PS: I get bots, but I don't visits/interest/people contacting me. Even though, the bots keep coming over and over anyway. And my product isn't such, but a service (my personal software-development work).
Baidu bots visit my site a lot. Not sure about your (or your wife's:)) knowledge of Chinese, but for me going there is pure gibberish. Also I assume that Baidu's results are mostly focused on China or on interests of Chinese people (at least, people speaking Chinese). For example, I assume that a Baidu user looking for software development companies (= what my site is about) expect to firstly find ones who speak Chinese (and, perhaps, even are only located in China). Equivalent assumptions hold for other language/country-specific search engines: although you might potentially find everything (= formally being global), the higher priority is usually given to local (country/language/area) results (= in practice not being global). As far as my website/company is very small and isn't even well positioned where it should be (i.e., English- and Spanish-speaking search engines/directories), it seems kind of weird to get so much interest from search engines which shouldn't rank it highly anyway. Bear in mind that the whole point of my (kind-of-kidding) concern (= its context = what allows anyone to adequately understand my point) is the relative relevance of these non-English bots with respect to the a-priori-most-logical English/Spanish ones (except the ones from Google which have always been there).
Regarding the rest of your post, it seems to me that you are trying to address my concerns, as if I would be asking for help or something like that (?!); what is extremely far from being true. Note that I am an experienced programmer, my company deals with custom software development and, on top of everything, I have developed myself a set of custom crawlers in the past (they got up to 3M domains and lots of information). And, in fact, I am currently running a new set (still just starting with no relevant info yet, but these are the first generation of new bots). So, my ideas about how crawlers work, how domains are distributed across internet, what to expect from a search engine (-> have used quite a few them too), etc. are quite clear. I merely shared a curious fact.
There are many possible reasons to explain these behaviours (what I have suggested or some of the issues you are pointing out). In any case, this isn't a problem at all (I can stop the bots via robots.txt file I want, but honestly I don't care); and, even in case of being a problem, I wouldn't certainly ask for help to understand/fix it for me. As said this was simply a curious issue which I thought that deserved to be included in my first comment as a nice-to-have farewell. I wasn't certainly expecting it to trigger this set of comments. Anyway, I hope that everything is clearer now.
Note that, despite not having any problem with ACs (and, as previously said, I am an AC myself, Alvaro Carballo is my name + first family name; although I never post anonymously), I might miss some of these comments because of how Slashdot works.
When a logged-in user writes a comment to one of my posts, I get a clear warning. When an AC does the same thing, I get nothing. So, the only way to know that an AC has written something is actually re-visiting my original post, what I might do or not.
As far as I am highlighting all the problems which I see with search engines (Google and others in other comments), I will include another one which I have experienced right now: not accounting properly for symbols, sentence-separating ones or otherwise.
For example, when I search for "I want to find this", I am not interested in finding a sentence like ".... to find. This means..."; but most of search engines ignore periods, even despite their important syntactic meaning. Other times, the symbols are very important to find exactly what I want. For example, when searching for "c# code", I am not interested in finding c code results (clarification apparently required here too: C# and C are completely different programming languages), but this is what I get because # (like many other symbols) is plainly ignored.
Like in the case of literal searches, this seems extremely simple stuff to me (adequately understanding each character is one of the first steps when developing a parsing tool); that's why I don't quite understand why most of (or all) the search engines cannot deal with any of this. Are they perhaps too worried about growing via money(= hardware)/copying-pasting what once worked/blindly-outsourcing/accepting-clueless-people-decisions/etc.? Yes, this is (sadly) the most likely reason.
My wife, who is Russian, also speaks English and Spanish. I find your surprise surprising.
Now, everything makes sense! You wife is the reason why these bots keep coming to my site. Please, do something! LOL
As highlighted in one of my comments below, I wasn't aware about Yandex being a worldwide search-engine; I thought that it was mostly focused on Russia(n). So the reason for my surprise was my ignorance regarding this exact issue.
In any case, I still find kind of curious these bots being so interested in my site, which isn't related to Russia at all. The most logical situation would be English-speaking bots of major search engines (rather than Russian, Chinese and Czech, as commented below too). On the other hand, Yandex does provide a big proportion of the results for some English-speaking search engines like DDG, so perhaps this is the reason.
Honestly, I haven't seen that happening even once; at least, within the top results (Google plays a lot with the number of results. I have seen many cases where most of the additional pages are fake and disappear just after clicking on them; although I understood that as a crappy marketing technique rather than as a bug). Additionally and out of all the possible bugs in a search engine, I don't get why literal searches should be problematic, this is the easiest to implement and debug option.
As said, I see quite a few things wrong with Google and don't want to use it, but have no complain on the technical front (e.g., reliable, consistent performance/features, always very fast, no bugs/weirdly-looking anything, etc.).
Anyone (or anything) seriously interested in actually beating Google (not just saying that they beat them or buying/tricking users to use their alternative) will need to invest lots of money, hire the best of the best and never allow a quick-money-earning cancer to blow everything up. Another important issue would be thinking very carefully about the exact business model and always remain faithful to it; this is the weakest point of Google (too greedy, undefined and always ready to get money from every single issue) and the one which they should exploit. The prize for anyone bringing to the market a search-engine performing as well as Google (or similarly) and complementing that reliability with honesty and clarity will be very big. On the other hand, doing such a thing would take time, patience and always putting technical aspects first; what, as per my knowledge, is extremely difficult. There are certainly lots of knowledgeable people with the patience and will to do such a thing, but their work will always be conditioned by the money people (neither knowledgeable nor patient).
Thanks for the suggestion. In fact, I am already using it since some days ago (I read about it precisely in Slashdot). It is still too soon to have a solid opinion about it, but does seem promising.
The (kind of) problems which I have seen so far are that it doesn't show the exact same results than Google (usually a lower number); and something which might seem irrelevant, but bothers me a bit: it doesn't highlight the matched string in the shown excerpts.
There is something which it doesn't have (neither most of the other search engines), but that DDG do have and which I liked: showing the favicons of the sites in the search results; a nice and easy-to-implement feature.
He thinks anyone who complains about DDG's interface is probably being dishonest.
This looks like a slightly modified version of my first statement; basically, you are elevating yourself to absolute authority and considering that anything against your opinion has to be intrinsically wrong and, consequently, people defending such heresies are liars. Additionally, you are talking about an issue which nobody here has mentioned. The interface? Who cares about that in a search engine? All of them look alike.
DDG is fast, simple and easy to use, gives useful results,
- Faster than Google? Or than any other search engine? Can you please provide some benchmarks? - Simple and easy to use? Have you ever had problems to use any search engine? How long have you been using internet? 1/2 days? - Gives useful results? Lots of people here seem to think differently. I will add one further issue which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere: non-US/English-speaking-countries searches are quite bad. For example, when I was using DDG 1 month back I wasn't able to perform a single worthy search in Spanish/about Spain (my mother tongue + the country I am currently living in). I do recognise that they do fix their problems relatively quickly (my intention was including here a bug I found which isn't there anymore).
DDG certainly does NOT look amateurish as you claim
This was parent's claim, not main. Although I also kind of agree on this issue on account of the various problems I saw when recently using it (even though some of them are already fixed).
Maybe you profess to want bloatware?...
Please don't (mis)interpret my words/expectations. I plainly look for reliability and software behaving exactly as I want it to behave (its developers should have created it such that it exactly addresses all my expectations). I tested DDG and, without getting a completely bad impression, decided to stop using it. My global assessment (at the moment) is: - On the technical front, DDG didn't show me anything relevant (if I have to blindly choose a search engine by ignoring everything except the results I get, this wouldn't be within my top 5 or even 10 picks; and only be bearing in mind the English results, for Spanish I wouldn't consider it at all). - Their privacy policy is very appealing (actually, the only reason why I firstly tried it), but various issues transmitted me a vibe which is somehow incompatible with that approach (something very subjective); same thing with the idea of being a small company trying to grow through high-quality/hard work and honesty. Basically, I couldn't empathise with their non-technical aspects which seem to be their most relevant feature.
Perhaps I was unlucky to find more or less random issues or misinterpret them; perhaps the guy who wrote a post above the usual evolution of a company is right (in fact, I am quite sure that is right; at least, in +99% of cases) and the first psychopaths are already in; perhaps my opinion is completely and absolute unworthy and you are right. Who knows for sure? But one thing is certain though: all what I wrote (here or anywhere else; now or ever) is my honest, objective opinion, on which nobody/nothing has/will ever have the slightest (paid/unfair) influence. I am the most non-buyable guy I know (+ the one caring less about money or short-term/dishonest/subjective/egoist gains of any kind). So, please, don't insult me or make me waste time by over-explaining issues which should be evident to anyone with a minimum knowledge and a bit of decency.
Criticising Google's privacy, advertised content, etc. is very easy (and probably well deserved), but on the technical front there are still really good. I don't recall having ever seen a clear error, bug, bad-looking part, etc. when using Google. I have used Google a lot, exactly the same than all the people here (at least, at some point). I don't agree with some of their policies and this is the only reason why I am trying to not use it.
Another comment below reminded me about the open internet peculiarities. So, here comes the understandable-to-everyone clarification: the bribe part was a joke; in principle, expected to be understood as evident (= this clarification not being required) for the following reasons:
- Who (and why) will pay me anything for writing a random post about my opinion on any front? What is the value of my opinion? A random guy talking about what he thinks that is better? Only a person with an altered perception of reality might think that this makes sense (e.g., getting ideas mostly from TV shows or having never a real work).
- Even in case that such a nonsense would ever take place ($1 per post?!), why a person describing himself everywhere as honest, objective, fair, etc., spending tons of time writing but also saying that hates writing about himself that he is a programmer only concerned about programming and very demanding with clients, etc. would ever get involved in such a nonsense? I suddenly forget about all my knowledge, education, expertise, principles, about all my work and decide to start going in the most pathetic direction anyone ever went? Should I perhaps consider first to reduce my expectations regarding being very demanding with clients? Or try to apply any of my two university degrees or my +10 years working experience on something else?
- Even in the extremely unlikely situation that the two previous points would be true, why (and this is VERY IMPORTANT) would I ever say such a thing openly!? How stupid you have to be to seriously believe that a person wanting to do something even partially dishonest would say it openly? The secrecy (together with dishonesty) is the whole point of a bribe!! Additionally, bear the previous point in mind too! I am always talking about being very honest why I will openly say right the contrary?!
Are you a sensible person thinking that all this is too evident and nobody could ever think anything of what I am writing? You are wrong. (Unfortunately,) I know quite a few people who will find this post very helpful, by assuming that they are able to read it until the end (they might choose to quit reading after finding a word they like and, even worse, by blindly trusting on whatever they decide this post means) and/or believe it (for them, saying that I am honest means that I am lying about being dishonest; they never crosscheck their crazy assumptions against reality, so their system is perfect).
Another example to get the idea: If you make me wait 1 month and then I make you wait 1 hour and say "sorry for being so pathetically stupid to make you wait 1 hour", you shouldn't understand that I think that I am pathetically stupid myself, but yourself (= if I think that 1 hour means being pathetically stupid and 1 month has many hours...).
Another one: if I see a video of a white guy acting stupidly/losing (by bearing in mind that I am also a white guy) and I say "I love seeing white people winning", you should understand that I am joking (= if you can understand that the guy in the video is acting stupidly why shouldn't I? Do you prefer to think that I am truly stupid and a racist rather than I am joking?!).
It is the same being a self-deprecating or others-deprecating version, the trick is adequately understanding what the given situation is about. The same word can mean many different things depending upon the intention, context, personality, what was said before or after, etc., incredible isn't it? Isolated words by themselves have no meaning (other than for fanatics, liars and keen-of-getting-an-excuse-to-do-something-they-think-is-wrong idiots).
But you know the best part? No matter what you (mis)understand and what you do on account of such a (mis)understanding, the only thing that matters is reality and facts. And you, random misunderstanding idiot, will be fully responsible for each single action you have ever performed based upon your distorted perception of reality:) (-> to show that there is no hate in
just often enough to suspect astroturfing. I've never had a problem with DDG search results
So, you basically think that anyone having a different opinion than yours is lying? There is a big conspiracy against all what you like and lots of money around to pay all these conspirators, right? Because convincing you is the most important part of any business which you don't like (dishonest, by default), but you are smart enough to see that coming? And why shouldn't I think that you are the one with a hidden interest here? I know that DDG has lots of problems (to say it softly), but you are saying the contrary (a lie to me), what should I think about your motivations?
Thanks for reminding me why I am lately explaining very carefully all my not-too-evident (+ systematically re-defining what might/might not be evident for some people) online references -> a couple of comments ago I mentioned a bribe which was (evidently?!) a joke.
I thought that Yandex was mostly in Russian/for Russia and never tried it, at least not directly (a big proportion of the DDG results come from Yandex); I might try it as well. I had some past bad experiences with Bing, but I guess that should try it again. Thanks for sharing your impressions!
BTW, I forgot to mention in my previous comment the seznam.cz bot which also visits my site a lot. This is a Czech search engine, whose deep interest in my site is also a mystery to me.
This is one of the options which I am planning to test while looking for my new primary search engine. I knew about Qwant because its bot has been systematically visiting my main site (customsolvers.com) during the last months. I went there once and didn't get a bad impression, but still have to test it a lot before having a worthy opinion.
As a complementary fun fact, the top search-engine bots visiting my sites are the following: 1. Google (by far, the most persistent bot ever). 2. Yandex (no idea why as far as all the contents are in English and Spanish). 3. Sogou/Baidu/Soso (no idea why for the same reason than the previous one).
DDG was my primary search engine for some months and, despite (kind of) getting used to its peculiarities, I kept seeing problems. For me, the deal breaker was when their literal string support (e.g., "I want to find exactly this chunk") stopped working during some days (apparently, now it works fine again). Also I have seen other issues which have made me somehow distrust it.
Currently, the position for being my primary search engine is vacant. Any interested applicants around? Please, bring references and a bribe (the references can be small).
Apparently, Opera isn't planning to continue the development of this browser (what they said in their Twitter account), but they might include some of its features in their main product. I think that this isn't a so good idea, because the Neon approach does seem promising to me. I will definitively continue using it as one of my main browsers.
I know already the kind of tasks which it will be taking care of: web-searches and punctual visits to major pages (e.g., reading a newspaper or watching a Youtube video), where its behaviour has been proven excellent so far. If I had to use one web browser to do everything, I would certainly not choose it; basically, because it cannot deal with quite a few scenarios (what is quite logical for a prototype). But I don't need to make that decision anyway, as far as am happy with my using-different-browsers-for-different-tasks approach.
It is very refreshing to see worthy innovations in apparently-not-improvable areas and I think that those taking the risk and (even only just partially) succeeding should always be supported and motivated. Hopefully, Opera will be able to adequately maximise what seems a good first step in a promising direction.
Just to see how it behaves under tough conditions, I went to re-watch a video I saw this morning with another browser + ad-blocker (lots of popups in that site). I was able to play the video without seeing a single popup. But then I started hearing something and realised that the popups were opened in different windows on the background; not perfect, but at least they didn't bother me. Also I looked at its settings and the popups should be blocked (perhaps it stopped some of them, but certainly not all). In any case, I guess that you might install a popup-blocker, if not now, in the near future.
After using it a bit more, I have seen other features which I like: it seems to start/load pages quicker than usual (?), all the open windows remain after closing the browser unless you expressly close them, there is an easily-accessible link to capture any displayed part, it has its own task manager, etc. I might test it further during the next days and even decide to include it within my main browsers (currently using 4, for different pages and purposes:)).
... it looks and feels certainly different. Even its logo is weird. It has quite a few animations and the default layout isn't the typical one.
I am not in a position to recommend/disadvise it. No idea about its reliability and other actually-relevant-to-me aspects. I am not even sure whether I will use it at all. But it seems that might attract some interest (among young people?) because of being somehow innovative.
Thanks for the feedback, although I don't agree with you.
I like using parentheses, perhaps too many lately, but I don't see this as a problem. Additionally, it is a matter of context: in some cases, lots of details and over-explanations seem better; what is a bad idea in different scenarios. I don't try to be confusing, but appealing to certain audience. In any case, I usually avoid sub-parentheses and didn't include any of those in the aforementioned comment.
It was an option I considered (together with being joking), but I have also seen quite a few comments in Slashdot (and in other places) showing a quite bad understanding about all this. So, I thought that it was a good excuse to put some ideas together. Thanks for the clarification anyway.
When Microsoft rewrites Office in.Net, give us all a call.
I have no idea (neither interest in knowing) about the language used by Microsoft to develop anything. Although by bearing in mind that Office was released much before than the.NET Framework was created, I guess that they used a different language (same thing for Windows). Bear in mind that even the whole.NET Framework was created with non-.NET languages (at least, C++), although has been recently partially transitioned to.NET (mostly C#, but also VB.NET).
What I meant with "main Microsoft programming environment" was the one "sold" by Microsoft to developers to create software (as previously VB), not implying that they are using it internally (although is likely the case with the newer products) or that it is better than other alternatives (although I like it pretty much). The whole point of my comment was highlighting the fact that it is a comprehensive present-everywhere framework, contrarily to what some people here seem to think.
There seems to be quite a few misconceptions in Slashdot when talking about.NET, which I will try to address in this post. Before going ahead with the clarifications, note that I have been developing in.NET (both C# and VB.NET, mostly in desktop and web for Windows and Linux under different formats) for some years already. During the last months, I have also been contributing to the open.NET projects. I think that it (+ Visual Studio which, despite some of its last versions have become a bit too heavy, I still think that is the best IDE ever) is a very programmer-friendly framework and that's why I tend to use it when possible. I am not a Microsoft (or any other brand) fan, but live in the real world where Windows is the most-widely-used OS. After this introduction, what matters here:
* The.NET Framework has been the main Microsoft programming environment since some years ago. Note that one of the most relevant Windows updates is precisely the.NET one. Since the beginning, it included two main languages, C# and VB.NET (different syntaxes, but virtually identical functionalities and generating the same CIL), although additional ones have been added/further-supported during the following years (e.g., F# or C++); these languages can be used in many different sub-classifications taking care of virtually any scenario (desktop, web, games, mobile, etc.; each of them with various sub-alternatives). I think that the.NET name is quite bad and misinterpretation-prone, because it seems to indicate the (non-existent) requirement of a net connection/internet. Additionally, bear in mind that all this was traditionally meant to be only run on Windows, but also appeared some alternative versions for other OSs; the most important one was Mono/Xamarin which has been recently bought by Microsoft. In summary, all what you need to run a.NET program/web/game/mobile-app/etc. is having installed the.NET Framework (included in Windows by default) or a compatible alternative like Mono on the given machine.
*.NET Core (or further new classifications like.NET Standard) wasn't the original reason for open-sourcing.NET. This is just one additional layer of the (IMHO, too complex already).NET+non-Windows-compatible reality being used by different languages, under different scenarios and on different OSs. These new attempts try to put together the multiple sub-versions + open-source essence but, as what usually happens with.NET, aren't the only option and you don't need to develop in.NET Core (although, as a newer format, it is encouraged and, for example, you need it lately to test the open-source versions).
In summary,.NET (understood in its widest sense) is huge and that's why generic conclusions about it are usually faulty. From a Slashdot-friendly point of view, this fact translates into: better than saying "I hate.NET because X", you should say "I hate.NET Winforms/WPF for this OS because X" or "I hate ASP.NET because X" or "I hate Unity (for games) because X", etc.:)
Slashdot Mirror
PS: I get bots, but I don't visits/interest/people contacting me. Even though, the bots keep coming over and over anyway. And my product isn't such, but a service (my personal software-development work).
Is there a search engine which isn't "global"?
Baidu bots visit my site a lot. Not sure about your (or your wife's :)) knowledge of Chinese, but for me going there is pure gibberish. Also I assume that Baidu's results are mostly focused on China or on interests of Chinese people (at least, people speaking Chinese). For example, I assume that a Baidu user looking for software development companies (= what my site is about) expect to firstly find ones who speak Chinese (and, perhaps, even are only located in China). Equivalent assumptions hold for other language/country-specific search engines: although you might potentially find everything (= formally being global), the higher priority is usually given to local (country/language/area) results (= in practice not being global). As far as my website/company is very small and isn't even well positioned where it should be (i.e., English- and Spanish-speaking search engines/directories), it seems kind of weird to get so much interest from search engines which shouldn't rank it highly anyway. Bear in mind that the whole point of my (kind-of-kidding) concern (= its context = what allows anyone to adequately understand my point) is the relative relevance of these non-English bots with respect to the a-priori-most-logical English/Spanish ones (except the ones from Google which have always been there).
Regarding the rest of your post, it seems to me that you are trying to address my concerns, as if I would be asking for help or something like that (?!); what is extremely far from being true. Note that I am an experienced programmer, my company deals with custom software development and, on top of everything, I have developed myself a set of custom crawlers in the past (they got up to 3M domains and lots of information). And, in fact, I am currently running a new set (still just starting with no relevant info yet, but these are the first generation of new bots). So, my ideas about how crawlers work, how domains are distributed across internet, what to expect from a search engine (-> have used quite a few them too), etc. are quite clear. I merely shared a curious fact.
There are many possible reasons to explain these behaviours (what I have suggested or some of the issues you are pointing out). In any case, this isn't a problem at all (I can stop the bots via robots.txt file I want, but honestly I don't care); and, even in case of being a problem, I wouldn't certainly ask for help to understand/fix it for me. As said this was simply a curious issue which I thought that deserved to be included in my first comment as a nice-to-have farewell. I wasn't certainly expecting it to trigger this set of comments. Anyway, I hope that everything is clearer now.
Note that, despite not having any problem with ACs (and, as previously said, I am an AC myself, Alvaro Carballo is my name + first family name; although I never post anonymously), I might miss some of these comments because of how Slashdot works.
When a logged-in user writes a comment to one of my posts, I get a clear warning. When an AC does the same thing, I get nothing. So, the only way to know that an AC has written something is actually re-visiting my original post, what I might do or not.
As far as I am highlighting all the problems which I see with search engines (Google and others in other comments), I will include another one which I have experienced right now: not accounting properly for symbols, sentence-separating ones or otherwise.
For example, when I search for "I want to find this", I am not interested in finding a sentence like ".... to find. This means..."; but most of search engines ignore periods, even despite their important syntactic meaning. Other times, the symbols are very important to find exactly what I want. For example, when searching for "c# code", I am not interested in finding c code results (clarification apparently required here too: C# and C are completely different programming languages), but this is what I get because # (like many other symbols) is plainly ignored.
Like in the case of literal searches, this seems extremely simple stuff to me (adequately understanding each character is one of the first steps when developing a parsing tool); that's why I don't quite understand why most of (or all) the search engines cannot deal with any of this. Are they perhaps too worried about growing via money(= hardware)/copying-pasting what once worked/blindly-outsourcing/accepting-clueless-people-decisions/etc.? Yes, this is (sadly) the most likely reason.
"that"? Haven't seen WHAT happening exactly? What does anything I said have to do with top results?
I see that you have serious understanding limitations, so I will not read anything else you wrote + talk to you anymore. Bye, stupid coward.
I meant "your wife" and "one of my comments above"
(Still not fully-adapted to the Slashdot no-editing peculiarities).
My wife, who is Russian, also speaks English and Spanish. I find your surprise surprising.
Now, everything makes sense! You wife is the reason why these bots keep coming to my site. Please, do something! LOL
As highlighted in one of my comments below, I wasn't aware about Yandex being a worldwide search-engine; I thought that it was mostly focused on Russia(n). So the reason for my surprise was my ignorance regarding this exact issue.
In any case, I still find kind of curious these bots being so interested in my site, which isn't related to Russia at all. The most logical situation would be English-speaking bots of major search engines (rather than Russian, Chinese and Czech, as commented below too). On the other hand, Yandex does provide a big proportion of the results for some English-speaking search engines like DDG, so perhaps this is the reason.
Honestly, I haven't seen that happening even once; at least, within the top results (Google plays a lot with the number of results. I have seen many cases where most of the additional pages are fake and disappear just after clicking on them; although I understood that as a crappy marketing technique rather than as a bug). Additionally and out of all the possible bugs in a search engine, I don't get why literal searches should be problematic, this is the easiest to implement and debug option.
As said, I see quite a few things wrong with Google and don't want to use it, but have no complain on the technical front (e.g., reliable, consistent performance/features, always very fast, no bugs/weirdly-looking anything, etc.).
Anyone (or anything) seriously interested in actually beating Google (not just saying that they beat them or buying/tricking users to use their alternative) will need to invest lots of money, hire the best of the best and never allow a quick-money-earning cancer to blow everything up. Another important issue would be thinking very carefully about the exact business model and always remain faithful to it; this is the weakest point of Google (too greedy, undefined and always ready to get money from every single issue) and the one which they should exploit. The prize for anyone bringing to the market a search-engine performing as well as Google (or similarly) and complementing that reliability with honesty and clarity will be very big. On the other hand, doing such a thing would take time, patience and always putting technical aspects first; what, as per my knowledge, is extremely difficult. There are certainly lots of knowledgeable people with the patience and will to do such a thing, but their work will always be conditioned by the money people (neither knowledgeable nor patient).
Thanks for the suggestion. In fact, I am already using it since some days ago (I read about it precisely in Slashdot). It is still too soon to have a solid opinion about it, but does seem promising.
The (kind of) problems which I have seen so far are that it doesn't show the exact same results than Google (usually a lower number); and something which might seem irrelevant, but bothers me a bit: it doesn't highlight the matched string in the shown excerpts.
There is something which it doesn't have (neither most of the other search engines), but that DDG do have and which I liked: showing the favicons of the sites in the search results; a nice and easy-to-implement feature.
He thinks anyone who complains about DDG's interface is probably being dishonest.
This looks like a slightly modified version of my first statement; basically, you are elevating yourself to absolute authority and considering that anything against your opinion has to be intrinsically wrong and, consequently, people defending such heresies are liars. Additionally, you are talking about an issue which nobody here has mentioned. The interface? Who cares about that in a search engine? All of them look alike.
DDG is fast, simple and easy to use, gives useful results,
- Faster than Google? Or than any other search engine? Can you please provide some benchmarks?
- Simple and easy to use? Have you ever had problems to use any search engine? How long have you been using internet? 1/2 days?
- Gives useful results? Lots of people here seem to think differently. I will add one further issue which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere: non-US/English-speaking-countries searches are quite bad. For example, when I was using DDG 1 month back I wasn't able to perform a single worthy search in Spanish/about Spain (my mother tongue + the country I am currently living in).
I do recognise that they do fix their problems relatively quickly (my intention was including here a bug I found which isn't there anymore).
DDG certainly does NOT look amateurish as you claim
This was parent's claim, not main. Although I also kind of agree on this issue on account of the various problems I saw when recently using it (even though some of them are already fixed).
Maybe you profess to want bloatware?...
Please don't (mis)interpret my words/expectations. I plainly look for reliability and software behaving exactly as I want it to behave (its developers should have created it such that it exactly addresses all my expectations). I tested DDG and, without getting a completely bad impression, decided to stop using it. My global assessment (at the moment) is:
- On the technical front, DDG didn't show me anything relevant (if I have to blindly choose a search engine by ignoring everything except the results I get, this wouldn't be within my top 5 or even 10 picks; and only be bearing in mind the English results, for Spanish I wouldn't consider it at all).
- Their privacy policy is very appealing (actually, the only reason why I firstly tried it), but various issues transmitted me a vibe which is somehow incompatible with that approach (something very subjective); same thing with the idea of being a small company trying to grow through high-quality/hard work and honesty. Basically, I couldn't empathise with their non-technical aspects which seem to be their most relevant feature.
Perhaps I was unlucky to find more or less random issues or misinterpret them; perhaps the guy who wrote a post above the usual evolution of a company is right (in fact, I am quite sure that is right; at least, in +99% of cases) and the first psychopaths are already in; perhaps my opinion is completely and absolute unworthy and you are right. Who knows for sure? But one thing is certain though: all what I wrote (here or anywhere else; now or ever) is my honest, objective opinion, on which nobody/nothing has/will ever have the slightest (paid/unfair) influence. I am the most non-buyable guy I know (+ the one caring less about money or short-term/dishonest/subjective/egoist gains of any kind). So, please, don't insult me or make me waste time by over-explaining issues which should be evident to anyone with a minimum knowledge and a bit of decency.
Thanks for the information. Perhaps a friend of a friend might eventually find this useful while performing a research about something (winkwink).
Criticising Google's privacy, advertised content, etc. is very easy (and probably well deserved), but on the technical front there are still really good. I don't recall having ever seen a clear error, bug, bad-looking part, etc. when using Google. I have used Google a lot, exactly the same than all the people here (at least, at some point). I don't agree with some of their policies and this is the only reason why I am trying to not use it.
Another comment below reminded me about the open internet peculiarities. So, here comes the understandable-to-everyone clarification: the bribe part was a joke; in principle, expected to be understood as evident (= this clarification not being required) for the following reasons:
:) (-> to show that there is no hate in
- Who (and why) will pay me anything for writing a random post about my opinion on any front? What is the value of my opinion? A random guy talking about what he thinks that is better? Only a person with an altered perception of reality might think that this makes sense (e.g., getting ideas mostly from TV shows or having never a real work).
- Even in case that such a nonsense would ever take place ($1 per post?!), why a person describing himself everywhere as honest, objective, fair, etc., spending tons of time writing but also saying that hates writing about himself that he is a programmer only concerned about programming and very demanding with clients, etc. would ever get involved in such a nonsense? I suddenly forget about all my knowledge, education, expertise, principles, about all my work and decide to start going in the most pathetic direction anyone ever went? Should I perhaps consider first to reduce my expectations regarding being very demanding with clients? Or try to apply any of my two university degrees or my +10 years working experience on something else?
- Even in the extremely unlikely situation that the two previous points would be true, why (and this is VERY IMPORTANT) would I ever say such a thing openly!? How stupid you have to be to seriously believe that a person wanting to do something even partially dishonest would say it openly? The secrecy (together with dishonesty) is the whole point of a bribe!! Additionally, bear the previous point in mind too! I am always talking about being very honest why I will openly say right the contrary?!
Are you a sensible person thinking that all this is too evident and nobody could ever think anything of what I am writing? You are wrong. (Unfortunately,) I know quite a few people who will find this post very helpful, by assuming that they are able to read it until the end (they might choose to quit reading after finding a word they like and, even worse, by blindly trusting on whatever they decide this post means) and/or believe it (for them, saying that I am honest means that I am lying about being dishonest; they never crosscheck their crazy assumptions against reality, so their system is perfect).
Another example to get the idea: If you make me wait 1 month and then I make you wait 1 hour and say "sorry for being so pathetically stupid to make you wait 1 hour", you shouldn't understand that I think that I am pathetically stupid myself, but yourself (= if I think that 1 hour means being pathetically stupid and 1 month has many hours...).
Another one: if I see a video of a white guy acting stupidly/losing (by bearing in mind that I am also a white guy) and I say "I love seeing white people winning", you should understand that I am joking (= if you can understand that the guy in the video is acting stupidly why shouldn't I? Do you prefer to think that I am truly stupid and a racist rather than I am joking?!).
It is the same being a self-deprecating or others-deprecating version, the trick is adequately understanding what the given situation is about. The same word can mean many different things depending upon the intention, context, personality, what was said before or after, etc., incredible isn't it? Isolated words by themselves have no meaning (other than for fanatics, liars and keen-of-getting-an-excuse-to-do-something-they-think-is-wrong idiots).
But you know the best part? No matter what you (mis)understand and what you do on account of such a (mis)understanding, the only thing that matters is reality and facts. And you, random misunderstanding idiot, will be fully responsible for each single action you have ever performed based upon your distorted perception of reality
just often enough to suspect astroturfing. I've never had a problem with DDG search results
So, you basically think that anyone having a different opinion than yours is lying? There is a big conspiracy against all what you like and lots of money around to pay all these conspirators, right? Because convincing you is the most important part of any business which you don't like (dishonest, by default), but you are smart enough to see that coming? And why shouldn't I think that you are the one with a hidden interest here? I know that DDG has lots of problems (to say it softly), but you are saying the contrary (a lie to me), what should I think about your motivations?
Thanks for reminding me why I am lately explaining very carefully all my not-too-evident (+ systematically re-defining what might/might not be evident for some people) online references -> a couple of comments ago I mentioned a bribe which was (evidently?!) a joke.
I thought that Yandex was mostly in Russian/for Russia and never tried it, at least not directly (a big proportion of the DDG results come from Yandex); I might try it as well. I had some past bad experiences with Bing, but I guess that should try it again. Thanks for sharing your impressions!
BTW, I forgot to mention in my previous comment the seznam.cz bot which also visits my site a lot. This is a Czech search engine, whose deep interest in my site is also a mystery to me.
This is one of the options which I am planning to test while looking for my new primary search engine. I knew about Qwant because its bot has been systematically visiting my main site (customsolvers.com) during the last months. I went there once and didn't get a bad impression, but still have to test it a lot before having a worthy opinion.
As a complementary fun fact, the top search-engine bots visiting my sites are the following:
1. Google (by far, the most persistent bot ever).
2. Yandex (no idea why as far as all the contents are in English and Spanish).
3. Sogou/Baidu/Soso (no idea why for the same reason than the previous one).
Fully agree with you.
DDG was my primary search engine for some months and, despite (kind of) getting used to its peculiarities, I kept seeing problems. For me, the deal breaker was when their literal string support (e.g., "I want to find exactly this chunk") stopped working during some days (apparently, now it works fine again). Also I have seen other issues which have made me somehow distrust it.
Currently, the position for being my primary search engine is vacant. Any interested applicants around? Please, bring references and a bribe (the references can be small).
Apparently, Opera isn't planning to continue the development of this browser (what they said in their Twitter account), but they might include some of its features in their main product. I think that this isn't a so good idea, because the Neon approach does seem promising to me. I will definitively continue using it as one of my main browsers.
I know already the kind of tasks which it will be taking care of: web-searches and punctual visits to major pages (e.g., reading a newspaper or watching a Youtube video), where its behaviour has been proven excellent so far. If I had to use one web browser to do everything, I would certainly not choose it; basically, because it cannot deal with quite a few scenarios (what is quite logical for a prototype). But I don't need to make that decision anyway, as far as am happy with my using-different-browsers-for-different-tasks approach.
It is very refreshing to see worthy innovations in apparently-not-improvable areas and I think that those taking the risk and (even only just partially) succeeding should always be supported and motivated. Hopefully, Opera will be able to adequately maximise what seems a good first step in a promising direction.
Just to see how it behaves under tough conditions, I went to re-watch a video I saw this morning with another browser + ad-blocker (lots of popups in that site). I was able to play the video without seeing a single popup. But then I started hearing something and realised that the popups were opened in different windows on the background; not perfect, but at least they didn't bother me. Also I looked at its settings and the popups should be blocked (perhaps it stopped some of them, but certainly not all). In any case, I guess that you might install a popup-blocker, if not now, in the near future.
:)).
After using it a bit more, I have seen other features which I like: it seems to start/load pages quicker than usual (?), all the open windows remain after closing the browser unless you expressly close them, there is an easily-accessible link to capture any displayed part, it has its own task manager, etc. I might test it further during the next days and even decide to include it within my main browsers (currently using 4, for different pages and purposes
... it looks and feels certainly different. Even its logo is weird. It has quite a few animations and the default layout isn't the typical one.
I am not in a position to recommend/disadvise it. No idea about its reliability and other actually-relevant-to-me aspects. I am not even sure whether I will use it at all. But it seems that might attract some interest (among young people?) because of being somehow innovative.
The first video I saw of Inside Amy Schumer was precisely about this kind of 1-cup-and-2-girls stuff. Hilarious!
Thanks for the feedback, although I don't agree with you.
I like using parentheses, perhaps too many lately, but I don't see this as a problem. Additionally, it is a matter of context: in some cases, lots of details and over-explanations seem better; what is a bad idea in different scenarios. I don't try to be confusing, but appealing to certain audience. In any case, I usually avoid sub-parentheses and didn't include any of those in the aforementioned comment.
You're replying to a troll
It was an option I considered (together with being joking), but I have also seen quite a few comments in Slashdot (and in other places) showing a quite bad understanding about all this. So, I thought that it was a good excuse to put some ideas together. Thanks for the clarification anyway.
When Microsoft rewrites Office in .Net, give us all a call.
I have no idea (neither interest in knowing) about the language used by Microsoft to develop anything. Although by bearing in mind that Office was released much before than the .NET Framework was created, I guess that they used a different language (same thing for Windows). Bear in mind that even the whole .NET Framework was created with non-.NET languages (at least, C++), although has been recently partially transitioned to .NET (mostly C#, but also VB.NET).
What I meant with "main Microsoft programming environment" was the one "sold" by Microsoft to developers to create software (as previously VB), not implying that they are using it internally (although is likely the case with the newer products) or that it is better than other alternatives (although I like it pretty much). The whole point of my comment was highlighting the fact that it is a comprehensive present-everywhere framework, contrarily to what some people here seem to think.
until your 'net connection dies
There seems to be quite a few misconceptions in Slashdot when talking about .NET, which I will try to address in this post. Before going ahead with the clarifications, note that I have been developing in .NET (both C# and VB.NET, mostly in desktop and web for Windows and Linux under different formats) for some years already. During the last months, I have also been contributing to the open .NET projects. I think that it (+ Visual Studio which, despite some of its last versions have become a bit too heavy, I still think that is the best IDE ever) is a very programmer-friendly framework and that's why I tend to use it when possible. I am not a Microsoft (or any other brand) fan, but live in the real world where Windows is the most-widely-used OS. After this introduction, what matters here:
.NET Framework has been the main Microsoft programming environment since some years ago. Note that one of the most relevant Windows updates is precisely the .NET one. Since the beginning, it included two main languages, C# and VB.NET (different syntaxes, but virtually identical functionalities and generating the same CIL), although additional ones have been added/further-supported during the following years (e.g., F# or C++); these languages can be used in many different sub-classifications taking care of virtually any scenario (desktop, web, games, mobile, etc.; each of them with various sub-alternatives). I think that the .NET name is quite bad and misinterpretation-prone, because it seems to indicate the (non-existent) requirement of a net connection/internet. Additionally, bear in mind that all this was traditionally meant to be only run on Windows, but also appeared some alternative versions for other OSs; the most important one was Mono/Xamarin which has been recently bought by Microsoft. .NET program/web/game/mobile-app/etc. is having installed the .NET Framework (included in Windows by default) or a compatible alternative like Mono on the given machine.
.NET Core (or further new classifications like .NET Standard) wasn't the original reason for open-sourcing .NET. This is just one additional layer of the (IMHO, too complex already) .NET+non-Windows-compatible reality being used by different languages, under different scenarios and on different OSs. These new attempts try to put together the multiple sub-versions + open-source essence but, as what usually happens with .NET, aren't the only option and you don't need to develop in .NET Core (although, as a newer format, it is encouraged and, for example, you need it lately to test the open-source versions).
.NET (understood in its widest sense) is huge and that's why generic conclusions about it are usually faulty. From a Slashdot-friendly point of view, this fact translates into: better than saying "I hate .NET because X", you should say "I hate .NET Winforms/WPF for this OS because X" or "I hate ASP.NET because X" or "I hate Unity (for games) because X", etc. :)
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