1237cf19c079
tech



Hello Roy - 

--8<--cut 

CA>> There are many webpages but all of it is not information.
CA>> The one thing that was repeated over and over again in
CA>> college was "Qualify your sources". 

RJT> Yeah. 

CA>> On the WWW it is almost impossible to do. Any kid can
CA>> write up a webpage and put anything on that webpage
CA>> representing it as proven fact. The person viewing that
CA>> page has no way of knowing they are reading text from a
CA>> child's perspective. 

RJT> Then again, a bunch of the stuff I was looking at this
RJT> afternoon had a section at the end entitled "References"
RJT> followed by a pile of links... 

"References" only point to other opinions. What would be needed
by 'old school' standards is a bibliography pointing to where
the author found the information used to generate the opinions,
instructions, whatever. (books, magazines, tapes, etc.) 

CA>> Add that the WWW is very disorganized and you can waste a
CA>> lifetime 'learning' wrong information and waste hours/days
CA>> searching for that wrong information. 

RJT> Sure. I guess so far I've been pretty lucky, as I'm
RJT> finding lots of things that are stuff that I _want_, and
RJT> not much junk in there. OTOH, first thing I tried to do
RJT> today was to get on Ebay, and I couldn't. Got three pages
RJT> or so into it, and that was it. 

Most of the popular websites require newer versions of
javascripting and (apparently) Konqueror doesn't have it?
Mozilla v1.4 would probably work for you on Ebay? 

RJT> And every time I'd change one little thing, the damn thing
RJT> would send me not one but _two_ more cookies. Just what I
RJT> need to clutter up the HD here... 

As long as 'cookies' are stored in one central location they
aren't a problem. When you are finished you can just delete all
of them if you want to. Most are harmless really. I had a
user-poll CGI script that installed a cookie on the user's
machine to stop the same person from voting 1000 times per day.
Nothing harmful for the user but one person voting 1000 times
invalidates the purpose of even taking a user-poll. I took it
down eventually - users on the WWW don't interact with the WWW
if they can avoid it (short attention spans of about 20-45
seconds actually). 

CA>> Search engines 'search' in the most trivial manor possible
CA>> to increase their speed of execution so that finding the
CA>> experts and sorting them out from the kids webpages is
CA>> left as a manual exercise for each person attempting to
CA>> locate the information. :-\ 

RJT> Yeah, well... 

RJT> There's stuff you can do with HTML to help the search
RJT> engines out. ("Meta" tags, in particular) but most pages
RJT> don't seem to bother with them. 

All search engine software does not use the meta tag
information. There is some debate that Google ignores meta tags
other than those telling it to not 'follow' links on the page
("nofollow") or not to scan the page at all ("noindex") and
'keyword' meta tags. 

Many search engines will only list you if you pay them to and
will use whatever you tell them (in a form letter) regardless
of what the page actually is. 

RJT> I also remember well a while back doing a search for one
RJT> particular bit of info at the library a while back, and I
RJT> had one heck of a time finding it. After an hour or so of
RJT> wasted effort I went to a dealer (it was a car issue),
RJT> told the guy at the counter what I needed, and had the
RJT> manual in front of me a minute later, open to the info I
RJT> wanted... In the meantime I never saw so much junk as I
RJT> did when I was looking for that info on the 'net. 

I almost selected "parts counter man" at a dealership as my
profession when I was 19. It used to be a good paying job. 

CA>> In the way-back machine when I was sig section leader for
CA>> telecom on the CoCo sig for Compuserve it was my 'job' to
CA>> verify the information that was uploaded and test the
CA>> software to determine if it did indeed perform 'as
CA>> advertised'. 

RJT> That can be a tough job, especially the part about testing
RJT> the software. I carry a lot of stuff here but haven't
RJT> tried most of it, for that very reason- I don't have one
RJT> of each of those kinds of machines. And that's only going
RJT> to get worse. 

In this instance all software was for the CoCo. :-) 

RJT> (Aside: If you know of filenames for any particular coco
RJT> software that would be good for a filesection of
RJT> old/obsolescent machines, feel free to pass them along,
RJT> here or elsewhere, that's one of the machines on my list
RJT> that I don't have *anything* for at present.) 

Radio Shack discontinued the CoCo many years ago and the only
emulators for Intel hardware require a binary dump of the ROM
chip to operate. At least one of the emulators _does_ work. I
remember using it once but forget which one I used. Anyhow ...
without access to a working CoCo for the ROM code I can't
envision many people wanting CoCo software. ;-) 

CA>> When any of this was wrong based on my opinion I could
CA>> make it invisible to others temporarilly while I discussed
CA>> this with the person who uploaded the information or
CA>> software. Quality control was based on many 'editors' who
CA>> watched the flow of information each day and had the power
CA>> to censor and/or delete bad information. 

CA>> There is nothing like that on the WWW unfortunately. :-\ 

RJT> Only indirectly. I can't remember who it was, but I
RJT> remember reading an article some time back where the
RJT> author was of the option that "editors" as such were going
RJT> to be rather important people in the coming days, simply
RJT> because of the sheer volume of stuff that's out there. 

College servers seem to have the greatest volume of obsolete
and inaccurate text files for topics I am reading about. 

RJT> Look at the lists of links that some people put up. Half
RJT> the time they don't even verify that they still point to
RJT> the same place any more. 

This can be somewhat automated but everyone who puts up HTML is
not WWW 'literate' and doesn't know about that. 

RJT> You get some idea of what a person's about with the sort
RJT> of list they put up, though. And those who consistently
RJT> make good choices will eventually achieve something of a
RJT> reputation for doing so. 

Not that I have found. Longevity and cross-linking to your page
from other pages seems the closest to 'reputation' and that is
misleading if the webpages are not maintained and kept uptodate. 

RJT> Since lots of hosting is supported by commercial activity, 

I wouldn't say 'lots'. I would say 'some'. 

RJT> and hit counters tie into this, it probably also means
RJT> that the folks who do real well will find themselves
RJT> materially rewarded for this. 

A decade or so ago there were opportunities to earn a liveable
wage from a good website. Now I would guess it's more like
pocket change. 

RJT> Sorta like what's happening now, only without a whole lot
RJT> of the administrative stuff that's involved now and
RJT> without a whole lot of the people that are in the middle... 

I don't understand what you are referring to here. I do know
that with all the banner ads and requests to use links to
commercial websites to 'help support this webpage' it probably
looks like there is money being made but AFAIK those days are
gone for websites with informational content only. 

I have individual pages that get 15,000 hits per month and
could put some 'sponsor links' on those pages then let you know
if it generates any money worth bothering with. I tend to think
not though. There are a few commercial websites that sell
'refurbished' computers and inexpensive blank CDs etc. that
might fit in with my website's primary focus. I do link to
commercial websites but not to make money from them. 

I have noticed that people _do_ seem to click on links to
commercial websites quite often. I even put "(not a download
link)" after some of them and people go there anyhow. IBM,
Microsoft, and others rank at the top of the most often used
links from my webpages. I laugh about it but people seem to
think they will find downloads of free software on those
webpages that I have missed I guess? 

>
>        ,                          ,
>      o/      Charles.Angelich      \o       ,
>       __o/
>     / >          USA, MI           < \   __\__
 

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