Makin search on the other site and getting data and writing in xml

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Steve Holden wrote:
The fact remains that Google can chop your searching ability off
at the knees ...
No they can't. They can only chop off your ability to use Google.

[sigh]. Right, Lawrence, sorry I wasn't quite explicit enough for you.

Seems like a fairly important distinction. Google has the power to
"chop your searching ability off at the knees" only to the extent that
you grant them that power.

Saying "search" when you mean "Google" is like saying "using a PC" when you
mean "using Microsoft Windows".

 

[Steve Holden]

In message <[email protected]>, Ben Finney
wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

Steve Holden wrote:

The fact remains that Google can chop your searching ability off
at the knees ...

No they can't. They can only chop off your ability to use Google.


[sigh]. Right, Lawrence, sorry I wasn't quite explicit enough for you.

Seems like a fairly important distinction. Google has the power to
"chop your searching ability off at the knees" only to the extent that
you grant them that power.

Saying "search" when you mean "Google" is like saying "using a PC" when you
mean "using Microsoft Windows".

Well, I thought it was self-evident that since I was referring to Google
I wasn't talking about Alta Vista searching. If I said "Microsoft have
the ability to terminate your license" presumably you'd chastise me by
pointing out that they wouldn't be able to revoke my *Linux* license.
Whatever.

"There's none as thick as them that wants to be."

regards
Steve

 

[altemurbugra]

ok i close this discussion
i understand everybody no problem

 

[Stefan Behnel]

ok i close this discussion

No, you don't.

Stefan

 

[Paul Boddie]

Apparently, *you* don't understand what they're trying to tell you. It
roughly boils down to the following:

If we just step back from the brink for a moment and give the
questioner the benefit of the doubt - that the exercise merely involves
automating some kind of interactions that would otherwise require lots
of manual messing around piloting a browser, rather than performing
some kind of bulk "suck down" of an entire site's information - then it
is obviously possible to use the following techniques:

* Use a well-known mirroring or archiving tool such as wget.
* Use various testing tools, some of which are written in Python.
* Use urllib, urllib2 or httplib plus an HTML or XML parser in your
own program.
* Automate a Web browser using some off-the-shelf program.
* Use various automation mechanisms provided by your environment
(eg. COM, DCOP), possibly with Python libraries (eg. PAMIE [1],
KPart Plugins [2]).

Various sites forbid wget and friends as a rule, understandably, but
there are sometimes reasons why you might want to use various tools to
automate a procedure involving lots of data which would waste a huge
amount of time if done manually. Perhaps you might have mail residing
in a Webmail system which can't be extracted via any process other than
reading all the messages in a browser, for example, or perhaps your
favourite Internet applications don't provide decent shortcuts to the
information you need, instead believing that it's all about the
"experience": surfing around watching all the animated adverts.
Automation and related technologies can legitimately help users regain
control of their Internet-resident data and make better use of the
services around it.

Paul

[1] http://pamie.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://www.boddie.org.uk/python/kpartplugins.html

 

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Various sites forbid wget and friends as a rule, understandably ...

No, that is not understandable.