Interesting Links for 28-01-2012

[andrewducker]

• UK sight-loss charity sues airline for failing to fix their non-compliant website
  (tags: sight web blindness )
• Why Google is moving from showing links to providing answers
  (tags: google web search )
• Tom Watson reacts sensibly and graciously to having his intern play with his Twitter account when he was away.
  (tags: uk TomWatson twitter )

Comments

[ajr]

Why Google is moving from showing links to providing answers

I've been getting increasingly fucked off by Google 'autocorrecting' searches and showing you results for what they *think* you meant to search for rather than what you actually searched for. It's bad enough when they say "Showing you results for X, did you mean Y?" so you have an extra link to click to get to the right results. But yesterday, I was trying to remember which TV show had a joke about someone who thought "poloponies" was a word, because they'd misread "polo ponies". So I Googled it. And got results for "polo ponies". With nothing to click on to say "Oi! Google! NO! I typed it as one sodding word because I wanted to search for it as one sodding word, you useless c- [NO CARRIER]

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I get the same thing, I had to put quotes around it to get the exact word.

However, 99% of the time I get corrected it's because I've spelled something wrong, or Google has spotted a synonym that's what I want.

So if I search for "GAE Java OpenID" then the top hits all have "Google App Engine" in them, rather than "GAE" which is what I actually wanted.

[skington]

Also, Google is sodding useless for searching anything which has punctuation characters in it. Which, if you're a Perl programmer, is a medium-sized deal.

[andrewducker]

It works for things with full stops in it - string.isnullorempty happily finds the right manual page on the MS site for instance.

What kinds of punctuation are you using?

[gonzo21]

These makerbot things have the potential to radically change all sorts of stuff. Very exciting technology.

[anton_p_nym]

Having worked in the miniatures business (not for GW, though I've played their stuff off-and-on for nigh-on twenty years now) I shuddered upon reading the 3D plotter article.

The games industry shifted massively when computers became powerful and affordable enough to run games of comparable quality, and there was a huge contraction in the miniatures end of it. GW survived because of their concentration on quality of manufacture, emphasis on community, and their pricing high enough to keep generating revenue... I too grumbled about their prices until I realised that everyone pricing less than them was up against bankruptcy every quarter.

GW's always faced piracy, though they've won out because it's hard to duplicate their models well in any kind of volume. If fabs do become routine, though, then I think GW's sunk unless it transforms completely.

-- Steve misses working in the miniatures industry, but doesn't miss the late (or short) paycheques.

[undeadbydawn]

the point of the Lords is to have peers appointed because they know an awful lot about certain things [I believe the word is 'expert'] and are NOT career politicians.

I do agree with getting rid of some - if not all - hereditary peers, but rather a lot of the Life Peers are there specifically because they have vast amounts of real world experience that Commons politico's don't. In areas such as science and engineering.

having those people in place who don't have to worry about getting re-elected is in many ways a good thing.

[andrewducker]

the point of the Lords is to have peers appointed because they know an awful lot about certain things [I believe the word is 'expert'] and are NOT career politicians.

In your opinion, possibly. But that's not how they were set up, or how large chunks of them are run at the moment.

And I don't want them re-elected. I want 20 year terms, with no possibility of re-election.

[undeadbydawn]

I know Tom Watson is not the only sensible MP in the UK, but I often think he is.
well done, that man.

[I am also very fond of Caroline Lucas]