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Fravia's combing page
"Combing" = (simplified) gathering results that others have collected
~
Updated November 2000 (bear with me, this section will be re-ordered...)
Some essays about combing
[Combing] The art of sailing in pure water by Loki, October 2000 (A little of "methodology" about the information)
[Simple combing techniques] by Fravia+, October 2000 (part of a conference held in Milan for the Linux day)
"The importance of Webrings for combing purposes", by Lorenzo Gatti
Finally, you may find useful to peruse my obsolete 'lesson' [combing and klebing techniques] (November 1997!)
Use the [Combing resources] page as well!
[What is combing?] ~ [The "double combing" approach] ~ [An old case study]
What is combing?

Combing is a very effective search strategy: instead of simply searching, you use various other net resources:
-The continuously updated "Top 100" or "Top 1000" URL-locations

-Usenet newsgroups and their various "vigilant filters" 
 and "short range queries"

-Relevant site links pages.

-Clever, "revealing" searchstrings.
Obviously combing is an important technique for whatever interest you may have, quite useful in order to spare an incredible lot of Internet searching hours. We use this technique in order to wage battle against our "commercial smut" enemies, but you would be well advised to learn it and use it for *any* interest you may have...
The "double combing" approach

As Jeff realized and pointed out, simple combing techniques can give incredibly accurate results.
I think if a person really thinks about this and puts together some good keywords you can really find some terrific links to info thru BOOKMARKS ...and ALL THE WORK has already been done for you!......all with headings and sometimes alphabetized...:)
Just look at the following example: google... search... bookmarks fravia...
http://www.cs.umass.edu/~lmccarth/bookmarks.html ....mostly lots of info on crypto...
Indeed this kind of very simple combing approach (a combing querystring on a local search engine) can give impressive results. Try it out (here for instance: bookmarks proxies on crosswinds' homepages) and enjoy this kind of fishing right now! Yet you'll discover more advanced combing techniques reading the following...

[Combing resorces], originally compilated by Rumsteack in February 2000

An old "case study": combing commercial smut depots
death to the pornodealers

Warning: you better set the option "autoload images" OFF inside your Netscape settings, else you'll pretty soon regret having accessed this kind of sites... you will not loose anything... NONE of the images they carry is worth loading... should you really want nice "sexually explicit" images (for free of course, and please excuse the pathetic euphemism), then visit the many artists that expose their own work on the net... on the sites we are going to destroy (see how in the CGI-reverse engineering page) you'll not even find any "pornography" whatsoever, only fetid smut.

Let's start with a typical "combing" approach, I will not hyperlink because I do not want this site spidered along these links, but you may cut and paste the following URLs: 
Top1000 counter
http://www.hitbox.com/wc/world2.html          ;TOP1000 "normal", example for useful combing
http://www.hitbox.com/wc/adult.html           ;TOP1000 "adult", main entrance
http://www.hitbox.com/wc/top10.adult.html     ;top 10 smut commercial
http://www.hitbox.com/wc/top2100.adult.html   ;top > 2100... understand the "name" 
                                              ;approach




Webcounter
http://www.digits.com/top/both_adult_100.html ;top site has here "only" 540000 a day
http://www.digits.com/top/comm_adult_100.html ;top site has here "only" 124000 a day




Etcetera... you understand the trick now... here are some other ones
various smut counters:

http://www.xxxcounter.com/home/ 
http://www.web21.com/
http://www.sexhound.com/index.cgi?from=16818			this one uses CGI! :-)
I do not want this page catalogued inside the smut information retrievers, therefore the above links are not hyperlinked... cut and paste them in order to use them.

For combing purposes you may also use:
1) the usual search engines (which give incredible results at time!)
2) ftp search, looking for "hidden" subdirectories with relevant names
3) the "big page provider" search engines (like the ones on geocities or mygale)
As you can see from the above short information,
1.1) many "counters' statistics" betray quite a lot of useful information... if, for instance, you are interested in jellyfishes (it's an example!) you would be well advised, instead of searching the web for ages, to have a quick look at all the pages that inside the counters' statistics, fall under the counter's main categories "biology" or "science"... pretty soon you would find the "golden link" you were looking for...
1.2) We need MANY addresses of SMUT dealers in order to find the many that utilise a CGI-script (or other attackpoints) in order to know "from which site" they got the query... as you'll see on the redcgi reverse engineering page of this section, this opens the way to their doom!
2) As anybody that uses redftp search ("This server is located in Trondheim, Norway") already knows, the ftp search approach (that fishes hidden directories) can fish incredible (if tricky to interpret) results.
3) For other combing purposes (not for smut dealers, of course) you may use also the search systems specific to the big free pages providers...have a search at redhttp://www.geocities.com/search/ and you'll understand what I mean
Combing on the Usenet
(See the ad hoc usenet search page)
Usenet combing can work "on the fly" or "regularly" through the "Vigilant" filter at
[email protected]
I'll show you for instance one of my queries:
FIND how-to-search tutorial manual
		NOT spam
		NOT top position
		NOT advertising
		MAX 8
Such a query would give you useful information about "searching techniques" on the Web, you may of course construct how many queries you like and *register* (for free) by the vigilant filter, in order to get the results of your usenet queries emailed to you every day or week or month.

Usenet query can also be done through the two big Usenet "depots": Dejanews and email query, that are explained elsewhere on my site. Many of the main red search engines allow such querying too, using the services of either Dejanews or emailquery.

Good luck, good hunt!
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