OT: (NOT A JOKE) Be careful what you wish for....

[John Esak]

> -----Original Message-----
> Using a search engine like Google to do research, may be 

[...]

> Relying solely on technology can lead to horrendous errors 
> were Lisa minor
> inconveniences.

I chopped two bits out of this long note... Just to make a point... I
haven't even read what richard's brother's link pointed to yet....

I was on the phone with Jim Asman and our conversation led around to this.
One of the new things In technology that I really like... I guess it came in
around Internet 7 or google from around that period.  You are typing in a
search engine and the things found popup up in a little browse just below
you.... In the same way we all wanted to build letter by letter browses 20
years ago.   Anyway, I really like this of course, who wouldn't.  I'm
assuming that the data being searched has been indexed and this browse/list
scans through that index and pops up accordingly.  All great.  Although, I
saw a girl friend the other night looking for something... Not see it in
this little listing and then just stop looking saying, "Oh, it's not
there..."  I jumped up and said, hell no. look anyway.  Because I have found
two important things about that little search improvement.  Hell, it's
showing up in everything, Apple products, in Itunes, and google., and
Internet Explorer... Everywhere... We should know a little about it. First,
thing to know is, is it accurate?  My testing says absolutely not.  If you
don't see what you want in the drop down list... Try hitting the top one
anyway.  You are actually likely to see what you want a little down the
page.  Maybe it just hasn't been indexed yet, or the indexing key is too far
in some sentence or subject text. Who knows?  I just realized a short time
after it came out that this dropdown as helpful as it is, isn't infallible.
Second thing to notice is that it often and I mean often doesn't bring up
things in the order you would think.  If you select the top choice in the
list, I would think you could reasonably expect to have that item be at the
top of the page. Not so.  Many times it is 3 or 4 items down, or quite far
down. Sometimes you can't even find whatever it was.  

So, I use this dropdown listbox only as an indicator of possibility that I
might find what I want, not a definitive list carved 9in stone.  Test it and
see if I'm not right.  Maybe the items only get indexed once a week, or once
day, or an hour, or only with 5,000  sub-indexes instead of 6,000... Who
knows how the secret sauce works behind google, or IE or anyone 's attempt
at doing this routine.  I just know that I generally like it. I just don't
trust it completely.


If this has nothing to do with the thread, sorry.  Chalk it up to unwanted
thoughts thrown at you by choosing to read this thread in the first place...
Kind of like the 15 spurious things you see using the little drop down index
on the goole search tool.  :-)

John Esak