New open source Search engine!

[viking60]

Duckduckgo is a new open source search engine. It is a very good alternative too Google and it performs very well even for local data. DuckDuckGo is a new search engine focused on relevant results and respecting user privacy. Actually a mash-up of several other sites like Wikipedia, About, Bing, and Yahoo, DuckDuckGo also uses it's own web crawler: the DuckDuckBot. DuckDuckGo uses what it calls Zero-click search results to try to guess what you are looking for and give it to you directly in your search results

Mesa like. It has earned a place as my new start page. I was really charmed by the ip search; it brings your IP No. before the countless other hits.
Nice
I belive they call that zero click information.

Here is some more info

[rolf]

I looked at this, then to see if I could set it as one of the search engine choices in Seamonkey. Nothing point and click that I see, maybe in about:config There are some tempting analogs for the other search engines but it's too complex for me to want to play with it. More research needed.

[viking60]

I had to deinstall seamonkey but it sure was easy in Firefox.

[rolf]

I did find a Firefox plugin and someone else who wanted the choice in Seamonkey. Then, I found a blog with the howto I needed and I can try out Duckduckgo as my search engine: http://www.snork.ca/?cat=3

[rvause]

This is nice. I especially like the lack of tracking respecting users privacy better. The !Bang searching is good too.

[viking60]

This is nice. I especially like the lack of tracking respecting users privacy better. The !Bang searching is good too.

Yeah that is very important to me too as it should be to everyone. Privacy is a rare commodity on the edge of extinction.

[gabossy]

What do governments use open source software for? I need to find information on the government usage of open source software for a report. Any serious answers are appreciated. Thank you for the help.

[viking60]

Ok The list is long and distinguished. I'll give it a try:

The Millitary:
The military wants in on the cost savings, speed and flexibility which OSS offers to users, as opposed to being stuck waiting on proprietary software vendors to modify their tools when changes are needed.
Licensing issues may well be important too. The military might well benefit from the independence of a software vendor.
Speed and flexibility is of the essence: http://www.networkworld.com/community/b ... -secure-en

Nasa:
Use it to make their efforts more known. So that they get more attention to their hard work, and to increase the quality of the software they already have developed.
http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/opensource/
They also feel that Open source licensing has many advantages:
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/Resources/Softw ... ource.html

Here is an article you should read:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/030108-ossi.html

The cost reduction is a major argument for the cities and governments. Like the French parliament and the city of Munich. And in general the EU does not want the dependencies to one or two major software vendors, therefore the use of Open source is encouraged.
Governments and Cities use it for their everyday work like handling building projects, taxes, communication, schools, managing official buildings, their own employees and citizens +++++
It also is a major point for governments to have a standardized document format. The standard has to be independent.
And there also is the argument that governments handle huge amounts of data. Linux is the most appropriate operating system to handle the super computers with a market share of 89%.

Linux is open source but open source like OpenOffice is also used on Windows even if it is proprietary.
It is used in all the areas the governments are active in including intelligence:
https://www.opensource.gov/public/conte ... JjZS5nb3Yv

I am sure there is a lot more to say about this - but maybe it will get you started.

And welcome to the forum

[Snorkasaurus]

Greetings Folks!

I am the one responsible for the rants at snork.ca and came across this post as I was checking out links to my site. I realize I am necromancing a thread that is three and a half years old, but I hope I might be able to provide some updated information that would be relevant today.

Duckduckgo is a new open source search engine. It is a very good alternative too Google and it performs very well even for local data.

I actually used DuckDuckGo for the bulk of my Internet searching up until mid 2013. A few things bothered me, and I eventually left DDG. My biggest beef was that the search syntax at DDG did not always work well, especially if you were using exclusions or quoted phrases. I came across a few instances where I would specifically exclude a word and DDG would then float the results with that word to the top (yes, it was prioritizing what I didn't want). I should note that as I was typing this I tried a few examples of "broken searches" that I had previously recorded and they didn't seem too bad. I may have to re-examine how well the syntax at DDG works now.

On a related note, on DDG I had set my location to Canada and found that there were numerous times when a .com would be presented before a .ca domain for the same company. I just tested this one and it is still the case... for example, if you set your location to Canada and then search for "cabela's" you will see that cabelas.com shows up before cabelas.ca.

So I started using StartPage for my searches. They basically anonymize your search queries (which come from Google) and do not track or bubble the same way DDG doesn't. I started testing them out in the spring of 2013 and have now pretty much switched over completely. I must say though that some search results seem kind of limited, an image search is a good example of this... just try an image search and see how many images you get compared to what Google presents for the same search.

I did find a Firefox plugin and someone else who wanted the choice in Seamonkey. Then, I found a blog with the howto I needed and I can try out Duckduckgo as my search engine: http://www.snork.ca/?cat=3

I still have my post about adding DDG as a search engine in SeaMonkey, and it still works as far as I know... the entry can be found here. I am in fact still using SeaMonkey but have elected to stay at version 2.8 because it seems to be getting a little bloated since they decided to start releasing new versions almost as quickly as they release FireFox versions. If anyone else is still using an older version of SeaMonkey you can find a few of my favourite plugins that are still compatible here.

This is nice. I especially like the lack of tracking respecting users privacy better. The !Bang searching is good too.

When I left DDG this was the biggest thing I missed! I only used a couple dozen of the !Bang shortcuts, but I used them often enough that I found myself wanting to go back to DDG just for the !Bang list. But all is not lost, you can actually create your own !Bang list (with ANY syntax in fact) with SeaMonkey's bookmarks. Using bjoernvold.com as an example you create a new bookmark like this:


Notice the !bj in the "keyword" field, and the %s at the end of the URL, these are the secret to making your own quickURLs. Now when you type

Code: Select all

!bj beer

in to your URL bar you will actually see this:

Notice how it fills in the entire URL for you to perform the search? Keyword bookmarks are quite powerful, for example you can create a shortcut to a regular "non-search" page by just leaving the %s off of the URL, or you can make up your own syntax with a different character if you prefer something other than "!". I actually created a !ddg shortcut so I could search DDG if I didn't want to use my default of StartPage.

Anyways, I am glad to see some fellow SeaMonkey users as well as people who see the value of not being tracked, bubbled, or recorded while searching the Internet. I hope this at least helps someone enjoy their browser a little more. :-)

Snork.

[viking60]

Welcome to the forum snorkasaurus!
This is great stuff - and I love the tips. Trying them all now...
Startpage looks good. I will add that to my browsers.

This works well in Firefox too. I changed the "syntax" to ?bj and it works like a charm.


(It will make it to the Tips and Tricks section in some form, I am sure - that is where we gather our treasures).

You are clearly an aspiring Search Engine Berserk

[Snorkasaurus]

Hey viking60,

Thanks for the welcome, and I'm glad you like the tips... hopefully they will serve some of the folks here well.

You are clearly an aspiring Search Engine Berserk

A raging search engine, browser, firewall, anti-spam, and security/privacy berserk I hope!

Have fun,
Snork.

[viking60]

Yupp that makes a short and snappy title:
SEBFASP- berserk