From crispen@campus.mci.netFri Apr 12 00:55:48 1996 Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 20:33:08 -0700 From: Patrick Douglas CrispenReply to: TOURBUS-REQUEST@LISTSERV.AOL.COM To: Multiple recipients of list TOURBUS Subject: TOURBUS - 11 APRIL - METACRAWLER (BORK! BORK! BORK!) /~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~|~~\ | "Why | Surf When / You Can | Ride The | Bus?" / | \ |___________|__________/__________|__________|_________/ | \ / /______|-----\ / Get the latest software reviews, interviews, live |//////| | | chat, online gaming & more! Subscribe to WorldVillage |//////| | | Citizens, a great weekly mailing list. For info, see |//////| | | http://www.worldvillage.com/wv/join.htm |//////| | | |//////| | ~~~~/~~~\~/~~~\~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~\~~~~~~ \___/ \___/ T h e I n t e r n e t T o u r B u s \___/ TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP : METACRAWLER (BORK! BORK! BORK!) TODAY'S TOURBUS ADDRESSES : http://www.aclu.org/court/cdacom2.html infobot@infomania.com http://astro.queensu.ca/~dursi/borker.html http://metacrawler.cs.washington.edu:8080/index.html First, to those who were offended by my "mad cow" joke last week, I offer my deepest apologies. Second, to those of you who have been having problems getting into epic.org to download the text of "ACLU, et al., v. Reno" (the lawsuit filed by the ACLU to stop the U.S. Government's enforcement of the recently adopted Communications Decency Act), you might have better luck at the following alternate site: http://www.aclu.org/court/cdacom2.html This is the ACLU's official Web version of their lawsuit, and this page is pretty big (about 110K). As I said back on March 21, though, the "Nature of the Online Medium" section of the ACLU's lawsuit is most clear, concise, and user-friendly demystification of the Net that I have ever seen. Finally, thanks to the kind help several alert passengers at the back of the bus, I have once again found the address for the "English to Muppet Show Swedish Chef Translator" (a.k.a. the "text borkifier"). You can have the text of any e-mail letter "borkified" by e-mailing it to infobot@infomania.com with the word CHEF as the subject line of your letter. You can also find a borkifier on the Web at http://astro.queensu.ca/~dursi/borker.html And, before I get mail bombed by a whole bunch of angry Swedes, let me just add that anyone who has ever been to Sweden can tell you that people in Sweden do NOT speak like the Swedish Chef ... ... now, people from Norway, on the other hand ... *----------------------( MEMORY PRICES SLASHED! )----------------------* Add more Memory to your Laptop or PC and Do Everything Faster! It's easy to add memory and dramatically boost system performance. Because you asked for it -- CLC RESEARCH has just cut prices by 15-20% Money Back Guarantee and Special Discounts for TOURBUS Riders *--------------( Visit us at http://www.CLCR.com/memory )--------------* Do you know what my dream Web search engine would be? No, it wouldn't be Alta Vista (just between you and me, I absolutely *hate* Alta Vista). My dream Web search engine would be one that sent my search query to ALL of the Web's biggest search engines: Open Text, Lycos, WebCrawler, InfoSeek, Excite, Inktomi, Alta Vista, Galaxy and Yahoo. Better still, my dream Web search engine would take my query, send it to all eight of these databases, and then collate the results and throw away all of the redundant URLs (the same URLs repeated in different databases). Guess what, folks. Such a search engine exists. It was created by Erik Selberg and Oren Etzioni at the University of Washington, it is called "MetaCrawler," and it is completely FREE! You can find MetaCrawler on the Web at http://metacrawler.cs.washington.edu:8080/index.html Because MetaCrawler is forms-based, you'll need a forms-capable web browser like Netscape, Mosaic, or Internet Explorer to use MetaCrawler. However, once you get to the MetaCrawler Web page, you'll discover that MetaCrawler works like any other search engine on the Web. You type one or more keywords in a box on your screen, and then click on the search button. The search engine finds all of the Web pages around the world that have your keyword(s) in them (the "hits"), and then displays the hits on your screen. You then access the hits that interest you by clicking on their hyperlinks. While MetaCrawler may look like other search engines, it is actually quite different. For example, MetaCrawler searches take a little longer than searches through other search engine, but that is because MetaCrawler sends your query to eight different search engines! My personal experience with MetaCrawler is that a basic ("all these words") search takes about a minute. But, MetaCrawler's results are well worth the extra time! When you do a search, MetaCrawler will display a screen showing you which search engines it has queried and how many "hits" it found on that search engine. Be patient. This process takes some time. After all of the hits have been collected (which usually takes a minute), MetaCrawler collates the results. MetaCrawler looks for duplicate links, throws them out, and then displays the results on your screen. If this isn't cool enough, MetaCrawler also has an option that will check all of the links that it finds to make sure that the links are both accessible and contain valid data. Just do your search "as a phrase" instead of looking for "all of these words." These "as a phrase" searches will take a little longer (about 3 minutes instead of 1), but if you are someone who is frustrated by "404" errors, you'll find that this expanded search option will significantly lower your blood pressure ... and increase the number of "valuable" hits that you can find. Now for the shocker: MetaCrawler doesn't have any commercials on it, and Erik and Oren have no plans to add any commercials in the near future. According to Erik and Oren, "MetaCrawler is primarily a research tool, and will continue to be such for the first few years." That's about it for today. Oh, by the way, if you have sent in a Southern Word and did not receive a thank you from me, I apologize. I have been swamped over the past couple of months and my recent problems with my Mac have turned my onramp onto the Information Superhighway into an onramp into the Information Supercollider. Suffice it to say that I *do* thank each and every one of you for your "word" suggestions, and I have printed out or saved every suggestion that has been sent :) -------------------------------- TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE DAY -------------------------------- RAISIN - Noun. Motive or explanation. Usage: "There ain't no raisin to be actin' thatta way." (Special thanks goes to Jeryl Geary for today's wurd) YOU CAN FIND ALL OF THE OLD SOUTHERN WORDS OF THE DAY ON THE SOUTHERN WORD HOMEPAGE AT http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~crispen/word.html *---------------------( ELVIS IS ALIVE AND WELL! )---------------------* ELVIS the Mailbot, that is... And he's talking about Magazine Express. Find out what hundreds of TOURBUS riders already know--Your favorite magazines are all dirt cheap at Magazine Express, and you get something FREE just for talking to ELVIS! For an automatic reply, send e-mail to: *----------------------( tourbus@MAGAZINES.com )-----------------------* ====================================================================== SUBSCRIBE : Send SUBSCRIBE TOURBUS Firstname Lastname to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM unSUBSCRIBE: Send SIGNOFF TOURBUS to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Web Site : http://www.WorldVillage.com/tourbus.htm Advertising: E-mail BobRankin@MHV.net w/ Subject: SEND TBRATES ====================================================================== TOURBUS - (c) Copyright 1996, Patrick Crispen and Bob Rankin All rights reserved. Redistribution is allowed only with permission. Send this copy to 3 friends and tell them to get on the Bus! (\__/) .~ ~. )) /O O ./ .' Patrick Douglas Crispen {O__, \ { The University of Alabama / . . ) \ *NEW ADDRESS* crispen@campus.mci.net *NEW ADDRESS* |-| '-' \ } http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~crispen/crispen.html .( _( )_.' '---.~_ _ _& Warning: squirrels.
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