Re: OED, CD-ROMS, Hard drives, etc.

[Harmon Seaver hseaver@xxxxxxxx]

Thomas A. Robertson wrote:
>
>>
> Is this the kind of application Digital's AltaVista could work in. If you are
> not familiar with it, go to www.altavista.digital.com and check it out. They
> are making a similar product for use on our PCs and I plan to install it next
> week.

  Altavista's search engine -- as well as every other WWW search
engine (although I haven't looked at others recently) -- is seriously
flawed. It's Boolean logic simply isn't. I think what Robert is seeking
is something more on the order of the search engine used by Dialog, or
even the Notis library system. In other words, if you enter a search
with the line "cats AND dogs" you get a return with both, not 10,000
hits containing one or the other -- something the web search engines
can't seem to do very well. And then, of course, beyond that, you want
limiters for all and sundry types -- dates, proximity, wildcards, etc.


--
Harmon Seaver hseaver@xxxxxxxx hseaver@xxxxxxxx
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The fundamental delusion of humanity is that I am in here -- and you
are out there.
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Copyright, Harmon F. Seaver, 1997. License to distribute this post is
available to Microsoft for US$1,000 per instance, or local equivalent.
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