the messaging model.

Messaging is also being brought into the Java world with JMS (no, not the great maker) the Java Messaging System.

wow. This is the kind of discusion that makes me proud to login to /. why can't there be more? Why aren't there? hrmm.

They don't offer any but use Lycos's FTP Search and you'll find what you are looking for. :-)

It is supposed to be fool-proof in that only LYCOS "internal" content is linked in. However any curious kid could go to the Teacher Resources section where they are given a link to search the The Hotfiles software download library which gives you access to Quake, Doom, Duke Nukem, and adult-themed downloads.

Yesterday I was downloading Netscape Domestic/128-bit Version. It was going kinda slow, so I used FTP Search to look for the file elsewhere. It's all over the place, anyone could download it...
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and now they should come get slashdot.org!!! NO!!! GET YOUR Mp3Z HERE
OH NO !!!

But, I have to say that I have very little pity for the kid.
How many times have you seen sites where they say "Oh, the files are not here on my servers. I only link to them." Like Lycos and MusicSeek say that they don't have the files there, that they only link to them after you search. You know what? I don't have to leave those sites to download files which are copyrighted, I put in my keyword and search. As far as the user is concerned, the files are downloaded right from those sites. This whole "I'm only linking" bull is no excuse, if you link to the file deliberately or help someone obtain illegal product you are in the wrong and you are an accomplice to the distribution of "stolen" material.

IMHO it's like giving someone the name and address of a fence and letting them use my phone to make the deal and my garage for the purchase. Would the cops give a rats rectum if I was not the one who stole the product? Heeeeeeell know. To me, this is the same type of situation. This kid (and don't get me wrong, I do pity the dude, just not much) was knowingly directing visitors to copyrighted files.

Now, if I link to a site that then links to a site for downloading an illegal file, sure, there is no reason to sue. But none of the sites which my sites link to direct the user to anything illegal, and I check that sort of thing. If a webmaster wants to, hell, be my guest. But if you link to illegal shit and you do it on purpose, and someone sues, busts, or otherwise comes after your butt, you bring the karma on yourself.


Anyhow, rant rant rant, I'll shut up and drink my beer.

they own like 10% of lycos too. don't really know what that means, but i thought it was interesting enough.

-matt

ftp.wustl.edu /systems/os2/apps/mmedia/sound/players/cddb.zip (found with ftpsearch)

It's a year old, but even with a years worth of data gone, these 32 MB (compressed) are a good start.

Let's hope that this article is right, but since Reuter's can't even get the name of Corel's CFO right, who knows!? I think if this merger were to take place it would be very bad news for the Linux support Corel has been promising.

Corel realizes that OS competition means increased software competition, does Adobe know this? If everyone in the commercial sector uses MS OSes the ability to sell software plummets, except for Microsoft ... anyways, getting off topic!

It's at mp3.lycos.com