10/6/04 - 10/24/04 Feeling Spectacular [...google thinks I'm the authority, everyone else knows better]: While the irony of this "hate site" being the No.1 listing (out of 500,000) on the keyword combination "spectacular feeling" is a pretty funny natural satire-- the sad truth that we are allowing imbecile algorithm's to define what's on [accessible on] the Internet is foolish, tragic, and very depressing. More depressing, is the apparent fact is it is not enough to just logically beat people sensible enough to see the obvious flaws in the system, you also have to drag them to likewise obvious solutions. In the last couple of years I've had the strangest arguments with people, where they will concede there is a problem, and yet they will be belligerently defiant in their hostility to any suggested changes. There seems to be a pervasive perception that proposed solutions are more dangerous than living with the inefficiency of inperfection, even when the imperfection achieves substantial dysfunction. This resistance to change, and to even simple experimentation, seems to lack any logical thought that would justify this extreme attachment to a broken status que. It is my tentative conclusion that people have become so corrupt as individuals that they assume all proposed ideas or remedies are proposed out of the same corrupt intentions that motivate them. Put in very simplistic terms people seem more willing to be screwed by what they perceive to be accidental random chaos, then by the deliberate action of some untrusted entity. In very general terms, ideas aren't judged on their merits, they are judged based on the source. In other words, if it is "our" idea it must be good, if it is "their" idea it must be bad. This superficial judgment combined with the naive notion that current brokenness isn't already by "their" deliberate design, creates a foolish willingness to accept rotting in stagnation. A recent discussion over at XODP kind of illustrates the point. [this compilation organizedby individual issues debated makes for easier reading IMHO] In brief summation I make the simple argument that the Internet lacks an investment in its basic infrastructure that would be comparable to public libraries. I pointed out that corporate search engines, like google, function very much like bookstores, especially emphasizing the incentive to placate the dominant demographic profile ( popular culture). I concluded by basically stating that the Internet deserves what we have not allowed our literary history to languish without "a public investment in organization and equal access". Reply argument, is first a tortured denial there is a problem, then after some measure of concession, an obstinate refusal to consider solutions. Clearly the objective is to escape acknowledging the need for change either by attempting to minimize the problem or by attempting to complicate solution. Why? the obvious answer is netesq's "personal vested interest" in maintaining the chaos he gets paid to guide people through--but I don't think this obvious answer is the complete answer. For Netesq no idea engineered outside the capitalist ethic can have any value, such ideas are a heresy and he will not afford them honest consideration. If I was a person vulnerable to "feeling spectacular" I might be able to celebrate having successfully beaten the Netesq into his most recent concessions. But the truth is the concession that there is a problem means nothing without the concession that solution is not impossible... and in fact may be painless and very simple. Unfortunately, I've beaten this dead horse too long and too hard to waste anymore time or clubs on its thick dead skull. In other "a good idea wasted on a bad Internet" News my rss Blogs update thing seems to be working pretty reliably. I suppose I'll start sending out some e-mail's this week to the listed technology Blogs and see if I can solicit some "blogosphere" interest and suport.. I've kind of given up hope for the "search industry update index" as there isn't anyone in the search industry who has much interest in acknowledging let alone supporting any idea of mine. There is kind of an irony in watching people who claim the search industry to have algorithms incapable of bias, facilitate, enforce, and insure ( through link exclusion) that very bias. Whether they like it or not I am part of the relevant universe on the subject of search engines and Internet navigation-- and they only help prove my argument that the search industry is too vulnerable to the bigotries of individual "authorities", their gangs, and the pop culture they minister to. Can be installed on any page by including this JavaScript where you want it to appear in your HTML.. <SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript" LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT" SRC="http://donotgo.com/techblog.js"></script> permanent link: Feeling Spectacular

9/22/04 - 10/05/04 "You Stupid Search Engine" [...this months most relevant SE referral]: I have typed a lot worse than "you're stupid" in a google search box.... I know the search algorithm can't decipher my insults, as insults, but sometimes you just need to throw a punch and you just don't give a damn if it lands anywhere. Now that the marketing industry has completed its consumption of the "search industry" there really is no hope for any traditional capitalist balances to save the Internet from languishing as a cheap plastic "toy version" of the new cyber-enhanced world dreamed of a decade ago. Capitalism only works if the industry goal is consistent with a social need. Unfortunately the search industry, which has the potential to provide human society with huge gains in efficiency, is now owned and operated by perhaps the most socially parasitic industry of them all... "marketing". Marketing doesn't just produced nothing of value, for the Social blood it sucks , it produces a thinking animals worst enemy, chaos and confusion. Just as we should be able to do a lot better than going to war on the pretext of lies, we really should be able to maintain the basic infrastructure of the internet without the "help" of an industry where lying (FOOLing people) is 90% of the revenue stream. I've used the analogy before... but there's really no chance IN HELL that anyone would see wisdom in letting bookstores and publishers take complete control over how library "card catalogs" were indexed.... yet, we have done worse to the Internet and I am the only one crying "stupid"! Although I am trying to wean myself off the shitternet, I did spend some time this week reworking my "blog feed indexing thing" this new approach eliminates the need for cooperation (pinging) and it should basically run itself without me having to actually index any feeds. It will probably stay very beta, untill there's some traffic to justify finishing touches. As always...May God fuck you all (if your stupid war doesn't do that for him.) Can be installed on any page by including this JavaScript where you want it to appear in your HTML.. <SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript" LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT" SRC="http://donotgo.com/tester.js"></script> permanent link:You Stupid Search Engine

9/15/04 - 9/21/04 Stupid Google Tricks [... turning plain old Spam into a Spam-Loaf...for $30 billon]: Along with the rest of the "search industry" (i.e...the Internet advertising networks, i.e.... the marketing portals) the Google Menace is doing the algorithm "trick" of local search. Sadly for humanity my pet turtles are likely performing a trick more relevant to searching the Internet when they blink their eyes. The only thing I've found useful about the "search industrys" version of "local"-- is that it provides a relatively expedient method of keeping the real beef ...out of your Spam. If you just want to see what kind of "irrelevant junk" has been "optimized" for a local keyword just do a "local" search. Including local yellow page listings in a Internet search engine database seems to me way too long in coming to be considered an innovation. I don't think anyone applauded in admiration when road mapmakers realized it might be a good idea to mark the location of airports and even gas stations-- not exactly Ph.D. science. ... but because the search industry has cute logos, and funny names, and is of course loved and admired by everyone, adding phone book references is just too brilliant an idea to be laughably obvious to the googlling yahoos running and riding the shysternet. In industry jargon, local search will remain an Internet joke until the industry forces (or permits) the algorithmick inclusion of reliable "meta data". Local relevance isn't necessarily obvious on many local websites because the providers of the content sensibly presume that only irrelevant visitors need to be told that their New Jersey store isn't in California. Even if locally relevant web sites, obeyed the optimizing rules of stacking their content with local keywords addresses phone numbers and zip codes-- the stupid software algorithms really can't tell the difference between real local content, and the Snake Oilers every-city-in-the-world, snake oil franchise. Contrary to what the marketing pimp parasites, and SEO sluts, would have you believe the brokenness of meta data is easily fixed, and in turn, it is easy to clean the Spam out of the top ten listings that is 90 percent of the Internet the average users will ever know even exists. The solution is to give the claims (meta data) of content providers "integrity" either by allowing them to guarantee it, with the backing of a substantial deposit, or by allowing them to buy a fair trial to prove their integrity and credentials. All search engines should simply allow content providers to pay a reasonable fee to challenge the stupid judgment of the crude algorithms. For example: This three year-old, very relevant local site that without rational dispute deserves to be listed in the top five on the keyword "Mendham" is listed ( a sub page) in the 80's at google. If we had a search industry, sincerely motivated to produce the most relevant search results possible there would exist a fair mechanism to correct for the algorithm's poor judgment. For a fee or deposit the search engines should be willing to take the two minutes required to ascertain the sites legitimacy and substantial relevance to the keyword Mendham and appropriately adjust for the algorithms' failure. A simple mechanism to check against the fraud of switching the content after review-- would be to mark search index listings that have been reviewed (by an actual person) and offer the using public a percentage of the deposit money to provide notice of a deceptive content shift. The only obstacle to this simple solution, is the fact that it is a solution, and the industry doesn't want a solution because it's really in the business of running in a marketing pyramid scheme that is quite dependent on generic search results not being good enough to reliably outclass paid advertising. Allowing the Internet to have this marketing racket as a controlling part of its basic infrastructure is about as sensible as having a federal lottery to pay for national health care. On the next printing of the federal currency they should replace the "In God We Trust" crap with "All Hail The Zero-Sum Dilution" and print the money with the 500 strings already attached. ...We The People...Suck! This sites top-10 relevance on the keyword "bookmarklets" is another undisputed fact the search engines have chosen to deny. Here is a little most-browser font and image resizer that kind of proves the point. Can be installed on any page by including this JavaScript where you want it to appear in your HTML.. <SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript" LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT" SRC="http://donotgo.com/font3.js"></script> permanent link:Stupid Google Tricks

9/11/04 - 9/14/04 The 800lb Weasel [... goes tiptoeing through the SE tulips.]: The "search industry" just keeps getting sleazier and sleazier... and apparently there isn't any 2004 balance, to check this devolution into 1984 Catch-22 insanity. Apparently everyone is a lying piece of shit who loves paying for inefficient "make work" industries [SEO/SEM] that add absolutely no value, and effectively taxes all progress.... I mean, how obvious does it have to get... When a guy who runs a site called "search Engine watch", who is the most quoted "industry watcher" in the media, can get away scot-free with writing Blogs FOR the corporations in the industry.... you have got to know that something stinks in more than just Denmark. What next?... Ralph Nader doing the GM Blogs? The foul taint of middleman-marketing-mush is fast becoming the "substance" of the Internet... and real content pages, with real links are being rapidly exterminated by the Googlinator and the rest of the "industry" like they were some kind of freeloading "parasite". It's no real surprise that the ROI cynical greedy corporations are able to fool the "ignorant lowest common denominator" responsible for defining what's on television, etc.. What has certainly surprised me, is the soulless, greedy, and dishonest nature of those in the GeekDumb intellectual minority. How can smart people be so fucking Dumb? I know, they know there's no God to punish them.... but they should also know that we are designing the future--maybe even eternity--and the human quality, of our essentiall equality, makes it only logical for us to do the best we can, for the future "us" we will be. "Marketing" and "Promotion" are social artifacts, of a crude "unconnected" past, that no longer have any potential to serve any useful function. There simply is no rational justification for clinging to this "dark age" blueprint of the rules of commerce in the "instantaneous worldwide access" 21st century. Just as we haven't left medicine to languish frozen by the superstitions of the witch doctor-- we just can't let information technology be regressed into irrelevancy by the ethics of the Snake Oilers.... It's just too fucking stupid! New Tech Blog Feed permanent link:The 800lb Weasel

8/27/04 - 9/10/04 SE BlogS Feed [... A good up date that goes down after it pops up]: So far my life adage is holding true and "invention is the mother of failure". OK... I will concede that some of my ideas-- the diesel lawn chair -- weren't very good.... but this updated-Blogs-feed-thing seems too simple and good an idea just to rot here in "you're not one of us" obscurity. Especially when you consider that there's a lot of talk that RSS is going to crash from an excess of bandwidth use. The small 4K .js file that provides the "syndication" list of updated blogs in --last updated order-- can be easily pushed to other servers if bandwidth ever becomes a problem. It's rather simple old style interface of a drop-down-menu should be compatible with most browsers and its low profile shouldn't interfere with web page design. The real upside is, this thing doesn't need to cost anything, and therefore doesn't need to be monetized or worse access through proprietary software. The downside is....is.....is.... it's got my stink on it. I have sent out a half-dozen or so e-mail's to some of the members of the "search/marketing industry Blog community" I have gotten a couple of "yes I will ping" replies... but the yes seems, so far, unreliable. Obviously, mutual hate will probably be an obstacle to cooperation. In 1997 the Internet became the "comcomnet" [Commerce and Community] and it started to become clear that you had to be a member of a gang to have any reality in cyberspace. I have tried to ignore the trend and remain true to my nature, wild, undomesticated, and unaffiliated. (the truth is, in over a decade of Internetting I've only met two people who were not crazy, stupid, soleless, greedy fuckers...IMHO). On the Internet we have permitted, there are the "us-es" who are ranked in the top-10 with the search engines, and the Merlocks... I mean "thems", who only have the pretense of existence on the Internet. To get anywhere on the Internet as a "content provider" you've either got to make a few good friends among the Us-ers or you have to make a lot of friends among the Thems. Either way, by Internet rules, you're not allowed to be universally hateable or completely independent. Anyway, the point is... I probably need to find a more suitable community to test my innovation on... I am thinking I will take a step back and try creating a update feed for the more general " technology Blog community". The Dumboz category lists about 250 sites... maybe 25 percent of these are updated often enough to be worth inclusion, subtracting the profoundly uninteresting from that number should leave me with 30 or so sites worth listing in the update feed.....maybe this will be more wasted time .... but I haven't done anything on the internet in the last 10 years that wasn't...so.... permanent link:SE BlogS Feed

8/23/04 - 8/27/04 RSS & XML [... feeeeeeed me something else]: I have been doing some looking into the subject of "syndication" feeds. You see those stupid icons everywhere yet there isn't a whole lot of evidence on the Web that all this syndication is doing anything. It's like everybody's selling, but no one is buying with any web real-estate. My first impression, was to wonder, why do we need a separate new protocol to do this? Like the folks at this website, www.creativyst.com -- I think there is a better way. The idea of having quick, low bandwidth access, to website "last updated" information makes a lot of sense-- the notion that you should be required to use proprietary software the view that information, doesn't. Looking at the RSS feeds from some sites, I was amazed to see that they are not exactly the Really Simple summations they are supposed to be. Instead of indexing RSS feeds, search engines should "index" content changes on pages they spider regularly (like some Blogs) and let you "search" (by keyword or update time) just the updated content. In really simple summation-- web content I can't easily access with a web browser isn't anything I have any interest in. I do like the idea of avoiding visiting a website that hasn't been updated since my last visit... but the available methods seem unnecessarily complicated. My half-baked solution is this Blog update board. Using the newly installed PostBlogUpDate (off the MORE menu under still cooking) bookmarklet function on my powercons toolbox, a sample newest-story-quote can be pretty close to just "copied" from the blog and "pasted" to the top of the update board (also deleting the previous post from that site). In theory, it seems a workable idea if I get just a little cooperation from site owners and other conscientious users who don't mind doing a 10 or 15 second update now and then when they notice a new blog post. Its "beta" and I will likely need to beef up spamcurity... but if I wasn't the one doing all the updating I think I would really like it. In other powercons news I have added a couple of "select text and go" quick links to various page rank, text analysis, and SE comparison on-line tools. For those afraid of the simple installation-- there is an online version of Powercons you can load from a link or bookmark (the first use after a tool box update will cause some delay in the toolbox loading). permanent link:RSS & XML ...donotgo Blog

8/15/04 - 8/22/04 What a Tattered Web We Weave [..when search engines are driven by the need for greed]: Reading the Playboy interview with the google jerks it seems apparent that Bill Gates is going to have stiff competition in the most out-of-touch, greedy-bastard-internet-billionaire contest. In the interview the two jerks talk like google was the only search engine and that they invented the concept. They even resort to the very lame-- Google Saves Lives --mush in defending the wonderful "Compassionate Capitalism" they have so generously bestowed upon us. As most internet veterans know (if or when they're being honest) the now more expensive than General Motors, Google Corp won round whatever in the search engine wars pretty much by default. In the late 90's the brand names (aol, msn, yahoo, lycos etc.) were busy becoming cluttered, slow, incredibly irritating "I must sell you something portals" or as in the case of infoseek- were busy being destroyed by takeover companies like Disney who didn't know Mickey shit about the Internet. The google jerks talk like they really believe it was some kind of billion dollar, Nobel Prize-winning innovation to realize that internet consumers didn't like to wait 15 or 20 seconds to be served up pop-up ads and flashing banners just to do an internet search. In the interview the jerks basically concede, without exactly saying it, that PageRank is just a google manifestation of the obvious tendency of everything to reflect "popular culture". The idea that "Links are like referrals" isn't exactly a brilliant observation.... what has been kind of brilliant has been their ability to run a search engine like a Top 40 radio station and get everyone to applaud. (with their IPO cash maybe the google guys will do us all a favor and open up some top 40 libraries and save us from those public monstrosities that make all that extra nuisance unpopular literature available.) ....If you're spending time, trouble and money promoting your results (Carl Page speak for: to get your website fairly indexed) why not just buy advertising? We sell it, and it's effective. Use that instead. Advertising is more predictable and probably more effective. Or instead, maybe everybody should get a publicly subsidized university to supply seed resources and money for them to start up their own little capitalist empire by sandbaging the bloated established industry, by doing the obvious, and by initially pretending to be a nonprofit and more efficient alternative. Unfortunately in the interview we are not offered any insight into how exactly the google jerks turned a University Academic Project in to a private little gold mine. Maybe somebody will do us a favor and wright a "screw the world out of billions and fuck human progress in the ass, on university grant money, For Dummies book. Also absent from the interview is any insight into what google expects to do with a couple of billion in IPO cash. Maybe they can now afford to upgrade from the Grateful Dead chef to maybe the Rolling Stones chef or maybe even the Elvis chef.... I have heard rumors that Brittany Spears personal douche-ier can be had for the right price. --As always I hate you all... especially the smart bastards who should know better. related links: Google is begging for an upgrade permanent link:What a Tattered Web We Weave

7/17/04 - 8/14/04 Internet Search Does Suck [...Your search - did not match any documents ]: It seems impossible that this phrase could yield no results among the billions of web pages. You would think somewhere on the Internet there would be discussion that might provoke the response: "yes, Internet search does suck, but..." Apparently everyone is satisfied that Internet search is as good as it can be, or needs to be. It is a little frightening to realize that there are more serial killers roaming our streets, than there are Internet users actively complaining about the corruption that has been allowed to define the science of Internet Indexing. When you find yourself possessed by extremely unpopular beliefs it's hard to avoid the question... am my being brilliant or am I being a jerk? In some ways the question is not too hard to answer, I mean, in a world where George Bush can get elected president-- you know that there are a lot of jerks defining what is popular opinion... But the relative safety of disagreeing with the ignorant, arrogant moron majority doesn't provide an exemption if you get too extreme in your unpopularity. I mean most people do know that serial killers suck, so there are sometimes you must buck the logical trend and accept being a member of the now-and-then rational majority. Back to the subject at hand. So why aren't Internet users complaining? A substantial part of the answer is because most internet users are too stupid to know better. A lot of them are still using yahoo to find yahoo... if you look at what they're searching for it also becomes apparent that most Internet users are not knowledge holders, or knowledge seekers. Like cavemen watching the same painted Rock every night they just don't have the intelligence or imagination to say "you would think we could do better than this" (like maybe at least a couple of channels in black-and-white). It is likely that 9 out of 10 Internet users don't know what page rank (link rank) is, and don't know it is what is defining what's on the available Internet. 10% of hundreds of millions is still a lot of people so why are all these people who know about page rank so unconcerned? Just as it is a lot easier to talk lies about WMD than it is to prove WMD-- page rank is only a couple of four-letter words and most of the people that know the words have just accepted the "cheap talk" definition that it has a meaning synonymous with "democracy". In America with its two party democracy where the popular vote doesn't mean anything, I suppose the definition isn't completely crazy. In a more intelligent context, were words are not defined by wishful thinking, indexing the Internet based on a link popularity democracy (pagerank) is conceptually stupid... Add in the perfectly legal voter fraud and it's pretty close to insane. The problems with page rank: Makes the relatively easy to find, easier to find, and does absolutely nothing for everything else. If a website has a lot of links to it, it becomes an "authority" and in turn gets extra votes defining who else gets to be an authority. Converting the Internet into just an "insider's game" that embraces who-you-know over what-you-know. An "authority" in one subject automatically becomes an authority on all subjects.(really stupid) Has turned links into a traded commodity and that is eroding the credibility of the interconnections that define the core functionality of the Internet. Votes are about as easy to counterfeit as a plain white piece of paper. In other words if you have a willingness to cheat, finding a way won't be a problem. But there is still that 10% of the 10% of the 10% who do understand the Science (or lack thereof)... if ignorance isn't in the way... how come they're not talking? I suppose... being smart enough to know better doesn't necessarily make people smart enough to know better... especially if there is a financial incentive not to be too smart. It seems the past connection between science & intelligence, and the idealism of perfect understanding and finding the perfect solution, has been replaced by a singular passion to monetize perfectly. The goal is no longer defeating a problem in everyone's interest... the scientific goal is now to embrace any solution (no matter how imperfect) as long as it can be well monetized to your self-interest. The sad truth is, if the concept of a Library wasn't already invented, it couldn't be invented in the world we have created. There's no money to be made on it, therefore there's no value in it-- that is the mantra of mankind in the 21st century. "Smart people" really should be able to see that this kind of thinking is an embarrassment to our intelligence. permanent link: Internet Search Does Suck