Tutorial Three- Questions!

1. What did Alan Turing wear while riding his bike around Bletchley Park?
Alan Turing use to wear a gas mask while riding his bicycle around Bletchley Park to prevent hay-fever symptoms.
The search engine I used was AltaVista. The website I got the answer from was:
http://www.valeriapatera.it/patera_final.pdf

2. On what date did two computers first communicate with each other? Where were they?
The first computers talked to each other in 1969 through a network called ARPANET. The computers were located in California and Utah.
The search engine I used was AltaVista. The website I got the answer from was:
http://newsfeedresearcher.com/data/articles_t45/internet-computers-first.html

3. What is Bill Gates’ birthday and what age was he when he sold his first software?
Bill Gates was born on the 28th of October, 1955. So if Bill Gates first sold his software in 1975, which would make him 20 years old.
The search engine I used was AltaVista. The website I got the answer from was:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1029934/Life-times-Bill-Gates-Microsoft.html

4. Where was the World Wide Web invented?
Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN, invented the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1989. The search engine I used was AltaVista.
The search engine I used was AltaVista. The website I got the answer from was:
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/About/Web-en.html

5. How does the power of the computer you are working on now, compare with the power of a personal computer 30 years ago?
A computer in 1979 had an 8088 8-bit processor. A computer in 2009 has a 2.60GHz, 800FSB, 2MB processor.
The search engine I used was AltaVista. The website I got the answer from was:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/pa-microhist.html

6.What is the weight of the largest parsnip ever grown?
A PARSNIP weighing 2.3 kilograms and measuring about 35 centimetres long was picked from the garden of Port Lincoln man Ken Holden.
The search engine i used to find this answer was alta vista, the website used was, http://www.portlincolntimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/holden-growing-more-giant-vegetables/1570577.aspx?src=rss

7.When did Queensland become a state and why is the Tweed River in New South Wales?

Queen Victoria gave her approval and signed Letters Patent on June 6 1859 to establish the new colony of Queensland. The two sates of QLD and NSW were seperated in 1859, there were many reasons for why the boarders between states are where they are and these reasons can be found on the Queensland Government Mapping and Surveying website. I found this information on altavista, which led me to the website http://www.derm.qld.gov.au/mapping/index.html


8.What was the weather like in south-east Queensland on 17 November 1954?
It was raining at this time as it was when QLD had severe floods. To find this information i searched altavista for qld weather and found the bureau of meteorology website, http://www.bom.gov.au/hydro/flood/qld/fld_history/floodsum_1950.shtml


9.Why is is Lord Byron still remembered in Venice?
He wrote Don Juan and many other famous pieces, i found this on the bbc history website, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/byron_lord.shtml which i found by searching Lord Byron on Altavista


10.What band did Sirhan Chapman play in and what is his real name?

The Black Assassins is the bands name which i found by searching "Sirhan Chapman" which led me to the website
http://web.revolutionrock.com.au/oral-hist/index.php?id=36.


I then searched the links on this page which led me to their myspace page, it stated Sirhan Chapman - does Keyboards & Vocals. I couldnt find his real name but i did find an article by searching "Sirhan Chapmans real name" which said, "Keyboards and lead vocals are by Sirhan Chapman, Bass and vocals by Putty Nose Sarjeant, Lee Harvey Hinkley is on drums and Mohammed El Jackal on guitar and vocals.Needless to say those are their stage names. "We'll rip your mothers heart out", they said, warning me not to print their real names". http://www.blackassassins.net/CourierMailReview.html


PART 2: ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS

1. How do search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?

There are many different search engine types. Below describes two generic ways search engines work:

Crawler-Based Search Engines
Crawler-based search engines, such as Google, create their listings automatically. They "crawl" or "spider" the web, then people search through what they have found.
If you change your web pages, crawler-based search engines eventually find these changes, and that can affect how you are listed. Page titles, body copy and other elements all play a role.

Human-Powered Directories
A human-powered directory, such as the Open Directory, depends on humans for its listings. You submit a short description to the directory for your entire site, or editors write one for sites they review. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted.

http://searchenginewatch.com/2168031

2. Who, or what, makes one page (that you might get in your search results) more useful than another one, so that it is put at the top of your search results?

One of the main rules in a ranking algorithm involves the location and frequency of keywords on a web page. Sometimes it is called the location/frequency method, for short.

Just say you search for “travel” in a search engine, pages with the search terms appearing in the HTML title tag are often assumed to be more relevant than others to the topic. Search engines will also check to see if the search keywords appear near the top of a web page, such as in the headline or in the first few paragraphs of text. They assume that any page relevant to the topic will mention those words right from the beginning.

Frequency is the other major factor in how search engines determine relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web pages.

http://searchenginewatch.com/2167961

3. What are some of your favourite search engines? Why do you like one more than others?

I predominately use Google and Yahoo when searching things on the internet. I use these because they, until recently, have been the only search engines that I was aware of. This tutorial task however, has introduced me to a wider range of search engines that are just as good, if not better, than the conventional and traditional search engines (such as Google).