Re: You Don't Have to Be Nuts to Be a Mathematician ...

From: David C. Ullrich (ullrich_at_math.okstate.edu)
Date: 07/15/04 

Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 08:54:56 -0500

On Thu, 15 Jul 04 11:44:43 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:

>In article <1089893941.5200@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>,
> Ioannis <morpheus@olympus.mons> wrote:
>>David C. Ullrich wrote:
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>> Just to verify I'd get nothing I added a random word
>>>
>>> "Charles Dickens " -novel -novelist -English -author gazebo
>>>
>>> and I got 300 hits - at this point I gave up.
>>>
>>> How does one say "not the one you think I want" in google?
>>[snip]
>>
>>ROTFL :-)
>
>You may laugh <grin> but this was always a pesky problem
>w.r.t. user interfaces and translations in the computer
>biz. Not knowing anything about the program or the
>programmers of google, I'd start with a
>
> "Charles Dickens " .NOT. "novel novelist English author"
>
>The list of -tokens is not well-phrased.

Well _that_ doesn't mean what you thought it did.
I used that for the query, got no hits, clicked on
Advanced Search. That appeared with

NOT novel-novelist-English-author

in the "with ALL of the words" box

and

Charles Dickens

in the "with the EXACT PHRASE" box
(and with the "WITHOUT the words" box empty.)

I didn't find an explanation of boolean operators
where they said I would. At http://www.google.com/apis/reference.html
it says or is OR while not is -. (And there is no and...)

>OTOH, google's
>approach is to assume a sort of usage of sites, from most
>to least, is the best way to deliver their service.
>
>So the command is trying to tell google to reverse the
>sort. I bet you can't tell it to do that.
>
>/BAH
>
>
>
>Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

************************

David C. Ullrich