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Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy

about.qwant.com

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Re: Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy

#121
post #99
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a search engine must run on the widest array of web browsers possible. For being a European search engine and based in France to boot, they should very well be aware of platforms which have minimal or no JavaScript support in their web browsers, like for example the classic AmigaOS. If someone with a platform like that tries to use their search engine to perhaps find a JavaScript enabled client, they couldn’t…

> For being a European search engine and based in France to boot, they should very well be aware of platforms which have minimal or no JavaScript support in their web browsers, I don't understand this statement. Is there less js-enabled browser in Europe, or in France?

Commodore Amiga and ATARI ST were big in France (and still are, if the demoscene contributions are anything to go by); In Europe, Amiga is still a thing. ATARI ST is still a thing. Neither of those have complete JavaScript support, if any. That’s where “the French connection” comes from in this context.

Re: Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I never experienced it, because if I want to force exact match results I simply place the error message within double quotes. Come on!!! This is not my first rodeo. I’ve been on the InterNet (yes, with a capital N) since 1993 and I use double quote searching all the time, except that in cases like these one gets zero results back.

It is not relevant that you were on the internet before Google even existed. Apparently you are the only person in the universe that regularly gets never-before-seen error messages. I feel for you, but I hope you stay away from any issue tracker I am involved in, because no matter your vast experience, the quality of your error reporting is downright poor. If exact match search is unable to find your error message, t…

It is not relevant that you were on the internet before Google even existed.

That’s where you’re wrong: I’ve used the double quotation marks search technique since before Google and I’ve known about it and used it since Google’s debut.

I already told you I’m not compiling anything and can’t give you a reproducible test case right now but you chose to disregard that; I’ve also told you what to do to reproduce the problem yourself (“attempt to compile GCC, get an error, search with Google with and without double quotation marks”), but you don’t want to do that because it’s a lot of work, I know, but that’s your problem and here’s why:

The burden is on you to show that there is a teapot orbiting the Sun.

that is why, since you’re wrong again: I’ve switched to “DuckDuckGo” as my primary search engine and rarely use Google any more since the results are nothing but advertising-soiled false positives; I don’t care whether you do something about it or not. Now, you might wisen up and take my feedback about exact or partial error searching earnestly or not. You wanted feedback, you got it; your move on what to do about it. Good luck.

Re: Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy

#123
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is so much behind the US in the IT-Sector. Isn’t that a sad truth, only made worse by the irony that a lot of us went to work in the States. A lot of Europe is still conceptually stuck in the pre-UNIX, lone desktop Windows/MS-DOS, early ’90’s era, while the rest of the world runs them by with macOS PC’s and iPads. Lots of European UNIX talent left for the States right at the cusp of the dot-com era and helped…

"A lot of Europe is still conceptually stuck in the pre-UNIX, lone desktop Windows/MS-DOS, early ’90’s era" So Europe is stuck in the 90's which somehow predates the 70's ?? .. "while the rest of the world runs them by with macOS PC’s and iPads" Buying istuff is somehow progressive?

You betcha: that stuff runs UNIX, doesn’t disrupt one’s concentration with modal windows and runs circles around Windows desktops performance-wise. For most people an iPad and web applications are apparently enough, which means they don’t need or want a Windows desktop PC any more.

The early ‘90’s computing paradigm with a lone desktop PC user and application isn’t cutting it any more. At the very least, one good thing came out of change.

Re: Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A lot of Europe is still conceptually stuck in the pre-UNIX, lone desktop Windows/MS-DOS, early ’90’s era" So Europe is stuck in the 90's which somehow predates the 70's ?? .. "while the rest of the world runs them by with macOS PC’s and iPads" Buying istuff is somehow progressive?

You betcha: that stuff runs UNIX, doesn’t disrupt one’s concentration with modal windows and runs circles around Windows desktops performance-wise. For most people an iPad and web applications are apparently enough, which means they don’t need or want a Windows desktop PC any more. The early ‘90’s computing paradigm with a lone desktop PC user and application isn’t cutting it any more. At the very least, one good thi…

"that stuff runs UNIX" osx and ios have an very old UNIX legacy but as they currently stand are extremely restrictive walled gardens completey controlled by a single giant avaricious corporation. If you were true to your ideas you'd be running Linux which is open, open source and btw is most popular in Europe, eg. being the OS used by the public sector in Germany. "doesn’t disrupt one’s concentration with modal windows" What? please give an example. Linux's UI can be configured however u want. "and runs circles around Windows desktops performance-wise" That is just nonsensical. To talk about performance you need to be comparing 2 specific things. Which things are you talking about? As an example, heres two things I'm comparing; For fun once at work we compared benchmarks between two new laptops each costing about €1400. My colleague had a macbook pro, I had a msi gs60. My laptop scored about 3 times as much in cpu performance and 5 times as much in a unigine valley graphics becnchmark. "The early ‘90’s computing paradigm with a lone desktop PC user and application isn’t cutting it any more" Sure things are going that way, but if you think most users are ready to do everything via web-apps now then u are living in a very rarefied bubble. photoshop, autocad, 3dsmax, ableton, an endless list of specialised, high performance demand, software for professionals, theres a long way to go before that kind of thing can run in a browser. Also how is iOS os OSX somehow more web-app friendly? Youre much more restricted on them on what browser you can run and how u can configure it than on linux or even windows. html5 canvas doesnt even work properly on iOS.

Re: Qwant, a European search engine that respects your privacy

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You betcha: that stuff runs UNIX, doesn’t disrupt one’s concentration with modal windows and runs circles around Windows desktops performance-wise. For most people an iPad and web applications are apparently enough, which means they don’t need or want a Windows desktop PC any more. The early ‘90’s computing paradigm with a lone desktop PC user and application isn’t cutting it any more. At the very least, one good thi…

"that stuff runs UNIX" osx and ios have an very old UNIX legacy but as they currently stand are extremely restrictive walled gardens completey controlled by a single giant avaricious corporation. If you were true to your ideas you'd be running Linux which is open, open source and btw is most popular in Europe, eg. being the OS used by the public sector in Germany. "doesn’t disrupt one’s concentration with modal windo…

If you were true to your ideas you'd be running Linux

I would rather drop dead. I’m a UNIX guy, Solaris guy to be precise and that means illumos and SmartOS in particular. I value stability, formal specifications, the ability to introspect the system, a system which can self heal and is paranoid about correctness of operation and data. A system which is always engineered to be backwards compatible. Exactly everything that SmartOS is and GNU/Linux isn’t! illumos and SmartOS are using CDDL which is by and large less restrictive than the GPL, so GNU/Linux stands for everything I fight against. There are no words in any of the languages I speak which can express my hate of GNU and GNU/Linux.

As for macOS and iOS, I don’t care about open because I neither intend nor want to tinker with it: I want to pay, bring home, turn on and use. As long as all the hardware works, the thing is responsive and I have xterm and ssh to log into my SmartOS datacenter, I’m good to go. Not going to waste my life with GNU/Linux, I do that too much at work aleady. Simply not going to happen.

What I mean by responsiveness is that my 2013 MacBook Air is usable instantaneously while my barely a year old work laptop with Windows 7 needs half an hour to get to the point where it is able to launch an application. Then I launch it, but since it has other apps starting in the background as I’m working they keep popping up their windows and taking the focus away, interrupting my thought and workflow. A macOS app will never appropriate the focus, nor will subwindows be modal, forcing me to close them first if I want to get at the data in the main window. Windows is just crap.

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