Good Search Engine

In message , Char Jackson
writes:
[]
Agreed, and if I were *in* Dallas when I'm doing the search, I would
replace "Dallas" with "near me". "near me" works for almost everything,
from movie theaters to restaurants to Home Depot stores to you name it.

If I say, "movie theaters near me", Google replies with, "Here are some
listings of "movie theaters near me" within 8 miles". That's much more
useful than showing me all of the movie theaters within the DFW metro.

I didn't know about the "near me" keyphrase. But it does require the
search engine to know where you are; if I used it, I'd get results from
a different part of the country! (Various things _think_ they know where
I am, but I think they're using something to do with my ISP.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

As Groucho Marx said, "I cannot say that I do not disagree with you."

On 10/29/2018 7:10 PM, BurfordTJustice wrote:
What a cry baby. Man up boi!

Your quantum burst spamming in alt.comp.freeware is way too much....

--
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J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Char Jackson
writes:
[]
Agreed, and if I were *in* Dallas when I'm doing the search, I would
replace "Dallas" with "near me". "near me" works for almost everything,
from movie theaters to restaurants to Home Depot stores to you name it.

If I say, "movie theaters near me", Google replies with, "Here are some
listings of "movie theaters near me" within 8 miles". That's much more
useful than showing me all of the movie theaters within the DFW metro.

I didn't know about the "near me" keyphrase. But it does require the
search engine to know where you are; if I used it, I'd get results from
a different part of the country! (Various things _think_ they know where
I am, but I think they're using something to do with my ISP.)

Google knows where I am.

If I type in

"route 11 timetable"

the first result in the list is bang on.

I don't even need to type in a "near me" to
get them excited.

And the Google search engine doesn't seem to share
its location knowledge. As the maps.google.com site
opens to the wrong location. I was hoping maps.google.com
would zero in on my street and scare the crap out of me :-)

Paul

"Wolf K" wrote

| I didn't know about the "near me" keyphrase. But it does require the
| search engine to know where you are; if I used it, I'd get results from
| a different part of the country! (Various things _think_ they know where
| I am, but I think they're using something to do with my ISP.)
|
| AFAIK, it uses the phone's location finder.
|

There's a true sign of the times. In a desktop
Windows newsgroup someone assumes everyone's
on a phone.

Google and similar use IP address resolution. When
you go to Google and it shows your local forecast?
That's IP resolution. I do the same with my own
server logs. You can get free tools from MaxMind.com,
along with a database. MaxMind sells the database
but gives away a less accurate version for free. It
will generally tell where an IP is within one town or
so. Google probably knows the neighborhood by
a similar method. (There are online tools to do
the same thing for a single IP -- IP-based whois --
but with MaxMind tools, or similar, anyone can
have their own database.)

Geo-location, with phones or with their browsers,
triangulating tower locations, can be far more accurate,
but it can also be disabled. I don't use a computer
phone so I'm not familiar with the details of phone
spyware. While you can disable geo-location in the
phone browser, I'm not so sure about all the apps
or the phone itself. US law requires it for 911 calls,
so it may be built-in. And if your phone is made by
the likes of Google or Apple, why would you even
trust that such an option really works, anyway?

That's one reason I don't have a computer phone.
Here are two articles about Google's extensive
spying on retail customers, partially done by tracking
them on their phones:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150525...20150521-00848

http://www.newsdiffs.org/diff/140512...u-are-spending

(Note that the second link has the entire article wrapped
in javascript. If you disable script you'll need to read
it in the source code! The page has 11 external scripts
plus Google analytics script. One script is even named
"scrollspy".)

Funny thing.... People used to talk about how things
online are there forever, but these days they hardly last
a year. The WashPo link led me to a blank page while
the NasDaq link was no longer at NasDaq at all. I only
know the links because I save interesting tech articles.

To disable geolocation in Firefox:

geo.wifi.logging.enabled
geo.enabled

But that won't help much on a phone. There was
an article just last week about the extensive
problem of Android spying -- apparently a large number
of phone apps are sharing data with Google. And they
already share data with advertisers if they're ad-supported.
If you use a phone and leave it turned on then you're
wearing a tracking collar. No less than the animals in
TV nature documentaries. Actually more so. The African
leopard is only being watched by a few biologists. You're
being watched by "every marketer and his brother".

But John's in Britain. Their laws are probably
more civilized and their tech less sophisticated.
He may visit websites on his computer where the
company is simply not investing in top quality
IP-based geo-location.

"Paul" wrote

|As the maps.google.com site
| opens to the wrong location. I was hoping maps.google.com
| would zero in on my street and scare the crap out of me :-)
|

They know at least your IP. If you allow
cookies and use an Android phone they probably
know the last time you were in the bathroom.
Maybe they're just showing you other places to
encourage travel. (Look for ads for Kenyan hotels
next to that Kenya map.

On Mon, 29 Oct 2018 10:35:03 -0400, Paul wrote:

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Char Jackson
writes:
[]
Agreed, and if I were *in* Dallas when I'm doing the search, I would
replace "Dallas" with "near me". "near me" works for almost everything,
from movie theaters to restaurants to Home Depot stores to you name it.

If I say, "movie theaters near me", Google replies with, "Here are some
listings of "movie theaters near me" within 8 miles". That's much more
useful than showing me all of the movie theaters within the DFW metro.

I didn't know about the "near me" keyphrase. But it does require the
search engine to know where you are; if I used it, I'd get results from
a different part of the country! (Various things _think_ they know where
I am, but I think they're using something to do with my ISP.)

Google knows where I am.

If I type in

"route 11 timetable"

the first result in the list is bang on.

I don't even need to type in a "near me" to
get them excited.

And the Google search engine doesn't seem to share
its location knowledge. As the maps.google.com site
opens to the wrong location. I was hoping maps.google.com
would zero in on my street and scare the crap out of me :-)

For me, maps.google.com opens with the blue dot exactly on the roof of
my house, whether I'm on my phone or on my desktop PC.

--

Char Jackson

On Sun, 28 Oct 2018 21:25:25 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , Ken Blake
writes:
On Sun, 28 Oct 2018 18:26:46 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:
[]
to recognise placenames. (Though that's not foolproof of course -
consider "Denver boot", "Newcastle disease". [Parking clamp and poultry
illness respectively.] English is fun, and difficult - for foreigners
too, not just computers [and for English-speakers too often enough]!)


Forgive my slight digression, but talking about English, one of my
favorite stories is about Harriet, who was away at University in a
foreign country. A message sent to her parents from someone at the
school started out as "Harriet suspended for minor offenses, but it
was first translated into the language of the country the school was
in, then back into English. The message her parents received was
"Harriet hanged for juvenile crimes."

Chuckle! Probably apocryphal, but ranks alongside the Water Sheep, and
Norman Wisdom.



Yes, I'm sure it's apocryphal. But it's a good example of how poor
machine translations can be. They often completely miss the context.

On 10/28/18 1:26 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

[snip]

consider "Denver boot", "Newcastle disease". [Parking clamp and poultry
illness respectively.] English is fun, and difficult - for foreigners
too, not just computers [and for English-speakers too often enough]!)

Denver boot. "Justin boot" is something completely different (and not
particularly related to the city of Justin).

OT: there was a "Beverly Hillbillies" show with a man named Justin
Addison. Granny kept thinking Justin was "just an" (as if he that
Addison was a defect of some sort).

On 10/28/18 3:14 PM, Ken Blake wrote:

[snip]

Forgive my slight digression, but talking about English, one of my
favorite stories is about Harriet, who was away at University in a
foreign country. A message sent to her parents from someone at the
school started out as "Harriet suspended for minor offenses, but it
was first translated into the language of the country the school was
in, then back into English. The message her parents received was
"Harriet hanged for juvenile crimes."

The one I remember is "hydraulic ram" being translated into Russian and
came back as "water goat".

--
57 days until the winter celebration (Tue Dec 25, 2018 12:00:00 AM for 1
day).

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

Wouldn't it be funny if Elvis came back instead of Jesus?

There is no "current thread subject", the OP spammer posted a new thread.

This idiot is known for using weird formatting in the blind users group...

--
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" G6JPG-255 255soft.uk wrote:

Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: "J. P. Gilliver (John)" G6JPG-255 255soft.uk
Newsgroups: alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.freeware,alt.comp.os .windows-10,free.spam
Subject: Google Search Operators: The Complete List (42 Advanced Operators)
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2018 18:28:43 +0000
Organization: 255 software
Lines: 13
Message-ID: PYejBAib$f1bFwu4 255soft.uk
References: gm93tdl2fc4budbtbrj30odmbld56vrv9h 4ax.com pqsv4d$mhd$1 toylet.eternal-september.org f9b4td95o4aglhnu3jgtrqkjvfoo0a43kr 4ax.com pqvfcj$f7u$1 toylet.eternal-september.org h0woq3Mh8Y1bFw4q 255soft.uk pr4kgc$bp2$1 toylet.eternal-september.org pr4ubr$amh$1 dont-email.me
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="bfad250c5eabc92416f5a4659e5504eb"; logging-data="18523"; mail-complaints-to="abuse eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/KntLSQWby6WN259MAAhDA"
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Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org alt.windows7.general:175694 alt.comp.freewa319260 alt.comp.os.windows-10:80663 free.spam:11960

In message pr4ubr$amh$1 dont-email.me, John Doe
always.look message.header writes:
Besides the fact this regular troll has no idea what it's talking
about, it has been crossposting spam all over USENET. Check out the
Microsoft flight simulation group to see what I'm talking about, and
go from there.

I found the article he posted a link to extremely relevant to the
current thread subject.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus (It is now safe to turn off your computer).

This is the same nym-shifting psychopath who spams
anti-Dustin posts all over USENET...

--
"BurfordTJustice" burford/associate uk.MI15 wrote:

Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: "BurfordTJustice" burford/associate uk.MI15
Newsgroups: alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.freeware,alt.comp.os .windows-10
Subject: Google Search Operators: The Complete List (42 Advanced Operators)
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2018 07:10:31 -0400
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 65
Message-ID: pr6pra$lgo$1 dont-email.me
References: gm93tdl2fc4budbtbrj30odmbld56vrv9h 4ax.com pqsv4d$mhd$1 toylet.eternal-september.org f9b4td95o4aglhnu3jgtrqkjvfoo0a43kr 4ax.com pqvfcj$f7u$1 toylet.eternal-september.org h0woq3Mh8Y1bFw4q 255soft.uk pr4kgc$bp2$1 toylet.eternal-september.org pr4ubr$amh$1 dont-email.me
Injection-Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2018 11:10:34 -0000 (UTC)
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What a cry baby. Man up boi!




"John Doe" always.look message.header wrote in message
newsr4ubr$amh$1 dont-email.me...
: Besides the fact this regular troll has no idea what it's talking
: about, it has been crossposting spam all over USENET. Check out the
: Microsoft flight simulation group to see what I'm talking about, and
: go from there.
:
: --
: "Mr. Man-wai Chang" toylet.toylet gmail.com wrote:
:
: Path:
eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!toylet.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
: From: "Mr. Man-wai Chang" toylet.toylet gmail.com
: Newsgroups:
alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.freeware,alt.comp.os .windows-10
: Subject: Google Search Operators: The Complete List (42 Advanced
Operators)
: Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2018 23:27:05 +0800
: Organization: Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong
: Lines: 14
: Message-ID: pr4kgc$bp2$1 toylet.eternal-september.org
: References: gm93tdl2fc4budbtbrj30odmbld56vrv9h 4ax.com pqsv4d$mhd$1
toylet.eternal-september.org f9b4td95o4aglhnu3jgtrqkjvfoo0a43kr 4ax.com
pqvfcj$f7u$1 toylet.eternal-september.org h0woq3Mh8Y1bFw4q 255soft.uk
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posting-host="8c5b8043b59aeeae1854a5544ca67bc1"; logging-data="12066";
mail-complaints-to="abuse eternal-september.org";
posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19L4GaOYD758yHkO9p4q2WK"
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Thunderbird/52.9.1
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alt.comp.freewa319241 alt.comp.os.windows-10:80653
:
:
: The following could be your starting point:
:
: Google Search Operators: The Complete List (42 Advanced Operators)
: https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advan...rch-operators/
:
: --
: ~ Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch! Live long and prosper!!
: / v \ Simplicity is Beauty!
: /( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
: ^ ^ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.39.3
: "ö Å YSìö! "ö S÷ '-T! "ö S�Ð'O«! "ö ' ‹"õØ! "ö '%""õØ! "ö '%"ÅS©! "ö
S×Ý'¸õ! "ö '¤'Îóz! S©S Y'.¸Î"o' ‹
: (CSSA):
: http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_...sub_addressesa
:
:
:

Mayayana wrote:
"Paul" wrote

|As the maps.google.com site
| opens to the wrong location. I was hoping maps.google.com
| would zero in on my street and scare the crap out of me :-)
|

They know at least your IP. If you allow
cookies and use an Android phone they probably
know the last time you were in the bathroom.
Maybe they're just showing you other places to
encourage travel. (Look for ads for Kenyan hotels
next to that Kenya map.

The ADSL system here has backhaul capability, and
the Central Office where my ADSL comes in, it doesn't
necessarily process the stream itself. The byte stream
from the ADSL can be shipped to another major population
center. So one day, IP 1.2.3.4 is in Toronto, the
next day, it's in Montreal. I don't keep an IP if
I reboot my modem. And where it terminates isn't
a constant either. So attempting to keep a
history via the termination point, won't help
a tracking company.

When I visit

https://www.whatismyip.com/

I get this as a result

# Your Public IPv4 is: yy.yy.zzz.zzz
#
# Location: Montreal, QC CA === no, I don't live in Montreal
# ISP: xxx

A reverse lookup on yy.yy.zzz.zzz yields no hostname.
It's not like the old days, where you'd get
area23sanfran.att.com where the naming convention
helped give away what city you were in.

ip address: yy.yy.zzz.zzz
hostname: yy.yy.zzz.zzz ( not area23sanfran.att.com )

Walmart and Home Depot use "address of ISP head office"
as my physical location. And you can see the job the
ISP has done, limits what other mechanisms can be used.

I think it's still possible to use the packet-based
triangulation method (the one in the paper), which
is accurate to two city blocks, but that one required
nodes with a physical presence to build the picture.

However, if I keep looking for "bus route 11" and
clicking on the one I actually want, that helps
give away where I am. They could be using my
locality of search references, to spot my location.
Looking for too many pizza shops in name_of_town.
Then all they need is a reliable super-cookie. And
the browser does talk to Google for various services,
and my browser ID number will certainly help when
it is transmitted. (The browser ID could function
as an immutable cookie.)

Even the YellowPages website doesn't geolocate
me properly, and uses "address of ISP head office"
as my location. Damned annoying. Sites where the
information would be of value, aren't buying that
information on the market. Whatever Google (Search)
knows, it doesn't seem to be selling it as a Happy
Meal to other companies.

Paul

In message , Mayayana
writes:
"Wolf K" wrote

| I didn't know about the "near me" keyphrase. But it does require the
| search engine to know where you are; if I used it, I'd get results from
| a different part of the country! (Various things _think_ they know where
| I am, but I think they're using something to do with my ISP.)
|
| AFAIK, it uses the phone's location finder.
|

There's a true sign of the times. In a desktop
Windows newsgroup someone assumes everyone's
on a phone.

Indeed!
[]
Geo-location, with phones or with their browsers,
triangulating tower locations, can be far more accurate,
but it can also be disabled. I don't use a computer
phone so I'm not familiar with the details of phone
spyware. While you can disable geo-location in the

I don't see how anything you can do/disable on a 'phone can prevent
tower triangulation, if you're actually using the 'phone.
[]
But John's in Britain. Their laws are probably
more civilized and their tech less sophisticated.

Oh, I think our tech is at least as bad: we certainly (so I'm told) have
a lot more cameras than most countries (though I don't think all our
ATMs have them yet). The laws certainly protect the individual _a bit_
more (though a lot of those are EU laws; things may diverge after
Brexit).

He may visit websites on his computer where the
company is simply not investing in top quality
IP-based geo-location.

Here, on the whole, the IP is allocated from a pool belonging to the
ISP, AIUI. Though as I tend only to reboot my router when there's a
problem or power cut, I _do_ have the same ISP for weeks or months on
end.

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

One of my tricks as an armchair futurist is to "predict" things that are
already happening and watch people tell me it will never happen.
Scott Adams, 2015-3-9

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| Geo-location, with phones or with their browsers,
| triangulating tower locations, can be far more accurate,
| but it can also be disabled. I don't use a computer
| phone so I'm not familiar with the details of phone
| spyware. While you can disable geo-location in the
|
| I don't see how anything you can do/disable on a 'phone can prevent
| tower triangulation, if you're actually using the 'phone.

I see two aspects there. One is whether to turn off
the phone. I use a Tracphonne, buying minutes, and
only turn it on when I want to make, or expect, a call.
I don't mean letting it go blank. I mean actually turning
off the power so it has to boot up next time I use it.
That stops tracking.

Most people don't want to do that. So then the question
gets much more complicated. The phone service will
always know where you are, but will Google/Apple?

There's been recent news that numerous apps ask
for all sorts of rights, including location data, then share
that with Google or ad companies. But there's also
evidence that Google spies *all the time*.

https://qz.com/1131515/google-collec...-are-disabled/

Given that the Googlites are obsessed with data and
known to lie as a matter of corporate policy, I think
one has to assume Google always knows where you are
if your Android is turned on. Apple? They're more genteel
about it, but they're also more evasive and more prone
to locking down devices. To my mind it should also be
assumed that Apple spies whenever possible. And based
on what I've heard from Tim Cook in interviews, I'd say
they're also compulsive liars. I've never seen a Cook
interview where he wasn't twisting the facts while he
tried to paint Apple as the sweetest thing since the
Easter Bunny. (Just the other day I saw him squealing
about how Apple has created 2 million jobs in the US.
Besides being an absurd claim, it leaves out the fact
that they're offshoring billions to avoid taxes and do
most of their assembly with slave labor in Asia -- Which
he portrays as iPhones being a product of loving,
worldwide cooperation because it has parts made in
numeorus countries. The man has no shame.)

So assuming you don't actually turn off your phone,
you can shut off geo* in the browser to prevent
that sending data to websites (in theory) but you
probably have lots of apps sending your data constantly
to ad purveyors, Google, Apple, etc.


| Oh, I think our tech is at least as bad: we certainly (so I'm told) have
| a lot more cameras than most countries

Good point. Now that I think of it, you
people are a bunch of weirdos, writing 1984
with one hand while spy with the other.

| Here, on the whole, the IP is allocated from a pool belonging to the
| ISP, AIUI.

That may make a difference. Our ISPs for
highspeed tend to allocate one IP for a long
period, changing it only often enough to
prevent us from running servers. The MaxMind
database software knows what town my IP
address is in. But they do change. And sometimes
they change dramatically, with one company
trading IPs with another.

"Paul" wrote

| A reverse lookup on yy.yy.zzz.zzz yields no hostname.
| It's not like the old days, where you'd get
| area23sanfran.att.com where the naming convention
| helped give away what city you were in.
|

That's nice. You have more privacy than most.
My ISP gives thorough info with a hostname
resolution. A lot of them do. Road Runner, for
instance, will give the area. For instance:
socal.res.rr.com [s. calif.]
rochester.res.rr.com [ Rochester NY area]

Comcast, Bell South, RCN... most give away at least
the general location or state.