http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_be ... bbles.html (It's about 9 minutes and it's an easy listen but you will want to be able to look at the screen at least when the screenshots are shown)

In the past I've been guilty of using http://lmgtfy.com/ for the occasional pithy quip. Even then I knew that a direct link or a lmgtfy link would eventually be a dead link and my post isn't likely to disappear because "everything on the internet is forever/permanent" (too many people have said basically the same thing for me to credit any one over the others).

I even knew that people outside the US (say China for example) might not have access to the same information I do.

Now I know that even on the day, at the minute I post the term or topic it does no good for me to google it first to make sure someone else could easily google it as I did. I have no assurance that just because someone is in the same country as me that they'll get the same search results.

I have subconsciously known of this was happening in bits and pieces for years but now it's a clear fact documented not just my vague impression of the situation.

I have no big wrapup or moral to sum this with. I just thought I'd share. I hope you found it informative.

Yeah, what's good for advertisement and my immediate entertainment is increasingly bad for my overall well being. Such things scare me more than Al Quaeda ever have, although that might not say much.

good find. thanks.

Very interesting.

I think user-oriented filtering is still better than censorship. But the thought of SkyNet subtly dumbing down our filter bubbles has crossed my mind too.

If we bring morality into the game, the problem becomes: who's morality. Who knows if the gatekeeper really wants what's best for me? So far, if I understand it correctly, it's mainly my own monkey on my back that's controlling the filter bubble. The less varied my clicking habit are, the less varied my future results are going to be.

Interesting. I hadn't really thought about radically different Google-results etc.

I think he addresses the problem from a different angle than I would though. The important thing is that we are aware of the fact that filtering is going on. I think we can do little to change it.

5-minutes ago I had no idea what "lmgtfy.com" is, and I still dont know its purpose. At first glance it looks like some kind of evil website that is there to infect PC's or steal data.

Can someone give a brief example of why someone would want to use it rather than Google itself or indeed a URL.


Andy

Hehe, it's not going to infect your PC.

To quote from the quick summary when you google "lmgtfy":

"[A website] for [retorting at] all those people who find it more convenient to bother you with their question rather than google it for themselves."

Imagine you are the highest paid HD engineer on the planet and some kid comes to your blog about HD tech and asks "What is RAID?" you as the blogger would likely ignore that question but one of your loyal readers might respond with

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=RAID

Or if they aren't feeling snippy they might just respond with

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

The advantage for the true neophyte is that lmgtfy literally tells them how to use google and they see the process and are prodded to explore the results.

You might think it's a waste of time but then again it's often a wast of time to answer highly technical questions on the web. Some people won't get it no matter how you explain a concept to them.

Oh and all of that assumed that you could be sure the first few hits in a google search would answer the stupid question. If the first page of google hits end up being about RAIDs on Osama Bin Laden or RAID bug spray then lmgtfy isn't going to help the "What is RAID" poster on a HD blog.

This would have been the more humorous response, Andy.

I see, its a tool to take the piss out of people who cant be bothered to use Google to search fore something that they might find on Wiki for example.

However this still does not seem to answer many "simple" questions that simply googling for does not often give you if what you want is not a very long Wiki article, but very basic abreviated explanation.

e.g. Wiki Says.

"RAID, an acronym for Redundant Array of Independent Disks (Changed from its original term Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks), is a technology that provides increased storage functions and reliability through redundancy. This is achieved by combining multiple disk drive components into a logical unit, where data is distributed across the drives in one of several ways called "RAID levels". This concept was first defined by David A. Patterson, Garth A. Gibson, and Randy Katz at the University of California, Berkeley in 1987 as Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks.[1] Marketers representing industry RAID manufacturers later attempted to reinvent the term to describe a redundant array of independent disks as a means of dissociating a low-cost expectation from RAID technology.[2]

RAID is now used as an umbrella term for computer data storage schemes that can divide and replicate data among multiple physical disk drives. The physical disks are said to be in a RAID array,[3] which is addressed by the operating system as one single disk. The different schemes or architectures are named by the word RAID followed by a number (e.g., RAID 0, RAID 1). Each scheme provides a different balance between two key goals: increase data reliability and increase input/output performance."

I would say.

"RAID is a way of improving drive performance, capacity and reliability. You need at least 2 identical HDD/SSD's to do this at the most basic level and /4 at higher levels. There are drawbacks and it can be complicated to do and if it is not fully understood do not attempt this as it can be risky."

Most people I can understand would read the first paragraph of what is on Wiki and quite rightly say that it does not answer anything. The second paragraph may be perfect in its defenition but again does not give a suitable answer for many people. My very simple answer is just that, the vast majority of people will ask what it is in the most basic sence and then be put off by what it actually entails - if someone is still interested then they will be interested enough to actually read through the complexeties and dull meaningless crap in that Wiki article.

What a website like Wiki could really do with is a very basic bit of text to answer the basic question of "what is RAID" - that I assume is why so many people ask that very question, because they have already seen the Wiki article and have been put off of reading through it by its sheer length. Either way, telling someone how to Google something although amusing might really not be what the end user wants to see.


Andy

OK, so you don't like Wikipedia's article layout. Here is another scenario.

Say you are on a PG rated site or don't want offensive text on your site and someone asks "Why do people always laugh when I say Rick Santorum?"

Someone could say http://lmgtfy.com/?q=santorum instead of having to explain in their own words why people think "santorum" is a "funny" word.