A few of these Top 10 Reasons to Not Shop Online ring true. However, I’ve bought a lot of stuff online with happy results. The price is often right, it is generally much faster, and when I’m going to buy something besides clothes and food at a bricks and mortar place I find I still do most of the research online.
Via Ken MacLeod.
The folks at Web’s Biggest say that they are “The World’s Biggest Directory Search Engine.” Last week Internetweek reported that:
A Web search engine that uses the “whois” database said Friday that it searches more Web sites than any other search engine, including Google, which crawls the Web in a different manner for its search results. ….Always on the outlook for better information sources I headed right over and entered a search that has pointed a few visitors to Modulator: live strong bands. The results were 3 references that appeared to be paid adds and they were preceded by this message:
“Other search engines missed from a third to more than half of the Web sites [included] in the Web’s Biggest search results,” the firm stated.
Important: We suggest you make your search LESS specific. Please remember you are not searching the contents of web pages like you do at Google or Yahoo. You are searching one paragraph website descriptions. Furthermore, you will only find websites that contain EACH of your keywords in their description. Web’s Biggest is designed to find websites devoted to what you are looking for, not web pages that happen to contain those words.On the other hand a search for Lance Armstrong generated quite a few results.
Not everyone rebels. It is just the vast majority of people who find learning painful.
Marvin Minsky, Closer to Truth # 210: How Does Technology Transform Society?
a new cross-media genre presenting to broad public audiences “Knowledge Affairs” in which the fundamental questions of our times are explored by creative and thoughtful scientists, scholars and artists.
If you have a broadband connection watch Closer to Truth programs online. If not find them periodically on the Research Channel on your local cabel/satellite system.
1Show 210: How Does Technology Transform Society?
It does not look like Microsoft is taking security as seriously as their cash flow:
Microsoft this week reiterated that it would keep the new version of Microsoft’s IE Web browser available only as part of the recently released Windows XP operating system, Service Pack 2. The upgrade to XP from any previous Windows versions is $99 when ordered from Microsoft. Starting from scratch, the operating system costs $199.This is, though, just the tip of the iceberg. Many of these older systems, 49.2% of the Microsoft OS base, run on machines that can not support XP in a usable form. My family has 3 of these as well as a couple newer machines that have the memory and processor speed to support XP.
That, analysts say, is a steep price to pay to secure a browser that swept the market as a free, standalone product.
“It’s a problem that people should have to pay for a whole OS upgrade to get a safe browser,” said Michael Cherry, analyst with Directions on Microsoft in Redmond, Wash. “It does look like a certain amount of this is to encourage upgrade to XP.”
Big entertainment has captured Oren Hatch (see Induce) and at least 46 state attorneys general also appear to see themselves as responsible to big industry and not the citizens of their respective states.
The Washington Post and C/Net are reporting that the SGs are
are set to warn major peer-to-peer file-sharing networks that they may face enforcement actions if they do not take steps to stem illegal activity on the networks, such as the trading of child pornography and stolen movies and music.But, really, does this reflect consumer or industry concerns:
“We are writing to encourage your companies to take concrete and meaningful steps to address the serious risks posed to the consumers of our states by your companies’ peer-to-peer file-sharing technology,” the letter said. “At present, P2P software has too many times been hijacked by those who use it for illegal purposes to which the vast majority of our consumers do not wish to be exposed.”Uhhh, with the possible exception of ad/spyware that may come bundled with some P2P applications I don’t think anyone is exposed to anything they do not choose .