what a wise machine…
Sounds like a new Magic 8-Ball.
Have you tried asking it whether you should but yourself a cat?
That’s just too damn funny. *laughs*
It’s a battle of the comment spam!
…and ASCII over Unicode… :-)
— Hans 
Vi over Emacs. Of course, I already knew that =]
— Max
This system is really unfair since, you know, Atom and Python are actual words.
Anyway, a much better way is to use PageRank (instead of just popularity) and do queries like:
(atom kills kittens) OR (rss kills kittens)
(Answer: Bill Frist.)
I hate to burst a (really neat) bubble, but there are two major problems here. First, you don’t search for phrases – so any page with “perl”, “kills”, and “kittens” will be a hit for perl. What you’d want instead (well, what *I* would want) is a search for “perl kills kittens” in quotes, so Google will only give hits for times people actually complain about the particular feline deaths you describe.
Then there’s a general statistical problem. For many (like XML vs. Atom), there are simply zero hits. So the first one wins, but that’s nothing to write home about. “Too little data spoils the broth.”
John Kerry vs. George Bush anyone?
I suggest you host your site on an automobile.
“…whether you should but yourself a cat?”
That is either a case of a simple typo (‘but’ instead of ‘buy’) or is the most cryptic comment I’ve seen in quite a while.
— r
If you follow the link, the Python kills kittens score seems to consist mostly of Monty Python, not the Python language. Subtract monty and the score drops to 366 from 830.
Asheesh, you assume that Mark wanted this to be logical.
— Jeremy Dunck
Interesting. I like it.
— Pat
Mark, don’t you have this system worked out backwards? After all, if the search “HTML kills kittens” returns more searches than “XHTML kills kittens”, doesn’t that mean that HTML kills more kittens than XHTML? And shouldn’t you prefer the option that DOESN’T kill more kittens?
(Can you tell I’m a cat lover?)
some other results:
piracy wins over legality
dos wins over windows xp
life wins over death
truth wins over fraud
coffee wins over tea
walking wins over sitting
driving wins over walking
running wins over driving
Why kill kittens when they can kill each other? The “kills” operator is not necessarily symmetric: “X kills Y” doesn’t return the same results as “Y kills X,” but oddly enough, they both return the same number of results (so far).
— Eric
I find it disturbing that so many of the commenters here care less about the predictive power of the original technique, and more about finding more precise ways to kill kittens.
— mpt
Awesome! When I launch my new web technology I can ensure that at least one influential developer uses it by making sure the website refers to killing kittens! Marketing genius!
I wonder if anyone knows what words or phrases that people who go to this site type in. For instance, to test the deal out (w/o understanding how it worked), I typed in “Cowboys” and “Indians.” Anybody know? Kinda like that show, that Louie Anderson (?) hosts. — Things people do during Thanksgiving: Eat Turkey (10 pts.) – Watch Football (5 pts.) – Think of the Native Americans (-5 pts).
it’s going to be hard to get python running and producing form-c normalized UTF-8 encoded atom and HTML on computers built with vaccum tubes and running on steam power.
Apparently, france kills more kittens then eleven camels do.
— Phil
I understand it’s already possible to send Atom over RSS and REST over SOAP today!
Wait wait wait.
OSS kills MORE kittens than proprietary crap…so you choose OSS?
i wanted to leave a comment, but i noticed asheesh has already said everything i would’ve said. so, well …. me too!
— nex
I am currently in the middle of building some significant pieces of technology. Currently, the process of registering domain names is being improved, by the assumption that people made of brass will just automatically register all domains. Also, a technology to deliver high speed wireless broadband to people in the sticks, via wasps.
I’d love to talk about a technology desgned to kill kittens. It would be free software, Python, etc.
I am honestly not crazy.
— mattl
That is great stuff…
got a good chuckle on this, had seen the googlefight before but never had really messed around with it..
Surprised they are not banned from google yet.
joel
http://historyagent.com/joeldg/
— joeldg
But is it Live or is it Dead?
Schrodinger’s Box
— Null
Apparently, “my fatass” beats “Mark’s ass” (with kills kittens attached of course).
Better watch out Mark.
— Derik
I’m gonna name my next software project “Fox”. I bet it’s gonna come out at the top!
— KV
Apparently Apple also kills more kittens than Microsoft. More reason to hate those Mac zealots (besides the zealotry)!
— Foofy
Apparently guns don’t kill kittens, people kill kittens.
— Daryl