AltaVista vs. Google: speed and relevance shootout
on
Altavista Renewed
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I just did a test, I tried entering the single search word "Jaguar", and wanted to compare:
Speed. Speed is very important in a search engine, if it ain't fast it ain't usable as a tool for everyday work. I tried a real life search for "Jaguar" as well as a search that is almost guaranteed not to be cached.
Paid placement at the top of the results, or "sponsored links" as the search engines like to call it.
Relevant matches. Specifically I wanted to see how near the top Jag-Lovers, the largest non-profit Jaguar enthusiast site, got.
The result were conclusive: Google wins hands down on all counts. Altavista lists half a page of paid for "sponsored links" before any actual search results are returned. Google has none, but curiously the topmost link is for MacOS X - Jaguar. Did Apple pay Google to have MacOS placed above any links for Jaguar cars, or is this a result of thousands of Mac users linking to Apple's MacOS X site?
Altavista was sloooow, taking several seconds to return a non-cached search result (try searching for something "unusual", or a completely made up word). Google is fast, returning the first results page instantly, no matter what.
Relevance: MacOS X is of course very relevant to a search for "Jaguar", even if it's not what I expected;-). Google lists it at the very top of the first page, Altavista has a mention of MacOS X at the bottom of page 1, but not Apple's homepage for OS X. Jag-Lovers was only listed on page 3 on Altavista, after 3 pages of various commercial sites, including of course Jaguar Cars' various sites. Google lists Jag-Lovers near the bottom of page 1, after Jaguar Cars' sites.
There is no question in my mind, Google is the best tool. YMMV. Oh, and yes, I remember when we all marvelled at Altavista and read about how the project started out as an idea scratched down on a napkin over lunch at DEC. DEC is dead, and so will Altavista be soon enough. Google is so much better, so why should Altavista survive in the long run?
> Can you name a few that you think won't ratify it?
Well, my country for a start: Norway. Also, I can't quite picture countries like Denmark, Sweden, the UK or any of the former eastern block countries going for this.
There's also a huge difference between countries as to how laws on the books are actually practiced.
I base my assumption on the present situation in Europe. AFAIK, only France, Spain and Germany actually try to block "objectional" material from other countries (the US) and ban the sale of Nazi paraphernalia etc.
This is a convention that has to be ratified by the legislature of each country, not a law. It is not a treaty and it does not bind the members of the Council in any way. Quite a few European countries will most certainly not ratify it as is for the same reasons as why it wouldn't be accepted in the US.
Please also note that this was cooked up by the Council of Europe, a body with absolutely no real power at all, not the EU Council (which does hold real power).
Disclaimer: Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental. Any resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic. The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader. The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this article.)
I was more into The Clash, myself. The distinction was very important, or at least it seemed so, back then.
In any case, anyone claiming to be punk today is only demonstrating all to clearly that they haven't got a fscking clue what punk was all about.
It was about broken glass, gloom and hope. Yeah, I know that doesn't make sense, but then again we're talking about punk here, OK? You had to be there, the early Thatcher years, the early Reagan years, the mainstream world hurling ass-backwards back to the values of 50s while unemployment was skyrocketing and mainstream rock and pop was more toothless than ever before in recorded history. On top of that both sides of the cold war had their fingers on the button 24/7.
The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones and the rest set us free, free from all the BS going on around us.
Palm will be announcing cellular carriers for the W in the near future.
Begging your pardon? Isn't this a GSM phone? Do the US carriers lock users in even on GSM networks? What's the point of having GSM then if you can't use whatever phone you like on whatever network you want and roam freely?
We may be behind the US on a lot of things here in Europe, but at least we got that right. My cellular carrier doesn't care, and it's none of their business, what kind of phone I use and where I bought it.
Speaking of my phone, I own a Nokia 7650. Can't see replacing it for the new Palm anytime soon, the Nokia does the same job in a smaller package.
Time to rewrite every GNU program from scratch
on
The Stallman Factor
·
· Score: 1
This is getting ridiculous.
Time to rewrite every GNU program from scratch and release them under a BSD-ish license.
That license should state that anyone may use those programs and package them into an operating system, without ever having to worry about how to name that OS nor whether anyone will use them for endless grandstanding and petty politics.
"Meanwhile, Europe and the U.S. are closing the doors fast on China's IP space, and at the rate this is happening the problem is going to almost certainly go diplomatic within months." [Steve Linford, a member of the Spamhaus Project]
This sounds like the way to go. If the problem gets elevated to the political, diplomatic level, it might get some press in Asia and help educate local sysadmins. It might even generate some local government incentives for ISPs to get their act together. If nothing else, it should get good old capitalism working, as in customers walking away from ISPs that are no longer able to deliver their email to the West.
So get busy and get those blocks in place on your email servers.
Imagine if there was once advanced, possibly even intelligent, life on Mars.
Would it be too far-fetched to speculate that perhaps that all higher life forms were wiped out by some virus or bacterial disease?
What guarantees do we have that bringing back a sample of soil or rock from Mars wouldn't expose this planet to the same catastrophic outcome?
There are several products out there which allow you to use your PC as a TVR and record directly to VCD. Just one example:
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR (no affiliation, yadda, yadda).
Anyone tried this product or others like it? Experiences: Good, bad, indifferent?
"Alan Boss, an expert in planetary system formation at the Carnegie Institution of Washington"
Now I'm sure Mr. Boss knows more about the subject than most people, but can anyone really call themselves an expert in a process we know to be happening all over the Galaxy (and most likely Universe), but for which we have only one observable study object? (And even that is 5 billion years after the fact, so much of what we "know" is conjecture.)
I mean, expert on our own solar system, yes, but planetary system formation in general?
Actually, no. I'm not. Please read what I wrote and please take into consideration the smiley.
In any case, here's someone else who had the same thoughts/reaction as I had upon hearing the news: Andy Oram in an article on O'Reilly Net. Scroll to the second-to-last paragraph.
You and I and everyone here at/. may know that Linux != RedHat, but to many people outside the community RedHat is a very strong brand name and may very well be the only Linux distro they know of. If AOL should impose some kind of content control mechanisms on the RedHat distribution this could have a serious impact on how Joe Sixpack views Linux as an OS.
Slashdot Mirror
- Speed. Speed is very important in a search engine, if it ain't fast it ain't usable as a tool for everyday work. I tried a real life search for "Jaguar" as well as a search that is almost guaranteed not to be cached.
- Paid placement at the top of the results, or "sponsored links" as the search engines like to call it.
- Relevant matches. Specifically I wanted to see how near the top Jag-Lovers, the largest non-profit Jaguar enthusiast site, got.
The result were conclusive: Google wins hands down on all counts. Altavista lists half a page of paid for "sponsored links" before any actual search results are returned. Google has none, but curiously the topmost link is for MacOS X - Jaguar. Did Apple pay Google to have MacOS placed above any links for Jaguar cars, or is this a result of thousands of Mac users linking to Apple's MacOS X site?Altavista was sloooow, taking several seconds to return a non-cached search result (try searching for something "unusual", or a completely made up word). Google is fast, returning the first results page instantly, no matter what.
Relevance: MacOS X is of course very relevant to a search for "Jaguar", even if it's not what I expected ;-). Google lists it at the very top of the first page, Altavista has a mention of MacOS X at the bottom of page 1, but not Apple's homepage for OS X. Jag-Lovers was only listed on page 3 on Altavista, after 3 pages of various commercial sites, including of course Jaguar Cars' various sites. Google lists Jag-Lovers near the bottom of page 1, after Jaguar Cars' sites.
There is no question in my mind, Google is the best tool. YMMV. Oh, and yes, I remember when we all marvelled at Altavista and read about how the project started out as an idea scratched down on a napkin over lunch at DEC. DEC is dead, and so will Altavista be soon enough. Google is so much better, so why should Altavista survive in the long run?
Well, my country for a start: Norway. Also, I can't quite picture countries like Denmark, Sweden, the UK or any of the former eastern block countries going for this.
There's also a huge difference between countries as to how laws on the books are actually practiced.
I base my assumption on the present situation in Europe. AFAIK, only France, Spain and Germany actually try to block "objectional" material from other countries (the US) and ban the sale of Nazi paraphernalia etc.
Unless you know otherwise...?
This is a convention that has to be ratified by the legislature of each country, not a law. It is not a treaty and it does not bind the members of the Council in any way. Quite a few European countries will most certainly not ratify it as is for the same reasons as why it wouldn't be accepted in the US.
Please also note that this was cooked up by the Council of Europe, a body with absolutely no real power at all, not the EU Council (which does hold real power).
For an insightful comment on CDMA see this article in The Register.
> CDMA is a better technology; even the European carriers recognize this (and are rushing to change their networks).
Say what? Which carriers are that? References, URLs please?
Disclaimer: Any resemblance between the above views
and those of my employer, my terminal, or the view out
my window are purely coincidental. Any resemblance
between the above and my own views is non-deterministic.
The question of the existence of views in the absence
of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the
reader. The question of the existence of the reader
is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient.
(A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism
is beyond the scope of this article.)
Apologies to whoever I stole it from.
You mean metre. It's a measuring unit used by NASA about half the time.
In any case, anyone claiming to be punk today is only demonstrating all to clearly that they haven't got a fscking clue what punk was all about.
It was about broken glass, gloom and hope. Yeah, I know that doesn't make sense, but then again we're talking about punk here, OK? You had to be there, the early Thatcher years, the early Reagan years, the mainstream world hurling ass-backwards back to the values of 50s while unemployment was skyrocketing and mainstream rock and pop was more toothless than ever before in recorded history. On top of that both sides of the cold war had their fingers on the button 24/7.
The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones and the rest set us free, free from all the BS going on around us.
Begging your pardon? Isn't this a GSM phone? Do the US carriers lock users in even on GSM networks? What's the point of having GSM then if you can't use whatever phone you like on whatever network you want and roam freely?
We may be behind the US on a lot of things here in Europe, but at least we got that right. My cellular carrier doesn't care, and it's none of their business, what kind of phone I use and where I bought it.
Speaking of my phone, I own a Nokia 7650. Can't see replacing it for the new Palm anytime soon, the Nokia does the same job in a smaller package.
Tip: The "Chrysler" is silent.
Time to rewrite every GNU program from scratch and release them under a BSD-ish license.
That license should state that anyone may use those programs and package them into an operating system, without ever having to worry about how to name that OS nor whether anyone will use them for endless grandstanding and petty politics.
Let's call this project UNG (Ung is Not GNU).
I wonder what sort of cooling system they use? Will they burn up if they stand still for too long?
What's their top speed, anyway?
You mean they don't?!?
As opposed to saying "Ahmm..." between every other word like they do now?
I can't answer for them, but I grew up by the sea myself. If I go inland for long I start feeling sort of trapped, if you know what I mean.
It's very odd, I know it's irrational, but I can't help it. Happens every time.
"Meanwhile, Europe and the U.S. are closing the doors fast on China's IP space, and at the rate this is happening the problem is going to almost certainly go diplomatic within months." [Steve Linford, a member of the Spamhaus Project]
This sounds like the way to go. If the problem gets elevated to the political, diplomatic level, it might get some press in Asia and help educate local sysadmins. It might even generate some local government incentives for ISPs to get their act together. If nothing else, it should get good old capitalism working, as in customers walking away from ISPs that are no longer able to deliver their email to the West.
So get busy and get those blocks in place on your email servers.
This has already happened - we're it.
There are several products out there which allow you to use your PC as a TVR and record directly to VCD. Just one example: Hauppauge WinTV-PVR (no affiliation, yadda, yadda).
Anyone tried this product or others like it? Experiences: Good, bad, indifferent?
"Alan Boss, an expert in planetary system formation at the Carnegie Institution of Washington"
Now I'm sure Mr. Boss knows more about the subject than most people, but can anyone really call themselves an expert in a process we know to be happening all over the Galaxy (and most likely Universe), but for which we have only one observable study object? (And even that is 5 billion years after the fact, so much of what we "know" is conjecture.)
I mean, expert on our own solar system, yes, but planetary system formation in general?
You know what this means, in 2-300 years the title "Miss Universe" will actually mean something.
The first thing that runs through your mind when you see the above headline is: "Wow, imagine a Beowolf cluster..."
Argh.
Rrriiight! Any women in the audience? Let's get to it, Linus said so!
Actually, no. I'm not. Please read what I wrote and please take into consideration the smiley.
In any case, here's someone else who had the same thoughts/reaction as I had upon hearing the news: Andy Oram in an article on O'Reilly Net. Scroll to the second-to-last paragraph.
You and I and everyone here at /. may know that Linux != RedHat, but to many people outside the community RedHat is a very strong brand name and may very well be the only Linux distro they know of. If AOL should impose some kind of content control mechanisms on the RedHat distribution this could have a serious impact on how Joe Sixpack views Linux as an OS.
No more playing DivX movies on RedHat! ;-)
The poll is still available here. It carries no warnings or disclaimers that the poll has been massively rigged by Microsoft.
Why?
Indeed: 'B', 'S'.