On Sat, 29 Jan 2011 20:50:20 -0800, rusi wrote: > On Jan 30, 9:21 am, Steven D'Aprano <steve > +comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: >> >> > I think this is a fairly accurate description of (one aspect of) the >> > problem. >> > If you dont see it as a problem how do you explain that google can >> > search the World Wide Web better than we can search our individual >> > hard disks? >> >> I fail to see any connection between the location that operating >> systems store files, and the ability of Google to index publicly >> available websites. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-addressable_storage#Content- addressed_vs._Location-addressed
Nope, sorry, doesn't help. Both local files on your hard drive, and most remote websites on the Internet, are location addressed. Google indexes the content, but they don't provide content-addresses. Indeed, they *can't* do so (except, possibly, for content they control such as Google Books), since they can't prevent content owners from modifying either the location address or the content. And as I've mentioned, there are desktop utilities that index content for Windows and Macintosh. In fact, Google themselves offer a desktop app that does just that: http://desktop.google.com/features.html -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
