Confused For A Robot

I was checking the prices on some electronics gear using Google this afternoon. Maybe I might enjoy adding HDTV to my MythTV DVR?

When my first request wasn’t specific enough, I honed in with “hdtv mpeg4&#185 capture pci.” That’s when Google got suspicious.

We’re sorry… but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application

Here’s the actual screen capture of Google’s page.

First, doesn’t Google already have a cookie on this machine by which they follow me around? You know what? There doesn’t have to be a second, because the first covers it all.

This is just weird, because a company that prides itself on artificial intelligence and expert machine interpretation of language, shouldn’t be confusing a 56 year old guy in Connecticut with an automated process!

Google has made more of a positive impact on the retrieval of information than any other company/application I can think of. That’s no minor feat. Our lives have been changed for the better by this student project, hatched at Stanford.

Am I still allowed to be a little disappointed?

&#185 – This is a mistake on my part. I really should have specified “MPEG-2,” normally accomplished in hardware, which greatly reduces the load on the DVR’s computer brain.

2 thoughts on “Confused For A Robot”

  1. Geoff,

    I’ve been looking at hardware to do HD on my MythTV Box as well. Do let us know if you come up with anything good.

    Of course, I’ll need more Hard drive space too.. since I’ve already managed to fill 250 GB with just the “Low-Def” shows that we watch.

  2. In my experience this Google issue is usually associated with their seeing your IP too frequently, making your query appear to be a site ranking program, or spyware app. They dont like those.

    The cause of this can be as simple as running an application that checks a gmail account every minute or two, again causing your IP to get flagged.

    Typically this issue clears up in about a 1/2 hour. If it keeps happening and your ISP assigns you a dynamic IP, you can easily release the IP and get assigned a new one.

    You’re right though – Google shouldn’t confuse a 56 year old guy in Connecticut with an automated process. But for a technology that’s less than 10 years old, I’m still impressed with them…weren’t we supposed to have flying cars like 20 years ago? In comparison, Google’s still pretty cool.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *