It is true that letting your money do the talking as an engine for social change is an over simplification. But it is way moar influential than voting because regardless of who you vote for the big companies are just going to nullify your vote by going to the seat of power and bribing the leaders with campaign contributions.

When the average person goes to the store and sees 20 different candy bars he thinks he has choice until he finds out all those candy bars are made by the same company. People are not computers... computers do not care about free will and choice but humans do... which you will notice most easily if you are placed in solitary confinement.

Any significant advancement in social behaviours require an individual to become aware but you cannot force the truth into someone so the most reliable means to enact change is to adopt healthier behaviours and to persuade by example. Most of my examples seem to depict extreme examples of the rich using their power to oppress the poor... while this has some truth on its face it is misleading.

You may remember I have stated that the ruling class is extremely stupid and it is. The notion that it has the ability subvert the will of millions is a gross over-estimation of their abilities. In most cases they are clinging to a system of government because a sudden shift in the balance of power would cause great suffering and chaos ( sort of like switching from Windows to Linux... sorry I saw an opening and couldn't help myself )

Don't despair and don't give up. Just because you seem alone in your beliefs for a better tomorrow does not mean you are. Take the necessary steps to help educate others and lead by example and with any luck others will CHOOSE to work for a better tomorrow with you. Ironically if it wasn't for the lies the media tells us the world would actually be a better place to live in because at crunch time people would not despair when society did not live up to the lies told to them by the media. Z/Z

I'll add my vote for duckduckgo. The worst result I ever got from google was when I searched for 'bookcases' and got 'hay racks', although it was a sort of triumph that they were English hay racks and not American ones!

Incidentally, if you wonder why it's called duckduckgo, it's short for duckduckgoose.

Its about associated ad revenues. Higher the rank (coming up first in a search), more revenues to google.

Far from being stupid, google (whose killer revenue generator is still advertising, is simply being very smart.

OK

So is it fair to say that Linux forums like this one have to pay Google in order to be listed among the search results? Don't get me wrong I don't think paying for things is wrong. I think the notion that I can only see the sites of the highest bidder is wrong primarily because there is a vast gap between what is good for the web owner and the web user. But I am totally wasting my time if I have to explain why subservience to a single search engine is a bad idea. Z/Z

Edit: Out of curiosity I tested Google vs. DuckDuckGo against one of my projects websites. The website I used for the test is a www with a .com extension ... I omitted the www and the .com extension in the search. The actual site name used is composed of three distinct proper English nouns. Eg: www.nounnounnoun.com

First I tried Google: I put nounnounnoun into the search line and this happened.

Showing results for : noun noun noun

Search instead for : nounnounnoun

If you keep Google's suggestion of noun noun noun then it will take you 5 pages to get to a link related to the proper site --- www.nounnounnoun.com

If you choose the alternate "search instead for" then Google will show you plenty of links that will lead to www.nounnounnoun.com

DuckDuckGo showed links for www.nounnounnoun.com by default when I entered nounnounnoun into the search line.

The example above is purely factual and in no way reflects my personal views and should not be construed as an endorsement of either search engine.

My site/forum is not Linux-related in the slightest ( with the possible exception of the hoster ) so I can and will not post a link to it on this forum... I do not allow unrelated solicitation on my forum as well. Z/Z

Probably the smartest thing Google ever did was to add "... of about 76,543,210" to their search count. Pure marketing.

If you want a few moment's idle amusement, patiently page-down to the end of their actual returned list. It will stop after about 300 entries. There actually are no more; the gigantic number is purely a fiction.

But, even at its very best, Google is nothing more than a keyword-search heuristic. It is convenient and ubiquitous, but it is not and it never has been very good.

IMHO, one of the very best content sites out there is http://dmoz.org, the Open Directory Project. It is based on the very simple idea that in order to compile a directory of information that is actually useful to humans ... you need a human being. And so, DMOZ currently says: 4,994,066 sites - 94,032 editors - over 1,009,904 categories. Every one of those "editors" is a real person.

Google succeeded in making itself "a brand," but I think that in the process of becoming Wall Street's Latest Darling they have lost track of the quality and effectiveness of their results. There are much better ways to search.

94k + editors sounds interesting... Imma give it a shot. My biggest beef is still content filtered by geographical location and backwards government legistlation ( without explanation as to why the content was blocked ).

Thankx. Z/Z

No.
(1) Google wont hike your rank for payment (not yet anyway).
(2) Sites like LQ are more forums etc. Look at commercial segments.

Its also about advertisers who fill up MY LQ screen with adverts suited to MY environment. ie. Indian education, hosting, marketing etc .. (Presently showing "Big Rock Hosting - starts at Rs. 79/ pm" above this reply box. They presumably pay the hoster of LQ to insert adverts based on the rank of LQ.

OK

Not publicly or openly.