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... of diminished, or complete, loss of privacy by end-users when interacting with the Internet, especialy any Server-side interaction and storage.
This be true whether you are storing your bookmarks, contact lists, photos, resumes ... whatever. Any time you are afforded the supposed "convenience" of being able to access "on-line" your frequently used day-to-day essentials, then you are placing yourself at extreme risk.
The Google Tool-bar, their Desktop, Yahoo!'s similar and myriad features, as well as those natively, and routinely, provided by the likes of MSN, and others, all place the End-user at some risk in loss of privacy and threats to their system's security.
For those truly interested in Index, and Hard-drive "Search and Retrieval", especially when combined with Web-search capabilities, I can offer to anyone here who e-Mails me and requests it, the original (and still by far and away, the best) AltaVista Desktop Indexer and Search Tool-bar. This application uses the DEC heuralistic "boolean"-driven logic which made AltaVista's Search-engine World famous. Sadly, with the breakup of DEC, and Compaq's own ultimate demise (they purchased DEC's AltaVista assets), CMGI, their successors, decided to down play AltaVista's capabilities, and chose instead to sell placements rather than index them, thus ushering in today's trend by all search-engines of no-longer truly being representative of what's really out there, as opposed to there being only what they want you to find. The AltaVista Desktop Tool-bar Indexer (I have the last known revision made by DEC archived) affords the End-user capabilities as originally envisioned by DEC to fully search, Index and retrieve just about anything that exists, either on your hard-drive, or the web itself; but, I caution here, it is not for the faint at heart, because if you request it to actually search the web for you, especially for some esoteric set of paramters, it may very well return hits in the millions, and you'll need at least 100 Gigsabytes, if not more, "free" disk-space just ro store the retrieved data; but unlike Yahoo's, or Google's, or MSN's, or Excite's, or Lycos' ... or whomever's search-engine, if it actually does exist out there somewhere, it will find it; this regardless of whether they want you to be able to or not.
As a corrollary to all this, it should be noted that whilst AltaVista, both the web-site and Search-0engine do remain a fixture on the web, the engine driving it has been licensed to Yahoo!, which now compiles the requests from both the original AltaVista web-site, as well as that of Yahoo!'s own web-site, and several others as well.
The complete download (compiled as one file) of the AltaVista Tool-bar is 12 Mb; but, it can be broken down into more manageable 3 or 4 Mb chunks if required. This application was distributed originally as "Freeware" ,and through discussions I've had with CMGI, who retain copyright, I have confirmed that it remains so; although they themselves no longer distribute it, nor will they be updating the Personal Edition beyond what DEC had originally packaged. The Corporate Edition continues to be licensed, and regualrly updated.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
"... comme recherché qu'un délice callipygian"
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Warren,
>I caution here, [Altavista's search toolbar] is not for the faint at heart, because if you request it to actually search the web for you, especially for some esoteric set of paramters, it may very well return hits in the millions, and you'll need at least 100 Gigsabytes, if not more, "free" disk-space just ro store the retrieved data; but unlike Yahoo's, or Google's, or MSN's, or Excite's, or Lycos' ... or whomever's search-engine, if it actually does exist out there somewhere, it will find it; this regardless of whether they want you to be able to or not.
Historically, that always was the problem with Altavista. Sure, they had a huge index; but the algorithms they used to search it would always produce far too many results, many entirely irrelevant. There is no point in getting millions of results if you have to sift through thousands to find what you want. Google, on the other hand, has not only a very large index, but the most sophisticated search algorithms in the web search industry today. There is a reason that Google is so much more popular than Altavista.
Also,
>unlike Yahoo's, or Google's, or MSN's, or Excite's, or Lycos' ... or whomever's search-engine, if it actually does exist out there somewhere, it will find it; this regardless of whether they want you to be able to or not.
I know what you mean, but technically you are wrong. I know that Google has been in the news lately for censoring web sites, but in fact they have always been receptive to indexing and archiving rules on web sites via "robots.txt", as has every other major search engine, including Altavista. Documents that a search engine can find that no-one intended it to know about have always been miscategorised due to ignorance or incompetence.
>As a corrollary to all this, it should be noted that whilst AltaVista, both the web-site and Search-0engine do remain a fixture on the web, the engine driving it has been licensed to Yahoo!, which now compiles the requests from both the original AltaVista web-site, as well as that of Yahoo!'s own web-site, and several others as well.
That is also wrong. Yahoo used to use Altavista for its page search results (though not its directory, which used to be the foremost on the web) but no longer does. In 2003 it bought the search engine company Inktomi and, as far as I know, its index is now developed in-house.
Getting back to your original point, of course it is not always a good idea to release personal details over the Internet. However, I would not go so far as to say it was an "extreme" risk. Nor would I put "convenience" in inverted commas (cue someone pointing out that I did; but that is because I am quoting): it undoubtedly is convenient to store things on-line, otherwise people wouldn't do it. Provided that one is sensible, only releases confidential details to companies that one trusts, and does not make available information that one is not happy to become public knowledge (of course, whether you can trust companies like Google and Altavista is worthy of an essay in itself), there is no greater risk than interacting with the "real world". The risk comes from a false sense of security from the apparent anonymity of the Internet; once one realises that everything one does leaves a trail of information about oneself, one appreciates that one is just as accountable online (in both a legal and moral sense) as one is in real life.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Well ok. But Alta Vista is dead. It is not used. Very few people have even heard of it nowadays. It has just failed to lie down.
The point is about Google. Beware the desktop.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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>Historically, that always was the problem with Altavista. Sure, they had a huge index; but the algorithms they used to search it would always produce far too many results, many entirely irrelevant. There is no point in getting millions of results if you have to sift through thousands to find what you want. Google, on the other hand, has not only a very large index, but the most sophisticated search algorithms in the web search industry today. There is a reason that Google is so much more popular than Altavista.
No, the major, and significant, problem with AltVista's Search-engine, as originally implemented by DEC, was not it's many mis-identified results, but rather the end-user's inability to grasp the underlying logic, and the neciessary terminoligy to implement it. Proper use of parameters ALWAYS returned just what the end-user asked for; whereas, using any of the todays popular Portal Search-engines, returns only web-sites in the first couple of hundred or so that have been paid for, and if you're lucky maybe a few that you actually wanted; thsat on the other hand, plays to today's techology; with often-times legacy information being suppressed at the sake of expediency rather than through any nefarious intent on the part of the original content provider. If you really, really, do want to find something on the Internet (whether through convention web-page content, or through FTP-access, one should still use "Archie" or "Gopher" applets, and manually retrieve the imformation without using any of the Portal Search-engines at all.
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>>unlike Yahoo's, or Google's, or MSN's, or Excite's, or Lycos' ... or whomever's search-engine, if it actually does exist out there somewhere, it will find it; this regardless of whether they want you to be able to or not.
>I know what you mean, but technically you are wrong. I know that Google has been in the news lately for censoring web sites, but in fact they have always been receptive to indexing and archiving rules on web sites via "robots.txt", as has every other major search engine, including Altavista. Documents that a search engine can find that no-one intended it to know about have always been miscategorised due to ignorance or incompetence.
Every Search application (even those developed by the McHill University at Nontreal, which remain the basis for all search technolgy used throughout the Internet) have recognized and obeyed "rotots.txt". That is, and probably remains, the only must-obey instruction written into their code. This device was implemented to protect propietary information, and technology, routinely shared in it's earliest days under the auspices of ARPANet; what I refer to here, would be information that remains on Servers, and no-longer linked through conventional means to web-content, being thought to be out-of-date, or otherwise unsuitable for continued distribution. Legacy software, device-drivers, spec sheets, and whatnot all fall within this area, with many web-sites, DELL's being a prime-example here, often featuring access to content that only falls within their current warranty period, where if what you are looking for falls outside of that, or is considerec to be "End-of-lkife", conventional search-techology, especially internal web-site Search-engines, will no longer return hits covering that content. If,a nd only if, you are extremely lucky will Google, or other Search-engine, maybe, return a hit to the relevant content. No "robots.txt" has been imposed, it's simply that the content-developer, when providing a list of pages to be indexed, omits pages considered to be no-longer valid, or relevant, or desireable for viewing.
My own personal feeling is that once "Publicly" posted, content should never, ever, be removed (or segregated); IBM, is a very good example of this policy, with them routinely providing updated source files for hardware (and software) that hasn't been manufactured in nearly a quarter-century or more, with them feeling if it had their NAME on it they will support it. Period.
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>>As a corrollary to all this, it should be noted that whilst AltaVista, both the web-site and Search-engine do remain a fixture on the web, the engine driving it has been licensed to Yahoo!, which now compiles the requests from both the original AltaVista web-site, as well as that of Yahoo!'s own web-site, and several others as well.
>That is also wrong. Yahoo used to use Altavista for its page search results (though not its directory, which used to be the foremost on the web) but no longer does. In 2003 it bought the search engine company Inktomi and, as far as I know, its index is now developed in-house.
THE COMMENT SHOULD HAVE READ:
" ... engine driving it has been licensed from Yahoo!, which now compiles ... "
Yahoo! has flirted with any number of Search Techologies over the years, with Inktomi's only being the last in a very long line indeed. At present, I'm not even sure if they are still using it, although I can think of any number of major content providers that do.
Google's techology is designed, and intended, to service their Advertiser Base with the largest number of page returns, and and consequently, views. That is all; there being nothing beyond that (no other agenda) that serves the End-users need to access content. Google is in the business of delivering up qualified "triers" and "buyers". That is all they are currently interested in, and have ever been interested in doing. All Portal Search-engines do very much the same thing, with exactly the same purpose. Long gone is the percieved notion that the Internet is intended for the free-excahnage of information and services. That concept died right along with the original AltaVista Search-engine, and with the demise of DEC. The web hasn't been the same since, nor is it ever again likely to be. Increasingly users are gong to encounter the need to pay for access, and ultimately it will all be on a pay-per-use basis, regardless of the content; fortunately I'm not likely to still be breathing when that eventuality occurs; but it will happen within my own end-of-life cycle, and long before many of our youngest Members here have reached early middle age; or at least it will unless everyone balks at paying for anything on the web, and abandon the technology in doves until it agains becomes entirely free of all cost to use; but again I simply do not see that happening either, as users, especially the youngest, don't seem to care; but then again, they don't seem to be conscerned about privacy either; if they had been, the likes of Google and their Desktop, and others would never, ever, have made the grade in the first place.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
"... comme recherché qu'un délice callipygian"
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I agree ... but then again Integrated Search (and the attendant loss of privacy, is an integral part of Google's Desktop application.
Regardless of whether the End-user is using Google's Desktop, Google's Search-engine directly from their web-portal, whether the End-uder is using Yahoo!'s Toolbar, or MSN's or whatever, using any of these lays the Enduser, nd their system wide-open to a myriad number of threats to their privacy, and their system's security and integrity. That has long been known, and discussed in tech formums worldwide since theiry were first introduced. It will always be noteworthy, and worthy of dicussion, to bring these issues to new, and novice, user's attention.
Google, is only the most recent vendor being burned over the coals about this, nor are they likely to ever be the last.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
"... comme recherché qu'un délice callipygian"
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>[With Altavista, ] Proper use of parameters ALWAYS returned just what the end-user asked for; whereas, using any of the todays popular Portal Search-engines, returns only web-sites in the first couple of hundred or so that have been paid for, and if you're lucky maybe a few that you actually wanted;
>If you really, really, do want to find something on the Internet (whether through convention web-page content, or through FTP-access, one should still use "Archie" or "Gopher" applets, and manually retrieve the imformation without using any of the Portal Search-engines at all.
I'm afraid I'm not convinced. Firstly, the market leader, Google, doesn't accept paid-for results as part of its main index. Others have, and they have lost visitors in droves. Yes, if you want to treat a search engine's index as simply a database of pages, then you can craft a complicated Boolean query that looks for pages with one thing but not another; and maybe other search engines are superior at this. But, frankly, that's not what people are looking for in a search engine. Often people simply don't know enough about the subject they are interested in to know what to put in. Google's strength is that it is not a technical search engine; it "knows" (through its pagerank algorithm) which pages are more likely to be useful and gives them priority. But even if you are a technical user, Google can also do advanced Boolean search matching, with ANDs and ORs and NOTs and wild cards and file types and so on. And it works very well.
Google is also under constant development. I fail to believe that if there was superior search technology available that it would not have been possible for their army of computer scientists to duplicate it.
It's a bit silly to suggest using Gopher or Archie. Archie is old software and simply isn't up to the task of indexing the millions of sites that now exist (even if they did use FTP, which they don't, mostly); and gopher is an obsolete protocol no longer supported by the vast majority of web servers. This makes them irrelevant to modern-day searching. Maybe you are referring just to small-scale searching (within a single network or computer); but in that case there are plenty of more modern alternatives.
I agree with you, however, that the Internet is moving away from the technological playground it once was and is moving towards almost complete commercialisation. I don't, however, think it is necessarily a bad thing. There are some things that individuals and non-profit organisations cannot achieve in a reasonable time-frame. I think it is good that Larry Page and Sergey Brin have made a lot of money out of Google, as they have gone a long way to making the Internet accessible for millions of people. It's also good that most of the businesses that one finds on the high street now have a web presence, as one can find out about their products from the comfort of one's own home. I don't think they will necessarily push out community services like this one. There will always be people like Timmy and Megaman, who are prepared to donate their time and money to a cause in which they believe.
David
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