(OT) Looking for a better Search Engine than Google

Yep, it must be my ISP. But I went to a WIFI spot last night. That page loaded right away.

Then I went to

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(also known as "Wayback Machine"). I found hundreds of copies of the original site, which has all the original data archived, including all the help files, tricks, and so on. I intend to copy each and every page when I have more time. However, there are no download files available.

But I did also find a lot of forums related to visualizations. I guess I'll have to get on a few of them. I'm sure someone will have the actual programs. It was a very popular program back then.... I still wonder why it vanished. I suppose it could be financial, or a death, or they just lost interest in it. I also found a foreign rock band with the same name. Maybe there was a lawsuit.... Who knows.... But yea, the original site has been gone since 2007 or 08. I'm just glad that I save all my older downloads. I have version 1.0 and 15 addon packs for it. I have tons of software going back to around 1990. Most is shareware or freeware, but there is a fair amount of older commercial stuff too. I even have Windows 1.0. I know everyone wants that, and I'll share it with anyone willing to pay me $1000, or buy me a beer (or both). :)

Reply to
Paintedcow
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Obviously you didn't try what you just suggested. I just typed "Bill Cosby" into google. First few hits, grouped together are news stories about his current legal troubles. Next is Bill Cosby's official website. Next is Cosby on Wikipedia. Next his twitter link, then a whole bunch more news stories. Nothing for sale really on the whole page.

Reply to
trader_4

I think the search engines generally are tending to streamline and aim at providing retail results, by which I mean things you can buy rather than things you can know:

"Bill Cosby" .... Did you mean "buy Chrysler" ? Here are sites where you might be able to buy "Bill Cosby"....

Microsoft's Bing was even stated to be designed for that purpose. Google, with it's emphasis on incoming links, has single-handedly changed the Internet by virtually eliminating small, non-commercial websites. There's been talk about switching to a relevance-based scoring, but as far as I know it's still just talk. Google is now primarily an advertising company and acts accordingly. If they switch back to just providing good information then they're not leading you to their advertisers, and those advertisers represent virtually all of Google's income.

Most other search engines are either wrappers around Google or multi-search sites that return results from several search engines.

Yahoo? At one time they had human-reviewed results. I'm not sure now. I suspect they may just be a wrapper for Bing or Google. I saw Marissa Mayer on Charlie Rose recently. If that's the vision guiding Yahoo then I wouldn't expect anything good to come out of the company.

I use DuckDuckGo most of the time. Google has just become too creepy for my taste. But I occasionally use them if I can't find what I want on DDG. I also use them for their cached pages. For example, Microsoft tries to force enabling script by blocking some of their pages, such as support pages. The whole page just turns up blank for me, with a request to enable script. I've no intention of enabling script at microsoft.com, especially given that there's simply no need for it. Their support pages are simply plain text info. Searching for the URL at Google, then going to the cached version, gives me the webpage.

If you don't care about privacy then Google is probably the best, at least in my experience. If you do care about privacy, Google's advantage is rarely relevant and their tracking is extensive. I'm actually tempted to block the google.com domains entirely in my HOSTS file. I already block all of the following Google properties, using Acrylic DNS which lets me use wildcards:

127.0.0.1 *.googlesyndication.com 127.0.0.1 *.googleadservices.com 127.0.0.1 *.googlecommerce.com 127.0.0.1 *.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 *.doubleclick.com 127.0.0.1 *.googletagservices.com 127.0.0.1 *.googletagmanager.com 127.0.0.1 *.google-analytics.com 127.0.0.1 fonts.googleapis.com 127.0.0.1 googleadapis.l.google.com 127.0.0.1 ssl.gstatic.com 127.0.0.1 plusone.google.com 127.0.0.1 cse.google.com

Google's analytics are used on the majority of commercial sites. Most webmasters don't know how to read their own server logs. Google offers visitor stats by just adding a bit of javascript aimed at google-analytics.com. So Google tracks you at most sites. Add to that Doubleclick ads, Google fonts, and Google's jquery library, and there are very few sites where Google doesn't get a chance to see every page you load as a result of their domain being linked from the page. At their own site they even send links through a proxy if they can't use script/cookies to track you. When I click a link it looks like this:

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Google is sending my click through their own server first, with unique IDs attached. The real link is only this:

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Reply to
Mayayana

I don't think it would do much good to block google domains because of their tracking capabilities because these days they can track via other types of methods within the Google Display Network.

Reply to
Muggles

Plus they track you with those damn camera cars.

My sister, my brother-in-law and my cat can all be found on Google Street View. 3 different states. My family is getting paranoid.

And then there's this:

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Reply to
DerbyDad03

So, how do you block the frames?

I have a large HOSTS file that block Double Click and lots of other stuff. For Facebook alone, I have around 40 entries. I think FB is as dangerous of not more than Google. I keep scripts disabled as much as possible. It's not just for privacy, but also because I am on dialup. Disabling all that crap makes webpages load a lot faster.

There is an old browser called "Off By One". It will load a page 10X faster, because it only loads basic HTML and pictures, and little more. Many sites dont render properly, but if all I want is some text info, I can usually just read the text and see pictures, and skip the crap. It dont work on some websites, but it's always worth a try.

I'd like to find a way to block those .CSS files too, and even more so, those damn pop-overs. The old popup blockers dont work on them.

Reply to
Paintedcow

Google is EVIL.....has anyone actually read the T&C for google maps and all the access it wants. NO THANKS startpage.com

Reply to
ChairMan

| So, how do you block the frames? |

In Mozilla browsers, enter about:config in the address bar, press Enter, then find the following and set it to false:

browser.frames.enabled

I thought IE had an option for frames, but I don't see it now. Though it does have a couple of options to limit functionality in frames.

With IE being nearly impossible to set up securely and Chrome being spyware, I use Pale Moon as my limited browser. (It's just a stripped down version of Firefox.) Then I use Firefox for cases where I must enable 3rd-party images, frames, temporary cookies and possibly script, using NoScript to limit that. K-Meleon is a 3rd option. They recently came out with an update. I installed it but haven't really tried it. And I didn't like that K-Meleon tried to go to these two sites on first start:

216.34.181.96:80 Savvis 52.27.123.81:443 Amazon

Savvis seems to be their site, but still, they have no business calling home. I don't know what the Amazon call was for.

With frames disabled there are a few sites that will be blank because they use a frameset. Thankfully, that method has been out of favor for many years, so it's rare.

| I have a large HOSTS file that block Double Click and lots of other | stuff. For Facebook alone, I have around 40 entries. I think FB is as | dangerous of not more than Google. I keep scripts disabled as much as | possible. It's not just for privacy, but also because I am on dialup. | Disabling all that crap makes webpages load a lot faster. |

Yes. Javascript "libraries" often take up to 1/2 MB these days, despite the page itself being much smaller.

You might want to look into Acrylic. It's small and simple, and lets you use wildcards:

*.doubleclick.net *.doubleclick.com

Basically it's a local DNS server. Very small. Open source. Your browser calls Acrylic to resolve a URL to an IP address, and Acrylic checks its own HOSTS file before going to the DNS server of your choice. Every once in awhile Acrylic seems to fail to start it's service. Then I have to uninstall it and reinstall it. I don't know why. Aside from that it works well.

| There is an old browser called "Off By One". It will load a page 10X | faster, because it only loads basic HTML and pictures, and little more. | Many sites dont render properly, but if all I want is some text info, I | can usually just read the text and see pictures, and skip the crap. It | dont work on some websites, but it's always worth a try. | | I'd like to find a way to block those .CSS files too, and even more so, | those damn pop-overs. The old popup blockers dont work on them. |

Nothing can pop up without script, although CSS is getting more flexible. I had to add some code to usecontent.css awhile back to stop animated "slideshows" done with CSS and no script. It's tough to skip CSS entirely. Many sites now just display as a jumble without it. But I often find myself going to View -> Style -> No Style on sites because their design is either really bad, with things like gigantic text or faulty CSS, or they've got a panel blocking the view. I still haven't figured that one out, but it seems to be deliberate obfuscation to thwart scripting. The page text will either be blocked or the background color will be similar to text color. Presumably the script fixes it, so the page gets disabled if script is disabled.

Example: 411.com for looking up phone numbers. It used to work fine. Now I just see a giant picture with some links below it. If I click the link for reverse phone or reverse address lookup it comes back to the same page. No input fields. It's useless. Then I set the view to No Style and I can see the various input fields. It seems that the picture is set to cover the page and only gets removed if script is allowed to run.

I really can't tell how much of the problem is spiteful coding to thwart script blockers and how much may just be incompetence combined with gross overuse of both CSS and script. The CSS file on that site is 125 KB! Not long ago that was too big for a webpage. And the amount of layout they actually use could easily fit in about

5 KB. So I wonder if maybe, with many of these sites, there's just nobody in charge and a lot of young interns are just cramming in all the latest hoopla, losing track of what they're doing. No one could seriously keep track of 125 KB worth of CSS for a single webpage.
Reply to
Mayayana

I was leaving the parking lot after renewing my car tag back in December and saw this weird car go past me as I pulled out right behind it. It was a google car filming the area. CREEEEEPY!!

Makes ya wonder!

Reply to
Muggles

There's nothing creepy about Google Maps Street View. Try it, you'll like it.

Reply to
marcus

In the google results, I try to avoid clicking on those links that are designated as ADS.

Everytime you click on an ad, it sends money from a small company to google.

You can usually find the same link a few lines down on the list.

Mark

Reply to
makolber

So you think the most preferred search engine should not only be free, but should exist on no revenue at all? The technology, systems, employees that make google search work cost money. What would a product like that be worth if it was a product you had to buy and pay for directly? Those small companies seem to be happy, or they would not be dealing with Google. And for the record, a lot of them aren't small companies, either.

Reply to
trader_4

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Reply to
My 2 Cents

| In the google results, I try to avoid clicking on those links that are | designated as ADS. | | Everytime you click on an ad, it sends money from a small company to google. |

Are you sure it works that way? I thought there was a bidding process to get into those top links. Bids wouldn't serve much purpose if the links then need to be clicked in order for Google to get paid. According to their page it can work in several ways, one of which is cost-per-impression.

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I've often thought in the opposite way: Clicking links will make the buying of ads less profitable for advertisers, which will stop them from buying ads. There seems to be sound logic behind both views. :)

But instead of all that I just avoid Google. It seems

*very* likely that Google is making at least some money when you use their search engine. And they're spying on you while you're there. Their manic greed is really a sad state of affairs. They made billions starting out, with no spying, no misleading returns and no skewed results. That was Google's magic: They ran an honest, useful business and got rich doing it. It was inspiring. But that's not enough for them since going public. It's all just greed and blinders now. I recently read that they're experimenting with more extensive ads on their pages:

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It probably won't be long before you have to fight with music, videos and jumping images to find the actual search results.

Reply to
Mayayana

I have tried it and it can be fun going back to another city I lived in years ago, and seeing which buildings still exist. For example, I found my grandma's house, which is one out of two of the old buildings to still remain on that block, since that whole area was mostly torn down and turned into condos.

But use it with caution, first off, it's not always accurate. There's a small rural town nearby and every building in that town is off (misplaced), by about 1/4 mile. In other words, the address given is wrong, or you see the wrong buildings for any REAL address. Worse yet, the houses at the edge of town are shown, but according to google maps, they have no address. And there is a private driveway shown as an actual road, which exits on the west end of town onto the main highway. That road does NOT exist. It begins as a driveway and stops at a fence. It does not go to the highway, (unless you were to drive thru that fence, then go thru a wooded area, then cross an irrigation ditch, go into soemone's private yard, and finally exit that person's driveway). In other words, that road does not exist at all! But google maps shows it as a real road and even has a name for it.

I got a laugh when someone I know told me they could break into a bank using google maps. There was a bank on a street and they zoomed in so close it looked like they went thru the front window and were inside. I told them to get some money while they were in there, but it never happened.... :)

Reply to
Paintedcow

Street View is indeed very creepy.

I worked at a McDonald's in NYC 4 decades ago. I recently used Street View to see what the area looked like now. Imagine my surprise when I looked at the image and saw the exact vehicle that I drive today rolling past the place where I used to work.

If you look next to the UPS truck in this image, you'll see a silver Honda Odyssey EX-L. Except for the fact that the van in the image is a taxi, it could be mine.

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Reply to
DerbyDad03

Worked for me just using the word "Vusic"!

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About 58,900 results Vusic Live - DJDummyTheGenius djdummythegenius.com/vusiclive/ - Cached - Similar Welcome to Vusic Live were music meets video. We have variety of shows through out the week from various DJ's all over the world playing music you don't get ...

Vusic Live - Listen Online - TuneIn tunein.com/radio/Vusic-Live-s225978/ - Cached - Similar Dj Base With The Lunch Box Show. ... Dj Chubby Chub With The Heat Rock Show. ... Dj Dummy Presents The Breakfast Club.

VUSIC LIVE (@VUSICLIVE) | Twitter

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- Cached - Similar The latest Tweets from VUSIC LIVE (@VUSICLIVE). DJ DUMMY HAS ASSEMBLE A TEAM OF FANTASTIC DJ'S AND SHOWS ON HIS WEBSITE. WITH THE ...

Vusic - Facebook

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- Cached Vusic. 194 likes. Vusic is the place where you can listen and see your favorite Music without all the mess in youtube.
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VUSIC - Facebook

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- Cached VUSIC. 833 likes ? 2 talking about this. Vusic: For the Artists ?

Download Vusic Free vusic.findmysoft.com/ - Cached - Similar Download the latest version of Vusic free. A music-visualization animation software.

Vusic :

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: Free Download & Streaming : Internet ...
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- Cached - Similar When VUSIC is projected onto a large screen, the audience will be able to experience the music visually since the projected images will be synchronized to the ...

Vusic for Windows - Free download and software reviews - CNET ... download.cnet.com/Vusic-for.../3000-2169_4-10178143.html - Cached

Reply to
Robert Green

Ijust put download "vusic" into google. Hits 2-8 were all for vusic.

Harry K

Reply to
Harry K

Is this the product?

Publisher's Description

  • From Morgan-Hocker Group: Vusic is interactive music response software that 'listens' to music CDs and generates colorful animations in response to the beats. Vusic works with any music CD put into a CD-ROM drive. Users can create custom graphic elements or choreograph original animations that can be saved and attached to song tracks on a CD or shared with others. In addition, these animations can be encoded onto the music CDs themselves. Vusic can easily be configured to respond to any kind of sound input, such as mixers, microphones, guitars, and synthesizers.

available for download from

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How did I find it???

Google.

Reply to
clare

Ya got that right! My address is misplaced by 7 miles. I warn tradesmen/delivery NOT to use google but call me when they are near.

Harry K

Reply to
Harry K

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