Please can we get the search page modified?

The 'Newer than' option is a pain in the butt because it doesn't default to a sensible value. Unlike other forums where last weeks threads are old news, this forum contains useful information in threads 2,3 and 4 years old. Ideally this value would default to 10 years and would catch everything ever posted that matches. If a searcher wants to narrow it down manually then he can easily. I'd settle for 1 year if you're concerned about server load.

I'd like to see the number of search results default to 50 per page,

What I'd also _really_ like to see is discrete links to pages in the search results. When I search for something and end up with more results than expected I'd like some method of advancing through 5 or 6 pages quickly until I get to the timeframe that I think I need without having to click 'next' 5 times and waiting for the results each time. It is possible to edit the URL to achieve this(*), so it should be possible to generate the links fairly easily. Something like "Previous, p-5, p-4, p-3, p-2, p-1, <p>, p+1, p+2, p+3, p+4, p+5, Next" would be ideal. (Similar to Google's handling of search results)

(*) If you edit the URL such that you ask for a page that is beyond the result set then you get a "You must be logged in to use the search engine" error.