in reply to PerlMonks and Google

I am really outraged.

If you do a search for crazyinsomniac on google, you'll get two pages full of results, with most of them cached.

In fact, if you do a search on any particular user from the monastery, and throw in perl monk, you'll get their homenode.

I for one do not appreciate having a history of my homenode available a 3 months after it's last been updated.

Can't we stop google from doing this?

I really really would like to prevent this. It does not seem to me like they asked permission, and this has to violate some kind of copywright law. The web is supposed to be ever changing, and it really pisses me off when people try to take snapshots for 'commercial' use, yes i consider it commercial use, without permission.

UPDATE:
Yes, google's cache feature is useful, and yes I do like it and use it everyday, and yes I could just not post information in a public arena, BUT I still don't like it and feel they should ask or say someplace:

Hey baby, we're a caching your goodies, so beware.

UPDATE: (April 26, 2001, 11:10am PST)
I do appreciate all the responses and what not, but you can't blame me for being paranoid. That is what sleep deprevation (among other things) does to you.

 
___crazyinsomniac_______________________________________
Disclaimer: Don't blame. It came from inside the void
perl -e "$q=$_;map({chr unpack qq;H*;,$_}split(q;;,q*H*));print;$q/$q;"

  • Comment on (crazyinsomniac) Re: PerlMonks and Google

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Re: (crazyinsomniac) Re: PerlMonks and Google
by MeowChow (Vicar) on Apr 01, 2001 at 10:32 UTC

    You've got to be kidding!

    I'm sure I'm not the only one here who thinks Google's cached results are an immensly useful feature. I use them daily; perhaps hourly.

    If I don't want to make information publicly available or archived, I simply don't put it online, ever, in any form. I don't believe you can have it both ways; you can't advocate a free, searchable, enlightening and informative internet, while crying "copyright violation!" when you spot a stale about me page in some search enginge's web-cache. Perhaps they are violating copyright law; well so much the better, and kudos to them.

    Yes, Google is commercial, but they are really the only search engine built by and for people with Clue, and that makes them Good Guys, in my book. If Google hears enough complaints of this sort, they will certainly relent, and become another worthless fenced-in MSN/aol-style portal. That would be a very sad day, for users of Google and for the internet at large. 

       MeowChow                                   
               s aamecha.s a..a\u$&owag.print
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Re: (crazyinsomniac) Re: PerlMonks and Google
by merlyn (Sage) on Apr 03, 2001 at 08:16 UTC
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Re: (crazyinsomniac) Re: PerlMonks and Google
by Malkavian (Friar) on Apr 01, 2001 at 07:11 UTC
    In a nutshell, I don't believe we can. Google is as useful as it is because of that caching facility.
    As for it violating copyright law, I think that was already decided that it didn't, as otherwise you'd find all companies that operated a webcache violated that copyright.
    Personally, I don't have any issues at all with cached copies of stuff appearing on google (interestingly enough, it seems to have archived stuff from the chatbox too.. I found an old comment of mine appearing on there on a search for "Malkavian perl monk")..
    Bear in mind, it only appears if someone's actively looking for that particular data.
    If someone is actually interested in looking for Malkavian the Perl Monk, I'm pretty sure they'd come to the Perl Monks site, and look at my home node.
    If someone's interested enough in me to go and look me up on a search engine, I think I'd count myself flattered. :)
    The idea behind Google's web cache is that quite frequently, some very interesting stuff is lost, either by user account shutdown at universities, or machines temporarily falling off the internet. In those cases, google offer a snapshot of this data for a time (won't be forever, as they don't have infinite space to store it), under the understanding it's a cache, and thus likely out of date, but still allows you a glimpse of what otherwise wouldn't be reachable.
    Anyhow, that's just my take on it.

    Cheers,

    Malk
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Re: (crazyinsomniac) Re: PerlMonks and Google
by little (Curate) on Apr 01, 2001 at 18:29 UTC
    yep, simply tell the search robots to not to follow, whether in the html header or in the robots.txt.
    And just by the way, I think Google would even like to be not in need to also index more or less usefull information about us.
    If you have your own homepage, well let Google search it. But as it is here we can not ask for anyones permission, which would be needed as the person cannot intervent anyhow and cannot stop search engines like google from indexing things that belong somwhat also to privacy.
    Otherwise we prevent perlmonks from saying something about themselfes in their homenodes.
    But however I might think :
    Have a nice day
    All decision is left to your taste
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Re: (crazyinsomniac) Re: PerlMonks and Google
by batmonk (Scribe) on Apr 01, 2001 at 08:03 UTC

    If you don't want in a cache, then don't post it in a public arena. If it ain't in google's cache, then it'll be somewhere else.

    Of course, you could use frames, I suppose. Those are a lot harder to cache.

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