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The list of Yahoo's Top 10 all-time searches

March 8th 2010 05:32

The history of accessible online search engines, boys and girls, goes way back to the pre-Gen Y days of 1995.

Oh, yes, you can argue, as they do here, that the concept of hypertext and memory extension can be traced to Vannevar Bush's wonderfully crazy data storage ideas in 1945 ...

And you can argue that the first online search engine was Archie (archives — get it?), created in 1990 by a Montreal university student named Alan Emtage ...

And you can argue that Excite, introduced in 1993, and Lycos, Webcrawler, Galaxy and Altavista, all introduced in 1994, are worthy of mention ...

But the truth is that the only really important moment in search engine history that does not feature the word Google came in April 1994 when David Filo and Jerry Yang the Yahoo! Directory.

And now Yahoo!, the company with the exclamation mark in its name which has generated much debate about whether or not it is grammatically correct to use a comma after it to denote a pause, is celebrating its 15th birthday.

As part of its birthday celebrations, Yahoo! has produced a list of the 10 most popular searches in its 15-year history. The list is a fascinating insight into the things we think about. Take out the predictable disasters, and we are a banal lot.

The Yahoo! 15-year Top 10

1. September 11

2. Cloning

3. Iraq war

4. Saddam Hussein

5. Harry Potter book releases

6. Michael Jackson death

7. Steve Irwin death

8. Tsunami

9. Enron scandal

10. The Millennium

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: History, Internet, Technology

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The things they say about geeks

March 15th 2009 08:39

If at first you don’t succeed, call it Version 1.0.

Unknown

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
Unknown

How could this be a problem in a country where we have Intel and Microsoft?

Al Gore (on Y2K)

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning.

Rick Cook, Wizardry Compiled

I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
Unknown

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history — with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.

Mitch Ratcliffe, ratcliffeblog.com

I may have invented it, but Bill (Gates) made it famous.

David Bradley (inventor of the Ctrl Alt Del keystroke combination)

The box said ‘Requires Windows 95 or better’. So I installed Linux.
Unknown

There never was a chip, it is said, that Bill Gates couldn't slow down with a new batch of features.

James Coates

Girls are like internet domain names — the ones I like are already taken.

Unknown

Software is like sex — it’s better when it’s free.

(attrib.) Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel

Hacking is like sex. You get in, you get out, and hope that you didn’t leave something that can be traced back to you.

Unknown

Alcohol and calculus don’t mix. Never drink and derive.

Unknown

The WWW is exciting because Microsoft doesn't own it and, therefore, there's a tremendous amount of innovation happening.

Steve Jobs

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

Bill Gates

You know it’s love when you memorize her IP number to skip DNS overhead.

Unknown

If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a UNIX user to show you how it's done.

Scott Adams

Linux? You can get a less powerful system, but it will cost you more.

Unknown

We are preparing to think about contemplating preliminary work on plans to develop a schedule for producing the 10th Edition of the Unix Programmer's Manual.

Andrew Hume

A printer consists of three main parts: the case, the jammed paper tray and the blinking red light.

(Attrib.) Todd Van Hoosear

Software undergoes alpha testing as a first step in getting user feedback. Alpha is Latin for "doesn't work".

Unknown

jaypeeonline.net, nickelkid.net, www-ee.ccny.cuny.edu, urbandictionary.com; image: www.1stopgeekshop.com

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Geeks, Internet, Technology

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The things they say about Microsoft

March 15th 2009 08:39

If you asked me to name the three scariest threats facing the human race, I would give the same answer that most people would: nuclear war, global warming and Windows.

Dave Barry

Bill Gates is a monocle and a Persian cat away from being the villain in a James Bond movie.

Dennis Miller

Now if Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed ... oh, he does.

Unknown

The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place.

Douglas Adams

The nice thing about Windows is that it does not just crash, it displays a dialog box and lets you press 'OK' first.

Arno Schaefer

People say that if you play Microsoft CDs backwards, you hear satanic things, but that’s nothing, because if you play them forwards, they install Windows.

Unknown

If rebooting to solve software problems had been unacceptable to the Windows using community, Microsoft would not exist today.

Carol Spears

The only thing that I'd rather own than Windows is English, because then I could charge you two hundred and forty-nine dollars for the right to speak it.

Scott McNealy

Failure is not an option — it comes bundled with Windows.

Unknown

The ordinary person is like an ordinary 18th century piece of farm equipment — say, a wheelbarrow. He operates without much self-awareness. He will know he is in need of repair when his wheel falls off. But the hypochondriac is like a wheelbarrow designed by Microsoft. He has constant two-way communication between his body and himself. He is trying to perform ordinary tasks, such as lumbering up a hill with a load of fertilizer, when suddenly an icon flashes to tell him that rust has been detected on the starboard cotter pin.

Gene Weingarten

Too many 'innovators', especially in the US, are resting on their laurels collecting government monopoly profits. At least Microsoft got their monopolies with good old-fashioned misleading marketing, channel strong-arm tactics and predatory pricing. They worked for it!

Geoff Parker

Unix, MS-DOS, and Windows: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Matt Welsh

We think our software is far more secure than open-source software. It is more secure because we stand behind it, we fixed it, because we built it. Nobody ever knows who built open-source software.

Steve Ballmer

When you say, "I wrote a program that crashed Windows," people just stare at you and say, "Hey, I got that with the system, for free."

Linus Torvalds

Windows 98 (n): 32-bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16-bit patch to an 8-bit operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor, written by a 2-bit company that can't stand for 1 bit of competition.

Stan Brown

Windows supports general-purpose non-Microsoft applications in the same way that a rope can be said to support someone who will be soon hanged.

Jeff Holtzman

I love the way Microsoft follows standards. In much the same manner that fish follow migrating caribou.

Paul Tomblin

In a world without fences and walls, who needs Gates and Windows?

Unknown

jaypeeonline.net, nickelkid.net, www-ee.ccny.cuny.edu, urbandictionary.com; image: www.mediabistro.com

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