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Comment Re: Bad move (Score 1) 375

Understood. I don't like to criticize without providing an alternative. I wonder how we can fix this?
My first thoughts are to group similar sites aggregating in the results - eg 'mercury anti-vaccine - (2549 results)' , 'mercury-health - (1024)', 'mercury-chemistry - (3230)', 'mercury-medicinal (4349)' ~ which you can click through to what you need.
Maybe using the new top level domains to refine the search?
I do miss the ability to add qualifiers in Google like mercury - 'vaccine' which restricts results to all mercury except vaccine.
I've found different sets of results using Yandex btw. I also have access to online uni libraries which helps a lot, but that is a closed system in itself by methodology. Can't find any fringe related material there....
You see, paradigm change results from evidence that doesn't fit a theory. If it gets harder to find fringe evidence, you tend to lock an existing theory into place. No advancement, no forward movement.

Comment Re:Just damn (Score 1) 411

Ask a pipe smoker, cigar smoker. The perfumed scent of good tobacco and the effect that all those wonderful tars have on the body. Someone described the effect as taking a deep breath then exhaling very slowly.
Other than that, no particular reason, although doctors in the late 1800's prescribed tobacco to help clear the lungs of phlegm.

Comment Re: Bad move (Score 1) 375

You have made a great point. A major point.
Firstly, if implemented, it affects the ranking of a (e.g.) pseudo-science website. It shouldn't hopefully cut it out.
Let's keep real though:
$10,000 network cables for hi fi systems? That's pseudo science.
Any website that mentions 'Turanean' is now pseudo science -even though at one point in time it was an academically acceptable term.
There are a million+ monkey wrenches.
If I write a blog on Atlantean or review a book written by a pseudo-scolar, how does my ranking change? Will it eventually fall off the end and we'll be denied (as far as Google is concerned), fair ranking?
Also, what about free speech? How do "Women against Feminism" rank as it can be argued that it is not politically correct? How does an algorithm cater for all the nuances? What about Stormfront or any site that attacks political correctness?
What if the atheists take control? Where else can I find treatise on Fire Temples and Zoroastrianism?
Someone wrote once "From little bird turds do big ones grow." and I think that is the wedge here. Once you do that, you start losing access to information. And it is sooo easy to drive that wedge harder.
From that we can ask the question if Google has the right to be the world guide in ethics, morality, philosophy and cosmology. About a year or so ago, I have started using different search engines with improved results. Having another language helps too.

Comment Re:sorry (Score 1) 57

where do you think the "billboard" numbers originate?

Try Tin Pan Alley which was the origin of the billboard numbers. Wikipedia has a good take on it. I'll quote below, that a lot of Rock and Pop actually came from Negro Ragtime, Cakewalk and Blues tunes, although Ragtime and Cakewalk were arguably White genre 'Black' music.
"Initially Tin Pan Alley specialized in melodramatic ballads and comic novelty songs, but it embraced the newly popular styles of the cakewalk and ragtime music. Later on jazz and blues were incorporated, although less completely, as Tin Pan Alley was oriented towards producing songs that amateur singers or small town bands could perform from printed music. In the 1910s and 1920s Tin Pan Alley published pop-songs and dance numbers created in newly popular jazz and blues styles"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Honky Tonk (Tin Pan Alley piano)
http://www.last.fm/music/Winif...

Comment Re:Bugs in Win 7 UI (Score 1) 516

There is an explorer bug that fixes itself if you close and reopen it.
This normally can be replicated doing a lot of folder moves from drive to drive either cut/paste or drag/drop.
Left side folders in an HD shows a truncated list (random folders in alphabetical order) while right side shows all the folders. Collapse and reopen a hd on the left side does not refresh the list. Renaming a missing left side folder using the right side window inserts the renamed folder in the left side but still doesn't update the whole list.
By closing explorer and restarting it will populate all the folders under the HD letter. I have about 5 drives and I move a lot of folders around so I tend to notice this sort of thing. It could be a file system bug.
In another example I was organizing images into different folders based on a timeline. When I finished and checked the contents of these new folders, I found that some files were missing or in the incorrect folders. Even taking into account human error, it worries me that I can't rely on these basic functions without double checking. I have no choice but use this Win 7 Ultimate OS server for the foreseeable future.

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