Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Works on Search Capabilities
bl8n8r writes "Microsoft is betting millions that someday it will be as well known for search as Google is. Some of its efforts to simplify search on the Internet will soon be in place. The new version of Microsoft's MSN Internet service, available this winter, will include a tool for retrieving digital photos based on images in the pictures. For example, users can ask their computers to retrieve all pictures that include a specific person's face or background."
Give me all pics of CowboyNeal in a van down by the river.
It is developing search-related technologies to do everything from sorting through digital photos to combing through items scattered on your desktop computers.
In other words, the Windows 'search' feature?
The new version of Microsoft's MSN Internet service, available this winter, will include a tool for retrieving digital photos based on images in the pictures
Hmmm. Interesting. I have seen a number of new MS bots trolling all over our lab site for the past two months grabbing every image they can.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I mean really, it seems like everytime M$ comes out with something new, they tell us it will be the second coming of Christ. C#, .NET, etc. I mean, when are we gonna learn that M$ touting a new technology as the best thing ever isn't newsworthy.
user: Okay.. search for that Kubrick movie 'Lolita'..
WebClippy: It appears you are searching for kiddie pr0n.
Here are some suggestions:
[ ] Send an automated confession to the FBI
[ ] Format your hard drive
[ ] All of the above
If you've ever visited the MSN portal more than a handful of times in a two-week period, you'd know that:
(1) The search capabilities are horrible; Google is much better.
(2) The "news" story titles are misleading and the stories are frequently repeated over the course of a week; Yahoo! is much better.
Once upon a time, businesses recognized their core competencies and did what they do best, and let other companies handle the things that those companies are good at. Once again, Microsoft chooses not to apply this conventional wisdom to their MSN portal
Remember Microsoft Bob?
William
When you're not looking, this sig is in Latin.
I've been wanting something like that for a LONG time!
Microsoft? Search experts?
.NET...)
Has anybody here used the awful search interface they put up on MSDN a couple of months ago? Its hideous. It takes twice as long to find anything as its predecessor did. Googling with site:msdn.microsoft.com is often the only way of finding some documents (I had to do that to find out any information on programming NT Services without using
Searching for a name of one of their programs ("dr watson") doesn't turn up any information on it in the knowledge base. You have to search for 'drwtsn32' to get anywhere, despite the full name of the program being mentioned in the articles about it.
Yeah, great search interface. Really inspires my confidence.
That would be cool though. I've often found a cute girl in porn and it would be nice to search the web for all other free pictures of her.
Yes, Microsoft will compete with Google someday. This shows their on the right track: We Can't find orselves!
insert sig here
as well known for search as Google is
It already is, though the quality of its reputation is far behind.
"Do you know Google?"
"Yeah, it's great."
"Do you know MSN?"
"Yeah, that piece of crap?"
It won't be easy to shove [google and yahoo] aside
Shouldn't be too difficult with an unfair monopoly on the computer market.
But he said better personalization is one way to improve searching. For example, if MSN knows that the computer user searching for "pizza" lives in a specific ZIP code, it can deliver results of pizza places in that ZIP code.
That's exactly why I *won't* want to use this new search engine. If I want to find pizza places in my zip code, I'll do it myself, thank you.
Crap, if I wanted internet that logged into me, I'd already have it.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
It's extremely easy to change your search engine. Changing your OS, your office suite, and even your browser, require a lot more effort for normal users. This creates MS's lock-in. But changing your search engine is as easy as typing in a new address (and Google's toolbar makes it even easier for users).
We've already seen a number of big fluctuations in search engine popularity in the short history of the internet. It's not a matter of what MS does as much as it is a matter of what Google does. If Google keeps their search reliability high, and keeps users happy, few won't feel any need to switch from something they're already comfortable with.
For example, users can ask their computers to retrieve all pictures that include a specific person's face or background.
think of time saved in searching for porn!!
"I drank what?" - Socrates
Internet Explorer won because Netscape sucked. While IE may have holes, the interface and the feel is far superior than anything else out there
(golf clap)
Millions, eh? For Microsoft that's, what, the cost of a month's worth of the tonnes of live pigs they feed Balmer (it's true! I swear!).
Anyhow, this is a Good Thing. Given that this is a situation where Microsoft can't strangle Google with it's OS dominance (at least, not in any way I can think of), more competition > less competition.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
It works much better than I expected.
I wish I was skilled enough to help out with the project because I think it will become important in the future and now that MS is after the same sort of application you can image what will happen.
The GIFT (the GNU Image-Finding Tool)
Wax on, wax off baby!
ROFLOORLOROLROLOLOLOROFL
u r teh funnie!!!
BSOD!!! LOLOLOLOL
Bill Gates: Why make billions when you can make... millions!
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
And how is this relevent?
Microsoft is betting millions that someday it will be as well known for search as Google is.
Once again, MSFT is betting millions on Crap(s).
doesn't GIFT do the same thing?? .. thing being: search images?
http://viper.unige.ch/demo/
and I will tell you why: This is one of the few fields where quality matters over quantity. The average user, when searching google, wants decent results, not corporate sponsored bullshit.
You will note the fall of yahoo as an material example.
Want an example? Go type "linux" into the msn search engine. I'll wait. Now, compare those results with those garnered from google.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
"For example, users can ask their computers to retrieve all pictures that include a specific person's face or background."
While it may not be a widely used feature, I can see that having several advantages. The only uses I can think of right now would be searching for symbols (For example, an ancient language), or an artists signature.
(\(\
(=_=) Bani!
(")")
"If you have to struggle through looking for things in hundreds of different places, it's just going to be intolerable," said Susan Dumais, a Microsoft senior researcher ...
Yeah, that's just terrible to expect people to go to some kind of effort to find information. Hey Einstein: that's why it's called "research". If you want to find information, you're always going to have to do some work.
The new version of Microsoft's MSN Internet service, available this winter, will include a tool for retrieving digital photos based on images in the pictures. For example, users can ask their computers to retrieve all pictures that include a specific person's face or background.
I'm guessing that the article author really screwed up something here. I can't imagine any kind of software that is going to automagically determine the identity of people in the background of a picture. Does anyone know what the hell this search engine really does?
GMD
watch this
..."to google" is a much nicer verb than "to MSN".
Given that Microsoft doesn't have the best history as far as impartiality goes, even if they did come up with a good search algorithm, how much would people trust the results?
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
CNN moved the story ... the link from the article is 404'd.
The article is now here.
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
...will include a tool for retrieving digital photos based on images in the pictures
Wasn't it already shown that this technology is quite unreliable?
This 'tool' is not going to work, much like my Xbox.
Server Error
This server has encountered an internal error which prevents it from fulfilling your request. The most likely cause is a misconfiguration. Please ask the administrator to look for messages in the server's error log.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Bull crap. Take a look at Mozilla! It's MUCH better than IE hands down. The fact that you have COMPLETE control over your browsing experience is just one plus. The fact that the browser does pop-up blocking all on it's own is just one great example.
Not only that, but you can even go further and get some Mozilla based browsers for Linux (and other systems?) like Konqueror or Gnome's browser (damnit, can't remember the freakin name).
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
Quite frankly, Google has absolutely nothing to worry about -- except Microsoft, that is. Google can even beat MS, but only for so long. At some point, Microsoft's money and patience may win out. Google's only hope is that MS goes into the airline industry, because that's the only way they'll go bankrupt before they can catch up to Google.
aQazaQa
i disagree. IE is nice if you like the media player being attached to it. but one of my biggest pet peeves is multiple windows. I like how netscape added the "tab" feature in 7.0 where i can see multiple sites w/ just one window.
But he said better personalization is one way to improve searching. For example, if MSN knows that the computer user searching for "pizza" lives in a specific ZIP code, it can deliver results of pizza places in that ZIP code.
As much as I hate Microsoft, if they made a good proximity search engine, I would use it all the time. It's one feature I wish google had.
They're throwing around all these inflated statitics about how many people use their service and number of searches and what not. It's all PR! The only people using their search are those that type their searches straight into the IE address bar and that's about 75% of Windows users I'd say. I've never heard anyone claim that MSN is their search engine of choice. Noone actually *chooses* to use MSN search... probably because it's not that good.
They'll have to iron out regular web searching before any of their gadgets and toys will be taken seriously.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Correct link to article (as if anyone reads them;)
We're talking about searching the content of images here. I don't care who does it: if they can pull that off, it'll be huge, especially if it's done by analyzing the image itself, and not extra data tacked on to the file. I've heard of some other attempts to do this, but the one's I've seen haven't worked very well.
An issue though: currently, sticking things in an image file is a pretty good way to prevent spiders and other simple AI-ish algorthims from grepping information like email addresses off web pages and signing up for things like Hotmail. If this image-searching idea works as well as MSFT hopes, that could change.
I'd read the article in question, but it seems that even CNN cannot resist the slashdot effect.
I wouldn't be surprised if face recognition searches worked in the future, but MS isn't going to be the ones who pioneer it.
Let's do a search for "Microsoft switcher" and see what comes up.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Google is no.1 for a reason, they produced the best search engine without any major advertising. I'm all for competition but if Microsoft want to take over Googles' no 1 spot by just having deeper pockets than I sincerely hope they fail.* If however they intend to make a better search engine then good luck to them. * Yes I know MS have more money to throw at R&D.
I've been wanting a tool that could search the contents of images for a long time, so instead of image searching for Corvette and getting logos, I could get images of the actual car.
The Bad:
It's from everyone's favorite anti-trust company, so everyone will start using it, as it will become the default page in IE on a fresh install. This means that even if it doesn't work that well, people will still use it, because it's "convenient".
The Ugly:
No doubt the interface will be bloated with long load times and an overly busy interface. They could never approach the "beauty in simplicity" interface of Google.
"Here are your results buried within 100.000 ads"
Well the first thing MSN should do is get rid of all the damn clutter they have on their page. Perhaps after that and a big improvement on their search capabilities I'd consider ever using it.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
The technology for the Semantic Web is good enough - people and organizations just have to be willing to add semantic markup. This will enable what I would call knowledge based search. Some good tools are:
HP's semantic web toolkit
Protege Ontology Editor
RDF and semantic web tools for Swi-Prolog
-Mark
or it could be that most people didn't care (or know) enough to spend hours downloading a different browser when M$ was already kind enough to provide one with just about everything it sold
Bell has developed a way to store phone calls, bills, pictures and music on a computer hard drive, with a search tool that can sort through it all.
Windows button + F
Do I want M$ indexing all my private photos? (Are they going to follow robots.txt directives)
Do I want people to be able to pick out a face from one of my photos and find every online image with that face?
The only uses I can really envisage for this are;
Government. I thought TIA had been killed, presumably M$ are betting that a replacement will happen.
Stalkers. They're going to love this.
BigCorp LLC. Profiling data that now includes your friends and acquaintances.
They can just make it the "default" search in IE.
I can just see it, too... IE will "accidentally" resolve www.google.com to search.msn.com. And while the lawsuits are going, M$ will claim (as in, for marketing purposes) marketshare as proof that their search is better.
And when it does come out in the courts some ump-teen years later with Microsoft guilty of uncompetitve practices, Bill will cough up the $300M to google and "fix" the "bug."
I've seen this history before... I don't expect them to change a winning formula. 8P
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
Wow, there are only five comments posted at this moment and already the link is dead.
Well, it's 404, not slashdot effect, so I'll save the snide comments about Netscape Enterprise Server.
Anyway, here's a working link. Should be good for at least a few minutes.
I worked for AllTheWeb.com for a while before we were part of a package sold by FAST Search and Transfer to Overture over the summer. Overture then is gobbled up by Yahoo!, this all after Yahoo grabs Inktomi. The SEO market is in consolidation. Back after we were bought by Overture, there was a lot of speculation that Microsoft would buy out Overture, along with the Yahoo! speculation. In fact, each of the engineers with AllTheWeb.com were contacted by Microsoft regarding employment possibilities. One of my coworkers went to Yahoo! and i'm contracting now.
But I digress...
This is a market in consolidation. Microsoft throwing its' hat in the ring is probably a good thing for the market, like them or hate them. They have the capital to bring new products to market and introduce some more innovation to the search engine space. This IS a good thing. However it's going to cost Microsoft an arm and a leg to get in. Yahoo! bought Overture for the paid inclusion search, Google has it's own products now for sponsored search as we know. Microsoft is going to have to develop this capability in house now, or pay a king's ransom to Yahoo! to get the Overture paid search into their product.
The only advantage Microsoft has is that when you install IE, your home page is always MSN search. When you mistype a URL (outside of VeriSign's squatting), you get sent to MSN search. They'll get a lot of traffic by default.
But it also could re-open anti-trust inquires as well....very interesting.
Biggest concern holding this back:
MSN search as censored by Microsoft.
Simply put, I can't trust a MS based search to return relevant information and not censor it's results. Until MS can resolve this issue, their search will never be as popular as Google. This is the single fundamental lesson that all other search engines seem to have failed. Between paid placements to censoring undesirable topics or information, they have all lost credibility. I want information, not someone else's judgement. Many people have long been in the habit of automatically going to page three or so in the search results just to get past paid placements.
Being able to do that reliably is way beyond current image processing technology.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Someone does something right, really right. So M$ sees and all of a sudden *THEY* have to do it, they dip into their $30E10 cash reserve and buy their way into the field. All because Billy wrote a BASIC interpreter 25 years ago. Fsk Billy, Fsk Micro$oft, Fsk stupid fsking users that support him.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
STEP 1: PURCHASE GOOGLE
STEP 2: TAKE ALL THE CREDIT
STEP 3: PROFIT?
Is there any technology they can't let be? Why is it they feel the need to yank the rug from under every single software company out there?
Seriously, Microsoft's megalomania is showing again. Why can't they just be satisfied with just doing one thing WELL instead of muscling their way into everything else and forcing mediocrity wherever they go?
Jeez MS! Why not get the bugs out of Windows first THEN start all these kinds of projects?! The simple fact is - you don't have time for this AND trustworthy computing.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I think you mis-typed "R&D" when you meant "M&A".
Microsoft doesn't do research and development, they assimilate and copy other technologies.
Google became number one because they created the best product, not because they leveraged their dominance to force their system upon the masses. As long as users are free to choose which search engine they want to use, Microsoft will be at a disadvantage because the company has NEVER been able to produce a superior product in any category, and has never been able to gain market share on the strength of its products alone. Even the very first victory for MS was due to signging an agreement with IBM to bundle their products.
Sure. Ease back on the wheat grass juice, cowboy.
I really a while back about the army doing automate image analysis feeding a computer pictures in order to identify hidden tanks. It worked great. Sorta.. it turned out that the army, in order to teach it, fed in pictures of tanks hiding in trees. Well the program started to mark as a 'hit' anything with trees in it. As i recall it was abandoned.
Microsoft is betting millions
To us mere mortals, that's like betting a $1.00.
I am sure their search engine will be balanced.
will rise to fame and fortune!!
All search results will point to Microsoft.com or MSN.com
What MS meant: The decision to build or buy came down to our ability to control.
Image search? What percentage of info search on the web is/will ever be image search? (Answer, more or less, zero.)
I am hard pressed to imagine how MS's "reputation for innovation" is going to enable them to develop search technology so innovative that it will be noticeably better than google's.
Success in technology markets comes from marketing, not technical superiority. MS is great at marketing, but Google seems fairly healthy in the search sector. If MS overtakes them in search, it will be by throwing its weight around, not by building a better mousetrap.
Your get a frost pist only to cut & paste this old junk? Its as stale as the GNAA. SHAME!
Every time i try to find something on Microsoft's support web page it always spits out bad results. It waits a long time and gives me an irrelevant answer which has nothing to do with what i want. Even if i type in the exact article title i am looking for it cant find it. Google seems to have a better index of Microsoft's web page than Microsoft itself does. Also, the results the msn search engine gives is obviously weighted towards people who pay and Microsoft's own interests. How do they expect to compete?.
Unless someone downloads the Google Toolbar, the only search option in 80% of the browsers on the web will be Microsoft's. That is a marketing message for advertisers that Google cannot match. Most of Microsoft's business are only to provide value-add for Windows and Office. Profitability beyond that is only gravy. Now, you take a Microsoft search, link it with Office-specific tools that let people search for supporting footnotes or photos while drafting a document, or PowerPoint presentation, then you have some value there.
It doesnt matter at all whether Microsoft comes up with anything better than Google, what matters, is that they have the capacity to suck the oxygen from Google's revenue stream if they ever come remotely close, because of all the desktops under their control.
The future probably sees Google in court asking to be placed next to Microsoft's own search button in their browser or whatever is supposed to represent browsing in Longhorn or beyond. When that happens, you know that Google has lost the battle.
Epiphany, and/or Galeon.
Chris
Can't find anything!
I, for one, welcome our new MSN overlords.
What I would like to see in a search engine is a engine that not only knows the picture, but also knows what's in the EXIF tags as well. There's also that XML-based creator field standard thing.
Could make for some intresting surgical searches. Want to see what output a specific model of digital camera it makes? Put in the model's name in the right field for EXIF, and see what people have come up with.
...you guys are slowing down a little....
A goal is a dream with a deadline
And no, I'm not a mac user, but even I would like one of the new G5s.
MS doesn't have large-scale search engine at this time. What you see in MSN is provided by third party search engines (Inktomi, etc).
I found this on the "Preotege Ontology Editor"'s front page. This is an astonishing use of buzzwords with an astonishing lack of real meaning! They must have some great marketing people working there!
Protege-2000 is also an open-source, Java tool that provides an extensible architecture for the creation of customized knowledge-based applications.
MSN Search: -> Goat or man
Where would this groups favorite picture show up on the list, and how would it be catigorized?
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
Tools on the google labs pageare labeled beta or whatever but they are still much more feature-filled and stable than the competitors' products I am aware of.
In this case, msn makes this mistake again when they are publishing some features which "will be" doing foo or bar some day.
Of course, an advanced picture search is nice and it might lead into more results than images.google.com but the main difference is that images.google.com is real.
The topic was "Microsoft Works on Search Capabilities" which is a correct headline. The rest was redundant.
(did anyone make an obligaroty "Microsoft Works"-joke regarding to the topic yet?")
The only thing I can see from Microsoft when it comes to search engines are logfile entries like:orand this (several hundred times):and finally
For example, users can ask their computers to retrieve all pictures that include a specific person's face or background."
Over the web, Google already has a service to retrieve images that is fun and even useful sometimes.
While MS is obviously out to conquer another market and has the bucks to sponsor research in its quest, it does have some good ideas buried in this pursuit. There's improvements to be found; improvements I'd even like to see in the FOSS that I use.
What I'd like to see are VFolders (in Evolution speak) of my home directory.
Not just the one directory tree that I create and get stuck with, but alternative, new trees looking into the same data.
Perhaps one view that's largely based on time (2003,...1999...) and subdivided down by month, etc.; another view that's based on frequency of access and of modification (~/.bashrc); another based on keyword hits from a glimpse search, perhaps with additional weighting for those search items in my home directory that I actually clicked on; etc.
Some of this technology exists in the form of suitable find commands, but I wouldn't mind having ls be able to list in the context of a choosable VFolder as well as what it gets from doing a stat() on the current directory.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Google, when used as a verb means to search for something.
MicroSoft used as a verb is more likely to replace fubar than google.
t
Thanks Chris.
I have it at home, but damnit, I have to use W2K at work. *grunt of dismay*
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
IE hijacks my web requests sometimes.
Thats what I call a smart search engine!
Hey, I just tried their new system, typing in "terrorist" and got this link.
It works!
Google needs some serious competition, as they right now are far ahead of the pack. However, Microsoft is evil, we all know that, and Google has made some not-so-nice decisions as of late (see Google watch).
Hopefully, it won't be long before a Free Software search engine will enter the scene.
Guess what guys Google allready has an image search thats what that images tab is for
Doctors do Massage in Longview WA now, who knew?
is to whistle a song to the mic and having Google give me some mp3 with that tune...
--krahd
mod me up, scottie!
mod me up scottie!
with what they already do? Why do they have to be the be all and end all of anything related to technology? It seems anytime someone gets a great technology, MS immediately copies it.
I know this is an old argument, but will it ever stop?
For example, users can ask their computers to retrieve all pictures that include a specific person's face or background."
/.? There's no face!
What if I'm searching for an alternate link for the Goatse man for posting on
'Googling' has now entered the language, and refers (naturally enough) to web searching.
Now tell me: What image does 'Microsofting' create in your mind, and how much KY Jelly do you figure you'll be buying?
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
spend hours downloading a new browser are you crazy?
Full download of Mozilla - 13MB
Full download of Firebird - 6.8MB
full download of Internet Explorer is around 111MB, 7MB hardly takes hours for a new browser...
"WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
Well, my father was recently telling me that he was considering repainting the garage with some kind of latex paint but was concerned about wether it would bond appropriatly to the wall. He wanted to see results of how that would work out...
I can allready see him going to MSN image search and searching for "Latex Bondage"
yeah, this was taken from some silly flash clip about parents and the internet...
Isn't this graphical search close to what would be in the domain of Corbis?
And isn't Corbis the oft-critisized Bill Gates' project to buy photographs and sell licenses for them?
I have to credit Bill Gates with two things, first, good or bad, he's a shrewd business man, second, unless he's crazy, he's doing his job because he enjoys it.
I often have occasion to look at their DHTML reference, but the only way I can reliably find the damn thing is to google for "microsoft dhtml objects". Going directly to MS's search is worse than useless.
(And before anyone suggests I bookmark it, I never bookmark anything. I just type in an URL or Google for it. That way I'm never without my bookmarks list.)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
1. Microsoft spend millions on a new search engine that eventually finds its way into a Win2K3 service pack.
2. For the next three years we hear lots of hype about the new MS search engine.
3. Microsoft buy Google and rename their engine as MSN.
4. Microsoft make massive changes to the new MSN and break it totally.
5. More releases.
6. More releases.
7. The MSN now finally works, more or less.
8. A new startup invents a new web portal metaphore, possibly based on smells.
9. The Redmond Boys start looking for smell engineers.
10. Go back to 1.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
can type http://www.google.com (or I can click the Google shortcut), Micro$haft will never be MY search engine!
Given:
1) Their other search capabilities suck badly
2) No one wants MS censorship
3) Their "other" software has more problems than a one-winged seagull in a hurricane (bonus points for temporal value)
4) Other people are working on the same types of enhancements to the web experience
I AIN'T SWITCHING....BITE ME, BILL...
Twin or more? ITA
Apache/Spring/La
So has the government...
The Microsoft octopus wraps its tentacles around another victim...
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
"For example, users can ask their computers to retrieve all pictures that include a specific person's face or background."
So if I type in monkeyboy as a search term, I should get back pictures of Ballmer, right?
The Borg don't need a *search* engine. Everything it touches turns into some very complicated mess just to accomplish a small task. The Borg should just focus on patching all those security holes so virii can't "search" users' hard drives for new victims. Just a friendly reminder that given The Borg's track record of fast "find file" searches on Windows hard drives compared to a "grep" search on Apple's Mac OS X, I don't see M$ breaking into new territory (speed) any time soon. A grep search is nearly infinitely faster than anything The Borg have or develop. Almost forgot, the M$ search will only work from Broken Windows and will cost just $19.95 + Local Tax or three easy payments of $9.95.
Search: "boobies"
Results: First 100 of approximately 475,547,574 results displayed.
Search: "linux"
Results: Did you mean windows?
Search: "ashcroft current location"
Results: You are under arrest.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Has anyone seen nutch? It looks pretty interesting. "Nutch provides a transparent alternative to commercial web search engines. Only open source search results can be fully trusted to be without bias. (Or at least their bias is public.)"
Take a look here: here
I think the community should respond to this in the same way that we did to verisign...BLOCK IT! If you don't want a certain IP or User Agent grabbing stuff off your site then make the appropriate entries in your httpd.conf and block it. I don't know what these would be as I don't know what subnet or User Agent MS is using to crawl. If somebody knows please post.
Joe6pack: Sorry, Google, I know you've got a better product and all, but MSN search came with my browser which came with my OS which came with my computer. Switching is too hard, and anyway I heard that MSN search works better with Windows.
So MS illegally uses its OS monopoly to create a monopoly in the browser market, which it will now, in turn, use as leverage to gain an illegal advantage over search/portal competitors.
I guess this is where the DOJ's failure to secure meaningful remedies against Microsoft comes to roost.
Will help you find terrorists?
*shudders*
Hm,
nothing to do with a sudden price drop in the cost of IE? It takes some time to switch from pay to opensource business models like Netscape had to do you know..
C'mon now, try firebird, youll like it..
Peace
?Dread
* some QA people that can turn over code that works and turn back code that doesn't.
I know, I know....why switch horses when crossing the stream....
* security holes so big they make the goatse.cx guy blush
I'm positive that their search could find bloat-features to remove from applications, given that 95% of the users of MS Orafice don't use 60% of the 'features'
Twin or more? ITA
Apache/Spring/La
If I need some quick cash, I go digging around in the couch. I'm sure when Gates needs to acquire an annoying little company that's been a thorn in his side, he just goes digging around in the couch. Couple million in loose pocket change later, he can buy his company, a transaction that impacts his overall net worth about the same as buying a bag of fritos affects mine.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
But can vary between 11 and 75MB. Hardly 111.
My favorite browser is Opera...mouse gestures, tabbed browsing, threading, well done popup blocking, and did I mention mouse gestures?. Not that it's the only browser with some of those, but it is very fast and low on bloat. And I think it's the only one with the gestures. Not to mention the M2 mail client is really nice (once you sit down and get used to it). You just gotta know beforehand that not all pages load well. But in my browsing experience, 90% of the pages I visit have no difficulty. Most of the 10% have only minor formatting problems.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
Here's what I think. If Microsoft makes a search engine on the level of google, first they're going to go off on some lawsuit based on insane grounds to get rid of the competion, which would be, in this case, Google. After they've gotten rid of google, they again become the monopoly, what happens from here? They slap a monthly fee on the service.
MS just spent MONTHS recoding the search for MSDN and it still sucks. Using Google I get results millions of times better....
use CPAN;
Cable's Black and White
I think that perhaps he meant spending hours finding and downloading every alternative to IE that exists--in order to find the one that suits you the most. That certianly would take a few hours. Especially for a noob.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
This really helped sort through my photo collection and also reveled some trends that I hadn't realized before. Never before had I realized how many of my photos were of white text on a blue background. I also have some sort of fixation on codes 0E and 0D for some reason.
It this the one you're looking for? http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /workshop/author/dhtml/reference/dhtml_reference_e ntry.asp
Well, first of all, you need to GAFL. Face it. You're a loser.
Secondly, none of your points are close to the truth, thus they do not justify a response.
Thirdly, everyone's tired of this same old boring bunch of lies. Hell, save yourself some typing/copy & pasting...just type in FP if that's how you get your jollies.
Fourthly, you're really lame AND a loser...
Twin or more? ITA
Apache/Spring/La
While IE may have holes, the interface and the feel is far superior than anything else out there
Uhmm...Yeah, that's why IE's java and ActiveX support permanently and completely broke for no reason on my machine. Not even a total reinstall of Windows, Java and IE fixed it. I can't even use Windows Update with it, to say nothing of other sites using Java and such.
Sure is an awesome interface, when the majority of the sites I visit won't even display properly (if at all). There's no error dialog, no half-loaded script, nothing at all to help me figure out what's wrong- most of the UI seems to be built around glossing over errors as much as possible.
On top of that, there's no built-in support for pop-up blocking, there's at least a security hole or two almost every week, and just generally feels old and busted.
I've been using Firebird for the better part of a year now, and I couldn't be happier. It may not be perfect, but at least everything works, it feels fast and slick, and keeps junk out of my way while i'm surfing.
IE hasn't won anything...Most people just don't know there's any alternatives out there.
Looks like 12MB to me, big guy.
Long story short, Microsoft has far too much of an agenda to allow objective searches, and everyone knows it. There's no way I would ever depend on Microsoft's search engine to deliver reliable results about Linux, open source, the GPL, or anything else that MS is "competing" with. And neither would many of the millions of tech-savvy people who use Google every day.
That and the fact that a big part of Google's draw is its simplicity, in that you don't get 120K of "how would you like to buy some crap?" banners before you get to your search results. Microsoft doesn't have the restraint or the finesse to pull that off, either. They could -- but they won't. Not when the almighty dollar is at stake, which is all MS cares about.
So they might be able to sell it to the mom and pop users who have no clue, but replace Google? No. Anyone who knows anything about MS or Google won't go for it.
images.google.com
A search for Dilbert Images
A search for Linux Images
A search for Hot Grits
A search for Natalie Portman
Hell, fark.com uses GIS to refer to the results of a Google Image Search.
Seems MS is once again playing catch up and pretending it's a new idea.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Some of its efforts to simplify search on the Internet will soon be in place.
No doubt this also includes a legal team to assault the intellectual property of Google and Yahoo, forcing them both to divert R&D funds into defense of their IP, stifling real innovation for years while Microsoft catches up.
It's called marketing. Would you buy something if the salesman describe it being mediocre?
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Are you not aware that Google is vehemently anti-second amendment? They do extensive filtering of gun and gun-related websites.
My first MSN image search will of course be: Bill Gates +pie
You might want to try not turning the kind of chicks who would do pr0n in the first place into SO's. I could see a hookup, but probably not the apartment key swap.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Knowing MS, they will screw this all to hell with stupid wizards, options, drop down menus, Clippy, etc. Have you seen their "Files and Folders" search in XP, compared to Win98 and 2k? They tried to make it user friendly, but for me, it's harder to use!
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Google really does need a new tab on their main page for Porn.
Now, times are different. Companies like Yahoo and especially Microsoft are aggressively investing in building the kinds of complex yet user-friendly search capabilities that Google has. Microsoft will soon have a search engine that rivals or exceeds the capabilities of Google's search engine. Google is doomed.
Internet-search tools is not the only market with a low barrier to entry. Another such market is the market for virtual machines. Consider the virtual machine monitor (VMM) sold by VM Ware. It did excellent marketing of a very simple idea -- and a very old idea. VMM was invented by IBM and has been around since the 1960s. The theory of VMM has been well documented and understood in the scientific literature. VMWare took the idea of VMM and simply applied it to the x86 chips. VMWare's genius is in marketing its product as though it were a revolutionary breakthrough. Most of its customers bought the marketing campaign with hook, line, and sinker.
Microsoft is now investing millions of dollars in VMMs and purchased the key VMM technologies from Connectix. Microsoft has succeeded in creating a VMM that rivals or exceeds the capabilities of the VMM sold by VMWare. VMWare is doomed.
Unlike both Google and VMWare, Microsoft has an R&D budget of billions of dollars. Microsoft can defeat both Google and VMWare in their respective markets. Despite public declarations to the contrary, both Google and VMWare are warily aware of Microsoft's R&D might and are working quickly towards an IPO while there is still chance for an IPO. If you buy stock in either Google or VMWare, you might as well just burn the money. It will be worthless.
http://tech.msn.com/software/OS/Linux/
...
They are selling Red HAt
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Which is to say, at all? They shouldn't bother writing a search engine, they should just get Google to call itself GNUggle.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
how is this Brazil reference relevant?
I use Google pretty much exclusively, and I've been happening upon this sort of activity more and more. It's quite annoying. I think I was searching for servomotors or something, and one site had 3 domains on the first page of the search. All of them were identical. For fun, I click on a link that seemed somewhat relevant, and it takes me to some off the map place that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with anything. It was about some guy that got his ideas off of Star Trek. Like this is supposed to be something new.
It seems to be mostly related with non-specific technical type searches. It's distressing when something
this misinformed makes it to Google's front page.
on
A T-shirt in big bold letters "LEGALIZE IT" and the penguin pictured behind it.
How about "Legalize IT" with the Tux logo?
I wonder if you ever tried the search machine of MCN to look for Linux related sites? If this is the way M$ will organise the successor of Google, then lets stay with Google!
users can ask their computers to retrieve all pictures that include a specific person's face
j pg e s%20-%20007.jpg g .gif a tes.jpg i den/eddie-bill%20gates.jpg B romas/Fotos/Humor%202/Bill%20Gates%20Feto.jpg / 24/cnforb24.jpg p g . gif
I wonder if they'll link to any of this pictures, when searching for this specific person's face:
http://www.areyadone.com/images/hated/bill-gates.
http://users.cybercity.dk/~cfs4636/PIC/Bill%20Gat
http://www.holub.com/goodies/images/Billborg.jpg
http://home.midsouth.rr.com/catcam/bill-gates-bor
http://www.kewlcard.de/bilder/postcard/5/bill%20g
http://www.rockhardplace.com/horror/images/ironma
http://superwebon.iespana.es/superwebon/Archivos/
http://www.paulsjusticepage.com/images/cyborg.jpg
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/graphics/2002/09
http://ta.twi.tudelft.nl/DV/Staff/Lemmens/gates.j
http://images.ecampus.com/images/d/258/0312192258
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
> VMWare's genius is in marketing its product as though it were a revolutionary breakthrough.
Maybe. I think their real genius comes from marketing VMWare as a tool for server consolidation (as IBM did with VM).
Everyone else was marketing their virtualizers as a desktop compatibility kludge for old games and legacy software. Admittedly, VMWare did this as well, notably on Linux.
HAND.
hehe.. didn't think i wud get a flamer with this old mac shit.
google doesn't bother with extraneous crap. Altavista and AllTheWeb both support more types of searches than google.
A single feature is useless when another engine still returns better results. I still use google for text searches, only hopping over to altavista for a music search.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Actually I do use IE when I want to kill time, I use mozilla to get work done
"...will include a tool for retrieving digital photos..."
And someday I will deliver a search tool that can search video, and for example present all the video clips of presidents scratching their nose and create a database logging the clip, the president's name, the time and location, and the position in the video clip.
Just saying so doesn't mean it will be there! This sounds like overhyped vapor.
LOL
Sell you black people on ebay. I about wet my pants I laughed so hard.
Way to go MSN!! I wonder how that is working out for them?
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
FINALLY! Stalking girls will be so much easier with this technology.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
i entered "linux" in msn search, and what i got was a link to amazon.com (?!) in the first place and "Learn about the Microsoft alternatives and how to move to them from open source products."
i'm beginning to hate them...
Pascal
Face-recognition technology doesn't even operate at 65% efficiency, yet MS is somehow going to magically be able to search for pictures with a certain person in them. More than likely, what this means (when translated), is that you type in a bunch of meta-information in a picture (key-words about it), and the search-engine searches that. Wow, a real biggie -- as if that didn't already exist.
Not that this isn't an interesting idea. I just doubt that MS will successfully implement it. It'd be interesting to see an FS project trying to create this functionality. It would, however, pose some difficult problems.
Assuming that face-recognition technology is improved, if you want to search for all pictures with "Bob" in them, your computer needs to know what Bob looks like. This means you have to at least once point to Bob in a picture, click on him, and tell the program that that's Bob. This, of course, assumes that this technology will also be able to recognize concrete borders between different objects. Humans can easily tell where a person's face ends and a background begins, and can tell the border between any two objects; teaching a computer to do that isn't so easy. Our knowledge that tells us "Bob's face ends there, and that's where the background begins" isn't as simple as noting a contrasting shade or color. It's the result of a life-times worth of learning about how different things look in a distributed system (image-memory is distributed accross different brain-cells, to create a profile of what various images look like).
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I think we slashdotted cnn again ;)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/09/19/micros oft.google.reut/index.html
works though:)
For example Microsoft bought the set-top box leader - WebTV and everybody thought they would drive everybody else out of business - yet they screwed it up so badly that despite millions of dollars Tivo etc. overtook the former leader WebTV.
Google is successful with a simple concept: Don't be intrusive, carefully place advertisments and respect your visitor.
What Microsoft and obviously you don't understand is that you don't need an RD budget of billions to deliver that.
Microsoft's company philosophy and ethics are contradicting. They would plaster so many ads out there and scew the search results so much that they would open the way for alternative offers. Just look at MSN-search, the "featured" and "advertized" links are barely distinguishible from the rest. (a pale grey tiny text)
A battle between Microsoft and Google over search engine dominance. Who will win?
Hmmmmm... What advantages does each side have? Google has current dominance in the web search market. Microsoft has the ability to bundle its search technology into IE which it integrates into 98 percent of all desktops running on the planet.
Will the fact that this would be illegally leveraging its monopoly power on the desktop stop them? Doubtful. If their past behavior is any indication.
So in this contest it will be: Google 0, Microsoft 1.
Its been nice knowing you Google. You'll be able to sue but as our court system has shown, even if you win Microsoft will be allowed to profit from your demise.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
You could conceivibly build galeon for W2K.
Why not fork?
The first 4 results for search for "Linux" on MSN are :
i gration)
1 - Amazon
2 - Ebay
3 - Introducing Linux by tech.msn.com: "Red Hat 9.0 is a boon for those who already use it, but it's too expensive to warrant a switch from Windows."
4 - Alternatives to Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP : "Learn about the Microsoft alternatives and how to move to them from open source products."
(www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/m
Parent was exagerating the place of commercials on MSN: propaganda reduce advertising space a lot.
My first search.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
How one can get much simpler than Google, I don't know... unless M$ is working on the neural interface.
The main reason Google won out over all the other search engines is that the user interface is plain and simple. Their algorithms are very good, but the reason I have it as my default home page is that it loads fast without tons of crap I don't care about. It is the very definition of a tool. M$'s homepage OTOH is more like a giant bin with all sorts of tools tossed in and rusted together, and several vendors pointing at things in the bin and saying how great they are.
It's this attitude that kills companies more than any other reason. You must remember that despite Microsoft's attempts, there are competitors that they haven't managed to kill. Intuit is one, despite Microsoft practically giving Microsoft Money away with Windows 95, bundling it in virtually every "home" product they make, and aggressively pricing it. Quicken and QuickBooks still exist and are doing very well.
Should Google fear Microsoft? Who wouldn't? Should they lay down and die because they will inevitably be massacred by the Beast of Redmond? Of course not. Now, should Google IPO because of the Microsoft threat? I doubt it. Not being held to a board of stockholders lets them do things they wouldn't be able to do otherwise like refuse potential revenue streams like pop-up advertisments and pay-for-place search results. The very things that got Google where it is today would be lost if they IPOed and the stockholders started to demand that they maximize their revenue by doing so.
Right now Google has a better product than Microsoft. If they continue to have a better product than Microsoft, there's a good chance they could survive. If they cease having a better product than Microsoft they will die.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Image searches are really just text searches that limit themselves to image results. What I want is a search where I upload an image, and the engine finds similar images after "looking" at the image. Does anyone know if something like this is in the works by anybody?
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
Microsoft doesn't bet millions. They might as well give an idea a few hundred million in case it pans out. If they lose, oh well, it's still a fraction of the billion they have lying around.
They might blow a few million trying to take out Google, you know, why not? What else are they going to do with it, buy Madagascar?
Um... Google, Ask Jeeves, and other major search engines have had image search capabilities for a while now. Just go to one of their sites, click on the menu tab for image search, then type in what you want to search for. Whether it's a celebrity, porn star, geographic location, tv show, or whatever, they'll usually have images of what you're looking for. MS is WAY behind the times here...
Who need them? Everybody and his brother uses google here in Latvia!
You know, if this new technology allows me to search for boobs belonging to particular individuals, it may be the best thing to come out of Microsoft's R&D, since ....err.... ever!
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
So, what type of pr0n do you prefer? Blonde, brunette, redhead, asian?
Actually, this seems like yet another thing they stole from IBM. IBM, years ago, had a technology that could retrieve images based on description.
This search worked for me
Will I retire or break 10K?
To paraphrase Seinfeld: they have access to that 'equipment' 24/7, whereas we get access to it ... a few times a week? Maybe on a good week, not accounting for the slashdot geeks that live in their mother's basement. We can't reasonably expect to attain the same level of familiarity and expertise.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
Maybe we did the scientific thing, and compared google's ability to 'search for images' to the claims in the article. You know, just to make sure Microsoft didn't have the upper hand.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
Bill: Hello. :-)
Ballmer: Hi Bill!
Bill: Y'know, I saw this Slashdot post the other day. A geek talking about fun and Microsoft.
Ballmer: Brilliant innovation!
Bill: Indeed.. Now would you lead its embrace-and-extend offensive?
Ballmer: You had me at hello.
Bill: As I always do Steve
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
will it cache the porn too?! imagine all the porn from those subscription sites, for FREE!! what quality.
"Search engines are doing a good job but not a perfect job," said Koenigsbauer, adding most search results today "don't deliver the results people are looking for."
This is certainly true. If Microsoft can do a better job than Google, that would be great. Given the pathetic search capability of Microsoft's own online knowedgebase, and their retarded clippy help system, one is not terribly hopeful.
However, after many years and many millions they have managed to build a stable (if not secure) desktop operating system and IE is the overwhelming winner in the browser market. If they are really determined to own the search market they may succeed. Some day.
meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"
tag to keep just Microsoft from indexing your site, maybe like
meta name="borg" content="noindex,nofollow".
Then I realized there already is one. To keep Microsoft from indexing your website but still let Google and other search engines index the site, use this meta tag:
meta name="Keywords" content="Linux"
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I thought the point was that the new MS search would have neural networks that can see certain images within images, which you could search for. (So no metadata attached, but you don't need the name of the picture to find it). But the article isn't there so I haven't actually read it yet!
I did a search for "search engine".
The biasedness is both expected and humbling.
While MS proports itself as the number 1 result, Google displays itself as number 6 behind other search engines.
Which is offering a "truer" search result?
__
Thou hast besquirted me, O leotarded one.
Simple. If you're running Safari, you must be running OS X. OS X isn't even supported on your pre-G3 machine, so you're lucky it runs at all. If you were actually using an OS that was meant to be run on that hardware (like os 9, or maybe even 8.x), your computer would be running fine. People who like the Mac tend to have machines that are designed to support their OS of choice, unlike yourself. I'd flame you for that, except it's probably not your computer, and thus not your fault. At least use a decent mac/OS combination next time before you start bashing them, Mkay?
It couldn't be - it shouldn't be?!? It - it - it is...
*sigh*
goes back to counting seconds to happy hour (~ 8100 at time of posting)
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
Are you feeling the irony, baby?
It's http://www.google.com/microsoft.
There is no trailing slash.
This link seems to work.
there is a similar image search application for linux: imgSeek.
MSN will ever beat out google. Their search engine is too biased. I just searched www.msn.com for Linux and got this link: Alternatives to Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP. The same search on google returns very relevant material. How does MSN get alternatives for Linux from a search on just Linux and give it a rank of 4? I can also see MSN slowly adding features that "require" IE only to "persuade" users to have an MS only OS. MSN, no thanks.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
1. MSN sets up search engine
2. MSN redirects all IE searches to search engine
3. Other search engines (e.g. Google) die off, MSN is only true one remaining.
4. MSN removes sites they dont like from search engine, sites basicly ceast to exist.
that would be farking sweet....
Let's preface this by saying that I am not anti-MS. I even formerly have used MSNs page as my home page. I like the fun stories, etc.
About 2 months ago, Microsoft decided that the MSN search box would steal focus from anything in the browser. Want to type in a URL in the address bar while the page is loading? Helfway through it steals focus and the URL is jacked up.
I use the Google toolbar, and even when I'm typing a search term in there, MSN steals focus and redirects my keystrokes to their search box.
I found this new "feature" to be som completely intrusive that I left MSN as a home page. And I'm not going back.
The sad part is that this has been happening for 2 months, and I've never heard anyone else complain.
Google doesn't sell any merchandise directly to the public, and therefor has no incentive to 'inject' results that favor their products...
MS on the other hand...
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
You know how processor intensive that would be? I mean, if everyone looked EXACTLY the same when you took a picture of them, down to the last visible strand of hair, then it would be difficult, but possible.
Withotu that, every time someone's got their head turned or their eyes shut, or having a pint of beer dumped over their head, they'll be completly unrecognizable to the computer.
Unless they're trying some 25 point recognition system like they do with finger prints, but again, that would be majorly processor intensive.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Microsoft's biggest obstacle to overcomming Google is Microsoft. If the new search engine does produce results as expected Microsoft will pepper the results with links to stock photos from Corbis (which is owned by Bill Gates). People use Google to get relevant results, MSN gives highest bidder results, I can't see an MSN image search being any different.
Did else anyone read the title and think it had to do with Microsoft Works (the low-end office package)?
:)
I didn't think so.
Disallow: /
Castle Redmondore can keep their greedy lard ass out of my site.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
But those are "FEATURED SITES". Under "WEB DIRECTORY SITES" we have (count really starts at 5 of course):
1. Linux Online 2. Linux Journal 3. Linux Utilities 4. Linux HQ
I'm just saying it isn't exactly fair to call it propaganda, when really all it is is advertising.
Why would MS want to run a search engine? There is some money in providing a good service without charging too much. That's google's business, but MS is too big to be interested in the income that business generates.
MS could only be interested in the larger sums of money that would come from providing an inferior service, one which revolves around advertising and skewing search results, and generally shepherding people back towards Microsoft at all times. Just like Java vs. .net. People will use this search service because MS will make sure it's the most convenient. But that still leaves a market google. Unlike operating systems and (close file-format) business software, search engines are not a natural monopoly. That means somebody can survive by offering a better product.
"It looks like you're browsing porn. Can I give you a hand with that?"
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
..because it will never be 'hip' to say.
... now with Microsoft..
Eg: J-lo, from the movie "Maid in manhattan":
"You can Google it at school"
"You can MSN Search it at school"
Bitch slap that outta hea mofo.
Besides as long as Microsoft keeps making up their results as they go, they're not getting anywhere. For instance, this article talks about how biased MSN Searches are. They're purposely skewing the results. That gives me ample reason to not ever use their service.
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
Actually you can get mouse gestures and whole whack of other spiffy extensions/add-ons for Mozilla.
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/
Sorry, I'm going to have to say Opera rules everyone.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
Avant Browser.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Microsoft goes well beyond that example to the far reaches of paranoia. Not only must they be number one in their sectors, they then cannot stand that there are other companies in other sectors doing well and so they feel compelled to go trounce them in that sector too. Then they take a deep breath, look around, and see yet another area that they didn't think of but someone else did and is succeeding at. And the beast rears up to devour yet another good company.
This may make business sense, but it's so off the deep end psychologically that a growing number of people are saying they no longer wish to do business with such a company. Hint: Long term capital appreciation doesn't happen when you are despised in the marketplace and scorned by your potential customers.
Microsoft couldn't be happy just being number one. They had to be the only one, and that's just sick.
Normally I'd agree with you... but seriously, MS have left it way too late. Google is a household name, people who think leaving a disk in the drive causes bitrot know that you should use google to search, even if it's just because "the IT guy says so." That won't go away.
nothing to do with a sudden price drop in the cost of IE?
I don't remember netscape costing. At what version did this happen?
One of the scariest things about Microsoft is that they can afford to make mistakes costing millions of dollars getting nothing from it except a learning experiance.
They can afford to do it over and over again until they have something that is actually fairly reasonable (this is what happened with IE, this is what happened wtih directX)
At that point they can use their new found comptence along side money generated from other products to dominate.
"...it will be as well known for search as Google is. Some of its efforts to simplify search on the Internet. . ."
Seriously. Come on people. If Google is too hard to use for somebody, the person should not be on the internet, for fear of the discovery of Goatse.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!"
-Leela's Dad
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
grep -i "Microsoft ass" *with_both_hands*
Why can't Microsoft's target user base use a simple method of organizing their audio, video, documents, um...user data files in general?
... ...
It is so easy to do. You know something like this.
D:drive
[userdata]
[Slashdot Junky]
[personal]
[documents]
[finances]
[images]
[multimedia]
[projects]
[yada yada etc]
[work]
[Anonymous Coward]
I rarely use the Windows Search function to search for my personal stuff, because I am always aware of where I save it. I use it to find missing DLLs instead.
I just don't get this push to index everything and make it searchable. For example, SQL Server-based filesystem. Joe User still won't be able to find his crap!
-Slashdot Junky
.
Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
Is there a way to allow some search engines, say google, access to you web server and also deny access to some search engines , say microshaft? I know, don;t allow access based on IP, but I'd rather do it from a ROBOT.TXT file.
Is there a way?
Before I get flamed, I'll answer "Why?" Because I'd like to see some search engines fail and see some succeed.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
Microsoft is a pig...a glutton even! Won't these guys ever get original? Um, hey microsoft!! -- stop changing standards and taking everybody elses' toys away! ok? ok! - Jim
- J
Which is better (for Linux), Open Office or Star Office? MS Office compatibility is nice, but not essential. Thanks Linux folk.
Spread the RC luvin'
Gee, and Slate recently had an article on "Googleholes" critizing the Google search engine. What a startling coincidence. ;)
Anyone else a programmer who's tried to search for anything on MSDN? You can know exactly what you want, and search for it, and still find shit. I have to use the site: option on Google instead of the search option in Microsoft's own site.
Oh well, it wouldn't be the first time they used inferior products to become the market leader in something. It might just work...
i'm sorry - i'm from a small town - but you've got to be shitting me.
how can you have a whole magazine devoted to search engines?
are the full-page drug ads for OCD?
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Yeah, they'll do a pretty search, but, too many people are familiar with google already, it's fast, simple and efficient and gets things done on the spot. this msn crap will more than likely be (you must click this, this, this, put your search here, put your great aunt's name here, whistle and jump around singing, now put a teardrop of a lamb in a flask on the 4th day of october during a full moon! yeah, my point stands, google is timeless, simple address, simply done, etc. they've perfected it, this msn crap will be just another search utility on the internet, only people who'll use the msn search are people who were stupid enough to use msn 8 in the first place.
Your post makes no sense. Just having a big R&D budget doesn't ensure success. How much is spent on search, rather on the scores of other research projects Microsoft has going on?
The fundamental mistake you are making is forecasting a moving Microsoft to overtake a static Google. But Google isn't static, it is moving as well. Recently, Google has been hiring like crazy. It's an open race with Google having a huge head start, and no convincing reason I've heard that Microsoft will overtake them.
When Microsoft figure out how to index a mail folder, they can turn their attention to the internet.
A week is way to long to wait for a repeated story, /. rarely waits that long... and why just stop at the titles being misleading, the whole write-up should be bogus and should point the reader to a geocities site that will be slashdotted just by the editor checking the links.
I will NEVER, EVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, use anything Microsoft produces, sells, or otherwise attempts to foist on the public, including MSN.
Unlike both Google and VMWare, Microsoft has an R&D budget of billions of dollars. Microsoft can defeat both Google and VMWare in their respective markets
"Google for it" has become a common phrase in popular culture. IMO, anything MS does to discredit Google will backfire.
I've actually used that. It doesn't change the fact that its still IE, and IE still sucks.
Have fun in your Windows-land.
Microsoft is betting millions that someday it will be as well known for search as Google is.
Microsoft should first finish what it started with the desktop. Windows search capabilities in Windows XP are as useful as tits on a bull. By default, it takes forever searching through archives, and gives poor/incorrect results.
I would say it's worse than that. Other than the two core areas: operating systems (and I use the term loosely) and office suites Microsoft has managed to fail at, hose, bungle and just generally screw up everything else it has tried. Look at the personal finance market, for example. Intuit handily threw Microsoft out of that race, and the only reason that Microsoft didn't succeed with its usual approach of simply buying Intuit is because Federal regulators queered the deal. No, Microsoft, in spite of those billions of surplus dollars I keep hearing about, is a fundamentally incompetent operation outside of its few (phenomenally) successful areas. It remains to be seen whether the XBox has any staying power, but I think that Microsoft will ultimately manage to screw that up as well.
... well. The Mongols had a similar one.
I tend to agree with you that it will be difficult to unseat Google. It works, its "free" and everybody uses it. Geeks aren't the only people that appreciate a clean, functional Web application without all the baggage. Matter of fact, I've found that most non-geeks I know prefer that simplicity, since a complicated portal site like Yahoo just tends to confuse them.
And I think you're being too generous. Microsoft doesn't seem to have much in the way of corporate ethics and as far as philosophy goes
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Quicken and QuickBooks still exist and are doing very well.
They not only exist, but outsell Microsoft's products. One example where a de-facto monopoly was established due to overall high quality and customer satisfaction. Microsoft could learn something valuable from that.
I will give Intuit even more credit: they flirted with "Product Activation" ala Windows XP, but just dropped it because their customers didn't like it!
Companies that survive Microsoft are ones that simply stick to their guns, market a quality product and listen to their customers. Google doesn't necessarily need to have a better product (whatever that means in the rather confusing portal/search engine market) than Microsoft to survive, they simply need to remain a better company, and that's not hard to do.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
MSN Search won't replace Google for one reason: MS is constitutionally incapable of leaving their own interests, financial and otherwise, out of the results. People prefer one search engine over another mainly based on whether it returns accurate, unbiased, relevant results, and keeps the paid-for stuff out of the way of the actual results. MS won't be able to resist trying to "improve" things by putting the paid-for listings in with the results (where they're more likely to be clicked on, and therefore more valuable to Microsoft because they can be sold for a higher price), biasing the results in favor of their own sites (which would result in increased value for Microsoft for those sites) and so on. Given alternatives, people will tend to migrate towards the one that gives priority to their interests and away from the one that considers their interests secondary.
Oh lovely, lovely, lovely - when will I be able to search for people to impersonate ?
>Unlike both Google and VMWare, Microsoft has an R&D budget of billions of dollars.
>Google is doomed.
After all, we know that having more money means you automatically win. Just look at Windows; since it has more invested in it, it's obviously superior to linux, so naturally nobody will ever use the latter, and linux is doomed..
Twenties Retirement
And Google lets you search for "I don't know her name, but she's in this picture here" does it? No, I didn't think so, dumbass.
The chief problem with MSN is and always has been all the ads. I don't mind ads, as long as they're unintrusive. This, in my opinion, is where Google's single-mindedness made them the star. They didn't create a huge "portal", the way Yahoo, Lycos and the rest all did around 1999; rather, they simply created a search page. All it does is search.
Google's ads are also revolutionary. Simple, all-text links, all of which are clearly labelled as adverts (or, to use Google's parlance, "sponsored links"), mean less confusion. In short, Google has chosen absolute simplicity and straightforwardness over marketeering. Microsoft will want to make money off ads, so unless they follow the Google credo to the letter, people will still eschew MSN for Google. The only way to topple Google would be to make a faster, simpler, less intrusive search engine than Google, an that is one mighty tall order.
I tried that URL, and it's just a 404 Not Found type page.
"He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once." - Steve Jobs on Bill Gates
does no one else see this as the obvious conspiracy that it is 'search for people from faces in photos' like hell im giving microsoft pictures of people i know from photos somewhere along the line this gets to the fbi and every picture is scanned for terrorists
http://www.awfullybigmoustache.com
Microsoft suXor
Google vs. MSN Search : Fight!
Microsoft is much too greedy - they won't ever come just close to Google's good reputation for untainted results. Microsoft stealthily places the 'paid results' in a manner so as to camouflage them and blend them in with the 'normal' hits. Then there's the cheezy ads and popups and generally skewed results nowhere near as relevant as Google's.
Try searching for scientology : Google's #2 and #4 hits goes to critics of that criminal organisation. MSN has operation clambake listed only as #6.
And don't forget "Google is your friend". Try applying that to MS!
Surely, we do not want a monopolist (be it Google or MSN or Yahoo) to collect all our queries without transparency about what they do with the data in the long run.
I believe each of us would happily give away 100 MB of disk space to support a distributed open-source search engine: such an engine would be robust against attacks (i.e. could not be shut down), based on P2P technology (no central index; reliance on redundancy).
Whereas I have found several open-source projects that develop search engine code, they are all traditional i.e. Cathedral-style (of course they do distributed crawling, but the index is not shared across billions of users' drives).
Have I just missed something, or is it time to get the C compilers out?
"Uh-oh. Here comes clippy"
"Hey clippy, what's up?"
"Me you bitches! I'm high on crack! Wanna freebasssseeee?"
"No clippy, drugs are baaaaaad"
"Sorry, can't help you man"
"Pusiiiiiies!"
(crackpipe sounds)
"Woah, holy shit!"
cue microsoft windows startup theme music
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Konqueror is not Mozilla-based. It uses its own rendering engine, KHTML. KHTML is also used by Safari.
Blog Ho
Didn't Microsoft try to buy Intuit, only to be blocked for antitrust reasons?
deus does not exist but if he does
So you were born and raised in the sheltered workshop, and you won't be leaving any time soon?
Today, I agree that Mozilla is much better than IE (popup blocking being my single favorite reason, but here are lots of others).
Oh, and the other reason IE has such huge marketshare is, of course, that MS made it the default, and people really tend not to change defaults.
...is granted
That didn't take long! Please wish for something really exorbitant next time!