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A recent thread in this forum complained that a particular issue was "ungoogleable" because of the vagueness of the words involved. This reminded me of a song I played in high school pep band that I tried to Google a while back and couldn't figure out how. The song title was ["A" Rock] (without the square brackets - I added them as pseudo-quotes because the double quotes ARE part of the title).
When I try to Google this, Google ignores the quotes, discards the "A" as an article adjective, and simply returns results for "rock" (which of course give me millions of results unrelated to this song). Any suggestions as to how I might find information about this song, if such even exists?
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DuckDuckGo also gives the same result.
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Yes, but giving useful and usable results doesn't make money for google!
Get with the program. eh?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I get results googling for ""A" Rock" song
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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Years ago my brother-in-law made me look for "The Sound of C", a song he remembered from his childhood.
I guess Google's gotten that much better since then, because right now the very first hit brings back the actual music video for the song. Back then...it was pretty much like looking for Vin Diesel's "XXX" (without being able to include Vin Diesel as part of the search term).
By the way, in this particular instance, the C's gotta stand for "crap". I've not included the link to spare you from that earworm.
This would make a good survey topic...what are your ungoogleable terms?
modified 24-Jan-20 11:52am.
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Over the years, Google has been through so many variations of "search languages" - interpretations of quoting, plusses, minuses and whathaveyou, and variants of fuzzy matching, that I have given up.
I came into Information Retrieval before Google - even before AltaVista! - and "grew up" with the ideals of completeness and precision: Strive for a result that contains all the documents that the user wants (the completeness part), and only those of interest to him (the precision part). Today, that ideal has been replaced with one of "Use any measures available to generate as high hit count as possible - only be sure include at least one (semi)relevant hit in the first page of twenty entries, because that is all the majority of users care to look at".
In pre-google days, there was an IR search language (I believe that it was/is an ISO standard) for specifying not only "exact this string", but also that terms should appear e.g. wihin the same sentence, or paragraph, or separated by at most 'n' other words, etc. I belive that AltaVista offered an "advanced search" option handling this language. But using that search language required a certain level of training. Common man really doesn't care much for learning to use advanced tools; everyting shall be immediately available. So Google, with its totally dumbed-down search for anything that resembles anything that you mention, won the hearts of the public. Obviously, the ability to claim a minimum of two million hits, whatever you ask for, is essential to the marketing.
I am not sure that this idea of mine for a party game is original: Set up teams, give them one search term, and see which team can generate the lowest google hit count when combining this with two other terms, restricted to some dictionary. It doesn't have to be Encyclopedia Americana - it could e.g. be limited to words appearing the latest edition of your company's marketing magazine. You could vary the game by giving not one but two "mandatory" search terms, and by varying the number of "freely chosen" terms from the accepted sources.
I never carried this through as an actual party game, but when I suggest it, it always provokes a combination of laughs and recognizing nods.
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Google's search results are always tailored towards an attempt to sell you something. Filtering generic search results against the profile they've collected on you as a consumer and only returning what they think is the most relevant.
More often than not, I'm searching for API documentation. So that fancy algorithm is completely lost on me when I'm searching, say, for Directory.GetAccessControl().
Honestly, Bing isn't looking all that bad these days.
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Unrealistic user requirements: there is no song called "A Rock".
Prior art: The Rock.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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Answer was landscape
View = landscape
Not a picture = not portrait
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You're back Monday!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I thought of that but couldn't justify it
"We can't stop here - this is bat country" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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But as the Russians say: Quantity is a quality in itself.
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Jörgen Andersson wrote: But as the Russians say: Quantity is a quality in itself.
...and you can't argue with someone that has an AK-47, either way you take that it's proof in point.
after many otherwise intelligent sounding suggestions that achieved nothing the nice folks at Technet said the only solution was to low level format my hard disk then reinstall my signature. Sadly, this still didn't fix the issue!
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just to screw things up:
quality is what? bug-freeness? beauty of the UI? optimality of inner loops? ....
quantity is? lines of code, number of modules?, depth of documentation? ....
even time: 10 hours of about-as-good-as-a-junior code, or 5 hours of expert-level code? ...
what about:
- number of problems solved?
- amount of [other peoples] bugs fixed (or found before release they happened)?
- thoroughness of testing?
- best at facing the customer?
- the one that bought most of the coffees and danishes?
- the one who oiled the squeaky wheels on the chairs?
... the one that cleaned up the most sh*t or made the least amount of it?
some things can't be quantified, and even those that can are rarely comparable.
anyway (from the comic books) we know that true hero's shun recognition,
so best leave them alone otherwise they may become uncomfortable and fly off forever.
after many otherwise intelligent sounding suggestions that achieved nothing the nice folks at Technet said the only solution was to low level format my hard disk then reinstall my signature. Sadly, this still didn't fix the issue!
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stop being difficult. 
Real programmers use butterflies
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How about: meets user requirements.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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maze3 wrote: Time + Quality of Code = great developer
Time + Quantity = developer that putting the time in.
Quantity != Quality
I agree with you, but - and this is maybe what Rockstar is looking for? - there's a "labor of love" element wherein the code is the primary idea of one person who is pouring blood sweat and tears out to bring this brilliant baby to life.
And that happens a lot, and I'd say so often in these cases it's quality and quantity and the dev gets grey hair over it (but also satisfaction)
and maybe that's who Rockstar is trying to pinpoint.
Just my $0.02
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: there's a "labor of love" element wherein the code is the primary idea of one person who is pouring blood sweat and tears out to bring this brilliant baby to life.
I call it, Ownership!
If I don't own it, I don't care about it at all. Other people making decisions, telling me what to do. Fine. Just type.
But, if I Own It then I am making the decisions and making it work and insuring there are no bugs.
Ownership! So few companies really understand that. Maybe it's impossible for a company to understand.
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Yeah, i think they're more interested in preserving their own ownership of your work.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Surely irrelevant, but is it just me, or is the article using "rock star" developer in the general sense, whereas you seem to be talking about Rockstar, as in, the developers of the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption series...?
(if I'm in that mindset, that's only because I've been playing a lot of GTA Online lately...I've finally discovered, after many years, that the Online component can actually be entertaining, if you manage to ignore the idiots who think the game is only about killing other players)...
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You're right. I thought they meant Rockstar. LOL
Real programmers use butterflies
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