The Foreign Service Journal, December 2003

work and made more of a commit- ment at the front end, there would be drastically different results now,” said Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., D-Del., the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. College: You Can Research and Apply Online! College: where to go, how to get in, and how to pay for it. Questions like these can drive families to hire consultants. Ultimately, you have to make the decisions yourself, but there are a number of Web-based services that can help clarify the process for free. Here are a few tips to keep in mind. Apply for college online. It saves the hassle of dealing with the postal system and worrying about postmark dates and arrival times. Most colleges allow this; in fact, most have a link to an online application on the admis- sions page of their Web site. If you aren’t sure if a college accepts online applications, or you want help apply- ing, check out any of the Web sites designed just for that purpose, like Princeton Review ( www.princeton D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 13 C YBERNOTES There are hundreds (if not thousands) of Internet search engines, each with its own virtues and shortcom- ings, depending on the type of information you’re looking for. But only one search engine has achieved worldwide fame in its own right: Google , consistently ranked as one of the 10 most popular sites on the Internet. Created in 1998 by a couple of college students in California, its name is a play on the mathematical term “googol” (the extremely large number denoted as 1 followed by 100 zeros). Google employs an algorithm to scour more than a billion Web pages. It provides an interface in 88 languages and offer search results in 35 of them. In fact, more than half of its traffic (over 70 million users per month) is from outside the U.S. The site is so ubiquitous that it has even entered the English language as a verb, “to google,” meaning to seek background information on someone by typing their name into the site’s search function. On the site’s home page, you’ll find a wide range of items, such as the “Google Zeitgeist,” listing the “Top Gaining Queries” for the previous week. Here’s the Top 10 list for the week ending Oct. 27: 1. Elliott Smith; 2. Diwali greetings; 3. Halloween costume ideas; 4. Daylight Saving Time; 5. California fires; 6. Dia de [los] Muertos; 7. Spencer Tunick; 8. Concorde; 9. Scary Movie 3; 10. South Beach Diet. Google also has a sly sense of humor. If you type the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” into the search box (terms don’t have to be in quotes, by the way), but click the “I’m feeling lucky” button instead of “Google Search,” here are excerpts from what appears on the screen — on a page that looks exactly like an Internet error message: “These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be dis- played. ”The weapons you are looking for are currently unavailable. The country might be experiencing tech- nical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your weapons inspectors mandate. “Please try the following: “Click the Regime change button, or try again later. … “To check your weapons inspector settings, click the U.N. menu, and then click Weapons Inspector Options. On the Security Council tab, click Consensus. … “If the Security Council has enabled it, the United States of America can examine your coun- try and automatically discover Weapons of Mass Destruction. … “Some countries require 128,000 troops to liberate them. “Click the Panic menu and then click “About U.S. for- eign policy” to determine what regime they will install. “If you are an “Old European” country trying to pro- tect your interests …” If only all error messages were this entertaining! Site of the Month: www.Google.com