On 20 Aug 2004 09:18:36 -0000, "Jérôme" ATHIAS
<jerome.athias (at) caramail (dot) com [email concealed]> wrote:
>
> A new Google hack has come to my attention that brings back some information
> that is a bit troubling. [snip]
> When this query is put into the Google search, an idea of the brut strength of
> Google becomes apparent.
It's not a display of Google's "brut strength". Think of it as a
window onto humanities carelessness with information.
Google is not doing anything untoward. They just crawl web pages; if
people are silly enough to leave CC numbers around to be harvested,
it's an indictment of the page creator, not the search engine. Trust
in the results is destroyed once any form of censorship is invoked. We
can't and shouldn't expect a fix.
Interestingly enough, as soon as any "google hack" [1] becomes
discovered, the pertinent results rapidly become buried between
bazillions of blog entries talking about the "hack" itself. The
blog-stain spreads wider and wider until the useful data is thinned
out to nothing. Remember the "more evil than satan himself" gag?
Rgz,
Luke.
[1] I wouldn't call this a "hack", unless you subscribe to the
Jurassic Park style of "hacking" that involves madly hammering away on
a keyboard while a rotating cube or wire frame orb flying through a
corridor is rendered on your monitor.
<jerome.athias (at) caramail (dot) com [email concealed]> wrote:
>
> A new Google hack has come to my attention that brings back some information
> that is a bit troubling. [snip]
> When this query is put into the Google search, an idea of the brut strength of
> Google becomes apparent.
It's not a display of Google's "brut strength". Think of it as a
window onto humanities carelessness with information.
Google is not doing anything untoward. They just crawl web pages; if
people are silly enough to leave CC numbers around to be harvested,
it's an indictment of the page creator, not the search engine. Trust
in the results is destroyed once any form of censorship is invoked. We
can't and shouldn't expect a fix.
Interestingly enough, as soon as any "google hack" [1] becomes
discovered, the pertinent results rapidly become buried between
bazillions of blog entries talking about the "hack" itself. The
blog-stain spreads wider and wider until the useful data is thinned
out to nothing. Remember the "more evil than satan himself" gag?
Rgz,
Luke.
[1] I wouldn't call this a "hack", unless you subscribe to the
Jurassic Park style of "hacking" that involves madly hammering away on
a keyboard while a rotating cube or wire frame orb flying through a
corridor is rendered on your monitor.
--
Luke Burton.
Yes, questions. Morphology, longevity, incept dates.
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