Google Instant & Google Autocomplete

[spyderspyder]

'Google Instant' is the latest step in the march towards completely telling us what we want, how we will find it, and where...

It provides results even before you start typing and also allows you to quickly view results for autocomplete suggestions - it's "Searching for the TI (Thinking Impaired)".

Google Instant will be introduced to users across the world in a phased manner - an internet version of, "Today, the USA - tomorrow, the world!", as somewone once said.

If you already have Google Instant, you can turn it off by clicking the link next to the search box on any search results page, or by by going to "Search settings".

If you don't yet have it in your region, and you want to try it, go here: http://www.google.com/instant/



"Autocomplete"
No matter what you do in "Search settings", as soon as you start to type anythng in the Google search box, a list of Autocomplete suggestions starts to appear (because Google reckons that you don't really know what you want to search for, so Google is going to tell you!)

If you like this feature, fine. If not - hard luck!
With the introduction of Google Instant, the option to enable/disable Autocomplete has disappeared from the "Search settings" page. But there is a way around it (until Google put a block on it...).

If, like me, you have a permanent link in your Bookmarks or Favorites to Google, change the URL in the link by adding "webhp?complete=0&hl=en" on the end. (Also, uncheck "Remember search and form history" in your browser.)

Example:
If your link is to http://www.google.com, change it to,
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0

If you have a regional link (e.g., mine was http://www.google.co.uk/) again, just add webhp?complete=0
(e.g., mine is now, http://www.google.co...ebhp?complete=0)


That will help to keep them at bay - until the next attack!
(I always said that moving away from DOS 6 was a bad idea.)

Cheers,
s.

PS: If you also hate the ballooning, leaping-out effects now infesting a Google Images search, this can be suppressed by a script in Greasemonkey (which everyone should play with - it's fun):
https://addons.mozil...efox/addon/748/, or,
http://www.greasespot.net/

[alex28]

awesome post! thumbs up!!

[DrJackson]

'Google Instant' is the latest step in the march towards completely telling us what we want, how we will find it, and where...

It provides results even before you start typing and also allows you to quickly view results for autocomplete suggestions - it's "Searching for the TI (Thinking Impaired)".
[...]

You've forgot to mentioned WHEN... which is also important.

[...]
(I always said that moving away from DOS 6 was a bad idea.)
[...]

DOS 6 and a 5,2'' floppy disk I guess, right?

doc.

[spyderspyder]

"DOS 6 and a 5,2'' floppy disk..."
Not that old-fashioned: 3.5" floppies!

Meanwhile, I notice that by this afternoon, the Instant/Autocomplete aspects have been removed from the ...co.uk/ address - the same thing happened with the recent introduction of pictures as background. Maybe they floated it as a trial, to see what the reactions would be.

s.

[DrJackson]

For various reasons , I had today to reinstall (using first a CTRL-ALT-DEL main option, then the good old one format c: ) The Great Microsoft Product Of All The Time, I mean some windows version.

Of course, now I'm trying to install back all applications that I've had before.

And of course, I must pay attention to all options, sub options, checked or unchecked controlls otherwise:

...Yahoo messenger will install yahoo toolbar, will make yahoo default search engine, will make...
...java will install complementary Google Toolbar...
...AVG antivirus will try to install Google Toolbar too...
...Facebook will ask you to be "friend" with..., and with...
...and so on...

You have PC, you have trouble!

And now, I can hear an wisper: that is because you have WINDOWS .

doc.

[alex28]

That's why 2 weeks ago i permanently switched to Ubuntu... and i've never been happier :P

[DrJackson]

They say that came the day when Bill Gates dies and goes to Judgement.

There St. Peter greets him:
- Bill dude, for what you did to whole world with your Windouze, you should burn in depths of hell, but I do not know why it was offered you the chance to choose where you will spend the afterlife: in heaven or hell.

Just then an angel came to take him on Bill's hand and carried him to heaven.

There, Bill saw something like a small park where some old people supplied with food some dead birds.
Angel said:
- This is Heaven.

Bill crooked nose:
- Well ... Heaven should look like this?
Let me see what is on hell!

Angel takes him by the hand and lead him to hell.
In hell, great joy, partying, drinking, women.

Billy:
- Wow, well ... here's mine. Here I want to stay ... in hell.

And do not get to finish talking, that suddenly finds himself plunged up to his neck in lava.
With his last power, he shouted to the departing angel:

- Hey, angel, you shown me before something else!
-What can I say, that was the demo version!

My first Third Kind Encounter with LINUX was 10-11 years ago (RedHat 6 or something).
And wasn't a happy one, because I managed to waste all my work that I was doing using Windows and other related Windows aplications. (because hard disk partitions, because my fault , because some other reason. I had a @@@@@@ whole month working to recover or making back all my and other's work :blink: ).
Anyway, since then, I never touch something called Linux or related to Linux.

Till now, when I start to think if it doesn't exist some other options instead of Windows.
But I'm a little bit worried about Linux, because lack of drivers for PC components. I've search for linux drivers for my PC, and I didn't found them all.
So..., right now, I must be happy with Bill Gates product.


Ok. I said above about format c: option.
That was because I have Seagate manufactured hard disks. 1.5 T. And HD with Windows primary partition decided to die! Without any warnings!
My luck was that on that partition I had only OS and some few other things, not so important.
But now I'm in position to think to change all HD.
Can you imagine how happy I am now?

doc.

P.S. I guess we'd just hijacked spyderspyder's post! OOOPS! :D

[spyderspyder]

"I guess we'd just hijacked spyderspyder's post! OOOPS!"

That's true - but digression is the spice of colloquy.




I have only once had a HDD die, and it was completely unexpected - and therefore quite disastrous.

I did a reboot of the PC, and... Nothing! That was it - dead!

I went out and got me a new one, but bought two identical drives, which I marked A and B.

I fitted HD A, installed Windows, all my software and files, etc
.
When all was up and running I copied HD A to HD B, using the excellent, free, DiskCopy, giving me a cloned backup.

(Diskcopy takes about an hour to do a sector-by-sector copy of a 160GB disk, and is so easy to use.)

I have since bought another HD of the same model (HD C) and once a month I copy the working HD to both spares, and rotate which one is in service. (At the moment, HD C is in use, with A & B a as backups.)

Every 24 hours, I sync. my documents and files to two USB hard drives, which takes no time at all using SyncBack (again, free and a super program).


So...
I have two clone backups of my working HD, never more than a month out of date.
I have two sync'd backups of my documents and all other working files (including downloads and subs not yet hard-copied to DVD) which are never more than 24 hours out of date.

Belt and braces? You bet! But I sleep better.

And, if I buy a new PC, I can just put one of my HDs into it and have my familiar, and much loved, Win XP (which is heavily tweaked, especially to make it look and feel exacly like Win98!).

The only trouble is, I actually enjoy re-installing Windows...
And all my favourite software, like Vobsub, WMP, STW, MPC, MS Office...
(Most of which won't run on Linux, of course - hardly surprising, as it represent less than 1% of world wide OS usage, and so is not catered for by most software producers. )

s.

[alex28]

Dr Jackson, here's what to do.

(this method does not affect your Windows filesystem - it just installs Ubuntu like you would install any other Windows application)
(I said the same about drivers and stuff.. since my last experience was 2 years ago with Fedora.. but things changed and Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distro out there. There's a big community that releases lots of useful stuff - info, drivers, apps)

Go to: http://www.ubuntu.co...ubuntu/download
Download the desired version (32, 64). You'll end up with an ISO image.
Mount the image with Daemon tools or some other desired application (or just extract it with WinRAR)
Inside the iso you'll find a file called wubi.exe (Ubuntu installer for Windows). Run that file.



Select the Drive, Language and Installation Size. Set your username and password. Select ubuntu as Desktop Environment.
Hit Install.

Ubuntu will be installed like a normal Windows application. You'll have to reboot your computer in order for the installer to finish the job.
When rebooting you'll have dual boot. It will ask you what OS you want to start: Ubuntu or Windows.

If you want to get rid of Ubuntu or the dual boot prompt, simply go back to Windows, Control Panel, Add remove programs / Programs and Features and uninstall Wubi like you would uninstall any other Windows program.
It's that simple

(also, i would recommend a Live CD.. where you don't have to install anything, but you may end up burning a CD for nothing)


About software... my Ubuntu Software Center is showing: 29431 items. 29430 are free (Games, office apps, media players, 3D modeling apps.. you name it). Most of the programs that run on Windows don't run on Linux but you can:

1. Open them with Wine
2. Find an alternative ( http://wiki.linuxque...indows_software )

Edited October 1, 2010 by alex28
added some new info

[DrJackson]

[...]
When all was up and running I copied HD A to HD B, using the excellent, free, DiskCopy, giving me a cloned backup.

(Diskcopy takes about an hour to do a sector-by-sector copy of a 160GB disk, and is so easy to use.)

I have since bought another HD of the same model (HD C) and once a month I copy the working HD to both spares, and rotate which one is in service. (At the moment, HD C is in use, with A & B a as backups.)

Every 24 hours, I sync. my documents and files to two USB hard drives, which takes no time at all using SyncBack (again, free and a super program).
[..]

You don't have a PC, you have a server at home!

Well, I'm not so woried about data on my HDD.

8-9 years ago, I was in charge with what means PC at my work, i don't know, maybe 25 - 30 PC all in all.
In a day of March 24, a PC from money office , suddenly had required my presence.
Why?
Because a virus who erase boot FAT (file alocation table) and deleted all partition that was made on that HDD.

It was fun and fun, all girls that has using that PC became yelow at face. Last backup it was made 2 month before that happened.
Of course, what I told them, well, wasn't so nice, but...

Anyway, I start to search for some software, trying to recover data from that HDD.
And I found Lost and Found.
It is a program that work with something like a DOS prompt, (from floppy disks, need a startup disk and so on) and recover data even HDD it was formated 2-3-4-5 times!
It is an amaizing software - especially when you don't needed!

Shall I tell you that in next year, on March 24, something happened on a PC in a financial office?

Well, I start to think WHY it happened, and why just on that PC.
I finaly descovered that it was an WinXP designed virus, so I made another start partition, with Win95 as OS, special for one financial aplication (an aplication writen in COBOL), also having WinXP for some other aplication needed at that office. (that virus was came with updates from that aplication. It was no problem in all rest of time, but if it came March 24.... )
And I had no more trouble after that!

But that was 8-9 years ago!

I said about SEAGATE HDD.
To be honest, they have a product, SeaTools for Windows, that it try to recover bad sectors, restore clusters, format disks and so on.
It is recomanded to used it in prompt comand option (that means a boot CD, it will do it itself.)
It was worked one time, but now I'm too lazy to do it once more


Anyway, your story need to be closely studied.

doc.

[DrJackson]

[...]
Go to: http://www.ubuntu.co...ubuntu/download
Download the desired version (32, 64).
[...]

I've already downloaded in the morning!

It need another partition or I can install in same partition where Windows is? (Hmmm,.... stupid question )

doc.

[alex28]

as i said, it`s installed like any other windows application. It asks for installation size.. and for example selecting 10GB will make 10GB on your drive C for example. Those 10 will be used as the file system for Ubuntu.

You can easily remove it from Add Remove and everything will be like before :-)

[spyderspyder]

I had that on the PC for about 6 months, but never really got around to playing with it, so in the end I took it off.

Similarly, I keep thinking of putting Ubuntu on my laptop, but again, never seem to get around to it - especially as the only time I turn on the laptop it's to try out something before putting it on the PC!

s.

[DrJackson]

[...] Those 10 will be used as the file system for Ubuntu.

That it is what I'm afraid for!
Those Seagate HDD seem to be a little fragile, having two different kind of file sistem on them I guess will be too much.:blink:
I will try to recover the broken one. Hmmm,... work, work, work .

You can easily remove it from Add Remove and everything will be like before :-)

Really? It will delete also linux partition, make it back as NTFS (or some other Win FAT) and add back to main partition?
Smart Linux!

doc.

[spyderspyder]

"It will delete also linux partition, make it back as NTFS (or some other Win FAT) and add back to main partition?"

There is no partition created.

Your existing HD partition status is not affected, neither is your existing Windows system.

Wubi (Ubuntu Desktop installer) will install Ubuntu just like any other program or application.
Once installed, you can boot into it instead of Windows, and run linux-compatible applications in it.

You can uninstall it, like any other application, via Start/.../CP/Add or Remove Programs.

Also, you don't need to burn any disks, or mount any images if you download the "Windows Installer" version (wubi.exe) from http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/windows-installer.
wubi.exe will install the desktop version, just as you would with any other program.

(If you download the .iso file, then you will have to burn a disk with it, extract it to a usb stick, or mount it on a virtual drive - but why bother, when all that means is extra work to arrive at the same destination as downloading wubi.exe?)

Try it - you have nothing to lose, apart from a bit of space on your HD, and about 3 minutes spent installing it.

NB: Always make a Windows System Restore Point before installing anything new, so that should anything be changed you can always restore things to as they were. (This is just a good rule, and nothing especially to do with this particular app.)

s.

PS: Seagate hard drives are no more "fragile" (whatever that means) than any others in general use.

[DrJackson]

Righ now, I need a big, big hammer, to end suffering to a stupid, lunkhead, mooncalf, blockhead, poorly done 250 G Seagate HDD.