As you may recall, a couple of days ago, Philip was looking up information on the Steel City HP-6v2 and came upon a bizarrely-worded description at http://toolsmet.com/ (see 40512.9).
Fast forward to this evening: I was looking for some information on the Verilux ShopLight, and happened upon a different web site with the same kind of parallel-universe descriptions, this time of health-related items: http://healthek.com/.
Further investigation yielded yet another similar site for auto-related items: http://inpcars.com/.
Those were all I could find, but I’m guessing there are others. I can find absolutely no information regarding who is behind these sites. The web pages themselves are completely devoid of any copyright or other identifying information. A WHOIS search reveals that the domain name owners are hiding behind an anonymizer service based in the Netherlands.
The Internet is rapidly devolving into a network of autonomous bots, all creating web pages that consist of nothing but links to each other.
-Steve
Replies
Yes Steve,
I find it quite interesting. Various questions come to mind such as could this sort of claptrap arise because someone is using a translating facility on his computer? Do the makers of these products know that a nonsense is in progress? Who actually puts them into Google and why?
Steve & Philip,
As you may have heard, Vernor Vinge (an author of science fiction stuff) once proposed that human history is not just a complex and unpredictable thang but also subject to erratically occuring special events he calls "singularities". These are the special occurences that may be the result of several small and fortuitous evoutionary steps but result in a sudden and very radical effect upon the world (physical or human-cultural).
It's been fairly obvious that one of these Very Large Black Swans (unpredictable event, at least in their detail and specific effects) is going to upend us all soon. Vernor puts aside his misgivings concerning prediction to risk the opinion that the next Big Singularity will emerge from the ever-accelerating capability of computing (i.e. from the cosequences of Moore's law and similar).
Now, James Cameron has made them Terminator films, which pander to current US hysteria about Very Bad Things Out There. Others have opined that emergent computer intelligence may be less aggressive. Who knows?
However, I suspect them web pages of semi-gobbledegook you are findings is the first stirrings of the Machine Consciousness. Naturally, the beast will be Very Intelligent and so will be most interested in excellent pursuits and bodies of knowledge such as woodworking, bicycles made of exotic materials in the Italian fashion and how to seduce women, especially rich and generous ones.
What are we to do? Ah ha! Nothing! Events will take their course, willy-nilly, albeit those events will be unpredictable. Meanwhile I am closing the shed door and putting up a notice which says, "Province of Mediocristan - no Black Swans Allowed, especially if they have red eyes, hydraulic limbs and titanium teeth fixed in a rictus smile of bad intentions towards my personage".
Lataxe, an ostrich.
It will most likely not attack you through the shed door but rather through the portal from which you are now posting!
R,
Come out from behind that machine-generated fascade and post a picture of yo'self. I am hoping that there are no red gleams, titanium bits or futuristic-looking armaments!
Of course, it may be too late and all of us could be infected with the caustic memeplexes generated by The Machine Intelligence, which is keeping itself hid until we hoomans self-destruct via idealogical wars, conspicuous over-consumption and death-by-US tablesaw - all memeplexes slid into our heads by the naughty Machine. I believe it's using Polecat News and other so-called journalistic poison-pipes. I mean, why else would anyone buy a Unisaw clone, eat MacFud or go waltzing off to foreign climes to be bashed by the beligerant natives?
Lataxe, looking for the antidote, as hiding in the shed seems a bit inadequate
Edited 3/6/2008 6:48 am ET by Lataxe
"However, I suspect them web pages of semi-gobbledegook you are findings is the first stirrings of the Machine Consciousness. Naturally, the beast will be Very Intelligent and so will be most interested in excellent pursuits and bodies of knowledge such as woodworking, bicycles made of exotic materials in the Italian fashion and how to seduce women, especially rich and generous ones."
I think I like this Vermin Minge chap.
Lud, I think you ought to write a book. Call it "Random Ramblings
" or similar. It would do almost as well as Harry Potter for Thor.
Edited 3/6/2008 4:30 am by philip
Philip,
In that other book*, the one that Pedro recommended about the unexpected; failure of planning/budgets; paucity of correct predictions from so-called experts; and so forth, he illustrates behaviour that might help us avoid the worst consequences of unexpected events; or even help us take advantage of them when they pop up.
The behaviour concerned is that of those scientifically-oriented pragmatist organisations wherein the "employees" do a lot of playing about with thangs that takes their fancies. Every now and then a Black Swan pops out and they find themselves with a previously undreamt-of potential money-maker. Then the other lads in that happy organisation expoit the New Fangle and make loads of dosh for all. Perhaps they also benefit we citizens of Mediocristan (they inhabit Extremistan, incidentally) as the New Fangle is a biscuit joiner, diamond sharpening plate or even an item that can run an engine on one's own effluent whilst preventing any pong.
Of course, the New Fangle might instead be a Doom Machine or A Mind Eater - that's the trouble with unpredictable Black Swan events that are also Singularities; we cannot control what they will be nor put them back in the box labelled "Pandora's Thangs - Keep Out"!
Anyway, I lack the education, discipline and mathematical underpinning to be a scientist. So I just rambles on and buggers about in the shed, with the vague hope that some New and Exciting (not to mention Very Useful) Fangle will pop out or the process. In practice, one happy day merges into the next with nary a new fangle in sight; but at least I'm not stuck with an oilstone.
Lataxe, wandering in his mind.
* The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
It's clear that they're using some kind of simple-minded thesaurus-based search-and-replace program. If you look at two closely-related descriptions (e.g., two similar products from the same company), you can see how it's working. For example, I saw two products that obviously had the word "quiet" in their descriptions. In one case, it was replaced with "taciturn"; in the other by "reserved."
The question is why? If you click on the More Info link, it takes you to a page with various click-through advertisements. So that's the underlying motivation: sell advertising. But what's up with the convoluted product descriptions? I'm guessing that the intention is for the descriptions to be close enough to the actual descriptions that they score highly against a typical search engine request, yet avoid copyright infringement. (Strictly speaking, though, applying an algorithm to an existing description would constitute a "derived work" and still be subject to copyright laws.)
-Steve
I find it very frustrating. Many google searches now yield only these type sites, that really don't answer your need, and you don't know where to go from "there".
Steve,
I think part of the answer to your question resides here within: http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167931
With no demeanor intended to anyone if one has an understanding of how WEB search engines work coupled with knowing the world is full of varying mindsets; it's fairly easy to see where things can go afoul.
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Oh, I know all about all of that stuff with tweaking web pages to rank highly on search engines. People have been doing that in one way or another since the beginning of time (that is, since around 1994). You used to find web pages that had, at the bottom, a list of thousands of words (all displayed in white on white so that you couldn't see them), whose sole purpose was to generate search matches.
What's interesting about this case is (a) the bizarreness of the results, and (b) the well-protected anonymity of who's behind it.
-Steve
Steve,
What's interesting about this case is (a) the bizarreness of the results,
Intentional or non-intentional meta keys to get you on the hook maybe?
and (b) the well-protected anonymity of who's behind it.
First RED ALERT!
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Hi All,
Before changing my email address, I used to get ads from somewhere (?) where the first sentence was suggesting the next great stock buy. After that it was nonsense, very similar to those descriptions.
It kind of seems that there might be something fishy going on right under our noses. Strange.
Paul
"After that it was nonsense, very similar to those descriptions."
That's the thing: The "filler" text in spam emails really is nonsense, just randomly chosen sentences and phrases strung together in no particular pattern. The intent in that case is to confuse spam filters.
These descriptions are quite different. They are purposefully crafted to look like real descriptions, with just a few words changed here and there.
-Steve
Oh, I see. There were a few "buzz" words used in those descriptions, weren't there? What in the world is the purpose (motive) for these sites do you think? Definitely weird.
Paul
At least some of the links led to Amazon, so I suspect there is an attempt to capture the "referral fee" that Amazon apparently pays. If you keep everything anomomous with very low costs it only takes a few click throughs that give you a payment can make money.
It also traps search engine traffic.
The description I read (of a particular hand plane) sounded remarkably like typical spam subject lines, makes me worry a bit that while I was deciphering it, there was being spyware inserted into my new machine. Too funny (or not).
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