 First, what we'll be doing the next hour or so is we'll be talking about how to find things on the internet. That is how to find information, and that sometimes means how to find people on the internet because, well, the smallest part on the internet is like the individual that knows something and you maybe want to know who knows something. Well, this is mainly directed to people who have not been that long on the internet. I hope it will be very valuable for people who have been on the internet for a longer time. And yeah, so we have an hour, that's not much. Why am I doing this? Because mostly because I wanted to have an excuse for writing all this stuff down and giving myself a kick to write everything down, make some nice slides and use them over and over. Okay. So, the slides are not totally fully ready because that's not my PC and there wasn't a Netscape composer on it and I wanted it to do an HTML for the first part. And well, I hope, well, you can't see anything, right? Okay. So, my name is Hendrik. I've been with the CCC for a long time since I think that my first congress was in 1998. No, 89, 89, so that will make the congress in December my 10th or so anniversary. Well, we see. Okay. Let's start. Oh, cool. Fine. So, let me do some questions here. Who's been longer on the internet than, let's say, five years? Okay. Some. Longer than one year, most. And less than half a year? Nobody. Okay. Okay. I hope I can teach you something. Well, what I'll be talking about is the basics, the information resources that are up on the internet and I hope we can get to some nice lists here, some comprehensive lists. I'm pretty sure that you'll be able to, well, just throw up some things I haven't put down here, so I hope this will be something you, will you share some knowledge with all the others in this tent here? Okay. Next is what tools are out there and how can you use them and what do you do if all these tools fail, if all the search engines then don't work for you, what can you do then and where to find some information and stuff like that. And at the end I hope there will be some questions and somebody who will be able to answer them, maybe me, maybe some of you. Okay. So, the problem, what's the problem? The problem is about finding information on the internet. You know, the internet started without something called the worldwide web that's like 20, 30 years ago or something, but even then there was the problem on how to find the information that was up on the internet and there were like search engines like Veronica, I don't know who remembers that, that was a Goffa search engine and the main problem then in the back in these days was how to find the right mailing list and then if you have a little bit better access how to find the right news group and now of course it's how to find the right web page, how to find the right web board, the right web ring, the right mailing list of course all the time, well whatever. See what kind of information resources do we have? We have of course the worldwide web itself and you can search the worldwide web with search engines, I'll talk about that later. We have databases that most of the time have a worldwide web interface, I mean I'm talking here about like the RIPE database for example or yellow pages like 4.11 or therealwhitepages.com or something like that and then we have of course usenet news as an information resource. We have web message exchange boards that is something like a news group but it's based on a worldwide web interface and it's, well, there are millions of people up there. We have mailing lists and I believe that mailing lists have become more popular since news began degrading because of all these banners out there and people putting, posting pictures in non-picture web and news groups and stuff like that. And then we have IRC like in real time chat and we have of course individuals, people connected to the internet that knows stuff and that stuff may be interesting to you and they may share or may not share it with you, maybe not via news but maybe via email stuff like that. Okay, can you understand me? Am I talking too fast or something? Just raise your hand and tell it, okay? So first thing is the worldwide web. We have for the worldwide web of course search engines. You know, you name some, anybody know some search engines? Altavista, okay. Everybody seems to know this one, Altavista. Pardon me? Ah, not on light. Pummy? How do you spell it? The mother of all. It's like m-o-moma. Okay, yeah, fine. Okay, these are some. Basically as far as I know there are basically three different kinds of search engines like search engines, you have their own database like Altavista or not on light and then you have meter search engines that is search engines that use your input string for searching in other search engines like Mama of META crawler, I think dot com or something like that is we'll be using your search string to search other databases like north on light or Altavista. And then we have something more recent development in search engines. That is search engines that use information like how many times these pages they are indexing, are indexed by other pages and stuff like this. You may have heard about Google. Anybody heard about this one? Google? Yeah? Anybody able to explain it better than me than I can? What it does? It's interesting. Look, in this one, it's not mainly looking only at the page and what information is in there, but it's also looking at who else is referring to this content and stuff. So there is also another one. You can't use that one because it's an IBM internal prototype only these days. I've read about it, I think, in Scientific American or something. This prototype will search web pages and will try to find out who is referring to this web pages. And then you'll get to a list or to the, you have the possibility to differentiate web pages. Like this is a web page that has information on it and this is a web page that has information that points to other web pages. So you have hubs and sources. And a source is a web page that comes up with information, has information where the information is put up by some knowledgeable people. And you have hubs that is web pages that point to other web pages from a specific issue, of a specific topic or something. So this kind of search engines is coming along. And Google is one of the first that's going there. So what's the problem with the World Wide Web right now? The problem is that really you don't search everything with a search engine like Alta Vista. There was recently some news about this northern light search engine because they were reported to be the biggest one. They have indexed 17% of the internet. People believe that there are 800 million web pages out there and these has like 17% of them. I mean, 17% that's not even a quarter, right? So that's not much and Alta Vista is even less than that. So if you want to search most of the web, you have to use a meta crawler with meta search engine. And even if you use that, you won't get beyond 20% or something like that. So also in the news, there was something that's called a search engine that's called all the web www.alltheweb.com. And they say, and that's what they say, I don't know at all, they have right now 200 million web pages in next. And so they are the biggest out there and not northern light anymore. And they believe that they'll be able to index like the 800 million web pages out there by the end of the year because they have all these cool Dell computers with, I don't know, whatever. Have a look at them. It's not bad. Have a look at northern light. And well, I use Alta Vista pretty much. There's also something that's called www.searchenginewatch, I think, www.alltheweb.com, where you can find some information on what information these search engines are indexing. So that can be pretty interesting. Yeah, what you need to remember when using web pages is, if you get more than, like, say, 100 hits, you have said the wrong question. So if you have like 1,000 hits, fine. Nobody is able to search 1,000 hits in, well, a week or something. So you need to put in more specific question. And of course, there are some tricks or whatever. It's mostly very interesting or very, very important to really read the manual of the search engine. Like, what can you do to make your search more specific? I think everybody knows that if you put a plus sign in front of the word you are searching for, it will only come up. The search engine will only come up with pages that really have this word included. If you put up something like northern and light, some search engines will search for pages that have northern, or light, or both. So they will pull up the pages that have northern and light first, but the last, I don't know, thousands of pages will have only northern or only light. And if you put it like plus northern, plus light, with a space in between, I would show it, but you can't see anything. So it's of no use. You would get only pages that have northern and light in there. So that's something interesting. The next thing that's interesting is you can use a minus in front of a word, and then you will not get pages that have the word that follows the minus on the page, right? So do you get me? OK. Another good thing is to use quotes like an blah, blah. That will give you pages that have blah, blah in this sequence. There must be blah, and then a space, and then another blah. And you can use even that and make a plus sign in front of that. So combining these kind of requests will help you to get a more specific, more precise search. And another thing is it's what I found out, searching for tools, stuff, little tools, interesting things. You can go and search for names of the pages that people use. For example, if you look for hacking.html, or HTM asterisks, so you won't only get HTM, but also HTML, both, you get a lot of useful, interesting pages out there. So think about what the people that put up pages might have used as their name. And if you find interesting pages, look at their names, like in the file name, and use this file name for another search. So that gives you some interesting stuff to find. Like hacking, like hack, like hacks.html, stuff like that. That's interesting. That will give you some more things. Anybody thinks that I haven't mentioned something about search engine that I should have mentioned? 4.11 and stuff like that? Yahoo? Why do you think Yahoo is important? Yeah. You mean like in Yahoo, like in having these groups of information? Yeah. That's maybe a good hint. I didn't mention it because I don't use it at all. But of course, if you look for Yahoo, they have themes, subjects, and you can go and like in computers, and then consumers, and then PCs, and stuff like this. And so go down and down and down in a hierarchy and find information that way. I almost don't use it at all. But it might be interesting. Anything else? Web ferret? I think I've heard about that. Web ferret? OK. There are some other tools out there, like Alexa. I don't know. If you look for www.botspot.com, it's bot spot. Bot spot, I think. There you will find a bunch of assistance you can download and install inside your web browser that will try to help you to find information more easily and that have sometimes links to a database that has ratings about web pages. So if you look at a web page, you can see what other people have rated this web page. Like in that's interesting, that's crap, something like that. I've tried to use them, and I don't found them very interesting. And also, I thought that they know also, they now know what I will be searching all day, and I don't really like that. But it might be interesting to look at that. So anything else? Somebody? Yeah. The third kind was like Google and the upcoming IBM one. The IBM one? Google is www.google.com. So should be able to find that. Yeah. Next thing is beside the web. If you can't find things inside the web and if you have used all these pluses and put things into quotes, and if you found a nice web page, look for more keywords on this page and refine your search again and again and again. And if you don't really find things, you can go and try to find stuff in the use net, like in use net news. And the first step for searching use net news is, come here. Deja news. Yes. The archive of the internet or something, they call them. Oops. Deja.com, Deja.com, Deja news. They've been there like three years now? I think so. I think three years now. And they're indexing and they're archiving every single, I believe so, every single message that is sent out in news. So that's really dead interesting because you can go and search on the last two or three years of use net news and find out what people were saying about what their new digital camera or their neighbors or their last girlfriend and stuff like that. And that's very interesting. I would actually love to show that, but I don't think it will be of any use. You can search in Deja, like in all the search engines, like in using pluses and quotes and stuff like that. But it will search in news only. You can even get a news account on this server, so you will be able to browse the news via web front end. And what is interesting is that this will link you to people. Mostly, if you have web pages, you won't be able to link a web page with a person. Sometimes you can, and sometimes it's interesting if you find an interesting web page and you see there's some names are mentioned to use these names again for refining your search. If you find interesting stuff on Deja, you can click on the name of the person who has wrote the message, and you'll get all the messages he has ever written for the last three, four years, I don't know. And you'll be able to browse all these messages again. So that's very interesting. I mean, there's, for example, on Rec, digital. No, Rec, photo digital. I just brought me a digital camera, and now I'm reading news on that. And there's a totally crazy guy. I think he was fired by some company, and now he's putting up very interesting information about Kodak and Sony, and even with names and numbers. And if you have problems with Kodak machine, so-and-so, call Kodak, add and use this extension for this guy and yell at him. And that's very interesting. You can get people here. And if you find people here, you can also, of course, send them email if you dare. And look at what comes out. What's very, I think, very important with news is if you use news for searching information, be aware that people on Usenet don't like people coming in on a Usenet group and just asking, well, I have this new digital camera, and I want to know what tools I can use with it. Please email it to me. Thank you very much. They don't like these people. Because, I mean, if you say email it to me, you basically say, I want this information, and I don't care if anybody else gets it. So what would be more polite would be to say, I have this new digital camera, and I know these and these and these tools. And I like to know if this list is complete. Please put it on the board here. Because then, other people are also happy because you share some information with them. And they know what you are talking about. They know where you stand, like in knowledge. They know what you know. So they will be able better to find the information that you can use. Did you get me? I hope so. OK. On news, people that only ask questions, they are like, I mean, everybody thinks they are only consumers. They are not sharing anything, and that people don't like them. So you won't probably get an answer, probably. So you want to share information first. Say, I know that. I have tried this, yada, yada, yada, and it doesn't work. So please help me. That gives the people a lot better understanding on who you are, what you do, and stuff like that. Also, on for news, I'm pretty maybe talking about stuff you already know, but there are FAQs. We can ask questions on news groups sometimes. So it would be the best idea to wait for this FAQ to be posted or to search Deja for the FAQ on the specific news group and then read it first and then start to fire up questions in the news group. Next thing is before you use news and ask people, it would be best if you have tried these machines here first because behind news, there are always human beings. And human beings have some problems with language and style and typing. And if you do use your grammar right and if you can spell and stuff like that. So if you ask for questions that are easily findable on the web, you most probably get flamed and nobody will tell you anything. For asking question on news, you probably know that, but don't use close questions. Like, I want to buy a new digital camera. Should I use model A or model B? Question mark. Because that doesn't tell the people anything. And the answers will be limited mostly on these two models. So what you do want to ask is an open question that can't be answered by yes or no or A or B. You want to ask an open question that has to be answered by a text. And you may want to use that because of stuff like that. So it would be a better question to ask. I want to make photos with a digital camera and I want to make photos of rabbits and ducks and maybe sometimes my children or something like that. And what models should I use and I can spend $1,000 or so? That would be an open question and people would be able to tell you about all the models that are out there and that are able and that will maybe fit your needs and maybe be a good tool for you to use. A good thing is if you can join us and share some information first before asking questions. Because some people actually do look you up. That in they look, if you have ever provided the community with anything valuable. And if you just try it, that's OK. But if you didn't do anything and ask a question, they maybe just tell you that. You didn't tell anybody anything yet. Come here asking questions and they don't like it. And so you won't get any answers, right? So next thing I should be talking about is web message exchange boards. That's something between the World Wide Web and news. There are people out there that believe that the internet is the World Wide Web. And vice versa. Like in I'm on the web. Hey, cool, you're on the web. And yeah, what's this internet thing about anyways? And so they don't know what NNTP is. They don't know what a news reader is. They never ever heard about a news service stuff like that. And so they want and do share information on the World Wide Web. There are web-based message exchange boards. And these are sometimes very valuable sources. There are people on these boards that know a lot. They maybe don't know how the internet works, but they may know how digital cameras work, or the Coder company, or Sony, or whatever. And so that makes them valuable. I mean, you want the knowledge and not what they know about the internet and stuff like that. So finding these message exchange boards is very interesting. It's a very good thing to do. And it's not that easy, as I have found out. You can search for them via using web message exchange board or something, and then try to find message exchange board and use plus digital, plus camera as a search, as search keywords. And another thing to find these message exchange board is via web rings. Everybody knows what a web ring is? Pami? No? Web rings. I think there's something called www.webbrings, or www.webbring.com. It's basically a service. It's like a database where you can put in your own web page. And on your own web page, you can also put a banner that says, I am on the Sony digital cam web ring. And the Sony digital cam web ring is like a database that's hosted somewhere. And that will make it easy to jump from one Sony digital camera-related web page to another web page just by clicking on this banner that has mostly something like, go forward in the web ring, go backwards in the web ring, show the next five random links of the web ring, or show every page of the web ring. That can be very interesting. And so putting the words web ring in your keywords for a search engine can be a good thing to do. And these web rings will bring you eventually to these message exchange boards. And of course, you can ask in the message exchange boards if there is some other message exchange board, or if most of the people are also in some news group, stuff like that. So cross-checking where everybody is, right? Yeah. OK. Next thing is using IRC. Everybody knows what that is? IRC, who doesn't know what IRC is? At least one or two. IRC is old. It has been there for years, many years. Some people have forgotten that it's there, because there are now web chat stuff online. And you can use web pages for chatting with other people. But that's crap, believe me. IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. That's a channel-based text-only chatting system. It's server client-based. That is, you need an IRC client for your operating system. You can use for Windows, I think. There is something that calls Merck, right? And you will find that on download.com or something like that. And there are also IRC clients for every operating out there, I believe. And this client will connect you to the next IRC server. And this will present you with a list of channels. And I didn't really count them, but there are lots of them. IRC channels, they have names like CCC, and they have names like CDC, like in cold dead cow. And others, cold dead cow, cold of the dead cow. You know these guys? No, you don't. They're actually here, all the way from the US. Whatever. What you should be aware of is that there are, I think, three or so different networks, different IRC networks. There are many IRC servers. And these servers are connected to other servers. And these build an IRC network. And there are several. There's something called FNET, EFNET, I think. There's something called Undernet, I think. What are the others? Anybody knows? Anybody? IRCnet? OK. Pummy? OK. I hope you get it. I don't. So there are several. And you should find actually the same channel names on different IRC networks. So you should also have a look on who is on this IRC. And like, are there two people on there? Or five? Or 50? Or 500? And if you have built up like a personality on one of these channels, you don't want to find yourself on the wrong internet-related network. I did that once. And I thought, well, what's going on here? These people are all wrong. They don't belong here in this channel. I thought they were over from the Microsoft channel, taking over the OSU channel, something like that. But actually, I was on the wrong network. So completely different universe, these IRC networks. So on these channels, to get information is sometimes very, very hard, because these are groups, communities where some rules apply. And if you don't follow the rules, the people won't tell you anything. So some channels are different. They will tell anybody everything they know. If they just come in and yell help, some others will just kick you if you go in and say help. So you have to go in, look around, look on what kind of language, what kind of style these people prefer. Look for robots, mostly, I think any, every channel has its own robot. That's basically a script, joining from a PC or a UNIX workstation in this channel, keeping it open. Yes, this channel opens with the first person that makes up a new name, and it will close down with the last person leaving. And so for having channels always up every time, all the time, also if everybody is sleeping, you will need a robot to help it being open. And these robots also are mostly searchable. Like, they will react on some search strings or questions, and they will be able to tell you, for example, when they have seen Henrik the last time, or Frank, or whatever. And that's sometimes very, very interesting. So asking question here is, socialize first. Try to get a grip on the group, on the community that's working on this channel first, and then try to ask questions right away. If you don't succeed, use another nickname the next time. Because they maybe won't talk to you anymore. Well, I see is very real time, of course. Everybody has to be online to use that. And so you will have problems if you don't find the person you want to find on this channel. If he is not online, he won't answer your questions, right? So the value of the channel is absolutely totally related to who is online right when you joined and when you asked your questions. So the value of a channel can change over time. Inside the day, inside the week, whatever. Yes. Now, that's pretty tough to do that. Your IAC client, if you connect to a server, your IAC client will be able to give you a list of all channels in there. And you can try to search the lists and their descriptions for what you need. So you could go for hacking and look there. And you could go for photos and look there. But it's hard, actually. Not all of them are this clear. Like in what's that called? Like in OSUO, Windows NT, or Windows 95. That's easy. I mean, you know what these people are doing in there. But if it's called Atlanta Blues, you don't know. These people are jazz fans or what? So that's tough. But if you find a good channel, that's almost a very good source for information and for help if you need stuff. People are able to react to you the very second you ask the question. And that can be very, very good. Yeah, any questions on IRC? Anybody thinks that I should have mentioned something on IRC? Yeah, that's a good point. Your IRC client has some tools with it. Like who is? That's something like finger that will give you some information on the person that is also in your channel. And it will also tell you on which other channels these persons is. So if you find a person that seems to know what he's talking about or she's talking about, you may want to have a look in what other channels he or she is in so you can join these channels and look for information there. That's a good point. Thanks. Anything else? OK. So next thing is what do we have? We have mailing lists, of course. Mailing lists, everybody knows what that is, I hope. And mailing lists are basically one server that is operating the list, a list server. And this list server is, yeah, it has an address like in mail.ccc.de, no. Mail at ccc.de, that's a list. I hope this list is dead by now. It should be. I think it isn't, but it should be. Well, whatever that's the mailing list you can use for us questions on the ccc. And there will be people answering you that belong to the ccc or not. We don't care on this, not anymore. But whatever. The point is this is pointing to a list server and this list server is pointing to a list of email addresses of individuals, of persons, or of other mailing lists, for example. And if you ask a question to a mailing list, you should be aware that you may be posting to like hundreds of people, so don't attach binaries when posting to lists. You may get responses and lots of them on one question. You may not get any response because everybody is too bored to answer your dumb question, I don't know. And the answers are absolutely related to what the other person knows and what mood she is in or he is in. Like if they had a bad day and you're asking a dumb question, you will get flamed or something. Or they will send your Excel over and you won't like it. But most of the time these mailing lists are very interesting. And yeah, there are community mailing lists, like in you will find, I was on this digital camera example, you'll find web pages on that web message board, you will find a news group for that, you'll find web ranks, I didn't mention that, right? You'll find an ISE channel for that, you'll find mailing lists and several of them. So the most interesting question is not if there's a mailing list, but which mailing list to use. And that's something sometimes not so easy also. You can find mailing lists by looking in Digi News, sometimes they're announced there in related news groups. You can find them by searching for their archives. Sometimes a mailing list are archived in a web, in an archive, in a database that has a web front end. For example, I bet some of you know BookTrack, right? No, that's not CK, that's a Q. BuckTrack, some new, no, that's one. That's about security, IT security stuff. And BuckTrack has an archive on GeekGal, www.geek-goal.com, slash BuckTrack or something. And that will give you a web-based interface on the archive of this mailing list. There are several companies that offer lists, server services, like and you can join them and pay something or don't have to pay something for setting up your own mailing list, which can be very interesting, but only if there are some people on it, for two people or so, it doesn't really work. So using lists, using server, using lists and using archive as keywords for a search engine to finding mailing lists is maybe a good advice. Yeah, mailing lists, it's a little bit the same like in IRC, there's, most of the time they have some rules on these lists and there's a special community behind it, so try to follow the list a week or two to find out how these people are talking about what, because you may find yourself on the wrong mailing list and you don't want to ask them questions on the wrong mailing list. Yeah, did I? Yeah, listen first. Yeah, plus mail, plus list, plus archive, plus search is a good list of keywords for finding mailing lists. Yeah, so you may have used the World Wide Web, you may have used News and you have searched web rings and message exchange boards and you have found nothing that will really answer your question. What you should have found is some names of people that look like they may be able to answer your question. So the next step would be to go for these questions, if you can't find the information you need on the World Wide Web and you can't find it in News and you can't get people to answer this question in News and you can't find the information on message exchange board and you can't find, can't make people to answer your question on message exchange board and you have used IRC and everything else and found some mailing lists and searched them too. You may want to email some people directly and see if they are able to point you to useful resources or answer the question you have. There are some rules that apply to emails and also to use net messages. You don't know what the person on the other side is thinking, you don't know what their mood is, if they had a good day, if they had a bad day, if they're reading it at night or in the morning, if they're reading it at the work or in their private time, you don't know and you should try to make your message in a way that it doesn't bring them up, it doesn't annoy them so much if they are in a bad mood and it doesn't ruin their day if they are in a good mood, right? So if you email people or if you use News, be aware, people always think that you're talking directly to them. That applies for News also. People read your posting and they think you are meaning them. Like in saying, I've heard the Sony MacVicar camera is crap. You are just, well, I don't know, annoyed a million people out there that own these cameras and of course all the Olympus users will go, yes, right boy, but you may want to have some information on the Sony camera. So if you say just this is crap and hope that people defend their camera and give you some information that way, it may not work. It may just give you flames over and over. So if you email people or if you use News, don't be too formal, be informal. Like in don't say, hello, Mr. and Mrs. something and Mr. Forum or something like that, so Mr. Message Board, just talk to the people and if you email people directly, try to state where you find their email. People don't like it that they find some mail from somebody they don't know in their inbox talking to them directly, asking them questions directly and not giving money with the email. And so it is a good idea to tell them where you found their email, why you have emailed them because I've tried that and that and that and use this search engine with these keyboards and I use this use channel and blah, blah, blah and didn't find anything on this specific topic may you answer my question please? Something like that would be more, would be better. Explaining what you already found out is almost the best thing you can do to have somebody answering your question because if you did a good search on the web, you may will find out something that this person doesn't know, right? They know maybe something you don't know but with your search you may have come up with something they don't know yet. So sharing that information will make them much more, will make it much more likely that they will answer your question and really try to answer the question right. Yeah, sharing information is a very good thing. Also, gathering information on a specific topic and resharing it on for example news is a very good thing to get the information on the stuff you don't know already. For example, if you're looking on information on a Sony digital camera or whatever, an Epson, it is a good thing to just write down what you already know about this tool and then share this information and say, well this is what I know and this is what I need to know, what I don't know because if you do that people know where you are. They know where you are information-wise so they know where they can start. If you just ask the question, I don't know anything about this camera, could you please tell me something? They don't know where to start when with answering the question. If they don't know where to start, they maybe don't start at all and so you don't get an answer, right? So giving them a starting point by providing what you already know is almost the best thing you can do. And yeah, trying to offer some feedback yourself on things you can do is a good thing. Yeah. Okay, to get to the closing of this, I like to share some basic rules on information sharing I think. It's like with information it's if you have lots of it, getting more is easy. If you don't have any, getting some is not very, very easy because if you don't know what to ask, if you don't even know what you don't know, yeah, you have a bad starting point, right? If you know what you know and what you don't know it's much more easy to find out what you don't know, right? Because you are able to produce some questions. That means if you look like you know something and try to share that by trying to advertise that by sharing information with other people they are almost, all the time, you'll find people getting to you telling you things that you don't already know and want some question answered by you, right? I mean it then works both ways. If you share information, they know you know something, if they ask you something and they share some information first you will also be able to get to know more. So I think sharing information is on the one thing, it's like rewarding, like it makes you feel good and it's easier by sharing information to get other people answering your questions, okay? A good thing to do is if you are not like in, I need this information by Monday. If you know you have like a month's time or half a year or two weeks or something of time to find the specific information it is a good thing to put up your own webpage somewhere or on GeoCities, on Yahoo, I don't care, nobody cares really and use this webpage to put up the information you have found out, put up the links you have found out and when asking questions on the web saying while like I'm looking for information on this topic and I have put up this webpage and there's sending everything I know and I need to have these questions answered that I can put up, that I can update the webpage and of course give credit to everybody that gave me some useful information. That's a good thing to do. That will help others to find out what you already know and they'll be convinced that you are resharing what you know with the community. And a very important thing I think at the end try to verify your sources. If you get told something that may be utter crap, right? Like in people telling you that these stocks of Microsoft are going to fall very deep and you should buy puts or buy stock of this company or buy this camera because it has all the features you need and even more, try to verify the things. So there are a lot of people out there just talking crap that don't know anything. So taking everything that's on news or on IRC or on the web for real and as a serious information all the time is not a good idea. And even with news wire services like Reuters and they sometimes copy stuff from other news services. So if you read it, something and information in three different places, it may have the same source. So and this source may be wrong. So try to verify information that you make important decisions on, okay? So anybody, any questions? Anybody think that I have forgotten something? Don't have any questions? I don't believe that. That is very difficult. Finding information on companies that are not on the web is difficult. Another thing I forgot to mention is directory services. Like www.411.com or www.therealwhitepages.com, right? These are people finding services that have emails and real names in there. They get these by parsing news. So you'll find all the emails. I've ever used inside a news reader and even the ones I used were not having the thing probably set up and stuff like that. This is for finding people. Also for finding people that are not on the web because they're sometimes buying CD-ROM information on people that don't have a mailing list but have a telephone number and a street address, something like that. So there's also information directories for companies. I don't have a name, Henny, sorry, but there are. What else? There's, of course, for companies that are on the web and have a web page to find out some people you may want to talk about, about the content, about the web service, stuff like that, is going for the RIPE database. RIPE.net. That will, you can get there to the who is thing and for example, I may won't give you my personal home address when if you ask me right here, but it's in there. Bad thing because I own some domain names, right? Some domains and if you have a domain there is the address they send the invoices in. So there you can find even information some people would think is private. And another good thing is, I just recently found out, using PGP servers, like PGP key servers, you know them? There is something like, I've forgotten the name. Look at pgp.com or pgpe.com and look for key servers. For example, some people don't really differentiate between their public key they use for fun and for other stuff and the PGP key they use for their work. So we just recently had this guy saying on the CCC mailing list asking, well I need somebody that can test my firewall at work and I'm working for foreign banking institute but I won't tell you which. And well then, you know, putting his name into a web engine was one thing and I found out for which banking institute he was working on because his name or his email address was used on some of the web pages. But I later found out that if I just had used his name for asking for making a query on a PGP key server and then have used the key ID for another search, using his name to getting his PGP key, using the key ID, putting it in again and then finding out that this is also the key he uses for communication over the internet with his account, email account at the office, right? And so the name of the bank was in this email address there also, bad move on his side, right? He was really, really impressed on that. Well, it was nothing, right? But he was impressed. So who is PGP services? To answer your question, maybe, I didn't found that yet for Germany, but if you want to know something about companies that are not on the web and are selling things, there are some several rating services for companies by customers. I have forgotten the web, write me an email and I'll find it for you. My email address is like HHF at ccc.de. I can give you an URL that will link you to web-based forum where you can complain about companies if they send you crap or if they ripped you off, right? If you, there are some, it's just for consumer protection, right? There are some companies out there that are really ripping up customers and you'll find them rated on some pages. And there are also companies in there that are not, this is on the internet, but it's not like real information on who is running this company, you I'll be talking to and stuff like that. I don't know where to find that on the internet. Any other question? Yes? Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. You can get different results when asking twice or twice, Alta Bistro for example. I believe it's something like they say every user can spend two seconds in our database and if these two seconds are over, I just give whatever it gave to me and if you ask a second time, that's a good thing to do, yeah. I believe like if it comes to selling information, selling information is not cool at all, so selling search strings is really a good thing. I think you can really get into business with that because a good search thing will give you even, give you information that comes down the road that will be there in the future. The information only will only be valuable one time. Okay, so question. Small question, how exactly does a search engine search for pages? Yeah, that's different in different search engines. You want to have a look at www.searchenginewatch.com because they have some information on how the different search engines work. Mostly they use spiders of course. Well, they are roaming URLs and then going through all the links that are on one page and some of them are using information provided in the directories on the server and they're working differently. For example, AltaVista is only checking web pages every month or so, but it will go to the very last page to the very biggest depth it can go. It will check all the web pages on your server. Other search engines like in HotBot for example, I think, it will check your website every two weeks but it will only go to the one, two and three hierarchy, the hierarchies in your tree and then it will stop and it won't search all the others. So it depends on what is important to you if you want to be on time, having new information fast, you may want to use the new bot, the HotBot thing or new bot and if you want to search everything, or now all the 20% that you can search right now, you need to use something like AltaVista but I believe that Search Engine Watch has some numbers on that. So it's different. With dynamic pages, dynamic pages are a problem and usually dynamic pages can only be searched by the search engines that are, by the local search engine provided by this server. For example, if you have a company that use a Lotus Domino or a Microsoft server with these crappy, how is it called? Active server pages or using notes, databases, you won't be able to find information in AltaVista. You need to use the Search Engine by www.domino.net or something or so, yeah. Using local search engines, if you find that they're using dynamic content is a good idea. Okay, question. Other companies? I believe so. I believe so. I believe that you can pay Search Engine operating companies to be higher on the list. I believe so but I don't really have looked into that. Don't have looked into that. Questions? No question. Good point. What, where? L-U-X? Smart. Dot com. And they're, sorry, they're, pardon me? Just okay. Look. Oh, that's interesting. So they're exchanging search strings there and even attaching human interaction to it. That's cool. See, I knew if I would do this thing here, somebody would come up with something I didn't know. Right? It's all about sharing information and getting something back, okay? It works. You've just seen it. Well, yeah. Any questions, comments? Remarks? Okay, so thank you very much for your attention and you're free to go. Have fun the next day.