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Accoona - How Does This Search Engine Rate?
An anonymous reader asks: "How many of you have tried the new AI-based search engine, Accoona? How does it compare with the other big search engines (Google, MSN Search, Yahoo, etc)? In late 2004, the Associated Press reported that Bill Clinton helped launch the company behind the engine, which is also backed by the Chinese Government. The EETimesUK has another article which describes how the search engine is supposed to work." For those who have tried Accoona, how would you rate the accuracy of its results?
I completely agree. For me, javascript is a death-knell for Internet sites. (As are Flash, cookies, registration, DRM).
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Oh, and for all the clueless webpage "coders" who wouldn't know user-friendly usability if it hauled off and slapped them in the head, all itchy at the keyboard ready to type such pithy clever-isms in response to yours and my posts such as, "Gee, the Internet for you must be a lonely place"
Guess what? It's not. It works just fine without your clueless webpages. It must be a lonely place for YOU, with all your 'leet Frontpage uber-"coder" skills, or whatever.
I guess it could become very popular in Portugal, where accoona means, literally, 'the cunt':
"-Hey , I have to write a paper about some really obscure subject and I have no idea where to start looking. Any ideas?
-Sure! Take a look in 'the cunt', I usually find everything I need over there. Couldn't live without it, heh!"
Use the 'find out about %s' link to go to accoona.answers.com, and notice the logo. Have they changed hands recently, or launched a whole new site?
It takes an AI to spell it ...
Anyway, i'm suspicious about their great "AI". AI is supposed to think on it's own, make attempts to make something new, learn from it's own istakes. Just following the learning path described by the original programmer leaves it still dumb as it is, maybe a bigger databank behind it, but still dumb.
The search engine isn't really the place for an AI to start up anyway, too much information throughput with too few references.
You don't get smart by reading an encyclopedia, you get smart by understanding it and creating relations on your own. Accoona certainly won't do the latter on it's own.
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.