Previous entry: "4-Jan-2002 -- Magic SysRq Key" WebWord Home Page Next entry: "5-Jan-2002 -- Book Review: Designing from Both Sides of the Screen"

01/04/2002 Archived Entry: "4-Jan-2002 -- Operating System Sucks-Rules-O-Meter"

Operating System Sucks-Rules-O-Meter -- "This operating system quality and approval metric is based on a periodic AltaVista search for each of several operating systems, directly followed by "sucks", "rules", or "rocks"." (Comments: This is based on Altavista searches. Fine. However, I wonder how the results would look based on Google searches?)

Replies: 7 comments

In case you were wondering, here are the Google results:

linux sucks 145,000
linux rocks 84,000
linux rules 570,000

windows sucks 184,000
windows rocks 308,000
windows rules 1,310,000

Silly stuff, don't you think? Do these kinds of "ratings" erally matter at all? Are they valid at all?

Posted by John S. Rhodes @ 01/04/2002 11:12 PM EST

I'm sure the CIO considering Windows or Linux will use this as the ultimate guide - Not!

It's amusing, but of no real world relevance whatsoever.

People still use Altavista? Apparently, they're finally indexing web pages again. That's good news, considering that their indexes have been stagnating for several months. (Reference: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7630946.html )

I don't know why they bother any more. The battle of the search engines has been won by Google, who can't seem to do anything wrong. Pity. I still remember how they were the first "real" search engine on the Net (as opposed to Yahoo, which was just a directory.)

Then Altavista went "portal" with a vengeance, and totally messed up their site (anyone remember stupid hyperlinks like "shop for 'removing coffee stains' at BarnesAndNobel.com' ?) Years later, they learned their lesson and introduced a home page without all the e-commerce plugs. They even introduced a plain text search called Raging Search. (www.raging.com) But it was too late.

There's a lesson in this. Don't try to be everything to everyone. It just doesn't work.

I'm curious: how many of you still use Altavista as your primary search engine, if you use it at all?

Posted by MadMan @ 01/05/2002 12:50 AM EST

OK, I was slightly off the mark there. Lycos, WebCrawler, Excite and Infoseek were live before Altavista. However, AV was the most famous at the time.

Posted by MadMan @ 01/05/2002 12:56 AM EST

Oh Google can do something wrong. Their e-mail autoresponder gives a blurb about their reading every e-mail and that they try to respond personally when they can. However, since they became popular I've noticed the number of personal responses drop to near zero (in my case). Plus, after I gave them a list of usability issues they said they'd give me a free t-shirt, but I'm still waiting. (I live for free t-shirts.) I will retell this story every chance I get because I relish wallowing in such petty whining.

Posted by JS @ 01/05/2002 03:11 AM EST

I too was promised a google pack on two seperate occasions but am yet to see anything arrive.

Posted by Eric Scheid @ 01/05/2002 09:19 AM EST

These things do NOT matter at all !
Cus ppl today dosnt search on the net after " rules" and things like that..
so..

Posted by tech @ 03/29/2002 10:38 PM EST

These things do NOT matter at all !
Cus ppl today dosnt search on the net after " rules" and things like that..
so..

Posted by tech @ 03/29/2002 10:38 PM EST

Subscribe to Webword.com
Receive the best free usability newsletter on the Internet.

URL: http://www.WebWord.com/weblog/