The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5)

Amazon Sucks Now

All results for: stranger in a stange land

All 224 results for stranger in a stange land :

1. High Performance Goal Setting : Using Intuition to Conceive and Achieve Your Dreams
by Beverly Potter, Dr Beverly Potter (Paperback - March 2000)
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• Excerpt from page 7: ". . . simply "know" it. In Robert Heinlein's 1961 science fiction novel, Stranger in a Stange Land, grok is a Martian word mean- ing "to drink" and . . ."
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2. Immigrants on the Land: Agriculture, Rural Life, and Small Towns (American Immigration and Ethnicity, Vol. 4)
by George E. Pozzetta (Editor) (Hardcover - May 1991)

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• Excerpt from page 8: ". . . "A New Oslo on the Plains: The Anders L Mordt Land Company and Norwegian Migration to . . . Der- woodJohnson, Norge 1 Texas (Stange, Norway, 1982). "The best study of the Swedes remains Ernest . . ."
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3. Personal Property: Wives, White Slaves, and the Market in Women
by Margit Stange (Paperback - January 2003)
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• Excerpt from page 131: ". . . job that requires her to "smile affably" at throngs of strangers, reflecting their prospective fulfillment in a contemplated purchase that is . . ."
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4. Animal Eyes (Oxford Animal Biology Series)
by Michael F. Land, Dan-Eric Nilsson (Paperback - February 2002)
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• Excerpt from page 102: ". . . an insect to make fast corrections for pitch and roll (Stange 1981). The defocus then makes . . . for 0O of 4.7°. Even stranger, the rhabdoms, which in all . . . often. Summary 1 Life on land provides animals with a potential new refracting surface - the . . ."
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5. The Curse of the Bambino
by Dan Shaughnessy (Paperback - October 2000)
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• Excerpt from page 100: ". . . start Darrell Brandon, the 1967 equivalent of Denny Galehouse. Lee Stange would have pitched the playoff game. Stange was 8-10 in . . ."
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6. The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract
by Bill James (Author) (Paperback - June 2003)
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• Excerpt from page 10: ". . . 3.12 7 John Wyatt, 1967 10-7 20 2.61 14 Lee Stange, 1966 7-9 3.35 9 Lee Stange, 1967 8-10 2.77 13 . . ."
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7. Art Now
by Uta Grosenick (Paperback - September 2002)
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• Excerpt from page 484: ". . . Erkenntnis suchten. Oft schon zogen Menschen in ein vermeintlich „gelobtes Land", auf der verheißungsvollen Suche nach einem Paradies. Hierbei scheint die . . ."
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8. Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections and Became the Worlds Most Notorious Slum
by Tyler Anbinder (Hardcover - September 2001)
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• Excerpt from Back Matter: ". . . 1888, p. 10; Riis, Making of an American, 193. 11. Stange, Symbols of Ideal Life, 5-6; Evening Post, February 28, 1888; . . ."
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9. Pharmacotherapy : A Pathophysiologic Approach
by Joseph T. Dipiro (Editor), et al (Hardcover)
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• Excerpt from page 1169: ". . . from an able- bodied companion or parent to a dependent stranger. Any attempts at therapeutic management must take into account the . . ."
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10. German Boy: A Child in War
by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, Stephen E. Ambrose (Paperback - October 2001)
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• Excerpt from page 348: ". . . Trauen. There was little for them to do. Soon a stranger from Hamburg built a tavern across the street from the . . ."
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www.MarkTAW.com
Thursday, November 6, 2003

Heinlein's book was my #1 result.

Philo

Philo
Thursday, November 6, 2003

It helps if you spell "strange" right.

SomeBody
Thursday, November 6, 2003

Oh. Is that my problem. Hilarious. Instead of telling me I made a type-o, it found a couple of hundred books with the same type-o.

www.MarkTAW.com
Thursday, November 6, 2003

I am so tempted to create a new thread: MarkTAW Sucks Now.

The problem with computers is that they do what you tell them to do.

Alyosha`
Thursday, November 6, 2003

That's a pretty funny one.
More interesting though, marktaw, how did you come to not have read this book by now?

RAH fan
Thursday, November 6, 2003

Yeah - the next rev of the Amazon search engine won't only search the text of the book, but all possible misspellings as well...

Doh
Thursday, November 6, 2003

That's why I love Google -- it's saved me from my own typos so many times.

Google: Stranger in a stange land

Did you mean: "stranger in a strange land"

Absolute magic.

Robert Jacobson
Thursday, November 6, 2003

Well, just you wait until you use the rich client for Longhorn, then we'll see who sucks, buddy

Obvious
Thursday, November 6, 2003

Alyosha` - ha ha. Then I'll start a thread called Aloysha` sucks now. The problem with people is that for the most part, they only know what you tell them they know.

RAH fan - Who says I haven't? Okay, I haven't but I have read War & Peace, have you?

It seems they're improving the search engine on an ongoing basis, a week ago searching for the best selling titles that matched a certain phrase turned up completely random books with those words in them - but now they at least put the "Most popular results" on top no matter how you sort them.

I guess I'll become good friends with Advanced Search and Power Search.

Sorry for my type-o thread.

www.MarkTAW.com
Thursday, November 6, 2003

With the exception of the first book, it didn't find typos -- it found the word "Stange", mostly as author last names.

SomeBody
Thursday, November 6, 2003

By the way, if you want a good example of how Amazon's search engine has sucked all along, try doing a search for "Don Knuth".

SomeBody
Thursday, November 6, 2003

"try doing a search for "Don Knuth". "

I loved him in the Andy Griffith Show

Funny Stuff
Thursday, November 6, 2003

Uh... no... no I haven't.

But I did read both Gulliver's Travels and Moby Dick, and neither one for school.

RAH fan
Thursday, November 6, 2003

The misspelling doesn't change the truth of the original statement. The latest incarnation of Amazon's search engine leaves much to be desired. Mainly, I hate that you can't search for an exact phrase. For example, if I do an Artist Name search in the Popular Music category for the musical group "Blue Six" I get the following irrelevant results, even when I put the search term inside quotes:

The Read Deal - The Best of Today's Swing Music
Blue Harlem, Big Six

From Vienna With Swing
Blue Note Six

Salute to Satchmo
Various Artists - Jazz - Swing/Big Band, Blue Note Six

Midnight Blue
Art Hodes

That's four out of ten results that did not satisfy the intended query, not a very good signal to noise ratio. This is a real pain when you're trying to find something that has only common words in the title or solo artists with common first and last names and you get over a thousand irrelevant results. It shouldn't be that hard for a customer to find something when they know the exact artist name or title (unless you don't really want to make the sale).

Matt Latourette
Thursday, November 6, 2003

In one of the other topics someone (sorry I forgot who) suggested a GREAT tip for searching websites.

use google:

for example:

site:www.amazon.com "stranger in a strange land"
site:www.amazon.com music "blue six"

or even

site:www.amazon.com "don knuth"

Me loves google me does, ahuh, yup...

Jack of all
Friday, November 7, 2003

It is cool being able to read a page or two out of the book near your search phrase.

One search I did turned up a few pages in a bathroom reader, so I was able to read 2 pages of a 3 page story. Unfortunately, it wouldn't let me read the 3rd page, but that was easily fixed.... I just searched for a phrase I found on the 2nd page and was able to read a couple of pages more.

I don't know if there's a limit to how many times you can do this, maybe you can get through the King James Bible or War and Peace this way.

Just think, you could have the entirely O'Reilly Reference Library at your fingertips, one page at a time.

I'm sure the folks who designed the DMCA would be very displeased at me.

www.MarkTAW.com
Friday, November 7, 2003

Don't worry, Mark - the literary guild isn't nearly as afraid of the internet or as powerful as the RIAA.

Philo

Philo
Friday, November 7, 2003

MarkTaw,

There is a limit to how many pages you can read. Wired has a fine exposition on the whole idea and Bezo's future plans.

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60948,00.html

Jason Watts
Friday, November 7, 2003

So, I have to agree that Amazon does suck despite all commentary above. A search for "tiff" in their bookstore brings back absolutely nothing related to the image format. I get a whole slew of books on parenting in the "bit of a tiff" sense. Search for jpeg, I get a whole slew of books on web publishing because the extension apperars all over the text of the book.

In a word. . .

Terrible.

Elephant
Friday, November 7, 2003

Actually, the text search is a brilliant idea.

The problem is replacing the regular book search with it rather than making it a separate option. I can't fathom why they did that.

Kyralessa
Friday, November 7, 2003

Why is it terrible that searching for "tiff" doesn't bring up a book about the image format? How many books about TIFF are out there, and how many zillions more books that use the word "tiff" for its original purpose are there? How should Amazon know which one you mean?

Searching Google for "tiff" brings up anything you would want to know about TIFF the image format. This is probably because they have PageRank and people tend to talk about image formats online more than they do in Amazon's collection of books.

Fred2000
Friday, November 7, 2003

they should have made a separate field for 'search inside the book'

Alex
Friday, November 7, 2003

I agree with Alex. Default "Search inside book" is the antithesis of Google's default AND searches.

You should turn up the standard results, and then on the results page get a "Search inside book" link.

As it is, you have to "Search inside book" and THEN click on Advanced Search - and notice that none of the fields are pre-filled, so you have to re-type your query.

I guess it's the difference between "Here's the whole world, do you want to get more specific?" or "Here are a few items that match your search, maybe you want to expand your search?"

Something about searching for a book and finding 2,345,678,901 results intimidates me. "Wait, which one of these books really will help me "Get rich quick?" Getting the right 1 in 20 is much easier than getting the right 1 in 2,345,678,901.

www.MarkTAW.com
Friday, November 7, 2003

Is it markTAW or marcTAW?

Bella
Saturday, November 8, 2003