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AltaVista Can't Keep Up

jedrek writes "MSNBC is reporting that Altavista, the great search engine, isn't able to keep it's listings current. Altavista hasn't renewed it's index since July which, seeing how it's almost November, is a tad too long." AltaVista was my weapon of choice until Google came along and was so much better that most net users jumped ship.

434 comments

  1. Oh well... by jmorse · · Score: 2

    can't make $$$ off a search engine can you?

    --

    "You done taken a wrong turn."
    -Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
    1. Re:Oh well... by haruharaharu · · Score: 2

      can't make $$$ off a search engine can you?

      Sure you can. google licenses their technology to corps who index their own networks. The main site functions as an advert for this.

      --
      Reboot macht Frei.
    2. Re:Oh well... by nanojath · · Score: 1

      Is this a troll? Of course you can make money off a search engine; in one of three ways: you can sell targetted advertising that appears adjunct to the search results, you can sell searching functionality to other internet content providers, and you can sell preferential treatment in searches. Google relies largely on the first two for revenue, A-V on the third. Just another reason why Google rose to the top.

      --

      It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries

    3. Re:Oh well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is wrong. Google's technology should be licensed under the GPL and Free to everyone. Information wants to be free! It's a shame to see such talented people sell out. They might as well call it MS Google.

    4. Re:Oh well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Surely Stallman/Google or GNU/Google?

    5. Re:Oh well... by yesthatguy · · Score: 1

      GNUgle

      --
      Yes! That guy!
    6. Re:Oh well... by wo1verin3 · · Score: 1

      If google had a donate option, I would donate. It's nice to have GPL source/software, but I think forcing someone to have that, especially when other options exist is unreasonable.

      They created a service...correction, a GREAT service, and they use this service that is provided FREE of charge to end users, to promote a billable service.

      I use google at least 10 times a day, and images.google.com is quite useful.

      Information is free, the map will cost you.

    7. Re:Oh well... by kramit · · Score: 1

      I find it surprising that nobody has mentioned that Google has licenced its technology to other sites such as yahoo.com (They used to use Inktomi stuff)

      http://google.yahoo.com/bin/query?p=slashdot&hc= 0& hs=13

      I will just say this about google:

      Besides jumping off the Altavista boat like everyone else, I started noticing that Google's index was updated so frequently and was so complete that there was no reason not to use it as the search on my website.

      For free they allow you to set up a branded search page limited to a particular site. That is a pretty nice feature. It works so good that I am now wondering how much better it would be if I spent money and got the more advanced features.

      This is an excellent way of marketing a product IMHO.

      I also find my self using it more and more in debugging various applications. Just today I did a search for "NOTICE: trying to delete portal name that does not exist." to try to track down a postgresql issue and the first 5 results had more than enough info to tell me more than I needed to know.

      A friend has also talked about writing a white paper titled "Using Google's cache as an emergency backup" after having a disk failure.

      -----Kermit

    8. Re:Oh well... by silverbax · · Score: 1

      I see a lot of support for Google, but I've never liked Google. In fact, I go out of my way NOT to use it. It doesn't really return heavy results, and the results returned are generally about 10% accurate from my experience.
      To each his own, but I miss AltaVista a few years ago, when it was the "quick and dirty" search engine of choice. Maybe I got 10,000 pages, but there a was a good chance that somewhere in the results was what I wanted. With Google, I get maybe 10-20 results on average with MAYBE 1 or two listings related to the search, but mostly just packaged "results". Deployment may be better with Google, but I'm still waiting for a decent search engine.

    9. Re:Oh well... by Bobo+the+Space+Chimp · · Score: 1

      Altavista made it big doing this, too.

      --
      I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
    10. Re:Oh well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Try a search of COM+ in altavista, result: 0 !!!

      try the same using google :)

      altavista was my favorite search engine, but after google there is not a single reason I go back there

      BTW, the google bar in explorer is the GREATEST plugin in my browser, I don't have to go to google's home page and it keep my previous search strings.

      nevertheless, it would be a shame see altavista go away :(

      but, c'est la vie :)

    11. Re:Oh well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL
      that's good.

      MOd this as funny

  2. google vs altavista by mindphasr · · Score: 1

    I think altavista was everyones choice back before google came around, it had that special URL search where you could search by page that links a certain URL...

    1. Re:google vs altavista by keesh · · Score: 3, Informative

      Google also allows this. Go to http://www.google.com/advanced_search and look near the bottom of the page.

    2. Re:google vs altavista by Lussarn · · Score: 1
      Altavista f**ked up real bad the day they tried that portal thingy. Most of us just want a search engine.


      Altavista has reverted somewhat to search engine again but the index isn't on par with google and doesn't give as good results /me thinks.

  3. seems like by TheRain · · Score: 1

    It seems to me that the quality of all the other search engines has been degrading since google started getting bigger. i use to use metacrawler primarily (which polls results from many popular search engines) and i used to get useful stuff. Now if I go back and use it, it doesn't bring up much useful stuff. maybe it's just that my standards are raised since using google.

    --
    Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
  4. Yup... Altavista's not doing well. by SaDan · · Score: 1

    Google's definately kicking some arse in the search engine category these days.

    Used to use Altavista quite a bit too... It's a shame, really.

  5. "dynamic" search engine by British · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why just not make the search engine check individual results(maybe in the order oldest-newest with a threshold as not to overtax the search engine) on a search, and get rid of the 404s? If it sees its share of 404s, don't show it to the user, and update its databse or whatnot so it doesn't have to do it again.

    Yes, a self-updating search engine. Where's my VC?

    1. Re:"dynamic" search engine by Winged+Cat · · Score: 1

      Speed. Checking the sites on every search would take much longer than simply checking an internal database.

    2. Re:"dynamic" search engine by geomcbay · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nice idea in practice, but the speed hit to check all of the returned results in real-time would be significant. With Google, I get results in a fraction of a second...if they were to take on the added CPU and network load of checking all these results before they gave them to me, it would be much much slower, especially considering the amount of traffic they are fielding as the #1 (by far) search engine.

      As long as they keep their database relatively updated (and google does) I'll be happy getting back un-checked results as fast as possible. Also, the google cache feature is REALLY nice and takes away most of the sting of 404s when they do pop up.

    3. Re:"dynamic" search engine by geomcbay · · Score: 1

      That'll teach me to skip previewing my comments. "Nice idea in theory" is what I meant, of course.

    4. Re:"dynamic" search engine by Miles · · Score: 1

      Not only is speed a concern, but now you're using up all kinds of resources just to check if the site is up--for every single search. That alone would use up enormous amounts of traffic, even if the individual packets are small just because there are so many searches being done.

    5. Re:"dynamic" search engine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It wouldn't have to check every time you did a search. Why not every time you clicked on a link from the results? There would still be a lot more bandwith used, but less than checking every link every time a search was run.

    6. Re:"dynamic" search engine by silicon_synapse · · Score: 1

      Besides the performance issue mentioned by others, sites occassionally go down for a few minutes or hours. If google deletes a site's entry while it's temporarily down, what happens when it comes back up? It's screwed. And forget about realtime monitoring of every server on the internet; that would be just ludicrous (or something with a similar spelling).

    7. Re:"dynamic" search engine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But I want a search result showing all sites, not just those which happen to be up when I happen to search. What if an important site goes down when I happen to search for it? It becomes invisible to me. Moreover, under the current system, not only does the Google search show me that the site exists so I can check it later when it comes back up, it also shows me their Google cache. Google cache is a great service; I can find things there which no longer exist on the web, and for that reason it is invaluable. Don't change this, Google!

    8. Re:"dynamic" search engine by thelenm · · Score: 1

      I agree, the caching is really nice and is the Google feature I like best. Anytime I used to use any other search engine, I would get tons of 404s and no way to know what might have been there when the page was crawled. Most of the time, what's in Google's cache is good enough. Not to mention it's all marked up in pretty colors, mmm.

      --
      Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
    9. Re:"dynamic" search engine by mobiGeek · · Score: 1
      Could you imagine if you had to wait for 10 or more web requests to be successfully retrieved BEFORE showing you your search results?

      I bet you wouldn't be using that search engine for long...(then again, people still go to other slow websites...)

      --

      ...Beware the IDEs of Microsoft...

    10. Re:"dynamic" search engine by thogard · · Score: 1

      you can add a 404 url into the "add my page to your search engine" box and they tend to go away real quick with both Altavista and Google. I wish they would add a link to the result page to have it rechecked.

    11. Re:"dynamic" search engine by RedWizzard · · Score: 2

      So you'd click a result and then get a page no longer exists message from AltaVista instead of a 404 from the browser. How is that better?

    12. Re:"dynamic" search engine by British · · Score: 2

      How about offset the load of checking the sites to the client him/herself? Google/whoever gives you a raw list of search results, your client(maybe a plug-in or something) checks each one within specified thresholds(# of sockets, etc)

    13. Re:"dynamic" search engine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey, that's a damn good idea!

    14. Re:"dynamic" search engine by simon_cockle · · Score: 1

      Sounds like a client side process.

      'spose you could send back 404s to the search engine to update it's database. But would the serarch engine trust them? Probably not.

      --
      ________ semper ubi sub ubi
  6. What use is Altavista nowadays? by uchian · · Score: 1

    It used to be my altime favourate search engine - until Google came out. Now, I haven't used it in over a year.

    Why? Because Google gives me better, more relevant results all of the time.

    This is a serious question - for what kind of things is Altavista better at searching for than Google?

    The only thing that I miss in Google is the ability to _properly_ search for a phrase, showing only those results which contain the exact phrase. (In my experience, quotation marks get ignored in Google)

    1. Re:What use is Altavista nowadays? by Cheetah86 · · Score: 1

      Altavista still has a better image search, as googles is in beta and doesn't work too well. Once googles is fully working, however, it should make google my only search engine.

    2. Re:What use is Altavista nowadays? by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Google does have an advanced search, with phrase mayching and the "AND, OR" boolean matching that made altavista usefull. It just isn't as widely publicized as altavista's was.

      Try here for the advanced search, and here for how to use Google's pattern matching, its actually quite good (as is everything in Google).

    3. Re:What use is Altavista nowadays? by GigsVT · · Score: 1

      The only thing that I miss in Google is the ability to _properly_ search for a phrase, showing only those results which contain the exact phrase. (In my experience, quotation marks get ignored in Google)

      Google's quotation mark phrase search is screwier (is that a word?) than that. I once searched for a phrase quoted, and got a "no results" message. Then later on when searching on the same phrase without the quotes, I found the exact same phrase in the page, same case and everything. Either Google doesn't index the whole page or something.... I never did figure it out.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    4. Re:What use is Altavista nowadays? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I noticed that recently as well.

    5. Re:What use is Altavista nowadays? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you search for something like
      "is this"
      Then google sais that the words is and this are too common, and he won't search for them.
      UNLESS you do something like
      "+is +this"
      Now here, google will not ignore anything - and will happily find whatever it was you looking for.

    6. Re:What use is Altavista nowadays? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only thing that Altavista has over Google is that as far as I can tell there is NO way to make Google search for words like "The" "And" "La" "El", etc. Sometimes these words actually matter.

      "So...remind me again how am I supposed to search for music from 'The The'.."

    7. Re:What use is Altavista nowadays? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Sure thing -- "+The +The" will do the trick. When Google does exclude those words from your search, it also tells you at the top of the results page, and provides a helpful link.

      This page tells you all about how to use Google -- you should read it.

    8. Re:What use is Altavista nowadays? by LegendLength · · Score: 1
      Then google sais that the words is and this are too common, and he won't search for them.
      Yes, i knew google was a male. Logical, concise... That altavista bitch on the other hand, with its cluttered mind and skewed results...
  7. Asta La Vista Altavista by The+Slashdolt · · Score: 1

    Asta La Vista Altavista. I too jumped ship and I am now a googler.

    --
    mp3's are only for those with bad memories
    1. Re:Asta La Vista Altavista by Tackhead · · Score: 2
      > Asta La Vista Altavista. I too jumped ship and I am now a googler.

      As did I, many moons ago. I'd forgotten Altavista even existed.

      At least Astalavista is still useful.

    2. Re:Asta La Vista Altavista by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hasta la vista, knowledge of Spanish spelling.

    3. Re:Asta La Vista Altavista by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hasta La Vista Analvirginity.

  8. Google is my engine of choice these days by ergo98 · · Score: 1

    Altavista used to be my #1 search destination, but soon when the noise ratio got too high I switched to Excite which had excellent rankings of search results (remember scores such as 87%, etc.? In the day Excite had an excellent ability to dig through the crap and pull out the good stuff), however it switched to a seemingly unweighted system and became unwieldy, and that pushed me to try out Google.com which I know love. Google rocks not only for its excellent ability to dig through the crap, but also for the ability to jump between "Deja" searches and web searches in an instant.

  9. why i don't love anything but google... by spacefem · · Score: 5, Insightful

    AltaVista just started to look like all the others- commercialized, pushy, and annoying. Why is it that every search engine I visit wants to send me shopping? I mean, I know that's how they make money, but I'm there to search, for God's sake. Google doesn't do that. That's why I love it, not because of accuracy, lots of seach engines are accurate, but because it's fast and graphic free, basically, it doesn't try to get in my way. That's the magic, everybody, that's why nobody cares about any other search engine or directory or whathaveyou.

    1. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by dimator · · Score: 2

      AltaVista just started to look like all the others- commercialized, pushy, and annoying.

      Ahh yes, everyone and their mom wants to be a fucking portal. If you still like Altavista's search results (I don't) you should look at www.raging.com.

      --
      python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
    2. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by Mahonrimoriancumer · · Score: 5, Funny

      Come on, don't you like it when Altavista gives you the following?

      Extend Your Search:

      Shop the web for anthrax

      Find anthrax at eBay! Register now!

      Search for anthrax in your local yellow pages

      --
      So climate's changing. So what? It has always changed. The big news would be if it wasn't changing. - Dr. Philip Stone
    3. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by Masem · · Score: 2
      Even if you are shopping, the results may certainly be.. um interesting.

      A professor gave a talk last year regarding a new spectroscopic method using lasers; however, because of the interaction with the laser and the powdered sample, they wanted to design some method of shaking the powder on the sample tray as to keep 'fresh' sample under the laser at all times. Since they had to build this from scratch, he sent his grad students to the net to search for places that would sell this type of equipment.

      Needless to say, the students had a, uh, rather interesting time searching the web for 'vibrator' vendors.

      --
      "Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
      "I can see my house from here!" - ST:
    4. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by plsander · · Score: 1

      Similar joys searching for pages on LaTeX...

    5. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by TimMann · · Score: 1

      AltaVista is still nice because it indexes every word (including "the", etc.), so phrase queries are more exact. If you query AltaVista for "The Who", you'll get results about the band; if you try that on Google, you get no results and are told that "who" (not to mention "the") is a very common word and was not included in your search.

      You can avoid most of the ads and nonsense by using http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/text instead of http://www.altavista.com

    6. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by hpgoh · · Score: 1
    7. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I got annoyed with altavista several times, each one pushing me more towards google. I used to be a huge altavista fan. But then they added a bunch of useless portal crap. Then they added advertising everywhere. Then they added a ton of cookies. They they started reloading the results page every minute. I mean, if I look for something and get back a page of 20 links, then go through the results one by one, it can easily take a few minutes, and in the mean-time the page keeps reloading and the results change sometimes (funny how 2 eaxct searches will return different results, even without the index being updated). So i very rarely visit altavista these days, only when I can find nothing on google, which is not very often. I just wish google allowed more advanced queries (with + and -, with quotes and bools).

    8. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that made my day

    9. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by damiam · · Score: 1

      But if you query for "+The +Who" on Google, you get what you're looking for.

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    10. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by paranoidia · · Score: 1

      When I listened to a talk given by a worker at Google, he said the main goal for them was to get them off their site as quickly as possible. Really changed the way that I viewed them.

    11. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by RedWizzard · · Score: 2

      Google's strategy of providing a simple effective search engine has been a breath of fresh air in the industry and it's sucess has been incredible. Take a look at the latest audience reach ratings here. The graph comparing Google to AltaVista is particularly startling. When AltaVista relaunched as a portal site in Nov 99 they initially gained users but as soon as Google appeared it has been dropping like a stone. No other search engine outside the major players (Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Lycos, Netscape) has managed to maintain it's position against Google and it is likely that Google will pass Netscape in the next few months. Even more impressive when you consider that this is only google.com's market share and doesn't count hits from Yahoo or Google's international versions.

    12. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by onepoint · · Score: 1

      >>main goal for them was to get them off their site as quickly as possible.

      This makes perfect sense to me. I'm not a tech head but I think that when a person communicates to a web site there is a thread ( or a process ) kept open for new request. so if they get them off quickly, you ( in theory ) have less threads (or a process) running.

      your information run a long the something I read a while back, about the server configurations that google uses. 2 controller cards for a total of 2 (or 4 I can not recall) hard drives. This configuration will let you increase the I/O reads and keep cpu i/o lower.

      thanks for the info

      -Onepoint

      --
      if you see me, smile and say hello.
    13. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Heh. Mine too.

    14. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by satanami69 · · Score: 1
      From http://www.google.com/help/refinesearch.html

      "If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can include it by putting a "+" sign in front of it. (Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign.) The one exception to this is "the", which is so common it is not considered in searches."

      So you still would want to use AtlaVista for 'The Who' Searches.

      --
      I really hate Dan Patrick.
    15. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep. That's why I use Google so much. I was really getting to like Goo too (www.goo.ne.jp) and even though the names are similar, they aren't related.

      Goo was better at finding more non-US sites (starting with Japan) than Google at times, so if I couldn't get lucky with one, I tried the other.

      Too bad they totally convoluted it with ad/shopping crap and I think even changed from their own engine to a licensed one. It's nowhere near as good now, but still decent. (the only option in Japanese you had to worry about in the past was one pull-down menu which said "search mainly in japan" or "search the entire world" for sites.)

    16. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by wheany · · Score: 1

      Try clicking the link for "Shop the web for anthrax", scroll down to find:
      To find products near you for anthrax, enter your Zip Code:

    17. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by dryueh · · Score: 1
      here here!

      you know..i always default to google too for my searching. i used to always hit up hotbot for searches because of their exstensive advanced search options, but even that now has subsumed to the banner mayham and 'shopping' links.

      i never thought about why i liked google so much, but i think it begins and ends here..with the absense of blatant front-page consummerism.

      i've often wondered about the success of advertising links attached to things like search engines....just how many people are taken in by them?

      curious indeed..

    18. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by Liquor · · Score: 1

      I agree that the basic Altavista page has an incurable case of portalitus (or even portal-heavy-us). But they did maintain a good interface - it's just much harder to find. You used to be able to just append '?text=yes' to an Altavista URL to get a text only page, but now the advanced text search is hidden at http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/sites/search /textadv.

      But even this doesn't address the problem of their index being out of date (and recently, extremely incomplete).

      --

      Liquor
      Sanity is a highly overrated commodity.
    19. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by rark · · Score: 2

      As a new sysadmin, several years ago, I was tasked to set up a dns server. I had some issue with it (don't recall what) and went to search for 'named' -- and got a heck of a lot of pet sites (as in, what is your pet named?) .... but don't even ask what I got when I searched for BIND.

      Oh my. I was underage at the time, too :P

    20. Re:why i don't love anything but google... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Goody! At least I can use AltaVista to shop for Ammonia Nitrate, Sulfuric Acid, 190 proof Alcohol, Sudafed, 95% pure Lactose, Potassium Chloride, MethylEthylKetone, and other fun chemicals. :)

  10. They ought to license the Google engine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's what Google's there for.

    Of course, I don't see what the point of having Altavista around anymore would be...

    1. Re:They ought to license the Google engine by Winged+Cat · · Score: 1

      Maybe a different database? "You search your index; we'll search ours. Sure, our results will overlap, but we'll have some of the answers you don't and vice versa." Said differentiation will occur naturally unless strong efforts are made to keep Google's and Altavista's databases in sync.

    2. Re:They ought to license the Google engine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If Google goes public, could it be possible that they use the proceeds to purchase Altavista and its IP? A few Altavista features added to Google's search engine would create an insanely great Google...

      Hmm... Perhaps time to think about buying Google stock?

  11. Deja Vu... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Deja Vu...

  12. Why I stopped using AltaVista by keesh · · Score: 2

    I stopped using AltaVista once the load time for the front page got over a few seconds. Google has a nice, quick to load, clean interface. Last time I looked, AV was slow, covered in excess garbage and ads, and made searching take far longer than necessary. The last straw was when it started creating popups asking me if I wanted to go to the UK version.

    1. Re:Why I stopped using AltaVista by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sheesh, get a real net connection.

    2. Re:Why I stopped using AltaVista by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have DSL. You know nothing about how the web works, dumbass.

    3. Re:Why I stopped using AltaVista by shaniber · · Score: 1
      I stopped using AltaVista once the load time for the front page got over a few seconds.
      I can almost trace the commercialization of the web through my progression of search engine choices:

      1. '96-'97: Lycos. Left after it started getting too crowded on the front page, and they put that terrible animated gif on the front page, BEFORE they would even let you use the search engine.
      2. '97-98: metacrawler. Left shortly after it sold out, and became a crappy commercial portal, instead of the cool fast loading page it was when it was an academic research project.
      3. '98-99: altavista. Left when everyone else did.
      4. '99-: google and open directory project.

      So does anyone have any idea what the original metacrawler address was? I thought that when they sold out, they researchers there were working on some sort of fantabulous search technology that was going to revolutionize things, but I haven't got a clue what university it was originally hosted at...

      ssd.

      --
      mah na mah na.
    4. Re:Why I stopped using AltaVista by w.p.richardson · · Score: 2

      Metacrawler was developed at the University of Washington, but the old search site doesn't seem to work any more. You know, dot com cash and all...

      --

      Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!

    5. Re:Why I stopped using AltaVista by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And by the way, when I say "instantaneous" I mean "instantaneous". I'm trying to actually time how long it takes to come up after hitting refresh, and I literally can't. It's less than 1/10th of a second.

      If you have any problems, it's because of your rig, not Alta Vista.

    6. Re:Why I stopped using AltaVista by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      try Altavista's text only version

    7. Re:Why I stopped using AltaVista by kaimiike1970 · · Score: 1

      Try clearing your cache and then doing it. Make sure you flush the cache on any proxies you might use as well... 'Refresh' is not the best choice for 'testing' a site's load time.

      --


      Do a google search before posting.
  13. Boolean query: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    why doesnt google do boolean?

    Wish they would fix that.

    Kirk, make it so.

  14. Too bad, Altavista has nice features by c_monster · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I hope they get it back in shape. Altavista has a few tricks up its sleeve that Google hasn't matched yet, like the ability to do an exact-string search. I find that looking up names is sometimes easier with an AltaVista search:

    +"Larry Wall" -"Perl"

    AltaVista also allows meta searches, like "which pages link to mine?" Google just doesn't have that. I use it for everything else, though.

    ~chris
    --
    Read the full text my book Perl for the Web
    1. Re:Too bad, Altavista has nice features by thejake316 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Google can do all that stuff, and a bit more, it's just a different syntax, and it's THE spot to search Use(less)net, and the cache is an incredibly useful resource, including for seeing how the /. ministry of truth modifies things without notifying users when it makes them look bad (ooh, byebye karma!). For starters, try http://www.google.com/advanced_search

      I wish search engines would update links like every 100th time somebody clicks on them, that way the popular sites would be refreshed often.

      --
      AC's cheerfully ignored
    2. Re:Too bad, Altavista has nice features by geomcbay · · Score: 2

      Try clicking the 'Advanced Search' link. Google does support these types of searches... On the advanced search page you can do exact-strings and filter on specific words, etc. It's all there.

      You can also do "Which pages link to mine?" searches off that page, or to do it quickly from the mainpage, enter (for example) "link:www.slashdot.org"

    3. Re:Too bad, Altavista has nice features by denzo · · Score: 2
      AltaVista also allows meta searches, like "which pages link to mine?" Google just doesn't have that. I use it for everything else, though.
      Since when didn't Google have this?

      Check this link out of pages linked to /.

      Go look through Google's Advanced search options. You'll be surprised.

    4. Re:Too bad, Altavista has nice features by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hello idiot :)

      Google defaults to +word. If you don't want a word to appear in your searches, simply add that minus sign before the word: -word

    5. Re:Too bad, Altavista has nice features by Morbid+Curiosity · · Score: 1

      AltaVista also allows meta searches, like "which pages link to mine?" Google just doesn't have that. I use it for everything else, though.

      It doesn't? http://www.google.com/search?as_lq=www.slashdot.or g

    6. Re:Too bad, Altavista has nice features by thejake316 · · Score: 1
      --
      AC's cheerfully ignored
    7. Re:Too bad, Altavista has nice features by dewdrops · · Score: 1

      Google supports those kinds of searches just fine; try it and see. It also supports domain restriction, language restriction, and other kinds of search altavista doesn't. You can read about them here:
      http://www.google.com/help/refinesearch.html

      This brings up a good point; people often think something is broken and doesn't contain certain features when they simply don't know how to use it properly. Some of the most common gripes about {text editors, OSs, languages, DBMSs, etc.} can be attributed to the user simply not knowing the tool well enough.

      Drew

    8. Re:Too bad, Altavista has nice features by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      You wrote a book? Dude -- you're embarrassing yourself! Google does ALL those things you say it doesn't, plus MORE than AV could ever do -- and less (ads, junk).

      Too bad you can't delete your post!

    9. Re:Too bad, Altavista has nice features by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Try "+Larry +Wall" "-Perl"

    10. Re:Too bad, Altavista has nice features by Motheius · · Score: 1

      http://www.frbatlanta.org/econ_rd/bios/wall.htm

      I'd say it works pretty well don't you???

    11. Re:Too bad, Altavista has nice features by jesser · · Score: 2

      Google's "which pages link to mine" feature only gives you a fraction of the sites that link. If I search for 'link:joaniesthoughts.blogspot.com' (my friend's page), I don't get any hits, but if I search for 'jcc slashdot squarefree', I do get the part of my site that links to her site.

      --
      The shareholder is always right.
    12. Re:Too bad, Altavista has nice features by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This brings up a good point; people often think something is broken and doesn't contain certain features when they simply
      don't know how to use it properly.


      I disagree a bit with you on that point. In fact I had used google for a long time now, and I think that something like one year ago, it did not
      have all the features mentionned here.

      I too was thinking it was still unable to do these
      tricks until I tried again to look at what was
      proposed in "advanced search". I think there is a lack of communication of their new features :)

      Since a few weeks, I noticed that there was a search for images as well. This was one of the last reasons I used Lycos. But I discovered this
      while I was on the www.google.com international site. Usually I use www.google.fr pages (which have two advantages: the first is not important, and is that the site words are in French. The other advantage is that I can look only in French-speaking pages, which is really important to me.

      So I really think google becomes better and better, but it does not warn us of the cool new features :)

    13. Re:Too bad, Altavista has nice features by Monsieur_F · · Score: 1

      This brings up a good point; people often think something is broken and doesn't contain certain features when they simply
      don't know how to use it properly.


      I disagree a bit with you on that point. In fact I had used google for a long time now, and I think that something like one year ago, it did not
      have all the features mentionned here.

      I too was thinking it was still unable to do these
      tricks until I tried again to look at what was
      proposed in "advanced search". I think there is a lack of communication of their new features :)

      Since a few weeks, I noticed that there was a search for images as well. This was one of the last reasons I used Lycos. But I discovered this
      while I was on the www.google.com international site. Usually I use www.google.fr pages (which have two advantages: the first is not important, and is that the site words are in French. The other advantage is that I can look only in French-speaking pages, which is really important to me.

      So I really think google becomes better and better, but it does not warn us of the cool new features :)

      [re-posted after creating an account... oh those newbies!]

      --
      McCartney fans pay bus tickets. [...] Lennon fans too, with discretion.
    14. Re:Too bad, Altavista has nice features by tcr · · Score: 1

      Use(less)net

      I have to disagree with this...

      I use GoogleGroups for UseNet searches a lot (mainly as a reference for technical information) and the S/N ratio seems to be really good these days. I've got info from newsgroup searches that just haven't turned up on web searches...

      Perhaps it's just the groups that I use.

      I think Google have done a terrific job on the old Deja database (and that site was turning into a really crappy portal), and stuff like the spam filters really seem to work.

      Anyone else with similar experences, or is the 'Usenet is crap' meme pretty widely held?

      --


      Information wants to be beer.
    15. Re:Too bad, Altavista has nice features by thejake316 · · Score: 1

      Google removes much of the noise for you, but it can't completely remove the heat and leave the light (speaking of memes), even in technical newsgroups there's a lot of flame, reply to flame, repeat, although it may be slightly more civil than "5KR00 J00 F4GZ!" alt.flame posts. There's only so much you can cancel.

      --
      AC's cheerfully ignored
  15. Maybe... by Renraku · · Score: 1

    ...if Altavista sold out the first few pages of search results for certain words to companies they'd make a lot of money, or even become better. Not condoning this, but doesn't Google/Yahoo do the same thing?

    --
    Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
    1. Re:Maybe... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only ads on google pages are clearly marked as such.

    2. Re:Maybe... by damiam · · Score: 1

      Altavista does this to a much larger extent than Google. Google has one or two clearly marked text-only ads. Altavista is covered with banner adds and links to its "partners".

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    3. Re:Maybe... by LegendLength · · Score: 1

      And if it didn't mark them you could bet it would be the demise of google.

      AltaVista are just so dumb, they had so many users. They assumed people wouldn't notice or care if they had unmarked ads. It's funny to see them pay for that kind of deception of it's users.

  16. Its a shame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sometimes you need complex and/or/near queries and you need to spend time constructing a a lot of google queries working around its limitation to be relatively sure you find everything relevant in its database, also you often need to make a wider search than would be necessary with and/or/near and spend a lot of time shoveling through 10 pages of hits.

    Cant they merge? :)

  17. Google clearly superior by MSBob · · Score: 5, Funny

    Google's superiority can be asserted with a simple test. Search for "porn" on google and you get over 10,000,000 pages. The same search on altavista yields only just over 3,000,000 pages. No wonder everyone uses google.

    --
    Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
    1. Re:Google clearly superior by Alomex · · Score: 2

      Back in the early days we used to keep a mispelling index to compare relative search engine sizes:

      For example search for interenete

      Google: 76 results
      Altavista: 9
      Lycos: 49
      HotBot: 35

    2. Re:Google clearly superior by PopeAlien · · Score: 1

      No no.. Thats why altavista can't keep *it* up, not why altavista can't keep up..

    3. Re:Google clearly superior by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which is why, you'll remember, it's pronounced "Go ogle"

    4. Re:Google clearly superior by interiot · · Score: 3, Funny

      Mispelling

      Google: 4810
      Altavista: 1926
      Lyocs: 2639
      Hotbot: 2400

    5. Re:Google clearly superior by Alomex · · Score: 3, Funny


      What, you never seen a misteak before?

    6. Re:Google clearly superior by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Search for "porn" on google and you get over 10,000,000 pages.

      Yeah, but try the same search in google images. How many images on the first page would you consider porn? Looks like a big none to me.

    7. Re:Google clearly superior by Xerithane · · Score: 1
      Sorry, I can understand you being upset.. but that was really quite funny. I haven't chuckled at a slashdot post like that one for quite sometime.


      Lighten up a bit, and realize it was meant in good humor (And further proved your point!)

      --
      Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
    8. Re:Google clearly superior by RedWizzard · · Score: 3, Informative

      But most porn pics don't actually have "porn" in the filename so they don't get ranked highly when you search for "porn". Try something like "anal". You'll get a few on the first page if you have the mature content filter off.

    9. Re:Google clearly superior by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      His response was pretty light. "misteak" vs. "mistake"?

    10. Re:Google clearly superior by Xerithane · · Score: 1

      heh.. well.. hmm.. proof I should actually pay attention before posting. But, that did make the thread that much more amusing.

      --
      Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
    11. Re:Google clearly superior by tandr · · Score: 1

      10,200,000 to be correct. The thing is -- why these numbers are SO round. Or, they track every porn page there and list them only by 100,000th ???

    12. Re:Google clearly superior by RedWizzard · · Score: 2

      When I tried it just now it said "about 10,300,000". 100,000 new porn sites have sprung up in the last few hours! There aren't enough hours in the day!

    13. Re:Google clearly superior by jlle · · Score: 1

      The google result isn't totally fair. As you can see, it will show 59 results and you have to re-research to see the omitted similar results. If you do this, you will see that for instance result 47, 48, 54, 55 seems to point to pages that looks identic (I haven't actually spent time seeing if they are, they have identical summaries in the search results). Many other searze should be done based on uniqe pages as in most ch engines wont't show these at all as they probably are removed at an earlier stage. Now, this might of course be a usefull feature in some very special cases, but any comparison in size should be based on uniqe pages, as duplicates is mostly a bad thing.

    14. Re:Google clearly superior by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >Lighten up a bit

      Notice how he spelled 'misteak'. Everyone seems to have gotten the joke except you.

      Learn to read.

  18. Reminiscing by Anixamander · · Score: 1

    How I yearn for those halcyon days of July 2001. A simpler, more innocent time.

    AltaVista lets me visit there.

    --
    Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball(TM)
  19. Wired article on Google licensing/strategy by Jasn · · Score: 1

    Nice article on this now online from Wired, about Google licensing and other parts of its semi-unique profit strategy...

  20. The Fish by jued0001 · · Score: 1

    All I use Altavista for is Babelfish now, other than that, I always use Google to search for anything of importance. None of the other search engines ever really had a chance in my mind...

    --

    _______

    I just wish I could c:\format Internet

    1. Re:The Fish by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I also sorta like the news.altavista.com site sorta (although news.yahoo.com is much better). check out ">a search for osama

  21. Technology not the problem? by 90XDoubleSide · · Score: 1
    While it might seem that technology is the cause for the delay, Kaspar said that's not the case. "It's not something that's broken. It's just a big challenge to get as many pages as you can," she said.

    How can this not be a problem with their technology? Are they doing everything by hand? Maybe she means that the humans operating the technology aren't on schedule; in any event I think this points to the installation of management that knows nothing about the technology that drives the company after it became yet another big commercial portal, I think the first thing every /.er thinks of when they read this is, "please don't let this happen to Google." The new features they are adding are great, but they must keep their site small and clean; anything can be taken too far.

    --
    "Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
    1. Re:Technology not the problem? by LegendLength · · Score: 1
      I think the first thing every /.er thinks of when they read this is, "please don't let this happen to Google."
      Yes, i think it would be even worse if this happened to google because they own the patent their search technique, which would mean any upcoming engine may be forced to use inferior technology. Don't you just love patents.
  22. No, no, OH MY GOD NO!!! by acceleriter · · Score: 1

    Oh, never mind. I thought the article was about Astalavista. Phew!

    --

    CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.

  23. Management lost focus? by Mark+of+THE+CITY · · Score: 1

    AltaVista was started by DEC, which sold it off to someone (anyone know?) Anyway, CMGI is the current majority owner. All this passing around may have caused managment to defer decisions related to keeping the database current and available (don't buy servers, don't develop faster search methods).

    Contrast Google, which so far hasn't been sold, and still has, IIRC, its original managerial crew.

    IANA MBA, so take this with a grain of salt.

    --
    The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
    1. Re:Management lost focus? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      altavista.digital.com was marketing for Alpha servers and a office version of the Altavista software.

      When Compaq bought out DEC, they smelled dotcom and spun the unit off as a public company, making a few hundred million dollars. Altavista.com laid off most of it's workers more than a year ago due the lack of income. CMGI got them I think in exchange for debt.

  24. Google vs. Altavista... by edashofy · · Score: 1

    I don't understand the complaints about Google's "lack" of an exact string search. Google does pay attention to quotation marks, although it ignores small common words like 'a' and 'the' making it a little annoying. "Get the fish" also returns "Get a fish" and "Get for fish" and probably others. Also, it doesn't see punctuation as a hard separator and it takes some license with posessive ("Larry Wall" will get you a lot of "Larry Wall's") but overall, these minor issues are tolerable compared to the multitudinous advantages of Google.

    1. Re:Google vs. Altavista... by Tackhead · · Score: 2
      > Google does pay attention to quotation marks, although it ignores small common words like 'a' and 'the' making it a little annoying.

      I recognize this is important from an indexing and performance point of view, but it makes some queries extremely difficult.

      For instance, how would you search for the source of the quotation "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party"? That'll get cut down to "now time good men come aid party", and while I can think of a lot of web sites that might appear as a result of such a query, about 99% of them will probably not be what I'm looking for.

      The problem is particularly annoying when you're looking for things like song lyrics. (Curse you, Harry Fox, may you rot in hell for eternity for what you pigfuckers did to lyrics.ch.)

    2. Re:Google vs. Altavista... by _Bean_ · · Score: 1

      Perhaps you might want to come up with a better example as the first page of hits for "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party" all contained the phrase in question.

    3. Re:Google vs. Altavista... by damiam · · Score: 1
      For instance, how would you search for the source of the quotation "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party"?

      How about "Now +is +the time +for all good men +to come +to the aid +of their party"?

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    4. Re:Google vs. Altavista... by King+Babar · · Score: 2
      For instance, how would you search for the source of the quotation "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party"? That'll get cut down to "now time good men come aid party", and while I can think of a lot of web sites that might appear as a result of such a query, about 99% of them will probably not be what I'm looking for.

      OK, so it has been pointed out that you can get what you really want with judicious use of "+" terms in the original search. But you know what? There's no reason why Google couldn't do that for you if it knew you were really searching for a quote or an exact phrase. So I therefore predict that that Google will develop a special "quotes" section like they already have for "groups" and "images". Or maybe just a search directive like "quote:" (cf some of the special forms used in google groups).

      I mean, people whine about this a lot now, so it something that should get fixed. And Google does tend to fix what's broken.

      --

      Babar

  25. Weapon of Choice? by Morbid+Curiosity · · Score: 5, Funny

    Altavista used to be my weapon of choice, too. But then I switched to Christopher Walken.
    Now I always have someone to talk to when I need to get results.

    I must admit, he does tend to make a bit of a song and dance about it, though.

    1. Re:Weapon of Choice? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that's not funny.
      if there's any justice in this world you'll be modded down.

    2. Re:Weapon of Choice? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      alright, the world sucks.
      i'd like to think the moderation up is out of spite rather a lame sense of humor.

  26. Mmmmmm......Google by Sarcasmooo! · · Score: 1

    So much available information..........*drools*

  27. Re:When Ximian goes under... by jason_z28 · · Score: 1

    damn, that is probably the rudest thing I've ever seen on slashdot. You probably intended that to be anonymous. Moron!

  28. Why Google won... by Matey-O · · Score: 1

    Because, under launguage preferences it's got Swedish Chef (Bork! Bork! Bork!)

    Google is always stop #1, followed by support.microsoft.com (guess why) and when THAT doesn't work, Copernic! (www.copernic.com)

    --
    "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
    1. Re:Why Google won... by damiam · · Score: 1

      And h4x0r!

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    2. Re:Why Google won... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And I don't usually need to go to support.microsoft.com cause Google searches MS' Knowledge Base articles too... (Better than MS' own search engine)

  29. Asta-la-advertising by indros13 · · Score: 1

    Altavista was a slick search engine intil that stupid X10 camera ad campaign. I switched to google just to avoid that. I like it better now, anyway, because it's faster and is more relevant, but (as many others have said), I definitely miss "exact phrase" searches +including and -excluding specific words.

    --
    Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
  30. Google not that great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What is this with Google...it's clear the returns are crafted. I believe it's a modern myth that google has any worth at all. Please reduce the praise a notch or two, thanks.

    1. Re:Google not that great by Erik+Fish · · Score: 1

      Yes, they are crafted. Crafted to clean out all the assholes attempting to abuse the engine into putting their site first.

      Crafted search engine results aren't bad when the people doing the crafting think the same way I do.

    2. Re:Google not that great by silverbax · · Score: 1

      I don't like Google's packaged responses either. I want a search, not a consumer profile.

  31. If only google would... by wowbagger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The only advantage Alta Vista has over Google is proper Boolean search terms. If Google would get that, I'd drop Alta Vista from my bookmarks in a Planck Interval.

    However, the one thing that keeps me using Alta Vista can be demonstrated with this example:

    Earlier today, a co-worker and I were discussing
    Signetic's ficticious write only memory .
    I wanted to see if anybody had ever put a copy of that data sheet up.

    Now, searching with Google and the terms Signetics "write only memory" gets me over 80 hits, the last 40 of which have NOTHING to do with my search at all - they just contain one or more of the words. Note the quotes - I was searching for the exact phrase "write only memory", a distinction lost upon Google.

    Now, searching on Alta Vista with Signetics near "write only memory" yeilds 57 hits, all of which are direct references to what I am looking for (most of which are mirrors of ESR's jargon file entry). Adding and not ("jargon file") neatly removes those, leaving 43 hits.

    Why cannot Google add boolean searching to their engine? Perhaps they could do an initial fetch as they do now, then refine it with a boolean search?

    1. Re:If only google would... by GigsVT · · Score: 2

      I don't know man, I searched for "write only memory" without the quotes, on Google, and the URL you provided was the very first hit.

      Maybe you are trying too hard to force Google to do what you want, when if you let it do it's magic, it would have known what you meant. :)

      (The first google page of results were all relevant, the second page was about 80% relevant, on the unquoted string)

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    2. Re:If only google would... by Miles · · Score: 1

      When I did the Signetics "write only memory", there were only about 3 results (not including the "very similar" ones) that did not have "write only memory" (possibly with hyphens and the like between words).

      It seems to me that Google is perfectly aware that you were searching for a phrase.

      Also check out Google's Advanced Search for boolean type queries (noting that it doesn't seem to specify all allowed things). For instance, adding -"actual checking" removed the first hit.

    3. Re:If only google would... by wowbagger · · Score: 4, Insightful

      While I was composing my last post, several people pointed out Google's advanced search feature. Close, and thanks for pointing it out, but not quite as nice as Alta Vista's for one reason: Alta Vista allows me to type in my search phrase, while Google makes me split it up across several fields.

      Also, Google cannot handle searches like:

      (Signetics near ("Write Only Memory" or "write-only memory")) or ("dark emitting diode") or ("light emitting resistor")

      It's kind of like the difference between a GUI and a command line - Google's implementation is more like a GUI, while Alta Vista's is more like a command line.

      I am sure that for most folks, Google's advanced search is easier to understand, and that is an important design goal. However, I'd still like the full power of Alta Vista's boolean parser available to me as a power user. Perhaps Google could implement an extra field where folks like me could enter a complex boolean phrase.

    4. Re:If only google would... by DickPhallus · · Score: 1

      Funny my google search turned up that exact address in the number one spot. For exact phrases, just put it in quotation marks.

      "write only memory" not a difficult concept...

      Besides, what percentage of people search using boolean terms anyway? Google has advanced search options available for that kind of stuff, which isn't what Joe Surfer uses anyway.

      --

      --
      Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
    5. Re:If only google would... by Scooby+Snacks · · Score: 1
      Just add a minus sign in front of the words you don't want. I went to their advanced search page to make sure of the syntax. Turns out that you'd want to search on Signetics "write only memory" -"jargon -file".

      HTH.

      --

      --
      Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
    6. Re:If only google would... by Miles · · Score: 1

      Signetics "write only memory" "dark emitting diode" OR "light emitting resistor"

      Using the above seems to work nicely

    7. Re:If only google would... by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 2

      Check Google's help page and check the Basics of Search and Advanced Search Tips links for information on operators, related searches and other things along the lines you're talking about.

    8. Re:If only google would... by interiot · · Score: 2

      Just a note... google considers "Write Only Memory" and "write-only memory" to be the same, so you don't need that "or" there.

    9. Re:If only google would... by killmenow · · Score: 1

      Amen. This is the only reason I still use AltaVista as a backup search when Google is too assinine [mispelling intentional] to figure out that words in quotes are searches for exact phrases.

    10. Re:If only google would... by TheTomcat · · Score: 5, Informative

      write.only.memory

      is the proper way to search for "write only memory" on google.

    11. Re:If only google would... by wowbagger · · Score: 2

      Yes, but the URL I provided wasn't the one I was looking for. I was looking for a URL that might have had the original document as a PDF or a scan.

      My point was that, because I was unable to refine my search, Google took the most numerous link (the ESR link), and gave that to me.

      To complete my point, go try and find a PDF of the original document, or a scan. The only scan I could find was rather crufy and not quite what I was looking for, and I had to search the rest to determine that no cleaner version was to be found. Those extra 40 non-related links just wasted my time.

    12. Re:If only google would... by interiot · · Score: 2

      Search for "write only memory" scan, click on the first result, search the page for "Scan", click on that link. Voila.

    13. Re:If only google would... by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 2
      Try typing this into google:
      signetics write only memory pdf
      and see what comes up. :-)
      --
      Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
    14. Re:If only google would... by killmenow · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Sorry to follow up on my own post...but I just learned something...

      Let's say I'm trying to find some info on a guy named George A. Bush. I go to google, enter "George A Bush" and it gives me a bunch of results about President George W. Bush...telling me that "A" is a common word and was dropped from my search...I get the same result whether I enter it with or without quotes.

      Now, I go to AltaVista and enter it with quotes, and while it does have some stupid crap about President George W. Bush before the listings, the listings are all specifically referring to somebody named George A. Bush...

      NOW, I go BACK to google and enter "George +A Bush" and I get the results I'm after! Note that I have to use the quotes. When doing this, it forces the phrase and stops it from dropping the "A". Very nice.

      Maybe there's no point in AltaVista after all...

    15. Re:If only google would... by CKW · · Score: 1


      That's bloodly un-intuitive. Can't google set things up so that it automatically does that when someone uses quotes?

    16. Re:If only google would... by lowar · · Score: 1

      Yes, but the URL I provided wasn't the one I was looking for. I was looking for a URL that might have had the original document as a PDF or a scan.
      The third link from this search will give you a page with two scanned pages from the original ad. It took me about 1 minute to refine the search and find the scan.
      Check your facts before ranting...

    17. Re:If only google would... by nanojath · · Score: 1

      I for one agree with you. But I think the consideration is that most people wouldn't know a boolean search if it bit them on the ass. You probably have some similar background to me- as a student and later doing research I hacked tons of boolean expressions in engines like chemical abstracts and lexis nexis - powerful comprehensive content that would overwhelm you if you didn't chop them down with well honed nested boolean search modifiers. Well, them days is gone and Google is playing its audience, working the best solution to the average person who is just going to enter a bunch of words and hope for the best. But like you, I wish I had the option to use proper boolean expressions for the finer tune.

      --

      It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries

    18. Re:If only google would... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      [mispelling intentional]
      Was that misspelling intentional too?
    19. Re:If only google would... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, but with http://av.com/power you have many more search options than you do with google. Also, at http://av.com/adv you have quite a rich query syntax, including AND, OR, AND NOT, NEAR, anchor:, applet:, domain:, host:, image:, like:, link:, text:, title:, and url:

      I was reading my November 2001 issue of Playboy magazine (wow, Angelica Bridges is hot hot hot!) and in one section in there, the writer dude was making a big deal over the new images.google.com site when AV has had http://images.altavista.com for years now!

    20. Re:If only google would... by jesser · · Score: 3, Informative

      "write only memory" (with quotes) works fine for me and returns the same results as write.only.memory.

      --
      The shareholder is always right.
    21. Re:If only google would... by csbruce · · Score: 1

      grep write.only.memory `find http://`

      Who needs Google!

    22. Re:If only google would... by chancycat · · Score: 1
      Write-only-memory - what an idea.


      Still, isn't that what /dev/null is, in a kind of way? Write whatever you want to it, you can't get it back.

      Also, I found this funny - "PowerDog" utilizes write-only-memory in their dongle product.

      --
      Evan - needs to hit preview before submitting
    23. Re:If only google would... by Scooby+Snacks · · Score: 1
      Yes, but with http://av.com/power you have many more search options than you do with google. Also, at http://av.com/adv you have quite a rich query syntax, including AND, OR, AND NOT, NEAR, anchor:, applet:, domain:, host:, image:, like:, link:, text:, title:, and url:
      Let's see...
      • AND - This is Google's default search.
      • OR - Yup, Google does this too.
      • AND NOT - Well, with Google, you prepend a - to the words or phrases you want to exclude.
      • NEAR - AV has the upper hand on this one. I don't know of an analogous feature for Google.
      • domain: and host: - With google, you use the site: operator. If you want a specific host, just specify the host as usual, eg "site:www.theregister.co.uk". If you want a domain, just prepend it with a dot, like "site:.co.uk".
      • link: - Google has this too.
      • like: - Use related: on Google.
      • The other six - I'll grant you, I'm not currently aware of Google's answer to them. But how often does one need to search for a java applet anyway?
      Perhaps you could give an example of the utility of the other keyword: operators? I'm curious. Thanks.
      --

      --
      Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
    24. Re:If only google would... by Zagadka · · Score: 1

      automatically does what?

    25. Re:If only google would... by rnd() · · Score: 2

      Your example doesn't seem to have a problem on Google. I typed in write only memory and found the correct link as the first in the list.

      Google does take some getting used to -- the mental heuristic I use is, "what would most people type if they wanted to find the result that I'm looking for.." This technique gives me excellent results.

      Google is "too smart" for the kind of boolean searches that you discuss. The power behind Google is its ability to correlate a search phrase with pages that are selected first from the result set, while initially ordering pages based on the number of times they are linked to.

      --

      Amazing magic tricks

    26. Re:If only google would... by Dr.+A.+van+Code · · Score: 1

      [S]earching on Alta Vista ... gets me over 80 hits, the last 40 of which have NOTHING to do with my search at all....

      How did the first 40 hits do? How about the first 10? I ran that search on google and the first hit was to the jargon file entry and the next few were all about ... well, they were about Signetics write-only memory. The sixth result had jpegs of the original data sheets.

      When the search turns up good results, who cares if there are some bad results far down the list?

      --
      Good mfences make good neighbors.
    27. Re:If only google would... by p3d0 · · Score: 2
      ...gets me over 80 hits, the last 40 of which have NOTHING to do with my search at all...
      Why in the world would you care about the last 40 hits?
      --
      Patrick Doyle
      I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
    28. Re:If only google would... by XorNand · · Score: 1


      (Overheard in the Google command center...)

      "Geez! We've got more people interested in "write only memory" than "anthrax" today. WTF?"

      --
      Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
    29. Re:If only google would... by wowbagger · · Score: 1

      That's no lie! I'm surprised by the number of comments and moderations done on this little thread - I had no idea so many people were so passionate about this!

    30. Re:If only google would... by rmathew · · Score: 1
    31. Re:If only google would... by jesser · · Score: 2
      Google cannot handle searches like

      (Signetics near ("Write Only Memory" or "write-only memory")) or ("dark emitting diode") or ("light emitting resistor")

      I'd just do three searches:
      1. Signetics "write only memory"
      2. Dark emitting diode
      3. Light emitting resistor
      I'd split the search into three searches even if I was using Altavista, because with separate searches I can tell if one of my search terms is giving irrelevant results, and I can learn which terms give no hits at all. The only thing Google doesn't give you from your example is the "near" operator, which isn't really a boolean operator.

      The OR operator only gives you an advantage if several of your search terms have alternate spellings: (crash and (find or search) and (close or cancel)). I often use that kind of search when I'm looking for known Mozilla bugs in bugzilla, but I rarely need to use queries that complex when searching the web.
      --
      The shareholder is always right.
    32. Re:If only google would... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's a very goddamn good question.

    33. Re:If only google would... by vrt3 · · Score: 1
      To summarize: the first 40 hits of Google were all relevant (I don't consider it a problem that the last ones are not relevant -- just look at them in order until you get one or two that are irrelevant). Altavista got you 57 hits, but only because it included 13 mirrors of the jargon file. Notice how Google strips them, and only shows one jargon file hit. On the very last page, you can click a link to show also all the other mirrors.

      Which leaves us at Google finding 40 relevant hits with a standard search, and Altavista finding 43 relevant hits when specifying 'near' and 'and not ("jargon file"). Not too bad, in my opinion.

      --
      This sig under construction. Please check back later.
    34. Re:If only google would... by Robert+Hutchinson · · Score: 1
      Now, searching with Google and the terms Signetics "write only memory" gets me over 80 hits, the last 40 of which have NOTHING to do with my search at all - they just contain one or more of the words. Note the quotes - I was searching for the exact phrase "write only memory", a distinction lost upon Google.
      When I did the above search, I got 41 hits, plus the "very similar" omitted ones. Also, you can't trust the brief quote that Google tosses up from the page. The one I checked, while displaying write, only, and memory all separately, did have "write only memory" on the page.

      I believe this might also address the occasional annoyance of "George A. Bush" not working. Google puts priority on the phrase, but it's also looking for the individual words. This is probably helpful when you can't remember the correct prepositions in a title: "voyage at the bottom of a sea" works better without reading the common words. Google pulls up relevant hits with the above phrase; Altavista gets 0 hits.

      And as for NEAR, I was under the impression that Google weights every search with nearness. Put in a long phrase without quotes, and you're still likely to find the phrase in correct order near the top of the hits.

      Robert Hutchinson

      --
      Robert Hutchinson
      Smash it. Smash it good.
  32. Back in the day..... by SomeOtherGuy · · Score: 3, Insightful



    (early google beta days) I felt kinda like a pioneer that had stumbled on a secret pile of gold with Google....Now everyone in the office and the home front swears by google and uses nothing else. This is a perfect example of totally burying the competition in the dirt and then rolling over them....Cheers to Google...If a few more small things would have been in place -- you would have seen Linux doing the same to Windows.....(Imagine if todays Mozilla would have been around when IE4 was new....)
    Strike early, strike hard...win!

    --
    (+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
    1. Re:Back in the day..... by kindbud · · Score: 2, Funny

      .....(Imagine if todays Mozilla would have been around when IE4 was new....)

      Few people could afford 256Mb memory in 1996.

      --
      Edith Keeler Must Die
  33. Re:Gnome vs KDE by bowb · · Score: 1

    You know, opinions are like assholes: everyone has one, and ... I forget how the rest of it goes. Something about g**ts probably.

  34. Altavista by Richy_T · · Score: 2
    I gave up when they dropped their Usenet archives (which google then dropped intot that rolw in a timely manner). Though I still went back occasionally when google couldn't search on the angle I wanted. Then they added some stuff that made the page refresh after every x seconds. Well, on dial on demand dialup, that sucks. So I started avoiding them. Now I'm no longer on dialup but I just avoid them out of habit.

    You know, altavista used to publish the date that the pages they search were last indexed at the bottom of each search link. They dropped that off about six months ago. None of the dates were showing up as being 2001. I noticed that search for a page for a site I had updated about three months ago was still showing the previous data.

    yup, altavista sucks.

    Rich

    1. Re:Altavista by rainwater · · Score: 1
      I noticed that search for a page for a site I had updated about three months ago was still showing the previous data.

      I believe you are referring to the caching of the web page. That is most likely a separate process than the indexing. So it probally occurs less freqently.

  35. Who uses the Google Toolbar? by uchian · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Whilst I still used Windows at home, I have to say that the google toolbar has to be the most excellent search aid that I ever installed. Type any word into it, and you could choose to either search for them or (and this was the best bit) highlight EVERY occurance of the word on whichever page you happened to be on, just like when you look in the google cache.

    Very useful for skim-reading pages to find relevant information, even if it isn't the page that you searched for originally

    1. Re:Who uses the Google Toolbar? by Erik+Fish · · Score: 1

      Too bad it's spyware or I'd use it.

      I got a lot of mileage out of the Infoseek toolbar back in the day.

    2. Re:Who uses the Google Toolbar? by Coranthis · · Score: 1

      Actually when you install the Google Bar it asks you if you want the bar to send back an anonymous log of what pages you vist, but it does give you the option to opt-out of it at the cost of loosing one or two features.

      It also stops sending logs if you close it's toolbar, for when you don't want certain sites to be logged.

    3. Re:Who uses the Google Toolbar? by uchian · · Score: 1

      In what way is it spyware? Sure, they can log things you search for, but umm... don't they do that when you search for something anyway?

    4. Re:Who uses the Google Toolbar? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I used it often too (minus the advanced features), but recently switched to Mozilla for tabbed browsing and the toolbar is one of the things I missed. Since I would like to see it for Moz even if Google as a company would rather wait until XUL stops changing so quickly, or until Netscape 6 has enough users to justify it, I did send a message asking if third party work attempting to replicate the toolbar would be ok. No reply yet (after 4 days, admittedly, and the feedback address was the only place I could think of to send the question)- does anyone know who to contact at Google with such a question? If it's ok, I just might make one myself.

    5. Re:Who uses the Google Toolbar? by ymgve · · Score: 1

      Opera does it with even more elegance - at the side of the URL field there is a field that will search on anything put into it through Google. You can also use the URL field by typing 'g searchterm' there. They also have 'a' for altavista and lots of other search shortcuts (Though I only use Google regularly. Strange that.)

    6. Re:Who uses the Google Toolbar? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Re the toolbar being spyware, not true if you don't choose the "advanced features" on install. Verified with tcpdump, try it yourself. Also, they are very upfront about this difference (unlike many others).

    7. Re:Who uses the Google Toolbar? by damiam · · Score: 1

      Konqueror has a similar feature, and Galeon has "smart bookmarks" that let you design your own search engine toolbar. My Galeon toolbar has searches for Google, Freshmeat, packages.debian.org, and my own hard drive. It's cool.

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    8. Re:Who uses the Google Toolbar? by jesser · · Score: 1

      When I installed the Google toolbar, they installer made it very clear which options sent what data to Google and how to turn them off.

      --
      The shareholder is always right.
    9. Re:Who uses the Google Toolbar? by radish · · Score: 2


      It's a fantastic tool, and the logging features (although anonymous anyway) can easily be disabled on setup - they are very good about explaning what is going on. To be commended!

      --

      ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

    10. Re:Who uses the Google Toolbar? by wemmick · · Score: 1
      A simple feature of the google toolbar that I like is the button that chops of the tail parts of the URL. For example, if you're visiting:

      http://dir.yahoo.com/Reference/Dictionaries/

      The button give you a menu with options:

      • http://dir.yahoo.com/Reference/
      • http://dir.yahoo.com
      • http://www.yahoo.com
      It's a simple thing that could/should be in the browser, but google gave it to me.
      --
      ___
      Cognitive Overflow
      more than yo
  36. Sure they do... by Mustang+Matt · · Score: 2

    As far as the meta searches on "which pages link to mine?"

    Go to google. Type in a URL and then there should be a link that says, find pages that link to url.

    --
    The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
  37. Excite sucks too. by scott1853 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Redid website on 7/9/2001, Excite hasn't picked up the changes yet.

  38. HEY! by part!cle · · Score: 0

    This is supposed to be about AV, not google!
    Heh, well i guess that fact proves that google does seriously kick arse.

    --
    If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.
  39. Old search engines are all losers by supabeast! · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The old search engines are going to be dead soon. They are flailing away the water of the net, throwing out random links that make no sense, selling off search results to try and keep afloat. Google has taken the net by storm, even my grandmother and little sister use it. Microsoft and AOL try to lure people in with their wretched search engines, but people quickly realize that those are just ill-concieved marketing tools of little real worth. Webmasters all over are abandoning internal search engines for their sites, instead paying Google to do it for them. Yahoo has gone from the king of all search engines to a portal for sex chats, and a messaging client quickly losing its own little war.

    Google is the king of all search engines. It is clean and pure, without the convoluted portal structure that has wrecked the others. Bow before Google, beg it to bestow upon you its collection of wisdom, and love it for being so great.

    1. Re:Old search engines are all losers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      "Webmasters all over are abandoning internal search engines for their sites, instead paying Google to do it for them. "


      Maybe someone should tell them about ht://dig. Paying for what they can get for free.

    2. Re:Old search engines are all losers by jafuser · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I performed a search on AltaVista and got distracted and left the window open. After some time the browser automatically refreshed. I looked in the source and found:

      <meta HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT=300>

      What's up with this?? Why are they refreshing my results every 5 minutes if they haven't updated their index in 3 months?

      --
      Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
    3. Re:Old search engines are all losers by mthiel · · Score: 1

      Well, every five minutes you also see a new advertisement then. I'd bet this is listed as a selling point somewhere for their ad marketing even.

    4. Re:Old search engines are all losers by afree87 · · Score: 1

      I've read that this boosts their hits on the hit-tracker sites... maybe there was an old Slashdot article on it.

    5. Re:Old search engines are all losers by TheAJofOZ · · Score: 1
      The old search engines are going to be dead soon.

      This is particularly interesting as it is quite rare on the net for the early to not wind up with the worm. A read an interview with the creators of Hotmail who said that the reason Hotmail was worth so much was because it was the first. Though there are now hundreds of free web-based mail providers, hotmail is by far and away the biggest because it was the first.

      Largely, the same thing happened with search engines. I'm not as sure of the history but I would imagine Yahoo was in on the search engine idea very early in the game and that's how it became the biggest, but now google is leaving it for dead. It's nice to see that a quality product can come from behind in market share and take over - it doesn't happen too often in computing.

    6. Re:Old search engines are all losers by loopkin · · Score: 1

      I agree that old search engines have to worry... remember infoseek, excite, ... ? they are dead or nearly... some changed to useless portals that nobody uses, because nobody knows them as web portals, and because they try to copy Yahoo, and they do it bad.
      however:
      "Yahoo has gone from the king of all search engines to a portal for sex chats, and a messaging client quickly losing its own little war."
      That's simply not true:
      1- Yahoo has never been a search engine, but a web index, which is very different. They added their search engine afterwards (it was Inktomi-powered in the beginning), along with other services... though i don't think it's widely used.
      2- They have succeeded in becoming the only widely used general web portal without beeing an ISP or a traditional media (TV Channels, etc.).
      3- Yahoo has established its brand, like AOL (*sob*)
      4- Yahoo is the reference as web portal in fact.
      5- Well... i like yahoo messenger ! (http://kyahoo.sf.net/) And it's not dead !!! ;-))

      What is important, is that, yes, there was a benefit beeing the first, but that didn't mean it was enough. Google is better than Altavista, yes, but altavista's quality went _down_ a lot, especially since Digital was bought by Compaq. Instead of doing the right move towards keeping it up with beeing the best search engine, they added a ton of services that nobody needed (the i-must-copy-yahoo syndrom), and that was actually turning it into a crappy and unreadable site (which was one the reasons why i stopped using it). They just changed their "business model" for the wrong one.

    7. Re:Old search engines are all losers by Ioldanach · · Score: 1

      Yahoo has gone from the king of all search engines to a portal for sex chats, and a messaging client quickly losing its own little war.

      As much as I like google (and I do use it for almost all my searches), I still think Yahoo has a place. Google, for all its worth, isn't an organised site. With yahoo, I can quickly get a listing of the radio stations in Boston, MA, for example.

      Besides, once you get beyond yahoo's organised pages, it claims to be 'powered by google' anyways. I'm not sure if that means the result database is google's own or if it just runs the same software, but I expect the former.

    8. Re:Old search engines are all losers by King+Babar · · Score: 2
      Yahoo has gone from the king of all search engines to a portal for sex chats, and a messaging client quickly losing its own little war.

      I can't quite agree with this, since Yahoo showed true cluefulness by adopting Google for their own search engine purposes. And I think you are really missing the big huge honkingly important things about Yahoo: easy access to news, and (drumroll, please) Yahoo Finance. Screw sex; show me the money!

      Google is the king of all search engines. It is clean and pure, without the convoluted portal structure that has wrecked the others. Bow before Google, beg it to bestow upon you its collection of wisdom, and love it for being so great.

      Well, yeah, that goes without saying. Yet, strangely, it bears repetition. :-)

      --

      Babar

    9. Re:Old search engines are all losers by Amit+J.+Patel · · Score: 1

      I highly recommend reading "The Hit Charade" on Wired. It explains why -- Altavista wants more page views to boost its stats.

  40. Left behind by maniac11 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Alta Vista has certainly been an innovator in its day... and was by far the best search engine until Google.

    They were the first to have a searchable full-text database and asian character sets (Chinese, Korean, Japanese).

    Don't forget about Babel Fish either... seems like this alone would be enough to keep them alive...

    Ah well, wish them luck in a very difficult market.

    --
    Guvegrra?
    1. Re:Left behind by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Alta Vista has certainly been an innovator in its day...

      The great heros of the past like Gary Kildal are gone, overtaken by the terrorism of Bill Gates.

    2. Re:Left behind by Alrocket · · Score: 1

      Yeah, don't forget they also have a nice banner free text-only search. It used to be at av.com/?text which was dead handy to type when bookmarks weren't around...

      They'd always been my favourite until they put a banner on their text-only page, that really pissed me off, but thankfully it's gone again.

      I think I'll still be using the above link for quite some time to come (except when searching for obviously post-July info), unless Google come up with a decent implementation of AVs boolean capabilities as mentioned above.

      Al.

  41. Even better than Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I used to use google until I found http://vivisimo.com/

    Organized search results with document clustering

  42. Captain of the obvious by Uttles · · Score: 2

    Sullivan called the company's inability to update search results "inexcusable" and said it feeds suspicions that paid listings take priority over generic search results. "This is something people have been paranoid about. If you're going to start charging people to submit, does that mean Web sites that can't afford to pay will get overlooked?"

    Gee, I wonder? I think it's common knowlege that those who pay to be listed are given priority to those who don't, otherwise there would be no motivation to pay. It's economics, plain and simple. I haven't read through the fine print of the Alta Vista usage policy but I'm pretty sure they outline the priority system there. I would be rather surprised if a search engine company charged people for their listings and then didn't give the paying customers some sort of benefit. On the other hand, just because someone doesn't pay doesn't mean they will be overlooked, but they will not get massive amounts of traffic based on their Alta Vista listing. Someone who's semi-comfortable using the search engine will probably construct powerful enough searches that if you're site has what they want, they will see it in their list of matches, probably somewhere close to the top. If someone has the same material on their site and they pay, theirs will be one above yours, and that's the way it should be.

    It really is a shame that Alta Vista is getting lazy updating their free listings though, they have a great search tool and I like a lot of their functions, but it is outdated information and like the author I end up using Google most of the time.

    --

    ~ now you know
  43. Hardware by halftrack · · Score: 1

    It seems to me that AltaVista's problem is hardware and bandwith. (At least that's their excuse.)

    Hardware and bandwith trouble is again related to the allmighty buck. This, again, relates to the fact that the Internet isn't new anymore - it's not ...hmmm... in, it's common. This has results in a more normalised portal, search-engine etc. marked where only a few can survive on a commercial basis. The internet is just not a good place for advertisement anymore. People have learned the Internet, how to surf. I'm totally ignorying the ... leatherman ad on top of slashdot and the Opera banner on my upper-right.

    Advertisers are becoming more and more aware of this and companies not directly linked to the web - like car manufacturers and toaster manufacturers - just keep a page for ordering, information and support. Their Internet advertisement budget is not very large - it's cheap, that's the only reson to do it. If AltaVista or others were to highten the prices they would loose because a banner spot isn't that valuable, and others would offer it cheaper - and win.

    --
    Look a monkey!
  44. Come ON! by HongPong · · Score: 2
    "We are unfortunately just behind schedule. We know that all of this is imperative. Within the next weeks we will be back to the most updated index." She added that the company has "crawled" the Web pages across the Internet but has not updated the index as of yet.

    Umm... isn't the very core of your purpose to update listings? And you haven't updated non-commercial listings since JULY? Whoever is managing this engine has entirely lost sight of what they need to be doing. Meanwhile google does a hell of a job giving web users what they want, without tons of rather deceitful advertising and gook all over the interface. (of course Google has advertising, but it is clearly deliniated, off to the side, and does not overwhelm true results) Altavista, of course, needs to get their act together or risk collapse.

  45. Babelfish! by mikeboone · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The only reason I go to the altavista.com domain these days is for the Babelfish.

    So I hope the AV search engine will still prosper to some degree, so that the whole business doesn't tank and they take the Babelfish with it.

    1. Re:Babelfish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also, one can buy AltaVista's AV Personal Search product to index the mail and MS Office documents on one's hard drive. It's a *little* bit better than the built-in "Find in Files" doohickey that ships with Windows.

  46. Sure it does! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Yes, google does boolean. OR works - but spaces (outside of quotes) are assumed ANDs.

    Try the advanced search page

  47. Re:Gnome vs KDE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think the trolls have gotten to the moderators. That comment needs to be knocked down to -1, Offtopic QUICKLY!!!

  48. The strong points by zpengo · · Score: 2
    Altavista did have a few good strong points...their search features were excellent, letting users form complex queries just short of regular expressions...

    In Google, when you search for a phrase, it tells you half the words are two common, and then gives you the rest out of order.

    --


    Got Rhinos?
    1. Re:The strong points by ecampbel · · Score: 1

      I had this problem to until another poster pointed out that you can just add a "+" to all the common words (except for "the") in your phrase. So to search for the phrase, "Attack on WTC", you'd search for "Attack +on WTC".

      --

      Sig goes here
  49. What turned me off of Altavista by wunderhorn1 · · Score: 2
    What turned me off of Altavista was when the news hit that they were selling the top 10 results for certain searches to companies for advertising purposes. I noticed it seemed to be true, and when I do a search I'm usually NOT looking for a company's webpage.

    Around the same time I heard about a new search engine with a more comprehensive search, caching, and a light interface. I was hooked.

    I do miss boolean searching, but Google's targeted-text ads are way better than Altavista's destroy-the-entire-usefulness-of-the-search-engine wholesale-whoring-out-their-service-to-corporate-p imps advertisements.

    --
    Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
    1. Re:What turned me off of Altavista by WillSeattle · · Score: 2

      What turned me off of Altavista was when the news hit that they were selling the top 10 results for certain searches to companies for advertising purposes. I noticed it seemed to be true, and when I do a search I'm usually NOT looking for a company's webpage.

      Ah, but Google has ads in the latest issues of Fortune where they are selling the same thing.

      Sad, but true.

      --
      --- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
    2. Re:What turned me off of Altavista by LegendLength · · Score: 1

      I don't believe it. Any online references?

    3. Re:What turned me off of Altavista by tdye · · Score: 2

      What turned me off was when they had some catastrophic system failure and took 3 weeks to load their current search results back into the database. I was getting results that were 3 or 4 months old, and I switched permanently to google after that.

    4. Re:What turned me off of Altavista by WillSeattle · · Score: 0, Troll

      They are print ads. Of course there aren't online references. Real execs don't read it online, except when in Yahoo! Finance.

      I have a subscription, that's why I know about the ads.

      --
      --- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
  50. Don't let VCs run businesses by stonewolf · · Score: 2

    This is just another moral to the same old story.
    The VCs will push you into doing ANYTHING, follow
    any short term, well hyped, strategy to try to make a 0.01% better ROI for this quarter.

    You can't build a company that is profitable in the long run by changing directions every quarter. This is especially true in technology based businesses where more than half of the total value of the company is the team and not physical assets.

    Stonewolf

  51. Strongpoints of Google by denzo · · Score: 2
    Here's a personal list of why I think Google rules:
    • Lightning-fast searches. I like how Google rubs it in, too ("search took 0.14 seconds").
    • Windows IE toolbar. The most convenient way to search, which includes other neat features like page rank, easy keyword highlighting, etc.
    • Good Usenet listing.
    • Result translations (someone's already mentioned Swedish Chef, hehe)
    • Web Directory has won me over, goodbye Yahoo!
    • Almost every single search I've done on Google has given me the most relevant results on the first page. I hardly need to see any further result pages unless my search is obscure or vague.
    • Uses very little bandwidth (read: advertising)
    It seems like a one-sided battle now. There's just no comparison.
    1. Re:Strongpoints of Google by matrix29 · · Score: 1

      The Google Toolbar has a bad memory leak that screws up Explorer in multiple windows (I sometimes have more than 10 open during a long search).

      That's why I uninstalled it when I figured out that it was the Google Toolbar's fault.

      --
      "Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
  52. benchmarks by ftide · · Score: 1
    "AltaVista was my weapon of choice until Google came along and was so much better that most net users jumped ship."

    Can you cite benchmarks or code audits that validate this?

    How does google get current stuff faster than altavista? Smarter webcrawlers? More efficient backend organization of xml? Better knowing when and when not to replace cached copies?

    Show me the audit/changelog!

    1. Re:benchmarks by Erik+Fish · · Score: 1

      I think he means "better" as in "not selling search results".

      That's enough reason for me to never use a search engine again.

    2. Re:benchmarks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      go to altavista and do a search on 'altavista home page' and see what is the first hit; compare that to google searching for 'google home page'.

    3. Re:benchmarks by Miles · · Score: 1

      Why do you need benchmarks? If your own experiences weren't enough to justify the switch, then you wouldn't have switched.

    4. Re:benchmarks by FunkSoulBrother · · Score: 1

      wow, I searched for both on both engines, and googles results were crazy better. I should have figured. The only things I still use AV for anymore is
      -Babelfish
      -phrases, (like a song lyric) in quotes on av seem to produce very relevant results. There is probably a way to make google do this, but altavistas is intuitive and works just fine.

  53. How many other people.... by gr8fulnded · · Score: 1

    Have google set as their home page when they bring up ye old browswer?

    Or am I just weird like that?

    --Dave

    1. Re:How many other people.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      lol we all do

    2. Re:How many other people.... by Happy+Monkey · · Score: 1

      On Netscape and Opera, I do. On IE, I have it set to my Netscape bookmarks.

      --
      __
      Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
    3. Re:How many other people.... by thehamster · · Score: 1

      I dont, as Opera has a search toolbar which by default is set to... Google!

      Pity I have to move my TV window if I'm using it (I have it in the top right).

      --
      -- This is not a sig. But I'm a liar.
    4. Re:How many other people.... by jx100 · · Score: 1

      On opera I just have it open whatever I was surfing last. There is a bar on both Opera and IE for Google, so I don't even need to go to the site; I just type in whatever I need there.

    5. Re:How many other people.... by tdye · · Score: 2

      I installed the IE toolbar for google at work... my homepage is /.!

  54. update every three hours by BenHmm · · Score: 2

    Ok, so it's a minor plug, but as my sig says, I run Gbloogle from an old machine under my desk. It's a weblog search engine that updates its index every three hours.

    Now, apart from the plug (and this being slashdot, and me paying for the bandwidth, gawd knows why I did that), I point this out because even Google only updates every four weeks or so.

    For some subjects (and the memes and odd sites you find via blogs are good examples) the specialist search engines are going to become very useful. Things like Distributed Searching, JXTA and so on are the way forward when the web is double the size it is today, and then double again.

  55. AV for UserFriendly's QOTD by mikosullivan · · Score: 1

    The only reason I keep AV bookmarked at all is to answer Kickstart's Question of the Day on UserFriendly. He likes to do "fill in the blank" questions and I find it interesting to search for the pattern he requests.

    --
    Miko O'Sullivan
  56. One Google Gripe by kisrael · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, Google is far and away the best, but it's habit of ignoring common words, even in exact phrase matches, is annoying. "death to infidels" become a search for "death" and "infidels", you have to type "death +to infidels"

    Also, I'm a little worried about everyone becoming dependent on one resource like this. Admittedly they seem to have a knack for figuring out the Right Thing, but monoculture is never a great idea in the modern world.

    --
    SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
    1. Re:One Google Gripe by Miles · · Score: 1

      The habit of ignoring common words is because words like 'to' give almost no information about a web page or other document--it's not a very good discriminator. Since Google also uses the heuristic that words in your search that are closer together are better adding the 'to' makes only a little difference--you're really searching for something phrase like that has "death" and "infidels" in it, not just "death" and "infidels". This ensures that you get a lot of the results that most people would find relevant, and if you really are searching for the exact phrase, you get a warning about it.

    2. Re:One Google Gripe by srvivn21 · · Score: 2

      About the whole "one resource" thing... Before Google arrived on the scene and proved its worth, weren't most of the geek crowd relying on Altavista?

      If Google ever slows their pace of innovation, or someone else figures out a way to make more extensive catalogs of the internet, won't we just move on? Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door.

      Or something like that.

    3. Re:One Google Gripe by kisrael · · Score: 2

      Actually I used Yahoo. (which I think at the time was set to fallback to AltaVista) For a while, Yahoo has a built-in "value add", as any of its links were added by someone's reccommendation, and where therefore somewhat less likely to come up as 404s and be more ontopic than the keyword searches of the day. Google's Algorithm blew that out of the water. I haven't done much with its Category system either...

      --
      SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
    4. Re:One Google Gripe by blair1q · · Score: 2

      That's why it's far and away the best.

      Huh? You ask?

      It's really far and away the best because it's quick and does make solid hits on most of your search term. It does this because its search is less complicated and bogs down less in niggling things like getting the best hits on your whole search term. It's pages are also an order of magnitude less complicated. Need to expand on a meme fast? Google's snappy, let's go there.

      McDonald's food sucks, you say, but you eat there from 1 to 90 times a month. How often do you get to Pappadeaux, or Morton's, or somewhere else where the food is gorgeous, but takes longer, and effectively costs more time (both waiting and $$=your former work hours) per unit goodness.

      --Blair
      "The price of freedom is that you get the freedom you price."

  57. What would be nice.... by DavidJA · · Score: 1

    Is an interface within Google that can "search in" previous results.

    search.microsoft.com has this feature and it rocks. I can do a non-spacific search at first, then search within those returned pages for a spacific term.

    I already find myself using google to search Microsoft's KB 80% of the time (because it is so much faster) - but if Google had a search in function I'd never go back to search.microsoft.com again!

    1. Re:What would be nice.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Too bad Microsoft's full text search is insanely buggy and unreliable. (To be fair, the problem is patented up the ass by various people, including Google.)

      Half the time I spend searching at microsoft.com is trying to trick their stupid engine into giving me the result that I know exists.

    2. Re: What would be nice.... by Inthewire · · Score: 1

      It does.
      For instance, this is how to search within the results for "+I'm stupid"

      --


      Writers imply. Readers infer.
  58. What about + and -?? by alienmole · · Score: 3, Informative
    Forget the advanced search. Try using stragically placed + and - to force presence or absence of terms. E.g. the following:

    +Signetics +"write only memory" -antonym

    returns a bogus press release as it's first result, which may be what you're looking for. (I used "antonym" because many jargon file copies don't explicitly say they're from the jargon file.)

    I agree with the person who said you may be overspecifying your searches. The point is to find the stuff you want - as long as it lets you do that without much difficulty, does it really matter if you can't explicitly specify a true boolean search? You'd have to show me a case where Altavista really can find something that Google can't before I'd be convinced. All you've done is show that you weren't that familiar with Google.

    1. Re:What about + and -?? by Earlybird · · Score: 3, Informative
      • Forget the advanced search. Try using stragically placed + and - to force presence or absence of terms.
      Google ignores the plus, since it considers all terms important in the query. It honours the minus, however, for exclusion. Please realize that Googles honours phrases for page ranking. So if you're searching for "write only memory", it sorts on proximity, so you'll get exact phrase hits first, and the lower-ranked results will list documents that merely contain the words "write", "only" and "memory".
    2. Re:What about + and -?? by PurpleBob · · Score: 2

      I believe that Google's search mechanism came about as a direct response to the way AltaVista users tended to put + before every word. "No really, damn you, this is important."

      Google's use of +, though, is a bit screwy. If you put it before a non-stop word, it ignores all your +'s. So in order to search for a phrase including stop words, you have to search once for the phrase, let it tell you which words it didn't search, and then put a + before those and search again. Luckily, I don't have to search for "+to +be +or not +to +be" very often.

      --
      Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
    3. Re:What about + and -?? by MrFredBloggs · · Score: 1

      Also, if you search for a phrase in quotes on Google, it says something like `ignoring `if`` as its too common. Uh, yeah, but its in quotes? So i want to match the phrase, not just some of the words.

  59. Hasta la what? by WickedClean · · Score: 1

    And here I always thought AltaVista was a Mexican search engine.

    --
    ...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
  60. Current? by Reckless+Visionary · · Score: 2

    I love google as most of you do, but I do have a question. It's right to say that not updating your index in a long time makes your results useless, but what do we have to compare Altavista to? How often is Google updated, and how does it keep up to an ever increasing number of pages? Just curious.

    --
    I think I'll stop here.
    1. Re:Current? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well I'm not sure how often they update but I have seen pages I submitted included within 3 weeks.

  61. Why Use Just One? by GSpot · · Score: 1
    Why use just one search engine?

    Walk down the hill son, and scr*w them all!!!!

    I use a program that polls all the search engines you wish... it's called Copernic

  62. Teoma... going, going gone... sold to Askjeeves. by sumengen · · Score: 1

    Askjeeves did a clever move and bought Teoma. They wanted to buy Google too several years ago in their glory days, but waren't successful. So they bought directhit back then. Now with Teoma they have real competition for google. They probably try to licence the technology or create internal search engines for sites.

    The point is, Altavista should have done this first. They are out of this game unfortunately.

  63. overspidered? by jpack · · Score: 1

    I noticed that a couple months ago AV started spidering "dynamic-looking" pages (like URLs with cgi-bin in them or query strings, etc.) that they previously wouldn't touch.

    Perhaps in trying to compete with google's total index size by changing their rules a bit they've spidered more than they can chew, so to speak.

    It'll be a sad day when they take down their own index and just replace it with goto (ok.. overture...) results.

  64. I'm waiting for GoogleVista... by GeneralEmergency · · Score: 1
    &nbsp

    Where all the best features come together!


    (I stopped using AltaVista when they started using that stupid javascript crap to reload my page just to churn more ad revenue. MAN THAT TICKED ME OFF!)

    --
    "A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
    GeneralEmergency
  65. God I hate crap like this. by AugstWest · · Score: 2

    AltaVista, once known as a premier search provider among Internet cognoscenti,

    Internet cognoscenti? Who is getting blown here, the writer, wired, or the reader? All three?

    Cognoscenti must be the offspring of the Digerati, who begat Shem.

  66. I have to agree... by farrellj · · Score: 2

    I used to use AltaVista all the time, but now I use Google. Since AltaVista was severed from it's hardware base, DEC, it has gone downhill. Also, I think the editorial descision to include paying customers as part of the results rather than as separate adds like Google does also make me less likly to use AltaVista.

    ttyl
    Farrell

    --
    CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
  67. Google's Usenet searching almost useless, too by devphil · · Score: 1


    Yeah, this is mildly offtopic. I'll probably check the "no score +1 bonus" thingy. Anyhow...

    Google's new usenet search engine lacks one key feature, much in the same way as you described their web search engine. You cannot view the Message-ID of an article once you've found it.

    Oh, their Advanced Search page allows searching on a Message-ID. That would be useful if we knew the Message-ID ahead of time. Unfortunately, the only way we know that is to already have the article from a pre-Google search, or an original copy. (Deja, for example, had its "view original Usenet text" which would display the entire article, full headers and all, as plaintext. Wonderful. Why oh why did Google drop that?)

    So, for Usenet articles that get posted in the present day, you can't retrieve the Message-ID any other way. So you can't know what it is to search for it. So if you do manage to hunt it down, you have to refer others to it by either:

    • Posting the 19-line URL that repeats the search and jumps to the correct article, or
    • List the exact search criteria and add, "then jump to result number 24". Not effing likely.

    So, all you can do is search, and it's next to impossible to repeat a search. Can't cite articles by providing a direct link. Can't look up the ONE SIGNLE UNIQUE THING guaranteed to be present in every article. It's like a bookstore or a library refusing to show you the ISBN numbers. Fucking ridiculous.

    Sorry, just needed to get that out of my system.

    --
    You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
    1. Re:Google's Usenet searching almost useless, too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      huh? The "Original Format" option is right there on the right hand side of every message.

    2. Re:Google's Usenet searching almost useless, too by ksorim · · Score: 1

      Click on a message. Click on "View this article only" and then "Original Format". And there it is. Plain old text. With Message-ID and all.

    3. Re:Google's Usenet searching almost useless, too by devphil · · Score: 2


      Excellent! They've added quite a few features since the last time I checked. The whole threading tree on the left-hand side is new to me too.

      Okay, ignore my rant, then. :-)

      --
      You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
  68. Jumping ship. by _RiZ_ · · Score: 1

    I am included in the jumping ship. It seems altavista.com used to give you what you were looking for, but in recent history, it has been way off. google... right on the money most of the time.

  69. If the site is Slashdotted.... by Unknown+Bovine+Group · · Score: 1

    If the site is Slashdotted, you can always check out the cached copy at altavista.

    Oh no wait, the cache still has a story about the Y2k bug.

    --
    m00.
    1. Re:If the site is Slashdotted.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      We regret to inform you that, due to the current economic climate, we were unable to obtain funding for a sig.

      Don't you mean 'due to the sept 11 events'?

  70. Actually... by jodyh · · Score: 1

    ... I still miss archie.

  71. Re:Gnome vs KDE by ThatComputerGuy · · Score: 1

    ...and they're not afraid to share it with others?

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  72. They lost me due to obnoxious advertising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They lost me back when they allowed ad companies to serve adds like "do you think abortion should be legal. Click here to vote!!".

    I sent them a couple of emails complaining and then went to google 100%.

    Screw'em.

  73. Obligatory MS paranoia by gambletron+3000 · · Score: 1

    Why is MSNBC publicizing the fact that a search engine is out of date? Is that particularly newsworthy?

    The paranoid answer is that they want to discredit other search engines to drive more business to MSN search.

    Another symptom of the conflicts you get when MS is reporting news about their competitors.

    1. Re:Obligatory MS paranoia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You should know. That's /.'s manefesto!

    2. Re:Obligatory MS paranoia by gewalker · · Score: 1

      So, should I assume CNN is reporting on anthrax and Tom Brokaw so you will switch to the bacterial-free CNN news?

  74. mater google dolorota by Jingle+Returno · · Score: 1

    Google is nice because you can put stuff in the O's.

  75. Warning re Google by WillSeattle · · Score: 2

    I should point out that, while Google is great and my personal choice, we should all be aware that they're running ads in Fortune advertising how companies can get "their words" (two line ads) in the search engine results.

    I'm quite serious.

    I'll still use it, cause it is better, but it's not all that you think it is.

    --
    --- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
    1. Re:Warning re Google by PRickard · · Score: 2
      WillSeattle typed: I should point out that, while Google is great and my personal choice, we should all be aware that they're running ads in Fortune advertising how companies can get "their words" (two line ads) in the search engine results.

      If you check the Google site, you'll notice that the advertising links are clearly marked... Yahoo and most other search/index sites do the same thing. If it helps them to continue offering high-quality service, I don't mind.

      While we're on the subject... Has anyone else noticed that Google now includes PDF files in its searching? It indexes the content of the files and even lets you view them as plaintext. That's the best thing since bread came sliced, IMO.

      --

      == Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====

    2. Re:Warning re Google by King+Babar · · Score: 2
      While we're on the subject... Has anyone else noticed that Google now includes PDF files in its searching? It indexes the content of the files and even lets you view them as plaintext. That's the best thing since bread came sliced, IMO.

      I have to say that I almost cried with joy when the indexing of PDF became a feature. The view of them as plaintext...needs some work. But you know what? I have some confidence the work will get done, because one of these corporations that Google indexes for pay will fork over some money to make this happen better, and then we're really going to town.

      One thing about Google that people haven't mentioned is that they really do work constantly to improve the service. When they first took over deja, the results were...disappointing. But they've kept at it, and now it's pretty usable. We'll know that's really arrived when everybody starts pointing links at pages in that archive on the scale they used to when dejanews was at its peak.

      --

      Babar

  76. Sure it does. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Scroll to the bottom of the page and add another word to the search!

  77. shorter name? by mgkimsal2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The article points out that they tried to go up against AOL and Yahoo. Might they have lost viewers simply because they're name is too long to bother typing? google.com is easy to type, as is msn.com, etc.

    1. Re:shorter name? by big.ears · · Score: 3, Informative

      Try av.com. Its short, sweet, easy to remember, and just as useless as altavista.com.

    2. Re:shorter name? by Peter+H.S. · · Score: 2

      The article points out that they tried to go up against AOL and Yahoo. Might they have lost viewers simply because they're name is too long to bother typing? google.com is easy to type, as is msn.com, etc.

      www.av.com (pretty short) takes you to altavista. A whois says the record was created oct. 1998.
      No, I dont believe that was the problem.
      I did like altavista very much, and unlike google, it did have a good /powerfull "query language".
      But they kept loading banners and crap on their frontpage, and the site became very, very sluggish.
      And then came google. Google is really what killed altavista: google was extremely fast, and very slick and simple. Their approach to searching really was something new, and they knew how to make money too, without bothering its users ("portals" was the money making hype at that time).

      In the beginning, google hadn't indexed so many pages. A search on av, could often give better /more results. But I simply stopped bothering; if it isn't on google or deja.com, I don't really care.

  78. Untrue by Lish · · Score: 1

    This feature does in fact exist! If you click on "original format" when viewing a usenet posting, it will display in plaintext exactly as you are describing, including the message-ID. It's on the right-hand side near the top, next to "view complete thread".

    --
    "This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
    1. Re:Untrue by thogard · · Score: 1

      But the Path: line isn't there.

    2. Re:Untrue by Lish · · Score: 1

      A server path doesn't make much sense for an _archive_ really. Why do you want the Path: line?

      --
      "This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
    3. Re:Untrue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Path: line is non-canonical, so it makes little sense to retain it in an archive. As long as there's a correct NNTP-Posting-Host, the Path is expendable.

    4. Re:Untrue by thogard · · Score: 1

      Since Google is more than just an archive, I would expect to have it. It comes in useful when attempting to debug news transport issues.

      The path line also could come in handy for verifying stats like the freenix top 1000.

  79. Google beginning to have troubles too by CKW · · Score: 1


    Google used to scan my small site once a month. The last couple times it came by, it only did the top level pages. Two months in and it still hasn't come back to discover all the new links that were on those top level pages, which lead to a ton of useful files that are otherwise hard to find on the net.

    I'm beginning to wonder if they're not having troubles keeping up as well.

  80. Better service breaks loyalties by rjamestaylor · · Score: 2
    I, too, considered Alta Vista the best search engine until, when was that?, summer of 1999 when a friend pointed me to Google.

    Google was so vastly superior that I quickly stopped using anything else except Northern Light for special searches.

    I recall the graphical search aid AltaVista experimented with -- which was pretty useful once I learned the tricks. It was necessary to sort through the false hits generated by the "keyword" matching algorithm. Google, however, didn't need such a trick since it used the power of the Internet as its relevancy filter. Now, I'm so used to finding exactly what I want I can't imagine using a different method.

    Here's the lesson: better service, better value beats "loyalty" and "branding" with discerning customers.

    --
    -- @rjamestaylor on Ello
  81. search engine progression by Derek · · Score: 1

    My search engine progression over the past years looks like this:

    veronica(gopherspace anyone?) -> webcrawler(early 90's) -> altavista(late 90's) -> google(current)

    with an occational stop into Ask Jeeves and Northern Lights and Deja News. They were all good during their times.

    -Derek

  82. Moderator: keep this comment hidden please by terrorist-a · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Excuse me. I currently have no web page (and wouldn't care now about it) but will use slashdot to store an important text document I've written.

    I've seen slashdot preserves finely all comments. I'm very happy about this. I would like to tell my grandchildren: Look, there i posted in slashdot (-use some ironic air here if you want).

    well...

    I want to thank slashdot in advance for this. I could translate the document or explain some points if someone interested. Bye for now.

    ////

    Ideas para el docu linux-eco-logos

    Deceleración tecnológica... una meta

    Devaluación global de la propiedad intelectual. Usa la magia para bien.

    Conocimiento no es igual a dinero.

    Al bombo con las compañías explotadoras de la propiedad intelectual. Han tenido un tiempo para explotar al máximo el truquito...

    Redefinición de la oficina de patentes: cobrar por mantener el código online...

    No se pagan más patentes... Los productos se abaratan

    Ya no más cobrar porque yo lo inventé. Cobrar por que le s ayudo con mi invento o a ellos les agrada mi trabajo... En realidad en un trabajo de ese tipo no necesita mucho dinero, al menos no sé cuanto me agradaría ganar, pero me gustaría ganar mas y trabajar menos... o trabajar en alguna tarea distinta al ordenador,

    Pues me parece que yo no he escrito lo ultimo eh?

    Estará alguien monitoreándome?

    o algo más físico y de charla menos forzada. Menos cagador de columna o más bien restituidor de la misma...

    So que tenemos una revolución de precios... las cosas bajan increíblemente de precio se reduce todo lo que se puede. El desarrollador o el equipo son tratados como una entidad

    Oigan lo que somos:

    Somos un grupo de tipos que hacemos el mismo trabajo que hacen esos otros pelotudos y lo hacemos por muucho menos... Ah y se me olvidaba: Usted solo tiene que retribuír si quiere... Claro. Yo siembro papas y utilizo el mismo modelo y me muero de hambre... Tome, pruebe, vuelva si quiere, pague si quiere...

    ...si no, se le dan más muestras según sea nuestro humor y de acuerdo a un cálculo seguro según haya estado la varianza en el último mes... (economistas: interpretar a discreción y en offtopic por favor, no he investigado el significado de varianza, simplemente lo asigné a una idea que me pueden preguntar mas tarde haciendo uso del referente.)

    Saben de lo que hablo: proyecciones económicas cortas y más ecológicas, se utiliza el principio de ir subiendo el índice...
    ...de una ecuación compuesta por todos para el beneficio de cada índice (persona, pais)

    parámetros importantes: densidad poblacional

    queremos distribuir la gente un poco más separada [no se si iremos a tener que matar a algunos] o al menos aplaudir a la pareja que decide terminar pronto la vida de un niño no querido y/o defectuoso. Pero papá: si existiese eso tal vez yo no hubiera nacido... Es probable que todavía estuvieses transformada en el todo para este momento? Acaso las almas salen cuando tienen que salir o escogen?

    Cada persona del mundo tiene derecho a escoger las decisiones en un tiempo ??? Se mapean las comunidades litigantes geográficamente y con keywords

    Todo suceso se registra, existen miles de registradores, ojalá en su area hubiera varios registradores para hacer interpolaciones. Por supuesto que usted se puede inscribir con los registradores que quiera...

    Uno dice que su discurso lo escribio manuelito y le atribuye a el el significado o mas bien lo identifica como la fuente de backup mas cercano de la idea a través del tiempo.

    15:45 22/07/01 All contenido multitasked multimooded multithreaded mediohabednomás

    no se trata de imponer reglas absurdas sino de liberar la verdad... romper el velo que se impone sobre lo evidente...

    Pago porque quiero... y puedo

    Avanza con la fuerza de un virus o una inundación que va tomando mas y más terreno mientras los ojos de los protectores van hundiéndose en el pánico de ver que ya no pueden pararlo. Todo está justificado y publicado desde el principio.

    Grilla se extrafina... se llega mas a la definición del producto en terminos de comerciabilidad... En soluciones informáticas baja el precio, se compra justo lo que se necesita... desde el hardware hasta el software completo como un producto por eso tiene que haber un estandar para interactividad de sistemas operativos... se compra solamente el producto: photoshop y típicos

    Definición más completa del producto expresa el propósito último de la necesidad del usuario. Voy a estar mejor con eso? Me mantendrá en este estado? Cambiaré? Hacia dondecito masomenos?... Y así... El comprador escribe la orden de compra, la muestra y habrá algún proveedor que se vea interesado, si es que nadie la quiere habrá de fijarse el precio públicamente (el comprador lo hace) para captar algún pavo. Alguien quiere chuparmela gratis y discretamente? Solo yo, que soy hombre, quiero una mujer que me la chupe.

    75.79
    63.66
    27

    el dinero se pudre...no hay nada que no se pudra. El dinero deberá hacerlo también.

    El poder de napster y kazaa se lo otorgan a los nombres que ya existen. Una herramienta para conocer cosas nuevas aún no ha sido inventada.

    Comunities have their right to mantain their own comunicational vehicles and economic relationships. That means an evolution of money.

    In a coherent world Money rots, spoils.

    ////

  83. I hate google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sure it has a lot of pages, but you can't search them well at all. You can't have substring searches, you can't look for non-alphanumeric characters. That wasn't that big of a deal when it was just web pages, but when they bought Deja, and applied their fucked up view of powerful search engine on the news archives, I almost cried.

    I know I am alone in this attitude of anti-google, but come on, substring matching, and special characters like a slash (/) or pound/hash (#).

  84. Is it a troll, or is it funny? by uigrad_2000 · · Score: 1
    Any altavista user should know that it can be loaded graphic free
    (and also free of all those annoying categories.)

    Anyone who hates ads needs to look at the great job AltaVista has done with this:
    http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/text

    --
    Free unix account: freeshell.org
  85. We want your clicks! by fm6 · · Score: 2
    Why is it that every search engine I visit wants to send me shopping?
    Because of an short-sighted desire to generate revenue quickly. That meant "capturing" clicks. So the search engines became "portals" that did everything they could to steer you to affiliated web sites.

    Of course, click-capturing destroys the original purpose of the search engine, which is to make the whole web accessible to the user. Google avoided this trap. Perhaps because they were late into the game, and benefited from the mistakes of others. But I get the impression that their founders just don't like in-your-face web advertising. And it's worked out well for them -- they have no trouble selling their low-key ads.

    I use Google for about 95% of my searches. They have two big advantages over everybody else: the most comprehensive index, and the best result-ranking scheme. But I do wish they'd support something more sophisticated than simple stemmed-keyword searches. In some ways Google is the least sophisticated of all the search engines.

    I especially miss Infoseek. Still have a T-shirt they sent me after I pointed out some glitches in their spam filters. It would have been nice if Infoseek had stayed out of Disney's clutches and avoided becoming a media-pimp portal. Damn, but we need some serious competition to keep Google from getting stuck in its successful rut. But in today's financial climate, the necessary development bucks are simply not there.

  86. babel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    hey, babelfish still kicks ass.. that is about the only reasong i go to altavista. I can read those chinses and japanes anime pages now (^_^)

  87. Time varying results by Hazelrah · · Score: 1

    Has anyone ever noticed the way Google's results change noticably over a small length of time for the exact same query? I'm not referring the ordinary updating of data, but rather pages that appear in the search results one day, gone the next, and back for the second day. Some days the information seems more complete than others. I notice this the most when I search for something fairly specific that generates only 10's of results. I find this lack of consistency one of Google's primary faults.

  88. Problem with AltaVista by Dracos · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Like many here, I too used to use altaVista religiously. Then came the portal debacle. Then the pop up ads. Then the meta-refresh. Then, all of a sudden I couldn't find the seach input. You are a search engine, therefore the only thing I care about on your page is the input and the results.. The usage numbers verify this statement.



    The beauty of Google is that it has none of these.



    A weird side effect is that if you search Altavista for "google", good luck trying to find out how big a number it is...unless you follow the link that Altavista figures out for you.

  89. Read the article and it will tell you... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    its 28 days between updates for google, 30 days for fast search and between 45-60 days for altavista. That is when altavista is running to schedule.

  90. I use Copernic by EricLivingston · · Score: 1

    I find Copernic is incredible - it sweeps up all those search engines into its meta-search, including Google and Alta-Vista, sorts the results (in what I find to be a very intelligent manner), and even eliminates bad links from the result set to lower my frustration level. Finally, I'm NEVER bothered by anybody's ads, popups, or other distracting crap. Highly recommended.

    --
    Please Rate my comment (and help support Fre
  91. Name too long by blang · · Score: 2

    I never use any other search angines than google anymore.

    In order to reach popularity, the url for a site has to be really short. In the beginning, to use altavista, you had to type altavista.digital.com,
    way too much. In those days I used hotbot (inktomi/wired) for searches, and whenever I drew a blank I would go to altavista.

    When google came around, there was no need to use another site, since google is comprehensive, short to type, almost free from clutter, and the results seems to have fewer duplicates and irrelevant info.

    I also remember not too long ago another search engine, with a horribly long name. Northernlight or something like that. What were they thinking?

    Moral is:
    get a REALLY short domain name, and deliver a good product and people will come. Fail on any of these 2 requirements, and you're a fucked company. It doen't matter how good your search engine is, if I have to type somegitnamedthiscompanywithoutthinking.com

    I only bookmark specific information, not home pages.

    --
    -- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
    1. Re:Name too long by kindbud · · Score: 2

      In order to reach popularity, the url for a site has to be really short.

      Bullshit. On the contrary, your way of thinking LEADS to fucked companies. Short domain names have nothing to do with success. Flooz.com? eToys.com? VALinux.com? Need I go on?

      Moral is:
      get a REALLY short domain name, and deliver a good product and people will come. Fail on any of these 2 requirements, and you're a fucked company.


      Wrong. Simply wrong. The aftermath of the internet bubble is littered with the carcasses of companies with excellent product, short easy name, high visibility and well-known among the public, and a fucked up business plan. Netscape comes immediately to mind....

      --
      Edith Keeler Must Die
    2. Re:Name too long by glenmark · · Score: 2, Informative
      I also remember not too long ago another search engine, with a horribly long name. Northernlight or something like that. What were they thinking?

      Northernlight can also be reached at nlsearch.com. Most comprehensive search engine on the web.

      --
      *** Quantum Mechanics: The Dreams of Which Stuff is Made ***
    3. Re:Name too long by Haegar · · Score: 1

      Altavista even tried it this way.

      You can't get much shorter than http://av.com/

      But it doesn't help when the "product" is no longer good.

      --
      c'ya haegar
  92. Sure you can by Wee · · Score: 1, Redundant
    can't make $$$ off a search engine can you?

    You have no idea what you're talking about. Of course you can make money off a search engine. Ask the guys at Inktomi; they started doing it a long time ago. If you are a Google, you license your search technology to someone like Yahoo. Or AOL. Or Red Hat. Or AT&T's and Cingular's and Sprint's mobile subscribers. If your search engine was very popular, you could also create a very easy way for people to advertise on it. All these things bring in money. As long as you bring in more than you spend, you make "$$$".

    You should maybe stop reading fuckedcompany. Not everything associated with the Net is doomed.

    -B

    --

    Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.

    1. Re:Sure you can by kaimiike1970 · · Score: 1

      Stop reading fuckedcompany?!!

      and give up laughing at CEO's pathetic emails? Never!

      --


      Do a google search before posting.
  93. progression of search engines by TI-83 · · Score: 1

    at one point, webcrawler was a good search engine. There was also Yahoo and excite and altavista and all of them together, dogpile (and more, of course). Popularity has skipped from one to the next (though yahoo has been more portal than search engine, with lists and reviewed sites and such, news and stocks and groups and maps...) And one search engine to rule them. that would be google, right? google seems to be a sort of ending place, which could say something about innovation on the web. Or it could just mean that what is popular is also a Very Good Thing.

    --
    &&stuff;
  94. Re:Teoma... going, going gone... sold to Askjeeves by Erik+Fish · · Score: 1

    Teoma sucks anyway. It ignores robots.txt and meta tags for deflecting robots. It also doesn't group results.

    Besides, Google needs competition to keep them honest.

  95. Lexis::google as Lexus::Yugo by abe+ferlman · · Score: 1

    Lexis/Nexis (a legal/news/other full-text database service) has boolean searching with the most useful search feature I have ever seen: it allows you to search for two keywords and define how close to each other they have to be.

    So if you want to find text about Bush and Anthrax, but not just articles in which the two happen to be mentioned generally, you can search for

    bush w/10 anthrax

    and you will get "Bush said he did not have anthrax", but you most likely won't get an article that mentions them in separate paragraph or sections.

    --
    microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
  96. wildcard search by rif42 · · Score: 1

    As for many others Alta vista used to be my favorite search engine but now I most often use Google.

    But Google seems to lack * (star) wilcard search, i.e. you have write the words exact.

    E.g. searching for "Kylix specifications" you do not know if they call it "spec", "specs" or "specification".

    At Altavista I can write "Kylix spec*" and get result on all combinations. AFAIK there is not a way to do the same on Google.

    - RIF

    1. Re:wildcard search by Amit+J.+Patel · · Score: 1

      Try Kylix spec|specs|specification|specifications. That way you don't get Kylix specials or other spec* words.

  97. What about news.altavista.com? by kingdon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm not sure it is a widely known feature (I just discovered it recently), but I've grown pretty fond of news.altavista.com. A normal search engine will rarely spider a news site quickly enough to be of use for the searches of the sort "there is a news story on the radio, let me go to the net and find out what they are really talking about" variety. Does anyone other than altavista offer a search engine of this sort?

    1. Re:What about news.altavista.com? by tregoweth · · Score: 1

      For however long Excite remains in existence: news.excite.com. And, while it doesn't search news sites, dailynews.yahoo.com has enough feeds that it's usually pretty good, too.

  98. The Google cache by John+Miles · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... is one of the most interesting things to hit the Internet since Al Gore personally hooked up the first two Vaxes. People don't talk about it much, but a caching mechanism that efficient it has some rather far-reaching implications, not all of them necessarily good.

    For example, more and more often I find myself just hitting the "Cached" link on a Google result, instead of bothering to go to the original site. Why put up with the threat of 404 errors with long timeouts, obnoxious Javascript, and pop-up ads, when you can get most of the content you're looking for straight from the search engine itself?

    To some extent the Google cache threatens the ability of a site operator to gauge the site's popularity. If I were Google, I'd be tempted to turn the cache into a key part of the company's business: offer webmasters a "cache hosting" agreement (what's the difference between an original host and an up-to-date mirror?) that guarantees frequent updates and provides detailed statistical reporting, in exchange for a small monthly fee. Any advertising on the site would also need to be presented to the viewer of the cached copy.

    IMHO something like this needs to happen, and soon. Otherwise, webmasters are going to become tempted to disable caching of their content to avoid lost page hits and ad revenue. And Google is going to get tired of paying for the bandwidth costs associated with being treated like a giant free hosting provider.

    It's almost like a content-syndication feature, rather than a pure search-engine feature. I'll be surprised if their current caching model lasts much longer.

    --
    Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
    1. Re:The Google cache by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As it is currently implemented the google cache is usually pretty out of date. Most web sites *I* visit are updated daily or even more often (like slashdot). Until google can do realtime mirroring of the web in their cache system, I'll be sticking to the real thing.

    2. Re:The Google cache by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it's called akamai

    3. Re:The Google cache by El+Catface · · Score: 1

      Good points. It sounds odd, but the cache is far *too* useful in its current state. Imagine that, eh?

      I use the cache not only because it's often far faster, but Google helpfully highlights your search terms on the page, too. Why bother messing around with your browser's search facility when Google do it all for you?

      And that's without even starting on those evil PDF files...

    4. Re:The Google cache by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2
      Huh? "Caching model"? Google already has a snapshot of the page. It has to, in order for you to search its results, yes? I always wished that search engines would provide me with the ability to just show me what they had. It's one of the reasons Google is so resoundingly good.

      To some extent the Google cache threatens the ability of a site operator to gauge the site's popularity

      Oh, for Pete's sake...you must be a web designer. You know, customers needs are more important than webdorks' needs. Webdorks are not google's customers.

      Otherwise, webmasters are going to become tempted to disable caching of their content to avoid lost page hits and ad revenue

      Sure, go ahead. You'll pay more in bandwidth, and evidently money is the only point of the internet's existence.

      It's almost like a content-syndication feature, rather than a pure search-engine feature

      Buzzword alert! Buzzword alert! Danger! Danger!

      Yaknow, there's more to life than pleasing web dorks at every possible turn. They tend to forget that, due to the ability to design they have.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    5. Re:The Google cache by AndroidCat · · Score: 2

      On alt.religion.scientology we find this delay useful. In the Reed Slatkin affair (search Google if you want to know :^) Scientology frequently doctored web sites and pictures to remove some people and make them un-persons. (Stalin would have killed for this -- he killed for everything-else.)

      But quick checking of the Google cache found undoctored copies of pages and the PhotoShop nature of the pictures.

      So some latency delay isn't always a bad thing.

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
    6. Re:The Google cache by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Google already has a snapshot of the page. It has to, in order for you to search its results, yes?

      No, it just needs a keyword table for each page. The markup of the page is really irrelevant to searching. No reason to keep the original around at all.

    7. Re:The Google cache by Defector!!! · · Score: 1

      While I know that they are seperate entities of in and of themselves, many of the times I visit Altavista, I'm only going for the Fish. Amazing program. While it's not perfect by a long shot, it makes all the German sites much more readable ;-).

      Maybe if they get those stupid ads and flashy graphics off of their site people will start coming back. I hope so, if only so that the memory and research of Digital Equiptment Corp lives on. (man those guys were cool!)

      --
      We are the all singing, all dancing crap of the world....
    8. Re:The Google cache by whereiswaldo · · Score: 1

      First of all, where the hell did you get this "webdork" word from? You sound like one just saying it.

      Second, storing the entire page alongside indexed words is a totally separate feature than just indexing documents (and throwing away the original content). It takes a ton more disk space, too.

      Third, Google must have a shitload of bandwidth located in many different places for it to be fast from everywhere! It is one of the fastest sites on the 'net. I've noticed it hiccup a couple of times in the last few days, though. I'm sure they'll upgrade before they have to, though. :)

      Fourth, It's Miller Time. F*ckin A. Peace.

    9. Re:The Google cache by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Fourth, It's Miller Time. F*ckin A. Peace.

      amen brother. nice to finally see some sense around this place.

    10. Re:The Google cache by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      >So some latency delay isn't always a bad thing.

      Agreed. I work for a small web design/hosting company, and have on a few occations lost pages and once even an entire website (that's why I'm posting anonymously). Google cache to the rescue! They really are a lifesaver.

    11. Re:The Google cache by sigwinch · · Score: 2
      I hope so, if only so that the memory and research of Digital Equiptment Corp lives on. (man those guys were cool!)
      <sigh> I remember loading http://www.altavista.digital.com/ on an early Netscape. It was *SO* much better than archie. It was under digital.com instead of the familiar altavista.com because it started out as a DEC R&D project and they didn't think to register altavista.com, and some random guy got it instead.
      --

      --
      Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end. ;-)

    12. Re:The Google cache by ectoraige · · Score: 2

      What *are* you talking about?

      Why put up with the threat of 404 errors with long timeouts
      How on earth does google save you here? If the original server is dead, you're going to get *longer* timeouts, as it tries to load *each* image from the original server. If you'd gone direct to the site, you'd only get one timeout.

      obnoxious javascript, and pop-up ads
      The javascript is still there. The fact that the page is now in a frame shouldn't prevent the javascript from runnning. Kinda a key point of client side scripting, you know... it shouldn't depend on the page's location.

      To some extent the Google cache threatens the ability of a site operator to gauge the site's popularity
      That depends on his ability to read his logs.
      Each google-cache hit will generate plenty of image requests. All his advertising banners will still be viewed, except if he's using frames badly. If he is, that's his problem.

      I'd be tempted to turn the cache into a key part of the company's business
      You think it's not?!? A search engine kinda needs to keep a cache to, you know, exist. Google just posts links to theirs, that's all

      offer webmasters a "cache hosting" agreement.
      The only sites who would care enough are the bigger content providers who have regular updates - read news sites. If you're looking for current news, you're going to visit the site anyway, to ensure data is fresh. And if it's older news, it'll be cached anyway, so why should they pay?

      Otherwise, webmasters are going to become tempted to disable caching of their content to avoid lost page hits and ad revenue
      Doesn't matter, google caches it anyway when it is indexed, regardless of nocache headers.

      And Google is going to get tired of ... a giant free hosting provider.
      Don't you mean free content provider?

      --
      Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, ybt bss abj. Tb bhgfvqr. Syl n xvgr.
    13. Re:The Google cache by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You sound damn unamerican. Moderate his post!

    14. Re:The Google cache by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is that you, Andy?

    15. Re:The Google cache by Bobo+the+Space+Chimp · · Score: 1

      For the search, no. To show you the initial few lines, it needs the initial few lines. To show you sentences containing each search word, it does have to cache at least the text, but not the whole HTML structure.

      --
      I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
    16. Re:The Google cache by john@iastate.edu · · Score: 2
      Why put up with the threat of 404 errors with long timeouts
      How on earth does google save you here? If the original server is dead, you're going to get *longer* timeouts, as it tries to load *each* image from the original server. If you'd gone direct to the site, you'd only get one timeout.

      Which illustrates what google should be doing is replacing all those references in their cached copy to refer to their cached copy of the images too! No more timeouts (and boo hoo, no more ad revenue for the original site :)

      --
      Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
    17. Re:The Google cache by 1u3hr · · Score: 1
      webmasters are going to become tempted to disable caching of their content to avoid lost page hits and ad revenue

      Google doesn't cache images*, the cached html it displays refers to the original server (if available), so ad impressions still go to the original site. (Sometimes a hassle if the page fails to display, then just turn images off).

      * For images.google.com the origanal page is displayed in a frame, so again the origina site gets all its hits.

    18. Re:The Google cache by 1u3hr · · Score: 1
      Why put up with the threat of 404 errors with long timeouts

      How on earth does google save you here? If the original server is dead, you're going to get *longer* timeouts, as it tries to load *each* image from the original server. If you'd gone direct to the site, you'd only get one timeout.

      Google lets you read the page -- if the cache appears to be frozen trying to get images, just click images off and you can see the text. I do this a lot, eg sites.netscape.net which seems particularly bad now. (One really nice feature of Opera is that it has the image load option on the main toolbar, and also on ^G key; Netscape pissed me off when it moved that down two levels into its preferences last time I used it.)

      Some stupidities though, if a cached page has a refresh 0 seconds header on it it disappears -- then grab the source, edit it and view it locally.

    19. Re:The Google cache by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "two vaxes"???? Shouldn't that be "two vaxen"?

  99. Google does some things, yes... by c_monster · · Score: 1

    Seems like I used bad examples to show my point. I should have listed the exact search that I'm most interested in:

    +"Perl for the Web"

    Google reduces the search to "Perl Web" which brings up mostly false positives.

    Agin, I use Google for most things, so I'm probably just not taking advantage of the advanced syntax in most cases.

    ~chris who apparently failed the Google test

    --
    Read the full text my book Perl for the Web
    1. Re:Google does some things, yes... by skt · · Score: 1

      doesn't this do what you want in google?:

      "perl +for +the web"it omits words like 'for' and 'the' by default because they slow down searches. if you really want to use those in your search you must explicitly tell it to include them.

    2. Re:Google does some things, yes... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.alltheweb.com/ searches without stop words, so it will do the +"Perl for the Web" query for you.

      It updates the index more frequently than anyone else as well, keeping the number of stale links to a minimum.

    3. Re:Google does some things, yes... by jlle · · Score: 1

      No, according to googles documentation on the web, they will never search "the" no matter what you do. Queries like: "+the +man +followed +the +horse" or "+find +the +fish" shows this very well. (I have a distinct feeling that I found some other words they ignored as well once earlier, but don't remember now) A quick test amongst the big search engines reveals that only altavista and www.alltheweb.com seems to do searches without any stop words.

    4. Re:Google does some things, yes... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      No, according to googles documentation on the web, they will never search "the" no matter what you do.

      So that's why I get so few hits on my The The fan site...

  100. But alta vista had its day by hawk · · Score: 2
    Alta vista was *not* a stand-alone site in its heyday. It had an explicit purpose: show off the capacity of the alpha servers by having a capacity *far* beyond any other choices.


    When it was a marketing demonstration, it was spectacular. Then came the sad day when it was seen as a business of its own, and it fell fast . . .


    hawk

  101. less is more by beanerspace · · Score: 2

    "AltaVista was my weapon of choice until Google came along and was so much better that most net users jumped ship...

    Ditto to that. What made me change was all the "noise" and "junk" AV continually added to their search engine. Recently, I went back there to translate a page to English ...whammo, I get hit by one of those X-10 ads.

    If AV were smart, they'd leverage Bablefish and other useful tools to win users back. Instead, while they've tried to become more like Yahoo, they've given their competitor (google) time to implement image and usenet searches.

    Someone needs to slap their CIO with a dose of reality.

  102. + and - is better than boolean AND and OR by ArcadeNut · · Score: 2, Informative
    This may be a little redundant, but the + and - are far better than the AND and OR used by Altavista.

    With the + and - you get AND, OR, NOT, and MAYBE.

    Google treats multiple words as OR conditions and also uses them as context indicators.

    searching for THIS THAT will find things that have "THIS" or "THAT" or "THIS THAT". Pages where the words are closer together become more relavent. (The OR condition)

    searching for +THIS +THAT is the same as saying "THIS and THAT" on AltaVista. Pages won't be returned unless both words appear on the page. (The AND condition)

    searching for THIS +THAT is saying search for THAT, and if it has THIS, then include it as well (Thats the MAYBE condition ).

    searching for THIS -THAT means return pages that have THIS on them, but do not include any pages that have THAT in them. (The NOT condition)

    As you can see, it lends itself to some very powerful searches with very simple syntax. A far better solution than AND and OR IMHO.

    --
    Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
    1. Re:+ and - is better than boolean AND and OR by Verence · · Score: 1

      "This" "that" entered in will return both of the words.

      From http://www.google.com/help/basics.html#and

      Automatic "and" Queries

      By default, Google only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include "and" between terms. Keep in mind that the order in which the terms are typed will affect the search results. To restrict a search further, just include more terms. For example, to plan a vacation to Hawaii, simply type:

      --

      ... that's all i wrote...
  103. Why I use Google by phaktor · · Score: 1

    I have to say, The reason I use Google is because of the Language options. Finally a search engine in my language. hacker :)

    --
    I don't use eleetism in my Email
  104. Search Engine Wish List... by Muggin · · Score: 2, Funny

    If only Google would put those cool pop-up ads on their site! That is the only reason I use AltaVista.

  105. HastaLaVista by oni · · Score: 2

    here is a slightly slower alternative to altavista:
    HastaLaVista Searches

    From the site: HastaLaVista receives over 12 million queries a day. As of last Thursday, we had responded to quite a few of them

    1. Re:HastaLaVista by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hey, that isn't the real astalavista site, this is!

    2. Re:HastaLaVista by oni · · Score: 1

      I didn't say astalavista, I said HastaLaVista!

    3. Re:HastaLaVista by chip+rosenthal · · Score: 1

      Hey, somebody please mod that up. HastaLaVista is pretty funny.

  106. Google clearly superior --- Funny or Informative? by guru_steve · · Score: 1

    *grins*

    Too bad i don't have mod points right now, or else this comment would have been modded Funny... or would that be Informative? =)

  107. searching for people by payslee · · Score: 1

    In general when I'm looking for something on the net, I use google, because it works. The same reason I used to use altavista, before the signal to noise got too high.

    Last week, I started a search that proved surprisingly difficult. I was looking for the net traces of a guy who had asked for my number (yes, chicks do this), and I was astonished when google turned up nothing of relevance, since this guy had been a sysadmin for years. My three-month old nephew had a bigger net presence.

    So after getting nothing on google, I went to altavista, which gave me more results, but only because it included sites that had almost no relevance. More out of stubborness than anything else, I went through all the different search engines I could, and I finally found this guy using hotbot , which has to be the most scorned search engine out there.

    It had a bunch of sites not listed in the other engines, and they were relevant. Why? I can't imagine. Does it ignore robot.txt? Has it discovered some secret algorithm that specializes in hard-to-find information? I can't explain it, but I tell you one thing. Next time I can't find something (and I know how to look hard) hotbot will be the place I try.


    Do what you're good at, and use what works.

    --
    Doing my part to piss off the religious right.
  108. All The Web by svwolfpack · · Score: 1

    All the web does a good job of picking up Google's loose ends. (Everyone's gotten those completely random sites google sometimes throws your way) When I use it in conjunction with Google, I can almost find anything. (It's ad free and really fast too...)

    1. Re:All The Web by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree. Why don't you slashdotters ever mention alltheweb? It's been much better than altavista for years now. Its index is now smaller than google's, and it doesn't offer the cache feature, but it returns less "duds" than google.

  109. Re:Ummm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Considering that he's posting at -1, it's better for him to post non-AC in EVERY WAY. His comment probably won't be modded down, if it is he collects more negative karma, and either way it helps him round out his trolling portfolio.

  110. Oh my god! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's also got Pig Latin, and Elmer Fudd! Hmm... not whose browser can I reconfigure whilst they're not looking...

  111. Re:When Ximian goes under... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You haven't seen much of /. then have you? Keep looking...

  112. does that mean Web sites that can�t afford to pay by JohnHegarty · · Score: 0


    "This is something people have been paranoid about. If you're going to start charging people to submit, does that mean Web sites that can't afford to pay will get overlooked?"

    This is at the end of the article. Unless i am mistaken (and i don't think i am ) its already common practice for search engines to rank paying sites above normal searches. Can you do a seach on yahoo now without getting adds on the righthand side.

  113. Google == non-Microsoft search engine monopoly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

    flamebait 100% through and through

  114. whoops by espilce · · Score: 1

    accidentally modded your post to -1 (Troll) when I thought is was +1 (Funny).. sorry, I think I remember from somewhere that posting will remove any moderation I've done so maybe this will work

    --
    :q!
  115. It was that AltaVista got worse, not Google better by TekPolitik · · Score: 2
    AltaVista was my weapon of choice until Google came along and was so much better that most net users jumped ship.

    From my point of view it wasn't that Google got better, but AltaVista, particularly the Advanced Search, got worse due to AltaVista doing the most idiotic things. AltaVista simply doesn't work right anymore. Presumably they let the work experience coders screw around with the algorithms. The Advanced seach, which I would probably still be using if it hadn't changed, no longer gives correct results for boolean expressions. Some of the pages it comes up with have no relevance whatsoever to the boolean search you type in.

    IMHO the strength of AltaVista's boolean searching was the strength of AltaVista - with that gone, it was a foregone conclusion that the whole thing would come tumbling down.

  116. Google is still 2nd-rate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Google is still 2nd rate, but if altavista never updates and becomes an index for a long-gone, Web, this will change!

    Thanks to phrase searching, my results on Altavista are always relevant, but the Google search results are one big error.

  117. Searching for certain things... by MarvinIsANerd · · Score: 1

    ...on google is impossible to do.

    For example, try searching for the band 'The Who'. Google automatically filters out both words. Ack! At least with Altavista I can do this search and actually find something. Perhaps you can search for "The Who" on Google but I haven't found out how.

    1. Re:Searching for certain things... by jlle · · Score: 1

      you can do "the +who" and at least search for the word "who" at google, but that won't really give you what you want either.

      Try alltheweb.com instead.

  118. Big bug in altavista! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Try these three searches on very common words on Altavista. No quotes, no extra stuff:

    cat
    jpg
    gif

    Only Cat works.

  119. Searching for "Google" by Cowculator · · Score: 1

    That's because the number 10^100 is actually spelled "googol". The search engine's name supposedly has nothing to do with that (and no, they haven't indexed nearly that many pages).

  120. What Really Happened by n9fzx · · Score: 1
    Three researchers at DEC's Palo Alto Labs decided to build a search engine to show that DEC did the Internet and Databases better than anyone else. When they finished, they showed it to the management, who didn't have a clue as to what to do with it. The problem was that DEC was trying very hard to sell itself to Compaq. They didn't want to invest capital in new ideas, since that would shink the cash-on-hand and make them appear worth less to Compaq. As a result, AltaVista was always cash poor and couldn't afford to buy hardware (from DEC!) to keep up.

    The first spinout attempt was lead by a CEO who wanted AltaVista to be a software company, and was ended by the 1997 market plunge. Then Compaq bought DEC, and eventually sold most of AltaVista to CMGI. They then attempted to convert AltaVista into a portal, since the investment-driven strategy of the day called for eyeballs and land grab. A huge amount of cash was spent on the portal strategy (and very little on the search engine) until the day in April 2000 when eyeball valuations died.

    The moral of the story is that market and capital strategy matter just as much as technology.

    How do I know? I was one of those three guys!

    --
    ...-.-
    1. Re:What Really Happened by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Vikings are cool.

  121. Altavista can, Google cannot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Altavista has exact phrase search, Google does not.

    It is certainly not an exact phrase search if you have to load the phrase with extra junk just to get it to work right in Google, and it won't work anyway.

  122. Google has a linux penguin too by Albanach · · Score: 2, Informative

    Is it just me, or has no-one mentioned http://www.google.com/linux It can be useful to add linux to all your searches automagically, and you do get a groovy tux in the google logo to boot.

  123. Monopoly anyone ? by mbyte · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I totally agree that google wipes out *any* competition. However .. what happents when the cometition is gone ? will google still play that nice as it does now ? will it leverage its monopoly ? Am i the only one who is afraid of that ?

    1. Re:Monopoly anyone ? by supabeast! · · Score: 2

      Monopoly? I have mixed feelings about that concept, mainly because I am not so sure that being the only worthwhile searchengine really constitues a monopoly. When I stated that other search engines are dead/dying, I mean it figuratively, in that these search engines will get much less use over time, eventually becoming somewhat irrelevant. I think that MSN and AOL will hang around (Especially with the shutdown of all the other portals, and they will likely get a huge boost once Yahoo! finally dies.) for a very long time, so google will always have to strive to stay on top.

  124. Google warnings, PDF file index/text, etc by WillSeattle · · Score: 1

    If you check the Google site, you'll notice that the advertising links are clearly marked... Yahoo and most other search/index sites do the same thing. If it helps them to continue offering high-quality service, I don't mind.

    Good point. I noticed that too, when I first saw the ad in Fortune. But it is a change, nonetheless. As I said, I still prefer to use Google.

    While we're on the subject... Has anyone else noticed that Google now includes PDF files in its searching? It indexes the content of the files and even lets you view them as plaintext. That's the best thing since bread came sliced, IMO.

    Actually prefer my bread raw. But this is definitely a major bonus feature, IMHO. Almost as good as the way Ximian defaults to let you see what's in the file!

    --
    --- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
  125. Can't keep up CRAWLING, or can't keep up INDEXING? by kordless · · Score: 1

    There's a big difference. We here at grub.org have been working on a distributed crawler, who's whole purpose is to crawl the net AND crawl local content with the sole purpose of looking for changed content, compressing it, and sending it back to us. We've also put together a hacked up install of MnogoSearch on our site (see here), that indexes what we we get back from our crawlers. (Please keep in mind that we flush the Mnogo database fairly often right now if you look.)

    Even though we don't crawl beans compared to Altavista, Mnogo still chokes up at just under a million URL inserts a day (at it's best), and that's a problem because we are already crawling 3x that, and have a new client ready for release that does 3x the crawling what the old one did. The short of it is that a single Mnogo INDEXER can't keep up with our CRAWLERS by an order of magnitude.

    Knowing all this makes me wonder which problem Altavista is experiencing. Or maybe it's something entirely different holding them up. On the crawling side, if they are only crawling every 60 days, and have 600 million URLs in the database, then they are crawling 10 million URLs a day. If you crawl 10 million a day, at 15K a piece, then you are using about 15Mbps of bandwidth, which surely they have, right?

    On the indexing side, not all your pages will update every time you visit them, which means you can just index the ones that changed. We see an update rate of about 60% (the new client shows this to the user, BTW) on pages that we crawled a few weeks ago. Given that they needed to insert/reinsert those pages, their database/engine would need to insert about 500 words per page, or 3 billion inserts a day total for all the pages that they indexed. Keep in mind that they may not be able to delete words located on a particular URL, because you'd need an index on URLs on the word table which can slow things down and get REALLY big.

    If it's a crawling problem, then I suggest calling us. ;) If it's a matter of deletes/inserts, then I guarantee that their reworking their schema right about now.

    I'd really hate to see Altavista go, they were my first choice until Google came along and started kicking ass.

    Shamless plug, check out Grub!

  126. Hands-down, the best reason to use Google... by Armage+Bedar · · Score: 1

    ...is its wide support of languages, including Elmer Fudd, Pig Latin, and other "languages". Who needs BabelFish? ;-)

    1. Re:Hands-down, the best reason to use Google... by thehamster · · Score: 1

      You forgot: Welsh (they also do Irish and Scots Galic as well).

      --
      -- This is not a sig. But I'm a liar.
  127. Message to Google: Buy the Fish! by phillymjs · · Score: 2

    Keep on killing AltaVista, and then when they get really desperate, pick up Babelfish for a song!

    Now that they've got Deja under their umbrella, Babelfish is all Google needs to be...

    Best.... Search Engine.... Ever!

    ~Philly

  128. But do they make money? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I still think they are cashflow negative. I would have said cohosting is a profitable business but history has proven me wrong...

  129. Um, no. by John+Miles · · Score: 2

    Google already has a snapshot of the page. It has to, in order for you to search its results, yes?

    Not in the least. Storing a page's contents in verbatim plaintext form is about the worst conceivable way to build a searchable database.

    Oh, for Pete's sake...you must be a web designer. You know, customers needs are more important than webdorks' needs. Webdorks are not google's customers.

    Wow, there's a first time for everything, I guess! Rest assured, nobody has EVER accused me of emphasizing design over content before today. :)

    If you look at the extremely un-skillfully designed page referenced in my user info, you'll see a counter with close to 50,000 hits on it. That's neither a large nor a small number of hits for a personal geek page like mine, but the point I was implying earlier still stands. Namely, if I'd managed to accumulate only 5,000 hits over two years, do you think I'd bother adding any more content to that page?

    Well, the Google cache makes that very scenario a distinct possibility. If 50,000 people are interested in my page for whatever reason, but I see only 10% of this level of interest reflected in page views, that's a problem, both for me and for the people who were following my various projects by surfing the Google cache.

    Buzzword alert! Buzzword alert! Danger! Danger!

    "Syndication" is not a buzzword. The concept of distributing content through multiple independent outlets is nothing new. That's exactly what the Google cache is starting to do, whether or not you (and they) have thought through all of the implications.

    Yaknow, there's more to life than pleasing web dorks at every possible turn. They tend to forget that, due to the ability to design they have

    Trust me, I couldn't agree more!

    --
    Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
  130. No surpises by inkswamp · · Score: 1
    This isn't surprising, and I have long since bailed out on Altavista. It probably would have been wiser if the folks at Altavista had maybe concentrated more on maintaining their listings than implementing annoying pop-up windows which chased me and lots of people I know away from them. I know web sites have to profit, but annoying users is no way to go.

    --Rick

    --
    --Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
  131. Link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just in case anyone's lost, here is the link to google.

  132. Ant that isn't even the biggest Altavista's proble by haggar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, old indexes are bad, but Altavista has another, rather more serious problem: it doesn't yield very useful searches, because it's susceptible to spamming. Of course, if you never tried anything better than Altavista, you are used to roommage among the junk an Altavista search produces, but I am now spoiled: Google is so much better at filtering out the stupid porn sites. Also, Google is able (with some magic or AI) to sort the pages by actual relevance: I usually find spot on the first page Google finds. With Altavista, that's almost never the case.

    Google spoled me so badly that I now avoid by all means using any other search engine, it's THE standard by which I judge all the other search systems. Altavista doesn't come close.

    --
    Sigged!
  133. Google does what you want, AFAIK. by McDutchie · · Score: 1

    Now, searching on Alta Vista with Signetics near "write only memory" yeilds 57 hits, all of which are direct references to what I am looking for (most of which are mirrors of ESR's jargon file entry). Adding and not ("jargon file") neatly removes those, leaving 43 hits.

    You can do this in Google, as follows: Signetics "write only memory" -"jargon file"

    The phrase search using double quotes works fine for me. I have no idea why it isn't for you. I also get more hits for the same queries than you.

    Note that Google can include results for which the query words only appear in links pointing to that page, not on the page itself. You can verify that by viewing the cached entries, where it tells you exactly where the query words appear.

  134. If only slashdot could keep up with altavista ... by HerringFlavoredFowl · · Score: 1

    Funny I saw an article about this on infoworld last monday... I guess slashdot can't keep up with the pace ;-) I'm sure the article is cached somewhere on google :-O

    TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken

    --
    TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
  135. ..this just in... by SubtleNuance · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    01.10.24: Internet.

    In a stroke of honesty and insight, makers of Windows declares; "Unix is a dated pc of shite."

    Staff involved in the advocacy of M$ Windows feel that Unix is "past due" and "legacy" technology.

    They also went on to say "old search engines are not as good as our own".

    No impartial person was available to discuss the matter but we reported on it anyway.

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    do you ever get the feeling that you are screaming in the dark? that no one is listening? how do you expect to make the world a better place if you cant advocate your position ( which you honestly feel is just and true) -- kinda frustrating isnt it

    Peace friends

    1. Re:..this just in... by swirlyhead · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Whoah there, gentle now , calm, calm....

      I found this comment because you said something that rather closely mirrored something
      I said under "Open Monopoly" and I must say SubtleNuance
      that you might have better luck if you at least gave people
      a chance to reply to you outside of the fora,
      unless you think slashdot is all about talking trash under a nym.

      A pointer to a page with a yahoo addy would be a start.

  136. Related Search Engine Problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Increasingly there are a number of Websites which are only Front Ends to large databases of information. This means there is no large reservoir of HTML for search engines to troll for their indexes. The result is you never get any hits pointing to the site.

    For example a recent search on several engines for "Movies written by Cameron Crowe" (writer of recent movie Almost Famous) yielded lots of hits. Yet none of these hits pointed to the IMDB site. This site is pretty comprehensive database of movie related information. Entering the same search at the IMDB site yieled a simple one page list of the movies written by this writer with links to more information about each of the movies.

    On more serious note there are databases of comprehensive medical information (much needed in time of anthrax hysteria) that also are not hit by any search engines.

    As more sites move away from flat HTML storage search engines will be less relevant unless they can figure out a way to include these sites in their indexes.

  137. Litmus Test by davcorp · · Score: 1

    More importantly... I also use Google to test my client's internet connections... If that baby doesn't come up within seconds (99% of the time), I know I have a problem to fix :)

    --
    Gravity!... It's not just a good idea... It's the Law!
  138. Google, the last great search engine by ttyp0 · · Score: 1

    It's only a matter of time before Google will be forced to "sell out" to stay in business. That being said, Google is one of the few dot coms I'd be wiling to pay a small monthly subscription.

  139. The death of a pioneer by chrysalis · · Score: 2

    Altavista was the first powerful internet crawler and indexation engine. There were some other (Yahoo...) but most submission were manual, and AV had far more entries when it was launched.
    I can remember, some times ago, when ports 80 of all my subnet were scanned by a machine from digital.com ... Like many other sysadmin, I wrote to root@digital.com to complain... 2 months later, AV was born.
    Sure, today, AV can't compete with Google. I'm not especially talking about the search engine itself. But AV web pages are bloated by tons of ads, and it's really lousy to use nowadays.
    But maybe internet would never had a lot of powerful engine without AV. It was the seed (and it saved Digital, too... without this fantastic demo, Digital was about to go bankrupt) .
    This is just like Netscape. Nowadays, everyone says that Netscape sucks, and that their browser is a crappy bugs collection. True. But with its so criticized "proprietary" HTML extensions, Netscape made web pages way better than before. Remember how ugly were Chimera and Mosaic? Remember how Netscape 3 kicked ass? And who introduced Javascript and Java first?
    So, even if some companies/services have been obsoleted by their competitors, we should thank them for what the piece of technology they brang to everyone, and we should give them eternal respect.


    --
    {{.sig}}
  140. ex altavista employee by dickens · · Score: 1

    Altavista is tubing because they no longer have DEC's Eastern Research, Western Research, and Network System Labs behind them. It things had been different and DEC didn't get bought by Compaq which then sold Altavista, a lot of ideas like those used in Google might have become part of Altavista.

    Before Altavista the search engine became popular I worked for the group that was about to become Altavista the software company, productizing the fruits of the Labs. Amusingly I had just discovered Lycos at the time, when it was lycos.cs.cmu.edu or something like that.

    The original business model for the Altavista search engine (although there was disagreement on the idea at many levels) was to basically be an ad for Altavista the software company, which sold Firewalls, VPN and collaboration software as well as an "Intranet" version of the search engine. Just like Google.

    It didn't work. Pity.

  141. Highest three key word site by canadian_right · · Score: 1
    Search google for "dos game programming"

    That's my site that pops up at the TOP of Google.
    Anyone else get to the top using three keywords or less?

    Googles top site for a topic - better brag than a Cray in the basement.

    --
    Anarchists never rule
  142. Yes, but Hotmail is still one of the best by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and efficient.

    While all other search engines are inefficient and a complete waste of my time to search for anything (Unless *totally* up a creek for results.)

    All the other search engines have been made obsolete.

    (IMO)

  143. Altavista is not a search engine! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A SEARCH ENGINE will not rank higher those sites which pay the company. That's a Sponsor Search Engine.

    That's why I don't use AltaVista. I get better results with Google, pure and simple.

  144. google mostly altavista part-time by nocomment · · Score: 0

    I use google msot of the time as it's usually jsut plain easier and faster...

    2 things i still switch to altavista for
    1> when searching for exact phraze "microsoft really sucks ass" altavista will pull upa page that says that, google will pull up pages containg those words
    2>url searching. Altavista can search specific sites by using +host:www.ibm.com +thinkpad +390, which will search only ibm site for thinkpad 390's whereas google will not pull up anything

    --
    /* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
    /* http://allyourbasearebelongto.us */
  145. I don't see AltaVista as the problem... by slashdot_commentator · · Score: 2, Insightful


    What is wrong with the MSNBC reporter??? Why didn't they ask the most obvious question of all???

    WHY is AltaVista behind in refreshing their link databases?

    This is AV's lifeblood. I can make assumptions about AV having enough financial and infrastructural problems to delay upgrading its value content. But you always get the statement from the official press flak. (If only to gleen truth from spin. Sometimes they even tell the truth.)

    These are the journalists you're counting on for information about products, and accurate information concerning anthrax, terrorism, Al Queda, and our government's policies.

    --
    There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
  146. The True Vista... by fodi · · Score: 1

    Ahhh.. One of the most useful sites on the web. If a crack can't be found there, give up and pay the licence...

  147. Could there be a connection? by mefistofeles · · Score: 1

    Hmm, what I'm seeing is a company trying to out-smart itself. People want a search engine - not another market place. People want somewhere to get results to their queries not sponsered - more or less irrelevant - links to Altavista partners.

    Enter Google.
    Exit Altavista users.
    End Altavista drive to improve engine/site?

    Chimbis

  148. or by delmoi · · Score: 2

    Why not just use google

    --

    ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
  149. Hrm by delmoi · · Score: 2

    Looks like you slashdoted yourself right and proper.

    (God do I hate this 20 second rule. You can't be informative in one sentance, then you're a moron)

    --

    ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
  150. Some google alternatives by GeLeTo · · Score: 1

    alltheweb.com Let's you search the web, ftp files, images, MP3s and Videos. The results are quite good though not as good as in google. It has support for more languages than google and I use it exclusively to search pages written in my native language(which isn't supported in google). Has the best ftp search.

    ResearchIndex Nice scientific literature search engine. Lets you search not only documents but also citations. Keeps cached copies of the documents in multiple formats. Can show related documents or other documents viewed by users that viewed the current document.

    vivisimo.com Groups the found documents by topics and subtopics. Nice interface and the sudgested topics are quite reasonable.

    www.wisenut.com Similar to vivisimo, but vivisimo(IMO) is beter.

    www.searchshots.com Lets you see screenshot of the found pages. Too bad has a content filter and the results are not very good.

    www.teoma.com Simple interface. Can group the results by their topic.

    ditto.com An image search engine.

    webshots.com Not exactly an image search engine. But I've had much better luck finding images there than in any image search engine. Requires you to download a program (windows only) that puts the images as a wallpaper.

  151. Google groups by SergioB · · Score: 1

    But nobody here mentioned google groups. Google acquired deja.com and made it much more usable. I'm using it now instead of looking for free news server.

  152. PDF to text, Google cache and censorship undone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here's a fine example of the power of Google's cache.

    Censored Canadian documents, originally in PDF format, retrieved as text files from Google's cache and returned to the public domain.

    see it here:
    Censored Canadian Nuclear Safety Documents at Cryptome
    http://cryptome.org/cnsc-docs.htm

  153. I've never heard a server scream before by BenHmm · · Score: 1

    Well.

    It's back up now. But crikey...my poor little server...

  154. alltheweb.com by Gromgull · · Score: 0
    From the article:
    "Other search services, including Fast Search, update their engines every 30 days. Google typically updates every 28 days. "
    This is all wrong, Fast has got a cycle that updates the index every second week. I.e. twice as often as google. See this press release
    --
    -- .
  155. Hotbot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh c'mon. What's all this google worship. Everyone knows Hotbot's the better search engine!

  156. What about the hype? by betanik · · Score: 1

    Call me dumb, but I for one just started using Google because everyone was saying how good it was, how clever it was, yada yada yada. Then I just stuck to it.

    I think there might be a lot of people like me. I couldn't tell you whether Google's really better; but you must admit it was well-marketed.

  157. Google can translate too.... by tcr · · Score: 1

    Have you tried the Google translator?

    Seems to work fine for me...

    --


    Information wants to be beer.
  158. cognescnenti predates the web by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    so it is no way offspring of digerati.

    it was coined back when books,magzines,newspapers
    were where info hung..

  159. Altavista's bulky interface is to blame by cappie · · Score: 1

    IMHO, Altavista's ugly b1tch-4ss monster of an interface is the cause of its own demise...

    If they would have left it just as clean as Google, a lot of users who have jumped ship to google.com now would still be using altavista, simply because it works for them..

    It was probably some dumb manager who thought it might be a good idea to make altavista just as bulky as all the other ugly portals such as yahoo.com...

  160. Local/special searches can keep up with Google by 21mhz · · Score: 1
    ...as long as they offer something above the basic search for word matches, and don't swamp their useful bits with commercial gunk. For example, Google indexes Russian pages, but cannot pick all variants of a word when one particular form is given. Most of you English speakers cannot imagine the enormity of this problem. All the major Russian search engines handle this perfectly though, because they use dictionaries that relate variations.

    It's worth noting that Yandex, the tzar of Russian Internet search has, apart from the main portal-like facade, got a search-only back entry, which is the prettiest minimalistic search page i've ever seen.

    --
    My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
  161. Non-Graphic Altavista Searches by brigmar · · Score: 1

    I changed my Altavista bookmarks to http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/text yonks ago when they started with all the graphics stuff.

    Still prefer Google's results, but Altavista delivers better with complex searches.

  162. google has snippets! by searchtools · · Score: 1

    While I occasionally miss complex operators in Google, the text snippets shown with search results in bold generally give me the answer right away.

    I love the snippets and hit highlighting, and am encouraging all the site search developers I know to add these features. Great for end-user satisfaction!