FRAVIA'S SEEKERS TERMINOLOGY
TIDBITS OF WISDOM
A
• Altavista: Main search engine. Grandpa & Grandma where very happy with it once upon a time.
• Angles: the parts of his 'quarry' that a Seeker can grasp, if they are not too elusive.
• Anonimity: On the web you never give real info about yourself, no matter how pressing they are and you should always lie so much that your falsehood cannot possibly be outdone. Not that this will help a lot against stalking and malwares, alas :-(
• Arrows: pointed searchstrings, useful to reach your targets cutting the web like a pudding, see also The 'Moundarren' field case
B
• Blogs: "We despise blogs!" - announced fravia+, bowing from the waist as he spoke, but we still may have to search these morasses.
• Bookmarklets: useful tiny scripts, for instance the well known "google url cleaner".
• Bots: useful scripts, (ro)bots sounds cooler than "program". Like mechanical robots, bots are guided by algorithmic rules of behavior - if this happens, do that; if that happens, do this. But instead of clanking around a laboratory bumping into walls, software robots are executable programs that maneuver through cyberspace bouncing off communications protocols. Learn how to write them
C
• Cache: Important searching resource. A cache is most useful when the original target's server does not respond. You should better use the "text only" option, whenever available, to "unblock" the problem most cashes have: in order to spare their own server, they still try to pull images and scripts from the original target's one, and store only the text of your target. Caches can be most useful to bypass censorship and to quickly check content from not or slow responding servers: e.g. if a target does not answer or if your provider has arbitrarily decided you shouldn't connect to it. You can still search for targets through any search engine with a good cache, and read whatever, whenever you want. While the webarchive (the wayback machine @ alexa) offers multiple complete caches for many sites, and for many different timeslices, and is most useful for "disappeared" sites, its range and depth are far smaller and shallower than the broad caches of the main big search engines (gogle, yahoo, msnlive, ask and gigablast offer atm good cache facilities).
• Combing: Important searching technique. Combing is a very effective search strategy: basically, instead of simply searching, you search those that have already searched.
• Crackers: A cracker is a reverse engineer who breaks copyright protection on software. Heroes of the modern world. Some limit themselves to reverse, or improve, simple software protections, some other free software patents. I am honoured to count among my friends some capable (and some half-mythical) crackers. Software reverse engineering is the sine qua non for fighting back in a world that is getting more and more anti-democratic and oligarchic, where money counts more than knowledge (why?) and where citizens exist only in order to consume useless gadgets and do and believe what they are told.
• Cuil: A search engine launched with big fanfare by some disgrunted google database co-worker that claimed the "biggest index of the village", a search not based on popularity and a bigger respect for anonimity, but despite such good intentions has a stale updating record and atm doesn't seem to deliver good results.
D
E
• Edge: A "hard edge" is the term used when the edge of an object is painted in a well defined or definite way. So a Target with an hard edge is a strong Signal among the Noise. See Cinix's remarks, Nemo's Hotbot and other points of view.
• Epanalepsis: Searching method. Repeating a searchstring in order to avoid Noise.
F
• Fast: Fundamental Main search engine. Now killed.
• Firewall: Tools that you can use to reverse your target sites' structure and capture streams. For a toy operating system like Windows a firewall is absolutely necessary, both BlackIce and Sygate are good and easy to find on the web. For GNU/linux you de facto don't need a firewall. If you feel hypochondriac, just type ufw in a terminal.
• Flying: In searching sense: entering a database without a password or using other unconventional methods.
• Fravia+ : Myself, an ex Cracker turned Seeker
G
• GNU-LINUX: The correct name for a (much) better operating system than Windows, with the added advantages of being free and without spywares. Lusers call it "Linux" (from the name of the responsible of the kernel part of the project: Linus Thorwald), offending everyone else involved in the project which is about free software, not only about concurrencing Windows. The Gnu Project was launched in 1984 to develop the free operating system GNU (an acronym for "GNU's Not Unix"), and thereby give computer users the freedom that most of them have lost through Windows. GNU-LINUX was created and is actively promoted by my friend Richard Stallman, hero and free software defender.
• Google: Fundamental Main search engine
• Guessing: Fundamental searching technique. The key to guessing is research. Look around your target website and see how they name things and where they put things. Look at pictures and links and downloads. Do they like cryptic abbreviations? Do you see patterns?
H
• Homepages: A part of the web with a lot of Noise and some hard to find Signal.
• Hotbot: Fundamental Main search engine, now defunct
I
• "Index +of": Well known Seeker's trick. Explained in our webbits, copycatted by hundreds of self-appointed "search experts" when writing useless "web searchbooks" and now extensively used by every average web-spammer that wants to lure zombies to his crap sites.
• IRC: Internet Relay Chat lore. You may search through IRC (gosh, you may even waste time chatting), but beware your IRC Anonymity.
J
K
• Klebing: Important searching technique. Basically nothing else than using the referrals inside your loggings in order to find sites you did not even supposed to exist.
• K00k: a regular poster who continually posts messages with no apparent grounding in reality. Part of the trolling section.
L
• LART: Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool. Something large, heavy and painful. See the trolls section
• Linux: Incorrect name for GNU-Linux.
• Luring: important social enginering technique. Luring is for instance often used in order to caper lusers' email accounts, getting their passwords, connected to Stalking.
• Luser: "User loser". In searching terms is somebody "just" looking for a destination site. He's likely to put a one word search string inside Google and may even find what he is searching for, if he is lucky and wants to waste time.
M
• Malwares: Cfr Spywares.
• Messageboards: We have ours, other people have theirs, some are infested by trolls.
N
• Noise: Irrelevant commercial crap sites, that cover the Signal you are seeking. Can be partly avoided using appropriate search techniques and, of course, a good Browser. The noise should fade off when your Arrows pin a stronger signal.
• Network protocol analyzers: Catch spywares redhanded, check your target servers responses. Cfr also Firewalls.
O
• Opera: Quick and powerful browser, that most seekers use, often in combination with Proxomitron. Cfr anonimity lore
P
• PHP: Powerful programming language for searching scrolls, searching wands and bots writing. Now in part overpowered by Python.
• Proverbs: Seeker proverbs: mnemonic useful refrains for seekers.
• Proxomitron: A proxy. Fundamental privacy tool, that most seekers use in combination with Opera.
• Proxy: Various privacy tools and scripts for searchers & seekers, who mostly use Proxomitron. When you are in the comfort of your computer room, all alone with your machine, you splatter information about yourself all over the world. It's kind of walking naked in a crowded boulevard with your ID card (and your wallet) hanging behind your neck...
• Python: Fundamental programming language for seekers. Cutting edge, powerful and simple.
Q
• Quarry: What you are seeking: your target.
R
• Re-ranking: Various techniques used to increase the Signal and diminish the Noise using the main search engines.
S
• Searcher: is somebody looking for a destination site. He knows how to search, but he still does not 'feel' the dark energy pushing the web apart, as seekers do.
• Seeker: Web wizard searcher. Uses searching scrolls, searching wands and various bots. Has even (seldom used) magical pouches. Some of them are able to feel the dark commercial energy and fight for a better world. His symbol is a glorious ~S~ representing the ever moving nature of the Web, the Signal sinking among the Noise waves, the moebius path we all follow, the sunset of the web of knowledge and whatsnot :-)
• SEM: Search Engine Marketing. Pay per click scams, linkfarms and search engine clogging.
• SEOs: Search engines optimizers. The commercial clowns responsible for the noise clogging the main search engines. There are various interesting techniques you can use against them.
• Slowbombing: Email spamming method used to punish Lusers and Spammers.
• Snake oil sellers: Spammers (Linkfarmers kind).
• Spammer: In usual sense, a commercial idiot using mass-emailing in order to fish some luser, in searching sense a so called search engine optimizer.
• Spelunking: Exploring servers that do not collaborate.
• Spywares: Aka Malwares. Evil software programs that syphon your data away (or evil Operating systems: windows is for instance well known for its spying activities).
• Stalking: Various techniques that can be used in order to gather information, connected to Luring.
• Syrupping: Technique that can be used in order to gather free (and dubious) email providers.
• Synecdochical searching: Searching method. Substitution of a part for the whole, when searching (or the other way round) in order to hear a stronger Signal. Cfr also the synonymical searching bot.
T
• Target: What you are seeking: your quarry.
• Teoma: Fundamental Main search engine. Now fagocitated by ask.
• Tides: search engines will tend to give you inconsistent results either every few hours or even every time you do query them, depending on server connection speed, overload, moon phases, how many Americans watch television and so on.
• Trolling: Annoying behaviour on messageboards. Can also be used in order to gather information.
U
• Usenet: Fundamental part of the web. Will give you an incredible mass of micro-information, with mostly very useful results, especially for seeking, combing, klebing and stalking purposes.
V
W
• Webbit: Web-rabbit. A Target quasi-magically pulled out of the web cylinder.
• Web-rings: A part of the web with Noise and Signal.
• Wikipedia: Fundamental, authoritative and definitive encyclopedic reference. One of the most useful web-tools.
• Windows (or "Windoze"): Non free operating system, that has the added disadvantage of being expensive, slow, bugged, prone to crashes and continuously spying on its lusers and lackeys. Its incarnation XP for instance syphons users' searchstrings and users' IPs to sa.windows.com (IP: 207.46.248.249) each and every time a luser runs windows' own hard disk start ==> search facility.
If you (have to) use windows, protect your anonimity with care and always use powerful firewalls and/or filters like proxomitron. Also using Microsoft internet explorer as browser would be masochistic to say the least. Adventuring on the Web with MSIE is tantamount of walking blindfolded inside a mined field.
One OS to fool them all One browser to find them One email client to bind them all And through security holes, blind them... Your mouse has moved. Windows must be restarted for the change to take effect. Reboot now? [OK] [CANCEL]Despite the huge progress made by the wizard developers at Wine, Windows remain still useful for games, though, because GNU/Linux has always (criminally) underestimated their importance.
X
Y
• Yo-yo: A technique used to dive deep and avoid the commercial paid noise and the moron SEO's spamming of the Main search engines.
Z
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