*Sigh*. What has robots.txt got to do with this? They are not using a web crawler, so robots.txt is irrelevant. They are not even making an http request to Google's servers, they are simply noting what a user types and clicks. The only thing they are copying is what the user does.
But, this isn't like copying a map or a book or a car design from another company. This is more like one Ford saying to a Volvo driver "what do you do with your Volvo controls when it's snowing?", making a note of the response, and then using that to inform their next car design.
Yes, exactly right. And, what's interesting, is that Google would index your post just because it exists. The Microsoft method would require someone to actually click on those links, which to me seems more likely to produce genuine search results.
No, they're not copying from search engines specifically. They are recording all browsing habits. In theory, if you type something into the Slashdot search box, MS are monitoring that too. If you click a link from someone's Slashdot post, they are monitoring that too. Maybe we should set up a "Bing Sting" by all putting random links in our Slashdot sigs, installing Bing toolbar, then clicking on those links - I think we'll discover that MS are "copying from Slashdot".
The main issue here is that everyone needs to shift their thinking - Google is analysing the static links between pages, MS are (in part) analysing the dynamic, temporary 'links' implied whenever someone clicks on anything. What's interesting is that, with the MS method, you actually see what people are doing, rather than analysing a bunch of (potentially) dead links between pages.
Just like some people objected to Google and other web crawlers 15 years ago (hence robots.txt), there will be people who object to this sort of thing - problem is, surely the record of what I type and click belongs to me, not to Google, hence if I want to send the data about what I typed and clicked to Microsoft, that would be up to me, not up to Google?
User A types some words into a text box, then clicks on a link that takes it to a different domain. Toolbar B records those words, together with the destination URL of that link that was clicked, and uses those words to slightly bias the results of search engine C.
Toolbar B does this for every website that user A visits with the express permission of user A.
The owners of search engine D get annoyed, because when they deliberately insert completely unique [text string -> URL] mappings to their search engine, and have their engineers click on those links, it shows up in search engine C.
Note that the only reason search engine D were aware of this in the first place is because bizarre mis-spellings of words in their search engine later turned up in search engine C.
So, there is a logical way to connect page 3 with content X - someone at some point entered X into a text box, then clicked on a link that lead to page 3. In this case it was some Google engineers. The issue here is that Google (along with a lot of Slashdot posters) are thinking of the web in a static sense: 'how could X possibly link to page 3??' - Bing stole that data. Microsoft are dynamically looking at what users do, and the text string -> URL -> click interaction is seen as a relationship between a phrase and a page that they want to take into account with their search results.
They are not mining Google's database, they're collecting information on what a user clicks on for every webpage that they visit and using that to bias their search results. It's not up to Google to opt-in or opt-out of that, it's up to the user who is doing the clicking. Think about it: when you go to Google, you have a text box and a button. The Bing toolbar sees what you typed into the textbox, sees that you clicked a button, then sees that you clicked a link that took you to a different domain. That's what it's mining, it doesn't care that the site was Google. About the only way Google could stop this would be by having their user agreement state that you can't use their website if you have the Bing toolbar installed, and even then they could only pursue the users, not MS.
How is it "cheating" - who is making the rules? Is it not "cheating" to crawl millions of sites to find out how they link to each other? If not, why not? Bing are not targeting Google (although I'm sure they're aware that Google results would be included in this), they are collecting the path that the user took to every click that they make. Whether you and I think this is creepy or not (and I certainly do), the users of the toolbar opt-in to this, MS tracks what they do, and partially base their search results on this. It's not cheating in any way, it's just a different approach to collecting data to create meaningful search results, and one that is actually quite interesting - seeing what users actually do, rather than analysing the static links between sites.
I'm beginning think this debacle is a load of nonsense, having read a few posts, it looks like the engineer in everyone has turned off for the week. What's happening is that the Bing search bar monitors everything that a user clicks on, something that the user explicitly agrees to. The "Bing Sting" methodology that Google outlined on their blog involved inserting bogus search results that returned an unlikely match. They then had their engineers deliberately search for these terms in Google and then - wait for it - click on them. So the Bing toolbar analysed those clicks, and because no-one else in the world was clicking on a link with those terms, they went straight to the top of Bing's results.
So, Microsoft aren't data-mining Google, they're data-mining everyone, doing analysis on any user with the Bing toolbar, to find out the crumbtrail that led them to a certain page. This is arguably better than Google's approach, because Microsoft is finding out how users travel between pages, whilst Google is finding out how developers think users should travel between pages (although in this age of micro-blogging and social networking the distinction is less obvious). If anyone should be worried about this, it should be users of the Bing toolbar who don't want their complete browsing history being analyzed by MS. Google complaining about this would be total hypocrisy, considering the millions of websites Google analyses without permission to get their data.
I never thought I would be defending MS, certainly not on Slashdot, but really Google has nothing to complain about here. Even their robots.txt is irrelevant, because it's the users' text input and click that is being recorded, not the Google search results.
I'm not so sure. Consumer protection laws are pretty strong in the UK (I think one of the reasons why prices are often higher here than elsewhere) and it's very rare for firms to get away with widespread abuse like this. About the only area where companies manage to scam is in the area of telephone cold-calling (which is usually illegal) and that's only because privacy laws make it very hard to find out who made a call.
And, interestingly, many of the smaller software houses seem to have their apps priced lower though the OSX App Store. I think they see it as worthwhile in order to access the market. I think Apple here is really aiming at the big guns (Sony and Amazon) who are making a killing, and Apple want to take a cut. Seems like good business to me. At the moment I'm buying all my mp3s from Amazon as they're a good 10-15% cheaper than the iTunes store most of the time. I'm sure Apple will address that at some point (hopefully by lowering their prices...).
You're not paying Apple anything, Amazon are paying a cut for the use of Apple's services, and the right to sell on their platform. This is exactly the same model that console manufacturers have been using for decades, but for some reason lots of people [on slashdot at least] seem to have a big problem with this when it's in a different form factor. Also, and this is the key point, *Apple are not forcing you to use their store*. In addition to whatever sales channels booksellers use, Apple wants them to use the iTunes store as well. So if you really have a problem with Apple taking a cut, buy direct from Amazon. Personally I'm happy with Apple taking a cut when I buy things that I would happily buy anywhere (at the cheapest price of course) because then it might lower the cost of my next iPhone / iPad as Apple sees more money coming outside of the hardware purchase.
No, Apple is trying to force Amazon to sell books though Apple's store *in addition* to through Amazon's store. This will lower Amazon's profits, for sure. Amazon may charge more for books through the Apple store (although Apple may try to block that, too). Consumers who don't shop around might get stung for higher prices by buying through Apple. Otherwise, I can't see any disadvantage for consumers, and in fact for me I'm glad that I can spend iTunes credit on those books, if I want too, and I'm glad that Apple are finding ways to pull in additional revenue from the iPhone and iPad, because I want them to keep the cost of the devices down.
How can it possibly be "lack of choice" for Apple to insist that sellers who sell books for viewing on the iPhone also make them available through the Apple store. That would seem to me to be more choice.
But when things sound different, most people will think that one sounds better, and one sounds worse. 'Better' is a term for something that is different in a good way. The vast majority of guitarists would choose a valve amp, and if they don't it's probably more of a price issue (i.e. can't get a loud enough valve amp within their budget) rather than to do with the valves per se. Those that really do chose a solid state amp on its merits will usually have a valve simulator or even a pedal with a valve in it, in their effects chain.
If you think harmonic distortion and volume dynamics are "noise" then you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. He's referring to guitar and bass amps, not hi-fi amps. For musicians, these form part of the sound. The way vacuum tubes distort (which is the correct tern, by the way) when pushed hard is very musical, and very hard to simulate in solid state or software. Ditto the particular dynamic range compression that tubes exhibit when pushed.
You missed the important point: if (bing.getResult(string) == "") then { return google.getResult(string); } - where does the string come from? You have to know the nonsense word to discover the google result, which means that Bing must have some system for mining Google.
Of course you can send data over a GSM connection, the poster said "can my 56K Dialup modem be made to work through my cellphone", for which the answer is NO. Historically there were ways to send digital data, encoded in analogue, over an analogue cell system, p
but the original poster was talking about connection his historic modem to the current cellphone systems.
No, you can't use your 56K modem over your cellphone... I'm not entirely sure if you're asking a real question or not, but if you want to know the answer - voice traffic over cellphones is compressed in a way that makes sense for voice - mostly the system ensures that everything arrives in the right order, and that there are not significant pauses. Voice communication is pretty tolerant to small gaps in the signal, so generally the network will just drop short segments because that it more natural in conversation that having pauses etc. in the middle of works while the network catches up. For baseband data (i.e. encoded on an audio signal, like an analogue modem) you want the system to _never_ drop data and never pause, you want it to just worsen in quality, and the modem will negotiate down on the rate until it can keep a reliable connection.
Listen, I love Apple devices, I have two MacBooks and two iPhones between my wife and I, numerous Airport devices to play music around the house and a whole bunch of peripherals, and I'm fully committed to iOS and OSX. However, calling it 'trivial' to move data between those devices is ridiculous. A jailbreak is not trivial (believe me, I tried for days with my iPhone 3GS when iOS 4 first came out) and breaks one of the major advantages of using Apple devices - that Apple effectively manage it for you, and you can be almost completely certain that updates are safe and happen when required, and won't break the device. Once you jailbreak you're on your own, and back to the world of messing with the device and following ropey HowTos to get stuff done, the avoidance of which is exactly why I embraced OSX/iOS in the fistplace.
What would be trivial - and what Apple should (and I think eventually will implement) - is to be able to plug your iPhone into any computer and see it as a mass storage device, including all photos, music and data (i.e. Pages / Keynote etc.) files, and drag and drop directly, without needing special software or drivers. The technology for that is ten years old, and it's totally artificial that Apple don't implement it.
I agree. And I think Apple will gradually be forced to 'open' their devices, but not in the way most hackers would think. I don't care, and I think most people don't care, about the App store being open, and I don't want to download custom firmwear or even customise the UI. What I do want is my data to be open - I want to be able to access my iPhone as a filestore, drag and drop files, etc.. I don't mind if there's a protected area for the OS, but it's becoming a major embarrassment for iOS that you can't easily get files on and off the devices. Apple are clearly holding out for the 'cloud' to kick in, but I don't think it's happening any time soon, and the vast majority of people see their data as something that they carry around with them.
I don't disagree that it can be tricky, but it's the same learning the ins and outs of any language. My experience with CSS is that once it clicks, it's extremely flexible and consistent across [modern] browsers. The difficulty you're encountering is to do with deciding where the bottom is - I'm guessing it seems logical to you that it would be the bottom of the browser window, but if you're designing a tall scrolling page (like Slashdot) you want bottom:0 to be the very bottom of the page (which I guess is why it disappears).
Table layouts don't work well across different browser implementations, because they're not actually designed for pixel-level alignment. They break non-visual devices (e.g. screen readers) because often elements that should appear related when the table is rendered visually aren't actually adjacent in the html. To put it more grandly, table layouts break the separation between the actual content, and the description of how it should be laid out on a screen.
Using CSS for layouts allows the designer to lay the text and images out in the html in a way that makes sense as plaintext, then impose the layout over the top to make it pretty. It's also magically quick with CSS to re-factor a site by changing one file, for instance to make a site easier to read on a small smartphone screen. Really, table layouts are 1990s, and frankly they're welcome to them.
It certainly does (well, all modern browsers anyway). I'm just putting the finishing touches to a site for a photography and graphic design company with complete graphical layout (as would have been done with tables in the past), semi-transparent floating text boxes, slideshow with fade transitions, and all sorts of other bells and whistles. No tables, no Flash, the only text pre-rendered as a jpeg is in the company logo. Looks great in Safari (OSX and iOS), Chrome, Opera, Firefox, and IE 8. IE 7 is OK with some fairly graceful downgrades. IE 6 looks pretty rubbish but I don't really care about that.
Oh, and if you turn off styles you get a fairly decent-looking plaintext page, with all the slideshow images at the bottom, the only uglyness being a collection of graphics used for the borders at the very bottom of the page, and I will probably get around to changing them into DIV backgrounds rather than img tags before it goes live.
Slashdot Mirror
*Sigh*. What has robots.txt got to do with this? They are not using a web crawler, so robots.txt is irrelevant. They are not even making an http request to Google's servers, they are simply noting what a user types and clicks. The only thing they are copying is what the user does.
But, this isn't like copying a map or a book or a car design from another company. This is more like one Ford saying to a Volvo driver "what do you do with your Volvo controls when it's snowing?", making a note of the response, and then using that to inform their next car design.
Yes, exactly right. And, what's interesting, is that Google would index your post just because it exists. The Microsoft method would require someone to actually click on those links, which to me seems more likely to produce genuine search results.
No, they're not copying from search engines specifically. They are recording all browsing habits. In theory, if you type something into the Slashdot search box, MS are monitoring that too. If you click a link from someone's Slashdot post, they are monitoring that too. Maybe we should set up a "Bing Sting" by all putting random links in our Slashdot sigs, installing Bing toolbar, then clicking on those links - I think we'll discover that MS are "copying from Slashdot".
The main issue here is that everyone needs to shift their thinking - Google is analysing the static links between pages, MS are (in part) analysing the dynamic, temporary 'links' implied whenever someone clicks on anything. What's interesting is that, with the MS method, you actually see what people are doing, rather than analysing a bunch of (potentially) dead links between pages.
Just like some people objected to Google and other web crawlers 15 years ago (hence robots.txt), there will be people who object to this sort of thing - problem is, surely the record of what I type and click belongs to me, not to Google, hence if I want to send the data about what I typed and clicked to Microsoft, that would be up to me, not up to Google?
No, you totally missed the point.
User A types some words into a text box, then clicks on a link that takes it to a different domain. Toolbar B records those words, together with the destination URL of that link that was clicked, and uses those words to slightly bias the results of search engine C.
Toolbar B does this for every website that user A visits with the express permission of user A.
The owners of search engine D get annoyed, because when they deliberately insert completely unique [text string -> URL] mappings to their search engine, and have their engineers click on those links, it shows up in search engine C.
Note that the only reason search engine D were aware of this in the first place is because bizarre mis-spellings of words in their search engine later turned up in search engine C.
So, there is a logical way to connect page 3 with content X - someone at some point entered X into a text box, then clicked on a link that lead to page 3. In this case it was some Google engineers. The issue here is that Google (along with a lot of Slashdot posters) are thinking of the web in a static sense: 'how could X possibly link to page 3??' - Bing stole that data. Microsoft are dynamically looking at what users do, and the text string -> URL -> click interaction is seen as a relationship between a phrase and a page that they want to take into account with their search results.
They are not mining Google's database, they're collecting information on what a user clicks on for every webpage that they visit and using that to bias their search results. It's not up to Google to opt-in or opt-out of that, it's up to the user who is doing the clicking. Think about it: when you go to Google, you have a text box and a button. The Bing toolbar sees what you typed into the textbox, sees that you clicked a button, then sees that you clicked a link that took you to a different domain. That's what it's mining, it doesn't care that the site was Google. About the only way Google could stop this would be by having their user agreement state that you can't use their website if you have the Bing toolbar installed, and even then they could only pursue the users, not MS.
How is it "cheating" - who is making the rules? Is it not "cheating" to crawl millions of sites to find out how they link to each other? If not, why not? Bing are not targeting Google (although I'm sure they're aware that Google results would be included in this), they are collecting the path that the user took to every click that they make. Whether you and I think this is creepy or not (and I certainly do), the users of the toolbar opt-in to this, MS tracks what they do, and partially base their search results on this. It's not cheating in any way, it's just a different approach to collecting data to create meaningful search results, and one that is actually quite interesting - seeing what users actually do, rather than analysing the static links between sites.
I'm beginning think this debacle is a load of nonsense, having read a few posts, it looks like the engineer in everyone has turned off for the week. What's happening is that the Bing search bar monitors everything that a user clicks on, something that the user explicitly agrees to. The "Bing Sting" methodology that Google outlined on their blog involved inserting bogus search results that returned an unlikely match. They then had their engineers deliberately search for these terms in Google and then - wait for it - click on them. So the Bing toolbar analysed those clicks, and because no-one else in the world was clicking on a link with those terms, they went straight to the top of Bing's results.
So, Microsoft aren't data-mining Google, they're data-mining everyone, doing analysis on any user with the Bing toolbar, to find out the crumbtrail that led them to a certain page. This is arguably better than Google's approach, because Microsoft is finding out how users travel between pages, whilst Google is finding out how developers think users should travel between pages (although in this age of micro-blogging and social networking the distinction is less obvious). If anyone should be worried about this, it should be users of the Bing toolbar who don't want their complete browsing history being analyzed by MS. Google complaining about this would be total hypocrisy, considering the millions of websites Google analyses without permission to get their data.
I never thought I would be defending MS, certainly not on Slashdot, but really Google has nothing to complain about here. Even their robots.txt is irrelevant, because it's the users' text input and click that is being recorded, not the Google search results.
I'm not so sure. Consumer protection laws are pretty strong in the UK (I think one of the reasons why prices are often higher here than elsewhere) and it's very rare for firms to get away with widespread abuse like this. About the only area where companies manage to scam is in the area of telephone cold-calling (which is usually illegal) and that's only because privacy laws make it very hard to find out who made a call.
Wow, that must have really cut back the gun crime.
And, interestingly, many of the smaller software houses seem to have their apps priced lower though the OSX App Store. I think they see it as worthwhile in order to access the market. I think Apple here is really aiming at the big guns (Sony and Amazon) who are making a killing, and Apple want to take a cut. Seems like good business to me. At the moment I'm buying all my mp3s from Amazon as they're a good 10-15% cheaper than the iTunes store most of the time. I'm sure Apple will address that at some point (hopefully by lowering their prices...).
You're not paying Apple anything, Amazon are paying a cut for the use of Apple's services, and the right to sell on their platform. This is exactly the same model that console manufacturers have been using for decades, but for some reason lots of people [on slashdot at least] seem to have a big problem with this when it's in a different form factor. Also, and this is the key point, *Apple are not forcing you to use their store*. In addition to whatever sales channels booksellers use, Apple wants them to use the iTunes store as well. So if you really have a problem with Apple taking a cut, buy direct from Amazon. Personally I'm happy with Apple taking a cut when I buy things that I would happily buy anywhere (at the cheapest price of course) because then it might lower the cost of my next iPhone / iPad as Apple sees more money coming outside of the hardware purchase.
No, Apple is trying to force Amazon to sell books though Apple's store *in addition* to through Amazon's store. This will lower Amazon's profits, for sure. Amazon may charge more for books through the Apple store (although Apple may try to block that, too). Consumers who don't shop around might get stung for higher prices by buying through Apple. Otherwise, I can't see any disadvantage for consumers, and in fact for me I'm glad that I can spend iTunes credit on those books, if I want too, and I'm glad that Apple are finding ways to pull in additional revenue from the iPhone and iPad, because I want them to keep the cost of the devices down.
How can it possibly be "lack of choice" for Apple to insist that sellers who sell books for viewing on the iPhone also make them available through the Apple store. That would seem to me to be more choice.
But when things sound different, most people will think that one sounds better, and one sounds worse. 'Better' is a term for something that is different in a good way. The vast majority of guitarists would choose a valve amp, and if they don't it's probably more of a price issue (i.e. can't get a loud enough valve amp within their budget) rather than to do with the valves per se. Those that really do chose a solid state amp on its merits will usually have a valve simulator or even a pedal with a valve in it, in their effects chain.
If you think harmonic distortion and volume dynamics are "noise" then you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. He's referring to guitar and bass amps, not hi-fi amps. For musicians, these form part of the sound. The way vacuum tubes distort (which is the correct tern, by the way) when pushed hard is very musical, and very hard to simulate in solid state or software. Ditto the particular dynamic range compression that tubes exhibit when pushed.
You missed the important point: if (bing.getResult(string) == "") then { return google.getResult(string); } - where does the string come from? You have to know the nonsense word to discover the google result, which means that Bing must have some system for mining Google.
Of course you can send data over a GSM connection, the poster said "can my 56K Dialup modem be made to work through my cellphone", for which the answer is NO. Historically there were ways to send digital data, encoded in analogue, over an analogue cell system, p but the original poster was talking about connection his historic modem to the current cellphone systems.
No, you can't use your 56K modem over your cellphone... I'm not entirely sure if you're asking a real question or not, but if you want to know the answer - voice traffic over cellphones is compressed in a way that makes sense for voice - mostly the system ensures that everything arrives in the right order, and that there are not significant pauses. Voice communication is pretty tolerant to small gaps in the signal, so generally the network will just drop short segments because that it more natural in conversation that having pauses etc. in the middle of works while the network catches up. For baseband data (i.e. encoded on an audio signal, like an analogue modem) you want the system to _never_ drop data and never pause, you want it to just worsen in quality, and the modem will negotiate down on the rate until it can keep a reliable connection.
Yes, and ...yes.
Listen, I love Apple devices, I have two MacBooks and two iPhones between my wife and I, numerous Airport devices to play music around the house and a whole bunch of peripherals, and I'm fully committed to iOS and OSX. However, calling it 'trivial' to move data between those devices is ridiculous. A jailbreak is not trivial (believe me, I tried for days with my iPhone 3GS when iOS 4 first came out) and breaks one of the major advantages of using Apple devices - that Apple effectively manage it for you, and you can be almost completely certain that updates are safe and happen when required, and won't break the device. Once you jailbreak you're on your own, and back to the world of messing with the device and following ropey HowTos to get stuff done, the avoidance of which is exactly why I embraced OSX/iOS in the fistplace.
What would be trivial - and what Apple should (and I think eventually will implement) - is to be able to plug your iPhone into any computer and see it as a mass storage device, including all photos, music and data (i.e. Pages / Keynote etc.) files, and drag and drop directly, without needing special software or drivers. The technology for that is ten years old, and it's totally artificial that Apple don't implement it.
I agree. And I think Apple will gradually be forced to 'open' their devices, but not in the way most hackers would think. I don't care, and I think most people don't care, about the App store being open, and I don't want to download custom firmwear or even customise the UI. What I do want is my data to be open - I want to be able to access my iPhone as a filestore, drag and drop files, etc.. I don't mind if there's a protected area for the OS, but it's becoming a major embarrassment for iOS that you can't easily get files on and off the devices. Apple are clearly holding out for the 'cloud' to kick in, but I don't think it's happening any time soon, and the vast majority of people see their data as something that they carry around with them.
I don't disagree that it can be tricky, but it's the same learning the ins and outs of any language. My experience with CSS is that once it clicks, it's extremely flexible and consistent across [modern] browsers. The difficulty you're encountering is to do with deciding where the bottom is - I'm guessing it seems logical to you that it would be the bottom of the browser window, but if you're designing a tall scrolling page (like Slashdot) you want bottom:0 to be the very bottom of the page (which I guess is why it disappears).
Table layouts don't work well across different browser implementations, because they're not actually designed for pixel-level alignment. They break non-visual devices (e.g. screen readers) because often elements that should appear related when the table is rendered visually aren't actually adjacent in the html. To put it more grandly, table layouts break the separation between the actual content, and the description of how it should be laid out on a screen.
Using CSS for layouts allows the designer to lay the text and images out in the html in a way that makes sense as plaintext, then impose the layout over the top to make it pretty. It's also magically quick with CSS to re-factor a site by changing one file, for instance to make a site easier to read on a small smartphone screen. Really, table layouts are 1990s, and frankly they're welcome to them.
It certainly does (well, all modern browsers anyway). I'm just putting the finishing touches to a site for a photography and graphic design company with complete graphical layout (as would have been done with tables in the past), semi-transparent floating text boxes, slideshow with fade transitions, and all sorts of other bells and whistles. No tables, no Flash, the only text pre-rendered as a jpeg is in the company logo. Looks great in Safari (OSX and iOS), Chrome, Opera, Firefox, and IE 8. IE 7 is OK with some fairly graceful downgrades. IE 6 looks pretty rubbish but I don't really care about that.
Oh, and if you turn off styles you get a fairly decent-looking plaintext page, with all the slideshow images at the bottom, the only uglyness being a collection of graphics used for the borders at the very bottom of the page, and I will probably get around to changing them into DIV backgrounds rather than img tags before it goes live.