If you're going to search the web, make an intelligent guess first | Hacker News Reader

If you're going to search the web, make an intelligent guess first

blog.jgc.org

30 pointsjgrahamc6 comments

I don't think this is advice that really needs to be given to most people on HN. However, it is important advice.

I've often been told by my wife that the reason she has to ask me for help with computer issues is because I know what to google and she doesn't. She will often end up blinding picking part of an error message to google, but I am able to understand the error and the systems involved enough to make a good search that narrows in on the specific problem.

It's amazing how much more productive a little GoogleFu can make you.

I don't know, if that was true then the person who originally posted it might have found it themselves, or the people who responded to the original post might not have been so perplexed as to how he figured that out. It seems like a no brainer when you think about it but I'm not sure everyone would think about it right off.

Another fun approach would be using google code search which allows for regexp searching. Looking for stuff of similar format to {D1531,1000,1501|}, I find these two results. The results indicate that this might be related to printers.

http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=\{D[0-9]{4},[0-9]{4},[0-9...

Interestingly, that points to TEC Printers made by Toshiba for a similar purpose (barcoding). So perhaps this is a common barcoding language used by compatible printers.

Ref: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1346961

Another "good Google searching practices" anecdote.

When I was in high school (I live in Mexico) we were supposed to watch a human rights video for English class and transcribe the audio. But since I am somewhat lazy I thought tha maybe there could be a transcription somewhere on the internet. After googleing a while (only some very thoughtful searches which I don't remember) I came across a pdf with a full transcription from some Korean government site. I copied and printed the english text and that's what I handed in.

I failed the assignment and the teacher asked me to lend her the transcription so that everyone could have a copy.

P.S. When I found the transcription I passed it to some classmates and they copied the transcription by hand to their notebooks (they didn't fail the assignment).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com