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Re: RE: RE: Great piece on RSS

• To: clbullar@i... ("Bullard, Claude L (Len)")
• Subject: Re: RE: RE: Great piece on RSS
• From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
• Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 11:00:59 -0400 (EDT)
• Cc: mc@x... ('Mike Champion'), xml-dev@l... ('xml-dev@l...')
• In-reply-to: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE0DF79C@h...> from "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" at Oct 10, 2002 09:44:19 AM

"Bullard, Claude L (Len)" scripsit:

> Google is a fine loose white pages.  A yellow 
> pages is still needed.  Discovering that a business 
> exists is the easy part.  Qualifying that business 
> is the hard part.   Frankly, I'd hate to see 
> Google get yanked into the second part of that 
> problem.  It's a good search engine.

I'm not sure that the white/yellow distinction actually applies to search
engines.  A physical white pages allows you to discover the network address
of an object for which you have a canonical name.  With yellow pages, you
can find network addresses based on looser criteria, which Google can do
just fine.

With a very few exceptions like doctors, yellow-pages books do nothing to
validate the inclusion of objects under specific categories.  If I pay for
a business listing and claim to be a small-engine repairer, I will be
listed as one, never mind that I know less about small-engine repair than
the average chimpanzee.  Similarly, card catalogues don't discriminate between
books that tell the truth and those that are full of the most improbable lies,
impartially listing them all under the same Dewey or Elsie code.

Maybe we just plain expect too much from any listings service.

-- 
There is / One art                      John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
No more / No less                       http://www.reutershealth.com
To do / All things                      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
With art- / Lessness                     -- Piet Hein

• References:
  • RE: RE: RE: Great piece on RSS
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>

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