Re:The Switch
by
cyborch
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I don't know why, possibly it's the lack of web portal-ness of google, but very few non-geeks I know use google. They alle stick to the local Yahoo clone.
I may be missing something, but I really can't see the reason why... could anyone enlighten me, is there something geekish about google? Or is it just me thinking that non-geeks want to use more bloated and less efficient solutions than geeks?
No human decisions ?
by
EpsCylonB
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Do you think that the google search could be improved by more human decisions ?.
An example might be that goat.ce page (or whatever the url is) might get linked to a lot as example of bad taste (I seen a few pages that link to it and describe the page urging people not to visit it), which fine except that this web site is now getting linked to (or voted for which is how the google algorithm treats a link) yet it isn't a particularly good or informative website.
Even if someone was searching for something on bad taste, that page is not really an authoritive page about bad taste just an example of it.
advanced search
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
"when searching was a spew of boolean mumbo-jumbo"
I still use AND, OR, and NOT ("-" in google)
Re:There's a problem with this
by
GigsVT
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I've thought of this myself. I know I don't do nearly as much "surfing" between related sites now that Google is here and works. I usually hit Google up, then if that site isn't what I want, I don't bother clicking their links section, I just go straight back to Google.
The one thing that may save us though is AOLers. Bear with me here.:) I think that maybe we have found the most efficient way to get the information we want, mostly because the novelty of the Internet has mostly worn off for us. We no longer spend hours bouncing from site to site, just reading random stuff. We use the Internet as a tool to expand our effective knowledge and intelligence.
This is obvious with the various Googlebots that have sprung up in lots of IRC chat rooms. This happens a lot in help rooms, if no one knows the answer, or doesn't want to take the time to explain it fully, they just !google and the bot returns the first link in the search.
So while people like us, if we were the only people on the net, would cause Google to fail, so long as there are still "surfers" out there, it should allow Google to remain meaningful.
Just my two cents.
-- I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Re:There's a problem with this
by
ForceOfWill
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Then, it becomes harder to find things using google, and people start giving each other links again, and google gets better again.... see the cycle? I expect that there would be some sort of damping effect on this oscillation, so it would all even out in the end, with google being just short of good enough to warrant using it instead of passing links manually.
--
-- Seeing is believing; You wouldn't have seen it if you didn't believe it.
Maybe the semantic web will...
by
wiresquire
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
That is a very interesting point. If you check out the Semantic Web activity there is a move to semantic definitions . DAML + OIL and several other efforts are all looking at defining the spoken/written language for computers.
I wonder if the number 1 ranked page will always end up being a single document - the ontology.?
--
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
Informative but Not Conclusive
by
MadFarmAnimalz
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
> Then they must use some hybrid approach: human editors and AI
Well, there's the implied assumption here that the people running this surveillance operate with standard hardware, where standard means something google, altavista, lycos, etc. can get their hands on. Sketchy information suggests that they do not; specialised hardware seems to be the order of the day.
Besides, there's a lot of research going on in terms of context recognition, here to name one place.
This article is insightful? It is deceiving.
I read something interesting about the "Panopticon" not long ago...
"The agency which Poindexter will run is called the Information Awareness Office. You want to know what that is? Think, Big Brother is Watching You. IAO will supply federal officials with 'instant' analysis on what is being written on email and said on phones all over the US. Domestic espionage."
--John Sutherland of UK's Guardian.
Remember John Poindexter? Mr. Iran-Contra? He lied to Congress and kept Ronald out of the loop. He also was responsible for shredding lots of docs on the subject as well. Now he'll be spying on US domestic electronic transmissions.
There is some irony in him destroying thousands emails to cover his ass then and now being in charge of watching everyone else's emails.
I'm also sure that the billions of dollars for his new office may be able to overcome shortcomings of certain search engines. Nobody's going to have to type all those boolean operators.
Cheers to all the spooks! I think it is a job well done!
-b.
Re:The Switch
by
markov_chain
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I've been using the expression "just google for X" when referring friends to some site about X that I know shows up high on the hit list. It's funny, google is starting to replace DNS for me-- instead of remembering or bookmarking URLs, I just remember the keyword to google for. For example, the URL http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/ is harder to remeber than to just type "vnc" and hit "I'm feeling lucky."
I often wonder how much less productive I would be if google went away tomorrow:) If anyone from google.com is reading this, thank you!
Google sometimes defies explanation.....
by
fwc
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I was talking to a friend about "mystery email attachments", and wanted to find this user friendly strip.
So, without thinking I fire up google and type the search:
"user friendly the comic strip" email attachment
and then clicked on search. The first hit is the cartoon I wanted, so I click on it. When I pull up the page, I realize that the text words "email attachment" don't appear anywhere on the screen other than the graphic text in the comic itself, so google shouldn't have found the page - at least according to how I thought google worked. So I pulled up the source to see if there was a meta tag there which would explain this. Nope.
The only thing I can think of is that google either OCR's the pictures (seems scary, and that font which Illiad uses doesn't look very OCR-able). The other thing I thought about is that perhaps google also matches text found within <A> tags which link to that page or something.
I've shot a message off to google to ask about this but I haven't heard back yet. I'll be interested to find out how the *@(#*$ they did this.
I think that I saw an ad somewhere which said "How the @(#$* did they do that?" was the highest praise one web designer could give to another. If that's true, they've definately earned my praise in this case. Regardless, some wizard at google got their search engine to do exactly what I wanted with whatever technology they used. Technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. And google is definately magic.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know why, possibly it's the lack of web portal-ness of google, but very few non-geeks I know use google. They alle stick to the local Yahoo clone.
I may be missing something, but I really can't see the reason why... could anyone enlighten me, is there something geekish about google? Or is it just me thinking that non-geeks want to use more bloated and less efficient solutions than geeks?
Do you think that the google search could be improved by more human decisions ?.
An example might be that goat.ce page (or whatever the url is) might get linked to a lot as example of bad taste (I seen a few pages that link to it and describe the page urging people not to visit it), which fine except that this web site is now getting linked to (or voted for which is how the google algorithm treats a link) yet it isn't a particularly good or informative website.
Even if someone was searching for something on bad taste, that page is not really an authoritive page about bad taste just an example of it.
"when searching was a spew of boolean mumbo-jumbo"
I still use AND, OR, and NOT ("-" in google)
I've thought of this myself. I know I don't do nearly as much "surfing" between related sites now that Google is here and works. I usually hit Google up, then if that site isn't what I want, I don't bother clicking their links section, I just go straight back to Google.
:) I think that maybe we have found the most efficient way to get the information we want, mostly because the novelty of the Internet has mostly worn off for us. We no longer spend hours bouncing from site to site, just reading random stuff. We use the Internet as a tool to expand our effective knowledge and intelligence.
The one thing that may save us though is AOLers. Bear with me here.
This is obvious with the various Googlebots that have sprung up in lots of IRC chat rooms. This happens a lot in help rooms, if no one knows the answer, or doesn't want to take the time to explain it fully, they just !google and the bot returns the first link in the search.
So while people like us, if we were the only people on the net, would cause Google to fail, so long as there are still "surfers" out there, it should allow Google to remain meaningful.
Just my two cents.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Then, it becomes harder to find things using google, and people start giving each other links again, and google gets better again.... see the cycle? I expect that there would be some sort of damping effect on this oscillation, so it would all even out in the end, with google being just short of good enough to warrant using it instead of passing links manually.
--
Seeing is believing; You wouldn't have seen it if you didn't believe it.
I wonder if the number 1 ranked page will always end up being a single document - the ontology.?
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
> Then they must use some hybrid approach: human editors and AI
Well, there's the implied assumption here that the people running this surveillance operate with standard hardware, where standard means something google, altavista, lycos, etc. can get their hands on. Sketchy information suggests that they do not; specialised hardware seems to be the order of the day.
Besides, there's a lot of research going on in terms of context recognition, here to name one place.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Remember John Poindexter? Mr. Iran-Contra? He lied to Congress and kept Ronald out of the loop. He also was responsible for shredding lots of docs on the subject as well. Now he'll be spying on US domestic electronic transmissions.
There is some irony in him destroying thousands emails to cover his ass then and now being in charge of watching everyone else's emails.
I'm also sure that the billions of dollars for his new office may be able to overcome shortcomings of certain search engines. Nobody's going to have to type all those boolean operators.
The quote above is from the UK's Guardian... Check out what you might have been missing
An interesting story, curiously not in CNN..
Nor MSNBC...
Couldn't find it in Washington Post..
Article in LA times on his appointment does not describe what he is to do in his new job except to blather about Sputnik and stealth aircraft.
Not in CBC.ca : (
Cheers to all the spooks! I think it is a job well done! -b.
I've been using the expression "just google for X" when referring friends to some site about X that I know shows up high on the hit list. It's funny, google is starting to replace DNS for me-- instead of remembering or bookmarking URLs, I just remember the keyword to google for. For example, the URL http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/ is harder to remeber than to just type "vnc" and hit "I'm feeling lucky."
:) If anyone from google.com is reading this, thank you!
I often wonder how much less productive I would be if google went away tomorrow
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
So, without thinking I fire up google and type the search:
"user friendly the comic strip" email attachment
and then clicked on search. The first hit is the cartoon I wanted, so I click on it. When I pull up the page, I realize that the text words "email attachment" don't appear anywhere on the screen other than the graphic text in the comic itself, so google shouldn't have found the page - at least according to how I thought google worked. So I pulled up the source to see if there was a meta tag there which would explain this. Nope.
The only thing I can think of is that google either OCR's the pictures (seems scary, and that font which Illiad uses doesn't look very OCR-able). The other thing I thought about is that perhaps google also matches text found within <A> tags which link to that page or something.
I've shot a message off to google to ask about this but I haven't heard back yet. I'll be interested to find out how the *@(#*$ they did this.
I think that I saw an ad somewhere which said "How the @(#$* did they do that?" was the highest praise one web designer could give to another. If that's true, they've definately earned my praise in this case. Regardless, some wizard at google got their search engine to do exactly what I wanted with whatever technology they used. Technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. And google is definately magic.