Slashdot Mirror
MSN Search Blocking Results For XFree86?
Peacefire writes "Thomas Shaddack spotted this on http://www.root.cz/ (in Czech) -- if you go to http://search.msn.com/ and
search for 'XFree86', it tells you that you've 'entered a search term that is likely to return adult content', and directs you to the porn search engine NightSurf.com, which lists a bunch of porn sites that ostensibly match the term 'XFree86'. If you search for 'XFree86' on Google, however, it's clear that the top matching terms returned by a normal search, are XFree86 sites, are not a bunch of porn sites. MSN is apparently blocking the specific term 'XFree86' and not just filtering on something stupid like the 'X' or the 'Free', since you can search for 'XFree85' and 'XFree87' with no problem. And search terms like 'Linux', 'AOL' and 'Macintosh' are allowed, so at least MSN hasn't simply blacklisted all competitors' keywords as 'porn', but why would they be blocking 'XFree86'?"
Since it's about to get Slashdotted, here is the mirror list section from the xfree86.org site:
Web Mirrors
Our web site is very busy and often causes timed out connections. The following sites have been verified as being both accurate and reliable in their mirroring process, and so we recommend these for the best access:
Costa Rica
Copenhagen, Denmark
Paris, France
St. Denis, France
Berlin, Germany
Dortmund, Germany
Athens, Greece
Seoul, Korea
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Bucharest, Romania
London, United Kingdom
Not posting as AC 'cause the troll potential would be too high...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Something has gotta be wrong with that.
XFree85 seems to work
And so does XFree87
Here's a search for a possible culprit - just x86. Seems fine, although notice how the first 9 results are all AMD, with some impostor Intel claiming #10 spot (and it's not even Intel's site, it's Solaris on Intel document).
But back to searches for XFree86. So it wasn't the X86 part, how about
free86 - oh, look, XFree86.org is listed with Microsoft search engine after all. You just don't search it by name, search it by keyword that's reasonably close.
Perhaps they are blocking it because anything that uses the term "Windows" they consider to be a threat. Just look how "Lindows" Has had to change it's website to l---ws.com in several European countries
Not to beat the dead horse, but how many people using MSN as a search engine would know a thing about XFree86?
Maybe they meant to ban XFree69, but just made a typo.
otherwise searchinf for Free86 would have been blocked... right now it returns xfree86.org
1. Linux with Xfree86
2. ???
3. porn
I mean come on, can't you see that?
404
This is a use of market share to gain market share, which could easily be seen as an antitrust violation. The question is, does it count as hindering a consumer's capability to investigate competitors in this unique situation, where users would be attempting to do so via the infrastructure of the original company. Interesting indeed...
Of course the fact that such mistakes can be made, and left undiscovered for so long, speaks against closed blicklists like MSN's.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
Maybe they don't like the new license and are blocking it for our own good?
Has anyone tried variants on "X Box"?
I continued to nightsurf and i found another side of XFree86!
Live Now: Free cams with 'xfree86':(Click to zoom)
Get 'xfree86' at the Websites of the Hottest & Naughtiest Webcam Starlets, Hunks, Couples & Groups in the World. Click any star to visit!
Looking for xfree86? I deliver, and I'm live right now.
It sure it convenient with a graphical user interface but this is TOO MUCH.
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
MSFT is going to block all websites containing the letter "X", which will be all of their competition.
I.e. Linux, Mac OS X, Unix, hot XXX grits, etc.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
Don't tell me I'm the only one who asks my wife if she wants to XFree86 tonight?
You know what?
"how many people using MSN as a search engine would know a thing about XFree86?"
Apparently none, given the MSN results.
Hotmail blocks my best friend's last name, which is Raper, because it's "offensive"...
MSN returns all sorts of hits, it does not say anything about likely to return adult content.
Regards,
Ryan Pritchard
Fun Extends All Basic Life Expectancies
Perhaps they are doing soundex/metaphone type matching on the words to see if they are sex-related. Perhaps "xfree86" sounds like something you might find on a porn site.
Either than or it's X FREE 86 where 86 is some position that involves finding a woman with two heads.
John.
- FreeX86
- XFree87
- XFree 86
- X Free 86
As you can see they are clearly only blocking "XFree86", and not other combinations. Not the site itself, which is clearly listed, but searching for XFree86 works.
The point, I think, is that the only way people are going to know it is doing stuff like this (and thus, be able to make an educated decision) is if stuff like this is public.
I mean, if Google was blocking all search results for Linux-related sites, wouldn't you want to know? Especially if you already know the Linux sites, and thus don't search for their existence (if not content) on a regular basis.
I really just can't get over how obviously shameless Microsoft is in their business practices. This is a blatant and obvious attempt to mislead searchers, and potential users of XFree86, and what _REALLY_ pisses me off, is that stuff like this never seems to make it into the news. Why isn't this stuff taken to the masses via TV / News networks to show the rest of the world (eg: not just /. reader) how completely screwed up the business practices at Microsoft really are?
java guy, tech blog...
Blocking web pages whose titles include a word starting with X would block the Super Bowl, which for the last few decades has used the letter "X" in the name of each event as part of the Roman serial number.
Little kid told me that an "XXX" movie means you have to be thirty years old to get in.
In my (admittedly limited) use of MSN, top non-sponsored results are vaguely comparable to what Google returns.
I bootleg Fizzy Lifting Drinks.
Guess what a search for XFree87 gives you as its top result? This slashdot article, talking about Xouvert (an XFree Fork)!
Honestly, this seems more like incompetence than censorship.
perhaps a better question to ask is: Who the hell is using search.msn.com instead of google?
Not that I believe that Google is really doing their service out of the goodness from their hearts - they're doing it to make money.
But people wonder why I don't want to see a Micorosft Internet Search built into Windows (oh, and made so you can't remove it without damaging the operating system, like you can't remove IE or Media Player or anything else Microsoft decides is essential).
Call me crazy, but MS seems to have this weird habit of shutting down things they don't like. Is this just a stupid mistake? It could be - I mean, block things starting with X to keep kids from porn, right?
Oops - but Xfree85 works, so that can't be it.
MS gives away IE to shut down Netscape. That wasn't the crime that I thought was terrible - it was going to their OEM partners and threatening them with extra high cost of Windows if they put on Netscape.
So if they should take over the search world, can we really trust it to reflect accurately? I'm all for giving something a fair shake, but if before the game really starts they're already blocking alternate product possibilities I think "trust" is something that won't apply to MSN search.
Of course, I could be wrong. Could just be a simple misunderstanding.
Sadly, even if it is, based on their past history, I don't think I could believe that's it.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Finally a viable competitor to Google. I have been looking for XFree86 adult content for quite some time. Google could just never bring up what I needed.
Thanks MSN!
Darn, I just did a search for slashdot on MSN and it seems MSN wouldnt let me because it was likely to bring up a very violent anti MS website.
MSN lists itself first, and google is fourth - higher in the rankings than it is on google itself.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Ahem. Well, I challenge you to come up with a better theory then.
Notice that a search for "X Free 86" returns xfree.org, the XFree86 website, as its first hit.
If you think about it, it's unlikely their adult filter is catches pornographic searches by the query text alone. I can think of any number of queries which would give porn but which it would be difficult to computationally distinguish from non-pornographic queries.
My guess is that MSN performs the search in any case, probes the first hits in their cache with some porn-detection algorithm, and redirects you if the algorithm thinks it might be porn.
This would suggest that, for whatever reason, the first few hits for XFree86 (as opposed to "X Free 86" or XFree85") pass the porno test.
On the other hand, the notice says "You have entered a search term that is likely to return adult content" which suggests strongly that only the query is being studied. So I don't know.
Anyway, I'd be more inclined to think it's a crappy test than to think they've explicitly coded this as some incredibly obscure means of spiting XFree86.
Let's break it down ... X, as in XXX (porn), free, as in beer, and 86, as in people who have been 86'ed. I certainly wouldn't want my children seeing that :-o
(Score:-1, Wrong)
You may remember from a few months back, Microsoft wanted to buy Google. I think now we can see the dangers of such a company getting hold of the world's #1 search engine. The more conspiracy minded could find the desire to block competitors as the primary reason for Microsoft wanting to buy Google.
I think we're overthinking this. This could be a subtle way for Microsoft to block information about OSS, but I think it's because their search engine kinda sucks. Isn't it more likely that we're so used to engines like 'google' and 'alltheweb' that we assume that Microsoft must be up to something. Now, I don't believe that this would be beyond their scruples, just that this seems like a screwup. Anyway, how many of us use msn.com anyway? Try hitting 'alt-home' and you'll get my point.
-
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
I was going to `submit a site' - www.XFree86.org - as they obviously don't have it when I am confronted with `Please Upgrade Your Browser'
` You are using: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040207 Firefox/0.8'
They tell me what browser I'm using which is all well and good...
`To view this site you must use:
Microsoft(R) Internet Explorer or Netscape(R) Navigator 4.0 or higher'
And have the CHEEK to suggest it's not good enough.
`Click here to find the latest free browser from Microsoft'
They already know I'm running `Linux i686' so are they saying IE 6 works under Wine? Or maybe they have a GNU/Linux version.
Or maybe they're just big monopolistic meanies!
(I had to go and check if Netscape was even available for GNU/Linux and it is. Their website is so wonderful that I had to type `download Netscape' into their search bar to find where to download it.)
The simple, conspiracy-free answer to this riddle is that MSN just has a crappy search engine that DOES return porn sites when you search for XFree86.
I may be blind, but after reading many posts here I think there is just a little too much Microsoft conspiracy paranoia running amok on this site. I would imagine that this is as deliberate as when Microsoft included the swastikas as a character in one of their fonts.
Microsoft must be supporting white supremacists!
A silly statement, but arguably not much more of a logical leap than assuming a plot to derail XFree86.
And the irony is that their motto is "more useful everyday." I mean, that's obviously true if one day they're as useful as a stab wound in the kidney, and the next day they're as useful as a heat lamp to a burn victim, but wake up here, people. It's all an obvious attempt to associate porn and other "morally wrong" materials with the open source movement.
*whispers* You searched for XFree89, this topic is about XFree86.
To be honest as far as I know the only difference between the two is XFree3 but then I'm no professional geek.
This is Slashdot... does fantasising count? ;p
And while XFree86 gets blocked on MSN, let's see how a search for "SCO" fares on the two engines. (Top 11, "Because it's one more, you see".)
Hmmmm. Yep, no surprise there.
MSN Search Results "SCO" (Top 11):
1. SCO www.sco.com
2. California State Controller Kids Site www.kids.sco.ca.gov
3. Newsgroup: biz.sco news:biz.sco
4. Reuters - MyDoom Worm Aimed at SCO Web Site
5. DealTime - Sco Product www.dealtime.com/xGS-sco~NS-5320
6. InfoWorld - SCO: IBM Cannot Enforce GPL
7. Computer Business Consultants, SCO Unix Sales, Service & Support
8. Calibex.com - Simple Tech SCO-QUBE3/256 256MB for Sun
9. Bagpipe Marches & Music of Sco CD - Amazon.com
10. Northern New Jersey Council - Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco www.nobebosco.org
11. Northern New Jersey Council - Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco www.nnjbsa.org/camps/nobebosco
Google Search Results "SCO" (Top 11):
(Note: Includes the Google News "teaser" links just added.)
News:
1. SCO posts $2.3 million loss - InfoWorld - 2 hours ago
2. Perth firm files complaint against SCO - The Age - 9 hours ago
3. User group hits out at SCO - VNUNet - 11 hours ago
4. www.caldera.com
5. SCO | SCOsource www.caldera.com/scosource/
6. OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint
7. The SCO Group | SCO Grows Your Business sco.com/
8. the SCO v IBM info website
9. Analysis of SCO's Las Vegas Slide Show
10. California State Controller's Office www.sco.ca.gov/
11. GROKLAW www.groklaw.net/
And they aren't even competition (well, ostensibly they are, but Microsoft's a UNIX licensee - does that mean they got all of these threatening letters, too?).
Either they are blatantly "blocking" some search terms
:)
or this is just clear evidence of a shoddy search
engine.
Perhaps Microsoft is capable of both.
Never assign to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity....
If you have reached a level of cluefulness where you need to find information on Xfree86 then you are using Google as well.
Not necessarily.
If you start out as an MS user and hear about this other operating system, what is the first thing you need to do to BECOME clueful? Look it up. Right?
So you look it up, using the tool you know. And the tool refuses, and tells you it's something pornographic.
So you decide somebody's playing a joke on you and forget about it.
And you never DO become cluefull enough to download it and try it out.
And thus you never wean yourself from MSware.
And you keep buying upgrades from MS.
Multiply by millions.
Multiply by hundreds of bucks each.
Sounds like a GREAT marketing ploy.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Browser Lockout
link to MSN 3rd party Browser issue
Disrespecting Privacy
link to Bad MSN Bot
Now building a search engine that removes our ability to choose?
I seem to remember a few years ago jokes about what would happen if M$ provided searches....
I take it you haven't heard of the technique known as the '86'? That's like a 69, but the female partner's overweight.
(As a lady of mature years, these days my husband and I mostly prefer the '96'. Zzzzz...)
It is a woman's prerogative to change other people's minds.
Everything MS can do against competitors without getting sued, they will do.
Here is a workaround. Search for the term "XFree86+Unix http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=XFree86%2BUni x&FORM=SMCRT. This will pull up the most relevant sites related to the X Windowing system.
Get your free Dropbox account with 2 GB Free storage!
If you start out as an MS user and hear about this other operating system,
Argh! I was THINKING BSD while TYPING about X. Guess I'm not being cluefull today. B-(
But the point is still valid - finding out about a windowing system that's portable across other operating systems could help lead to conversion to the other op systems - and weaning from MSware.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
isnt blocked either. Something odd here. for sure
Paranoids,
Blocking XFree86 is not an indication of concious effort by Microsoft to divert traffic. Perhaps their blocking software has the following algorithm:
For terms that have been searched for more than 10,000 times, block the term if the first letter is X and the second letter is a consonant.
As you can see, this search doesn't consciously target XFree86. And XFree85 and XFree87 probably wouldn't meet the 10,000 criteria.
Wouldn't you think that anyone who knows what XFree86 is would not be detered by MSN anyway?
This is non-news. Hey everybody, the dots on acoustical tile above my cube spell out "Microsoft rules!" oh no!!!
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Perhaps they are doing soundex/metaphone type matching on the words to see if they are sex-related. Perhaps "xfree86" sounds like something you might find on a porn site.
Maybe it does, but "xfreee86" sounds the same, and returns real search results, and "xfree66" has more "six/sex" sounds in it and returns real search results. They're not filtering by sound.
...to tell the powers that be at MSN that the search is producing 'erroneous results'? It might just be that they're overlooking a problem they don't otherwise know exists.
Of course I haven't done this either... but frankly, I could care less.
Cheers!
Nightsurf.com must be a paying partner with MSN search. I bet they bought the keyword "xfree86" from MSN search, such that any searches on *precisely* that keyword will reroute the user to their search engine.
My theory is backed up by the fact that if you search for "xfree86 xfree86" rather than just "xfree86", you get back the right results.
I bet MSN Search would like to be notified of Nightsurf.com's trickery...
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Interestingly XFree*^ (SHIFT+86) returns the correct site listed as number one (xfree.org). Yeah, I did it by accident.
I think I'll stop here.
That's because bondage isn't always sexual.
Doesn't Microsoft want all of us to be in bondage to them? Straining against the yoke of software assurance? Restrained by the EULA? Struggling to close vulnerable ports?
Can't expect anything if you don't pay for it, eh? Hell, sometimes people ask me for directions when I'm out walking my dog, and I'll send them in the totally wrong direction! Just for the hell of it! Sure, some of them look pretty desperate to get wherever they're going, but they're not paying me or anything, so it's not like it's wrong to lie to them.
Microsoft browses slashdot too, you know. So they probably know where the spike in bandwidth is coming from even if they don't have one of those big screens.
Interestingly, if you search for xfree86 xfree86"you get the xfree86 home page
No sign of porn.
Goto http://search.msn.com select "Advanced Search" put in XFree86 then click on search.
You'll get a page with a box that has "Sponsored Sites" at the top and a link to NightSurf.com
Now click on the link below that box that says "Go Back to MSN Search"
OMG.... it's the results of the search for XFree86.. perhapse their "BETA" search engine is having problems with the basic search and sponsored links code. Overall the original article is BS since they rushed to slam Microsoft and didn't double check everything.
Clearly Microsoft objects to XF86's new license as being restrictive to the growth of Free Software worldwide!
Turns up a result, and doesn't trigger the porn filter. Add "babes fuck breast" if you like.
Yes the Eye Of Bill is watching. I can sense it's Evil gaze.
We talked about doing the full investigation, and suing, etc. and even called the district attorney since this seemed to be criminal behaviour to us. We decided we were too small and too poor to pursue the matter as a civil case, and I don't know what happened w/ the DA.
I thought it was pretty foul play, it was one of a number of incidents that helped turn me into a bitter Microsoft-hater.
Well thats funny a search for linux on msn brings up only 414 results, I WONDER why? http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=Linux&FORM=SM CRT
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
Don't be so closed minded. They could easily be both evil and stupid.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
I did a search for "teen shemales fisting watersports anal toys"[msn.com], and got www.xfree86.org as a result...
Catholic Schoolgirls
Hot teen sluts
upskirt shots
pictures of women licking my balls
sexy XFree86 girls
So, even if XFree86 was unintentional, what content do they think they're protecting us from?
"x free 86" returns xfree.org as the first search result. Something funky is going on..
Where would they get that idea?
I'm a fairly competent internet programmer, so here's my analysis: follow the money. First thing to examine is the url that MS presents. I've split it into multiple lines for readability. Notice that it contains two other urls as parameters.
r ch.dll6 R .gif
_ TR.gif
e al code=msn&src=1&key=xfree86
o m
http://search.msn.com/adpassthru.aspx
?ADTARGET=http://ads.msn.com/ads/adredir.asp
%3F&TARGET=http://apps.NightSurf.com/~wsapi/nssea
%3Fdealcode%3Dmsn%26src%3D1%26key%3D&QUERY=xfree8
&IMG=http://ads.msn.com/ads/IMGWB3/004400170001_T
This url takes you back to the msn search site so that it can record your click. The search site responds with a code 302 (Document moved) and redirects you to ads.msn.com. Here is the url for that. Notice the similarity.
http://ads.msn.com/ads/adredir.asp
?url=http%3a%2f%2fapps.NightSurf.com
%2f%7ewsapi%2fnssearch.dll
%3fdealcode%3dmsn%26src%3d1%26key%3dxfree86
&image=http://ads.msn.com/ads/IMGWB3/004400170001
This ad site responds with another redirect that finally takes you to nightsurf. Here is the url for that.
http://apps.NightSurf.com/~wsapi/nssearch.dll?d
Now here's where it really gets interesting. Notice the dealcode and key parameters in particular. They would seem to imply that MSN has some kind of deal with NightSurf.
I have to conclude that NightSurf paid MSN to feature it's ad (that's what it is, not a search result) when users type in 'XFree86'. I had difficulty understanding why a porn search site would want to do something like that, so I started investigating. First stop, betterwhois.com. Here's what they have to say about NightSurf.com.
Registrant:
WebPower Inc.
ATTN: NIGHTSURF.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA. 20172-0447
Domain Name: NIGHTSURF.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Inc., WP av4xg8hq3ck@networksolutionsprivateregistration.c
ATTN: NIGHTSURF.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA 20172-0447
570-708-8780
It seems that this is a private listing from Network Solutions and any further investigation will have to include sending an email to the listed address.
So the question remains, why is NightSurf.com (A.K.A. Web Power, Inc.) paying Microsoft for the XFree86 keyword? Did Microsoft knowingly accept that or was it more automated? Do I or do I not have a hole in my hat?
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
They've portscanned all you porn-downloading turkeys, and noticed that
1) you have XFree86.
2) you only ever use it to look at porn.
And by the way, isn't there a porn-centric linux distribution yet, with tools for downloading huge tracts of porn from usenet etc?
I got the adult content warning and tried:
xfree86 bullshit its adult content...
for a laugh, which for some reason bought back a bucketload of Slashdot stuff (!?). Conspiracy against xfree86? No, it's just a really bad search engine.
> So to me it does not look like "some porn sites plastered
> the term "XFree86" all over themselves", but more like a
> suspiciously blocked search query.
A "friend" (cough) told me that there is a porn site with xfree in it's URL.
BTW, a search for "latex" comes up with Mac TeX second down but with the Windows port MiKTeX nowhere to be seen. I wonder why....
The Machine stops.
Here's what "XFree86" shows for two more search engines. Really is interesting graphical results.
Yahoo vs. Google
This is nitpicking but interestingly if you search for Y Windows Y MSN Gives you this and Google Gives you this. Google finds it without problems.
I've tried a few other terms like Microsoft loses lawsuit and they don't seem to be filtering results. Interestingly searching for Microsoft Warez IS being manipulated pointing to microsoft.com/piracy. Don't blame them. Just interesting to compare the results with other search engines.
While I can possibly see this as some form of censorship, especially when searching for Xfee86, what I'd like to know is what other terms they have manipulated which might be interpreted as a conflict of interest. What would happen if the US government had a Goolge like search engine - what kind of censorship would occur on their site? At what point will NBC (of MSNBC) become involved - if ever - to filter out searches whose results are not in their favor. Does CNN, the BBC the CBC and other media do the same thing on Internet searches on their websites?
Ah. But if you search for XFree86 MS idiots!!! you bypass their pr0n warning and get a slew of links to Slashdot.
How not-so-strange...
Although I don't think MS is beneath filtering XFree86 out, I think I know how they'll explain this (if they so bother).
;-)
XFree86 does something that XFree69, XFree87, "X Free 86," etc. do not:
It returns 2 million hits in google.
(I quote figures for google since, obviously, msn's filters prevent us from measuring how many results their engine returns)
I think MS will claim (again, if they decide to respond at all) that their algorithm notices the suspect strings ("X" and "Free") as well as the fact that the number of hits is similar to those for truly naughty searches.
"XFree86" is a single 'token' that raises all three of these hypothetical red flags. If you enter "X Free 86" (including the spaces) into a search engine, the search string decomposes into three tokens that each raise no more than two red flags.
Evidence:
Search_Term, Google_Hits, MSN_Flags_as_porn
XFree86, 2.4 Million, yes
XFree87, 7, no
XFree85, 181, no
XFree69, 0, no
X, 300 Million, no
Free, 600 Million, no
freesex, 2.2 Million, yes
However, I should point out that the number of google results may not be a reasonable indicator of the frequency of occurences within MS's own database. If you search for "86" on both engines, google indicates 44 million hits, while MSN claims to have only 36 (that's thirty-six, not thirty-six million).
(I still think they're doing it on purpose, though
X FREE 86 also returns the correct Xfree86 homepage, and XXX free 86 doesn't generate a warning.
Never confuse volume with power.
You know what's fun? Search for "GNU" or "GPL" on MSN, and compare that with Google. The GNU website is the first hit on Google, but doesn't even appear on the first page of MSN. The first MSN result is an African safari thing... The first MSN hit for "GPL" is: "InfoWorld - SCO: IBM Cannot Enforce GPL". Insane.
1) At least there are search results for microsoft and not some kind of porn... 2) In slashdot, you will find posters opinions ( forums). The don't have to be objective or even true, it's just an opinion. A search engine especially from a big company must have some objectivity.
Next week MS will put another easter egg in their search engine to keep Slashdotters busy for hours while MS programmers hammer out Longhorn and Sheephorn and Horned-owl and take over the WORLD!!!
Flames ... no. Dollar bills is more like it.
and yes, they did it on purpose. You have to realize that the paranoia runs deep. It is very much a part of their behavior. They are essentially a reacitve entity.
It is a successful model because it works. Simple minded but true. Have you ever been attacked by a competitor who will take a huge pile of insignificant crap and try to use it to leverage an advantage? It takes lots of your time to explain that the tower of shit is just a tower of shit and not advanced technology to the client.
Meanwhile the compeitior has gotten the client to join an association of like minded people who sit around blowing smoke up one another's anuses. They believe it because they *want* to believe it and it comes with lunch and a 100 dollar bill under the plate once a month. Of course it doesn't make sense. It isn't supposed to.
To summarize, this is just one of the turds in the pile. Small, but they do pile up when you have lots of people piling them. And it probably didn't cost the company anything but a double latte.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
I tried to submit similar article on Jan 22 but it was not accepted. Evidently Microsoft responded to the complain and Apache is not blacklisted anymore. Below is my original one month old post. Sorry URL show proper results now and I did not saved the original search results.
A few days ago I noticed that every time I use Internet Explorer (i.e. MSN search) to look for apache related projects I never got a reference to apache.org websites.
Examples: jelly script , maven apache , cocoon framework .
*.apache.org sites never came up. I am not even talking about listing it as "featured web site". It never came up as the link at all!!! The best you would get is a reference to XML.com website discussing the technology but not to technology itself.
Even search for "apache web" got the reference www.apache.com as the featured site instead of www.apache.org Only "apache" got "apache.org" as the featured site at the second place after oil related Apache corporation. Yahoo and Google as you would expect did proper job.
Try doing a search for "Xfree", it actually pulls up "Xfree68" as the first result!
now thats odd.
....move along....nothing to see here....
Except that searching for "x free 86" on MSN returns the XFree86 homepage as the first result (so does a search for "x free86" and "xfree 86" and just "xfree"). A search for "x free" returns some X-Men web pages, free speech sites, and other "free" stuff and "x" stuff - but no adult content results. Only "xfree86" returns the link to the "adult content" page. I think your theory does not stand up to a real world test.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Searching for Xfree86 porn works, too! Strangely enough ...
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
Users in the United States don't need no steenkin' "rights under this supplemental EULA" because they have 17 USC 117, which provides a defense against copyright infringement to the owner of a "copy" (a "copy" being a physical medium, such as a hard drive, on which a work is fixed).
I like your keyword theory. It doesn't explain why XFree86 was chosen, but it does a pretty good job of explaining the other results.
/. :)
But this:
"x sex" does not block. "xx sex" does not block. "xxx sex" blocks. "xxxx sex" blocks. "xxxxx sex" does not. "sex xxx lesbian" does not block. All of those searches do returns tons of porn, however.
Could also stregthen my argument. In my opinion at least, of these terms, "xxx sex" and "xxxx sex" are the one most likely to be used by someone searching for porn, and would therefore have the highest search frequencies. They all have more or less the same porn triggers, like the 'x' and 'sex', but the ones with the greatest theoretical frequency are the ones that get blocked.
The "sex xxx lesbian" is the exception, I would have assumed that to be more frequent as well. But it's also the only three word phrase, which means that while the concept of "sex xxx lesbian" might be frequence, perhaps that particular order is not very common.
To further the test:
sex xxx lesbian PASS
sex lesbian xxx PASS
lesbian sex xxx BLOCK
lesbian xxx sex PASS
xxx lesbian sex BLOCK
xxx sex lesbian PASS
What does that mean? I have no idea. The two blocked searches are what I was expecting to be the most common searches, but that's just my opinion. Actually, analyzing this, I think it supports your theory. The keyword could be "lesbian sex" and the attachment of "xxx" is just coincidence.
But it was fun to type in a bunch of sex terms and claim I was doing research for
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
Wow! What a horrible search engine! Xfree86 porn doesn't bring up the warning because it's not the EXACT term which they have in their database. I suspect that they compiled a list of terms likely to bring up adult content, but they fail to check if somebody used a combination of those words.
Seach for porn, and you'll get the nightsurf thing. Search for nude, and you'll also get the nightsurf warning. But- if you search for porn nude then you'll get no warning at all!!! This is stupid even for microsoft standards.
They all pointed to an Xfree86 page. Kinda funny how just "XFree86" doesn't work. No wonder they want to own the search engine world. I'm not even anti-M$, but that's crap!
Microwaved twenties
The Internet couldn't tell a good bit from a bad bit if it bit it on its naughty bits.
The users of MSN (search engine) are mostly those who have a windows box and dont know about the alternatives (microsoft customers). IE brings up msn as the default home page. These people are usually in the same demographic group as those who install GATOR and HotBar et al.
Usualy such windows software that spies, snoops or hijacks your browsing experience, to be legal, has to have a written disclaimer that you must click through. Gator for example, does warn you (if you read the microscopic print) that it will distort your browsing experience.
I would say that MSN is as much of a browser hijacker as that in terms of manipulating the sites you view, but without the legality of the click through agreement.
MSN's lack of any such statement or click through combined with it's default homepage status has to be ripe for an anti-trust suit I would say. You just can't get more incriminating evidence than this.
while sco {
wget -O
}
and note the space between Xfree & 86. This will return xfree86.org link as desired.
Looks more like a (stupid) bug, but then again bugs always cause undesired results.
While I hate Microsoft for all the same reasons most of you do, I think in this case there's a non-malicious explanation. That redirection is probably triggered by the following conditions:
(1) The search term contains certain things that tend to find X-rated content. The algorithm might look for dictionary terms and try to form seperate words out of the serch phrase (so if you looked for hothornybabes it would notice that it contains the words "hot" and "horny" and "babes".) So, "Xfree86" probably gets flagged because it's "X" followed by "free" and some irrelevant number. But, wait, you say 'Xfree87" and "Xfree85" don't trigger, so that can't be it, right? Well, it still could be because of the next point:
2) It probably *also* only triggers the redirection if the search result returns a lot of hits.
So 'Xfree86' triggers a lot of hits, and contains red-flagged terms, while 'Xfree87' has the same flagged terms, but triggers few hits, and so isn't assumed to be porn.
Anyway, that's one possible explanation. I'd attribute this to stupidity on the part of the algorithm before attributing it to maliciousness.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The MSN search isn't biased against Linux at all!
For proof, just go here and read what it says in the title.
For the lazy: "MSN Seach: linux -- More Useful Everyday"
i believe the best demonstration is saerching for 'porn' and then 'porn porn'
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Obviously the MS programmer(s/oids) is(are/are) ANDing the evil bit flags instead of ORing them. They did check the for evil bit, didn't they?!
Why do I get the feeling that if you manually overrode the "maxlength=150" and set them a nice custom GET with "bork" 17000 times on the MSN search line, somewhere in Redmond a server will go down?
--
For a little recursive humor, trying searching "XFree86 adult" on MSN.
For those who missed it, the parent put a space between "XFree" and "86". Indeed, it does work, and returns about 3525 results.
one hundred twenty
is just enough characters
to write a haiku
I was standing up for the greater honor of Slashdot, about which you were equally insulting.
This is Slashdot. I get it out of my system here so I can be a lovable cheerful teddy bear in real life. For all you know, we work together, so you ought to be thankful. Heck, maybe I'm your mom. Or even you, during those mysterious blackouts.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Well, presumably if you type it twice, then you're sure you want it and don't need a warning.
My deviantArt site
My guess is that since 'X/Freee/86' is a plausible keyword combo for a porn site, *and* a popular search term for that other reason, those running porn sites would be tempted to submit a lot of sites optimized for that keyword. If the web crawlers that feed MSN's index pick up a lot more porn sites for "xfree86" because the keyword is being targeted more by porn sites, then it shouldn't be surprising that searches for xfree85 or xfree87 don't set off the message.
Then again, I typed "xfree85" into nightsurf.com, and got the EXACT SAME 162 RESULTS, in the same order, with only the keyword changed...
...what can be adequately explained by Microsoft's search engine being shit.