Well, they want to see your raw abilities, not your development environments abilities.
"raw abilities" my ass. No one codes that way anymore. Shit would never get done if you had to hire someone who actually knew a language and environment completely. Working in language x, environment y, trying to do z? Regardless of whether you've never even seen x, y, or z, or if you're the fucking inventor of all 3, you're going to point your web browser at the google machine to look shit up at some point.
I haven't touched C/C++ in ages. I've never touched Ruby. If I was asked to blindly code shit on a board/piece of paper, I'd probably just scratch my nuts then leave. If I was asked to actually work with them I'd jump into the existing code and environment (if any), start poking around, look up some reference material, and be on my way to getting shit done.
There's a reason computer science focuses on concepts and algorithms more than individual languages and environments.
Must Every.Single.Article. relating to Apple get trolled by Android fanbois and vice versa? Is this really worth your time, to argue inane points about some preferred phone OS you use? 90% of the comments on this article are worthless drivel. Sometimes I think the quality of/. commenting is going down hill in a big way, but then I see other sites forums with the same issues on the iOS/Android flame war. Are your lives really that shallow?
Perhaps/. should do away with AC commenting. Sure you could still do it with a throwaway account but that effort would cut a lot of noise out of the system.
The submissions and summaries are 99% of the problem, not the comments.
Microsoft got into the console market because they wanted to maintain and increase the number of developers hooked on DirectX.
End of story. Everything else was a "So, where do we go now" afterthought.
Oh please. Do you expect me to believe that it was originally envisioned as the DriectXBox? Or that they didn't really have any other plan beyond buying off the shelf components and slapping them together in an ugly case? That the billions in losses that even today still haven't been made up weren't part of some grand scheme?
"may explain why the laws of physics in our corner of the universe seem to be finely tuned to support life" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropomorphic_principle The universe is not tuned for life. We are tuned for the universe.
Life is tuned against the universe. Life is the struggle against entropy.
This sort of feature is incredibly interesting, but how well does it really work for things that might not be already known by a normal person? I mean, it is pretty simple to know to say "find the nearest locksmith" if you are locked out; I highly doubt *anyone* responsible for locking themselves and their belongings up does not know that a locksmith is the go-to resource for such things. What if I said "i need to find a cheap glockenspiel" or "I just lost my wallet" or how about "i need to break up with my girlfriend"?
By extending your logic only trained pilots should ever fly in a plane; only mechanics should ever drive a car, only engineers should ever operate machinery, only physicists should ever use electricity.
Technology should empower people. That is its sole purpose. Apple groks this. They don't make computers or gadgets for geeks to tinker with, they make tools for average people to use in their everyday life.
You're a moron.
Only trained pilots should fly. Only licensed drivers should drive. Only trained mechanics should perform non-routine service on vehicles. Only engineers should operate trains. Only engineers (the other kind) should design things involving complicated mechanics (again, the other kind of mechanics). Only physicists should put theory into practice when we're looking to the fringes of what we know about physics to provide us with new physical principles to exploit for energy/weapons/communications/whatever.
You have to be an expert to design and build the good stuff. You don't have to be an expert to use any of the good stuff, just competent. If you're incompetent, you can use the safety scissors and the easy bake oven.
When was the last time someone flew some planes into a few of the tallest buildings in your country in the middle of your most densely populated city? I'm as opposed to the TSA as the next guy but it's important to put what Americans "put up with" in context. I think it's pretty well understood by most people who take the time to consider such things that it's largely security theater.
No, context is not important. Giving up freedom for security is badnewsbears every time. Every time.
Anything important (bank accounts, real estate, pensions, insurance) will be handled properly and legally when you provide a copy of the death certificate and, in some cases, a copy of the will.
Ebay auctions? Email accounts? Who gives a fuck? If you want to be nice tell ebay/google/yahoo/ms/whoever that he's dead and an auto-responder stating that fact would be helpful.
Isn't that just learning? You have not yet directly experienced skunk spray, so it doesn't have the same effect on you as someone who has experienced it. The area I have always lived in has a lot of skunks. Like you, the smell never bothered me all that much. Then one day our cat got sprayed, and before we knew it he was in the house. Now I absolutely can not stand that smell, no matter how far off it is.
People who've never lived in areas with a lot of skunks seldom appreciate just how potent and horrendous fresh spray is. It doesn't smell anything like the odor of a far off skunk. I had a cat that got skunked once and did the exact same thing. I've heard fresh skunk spray described as an acrid mix of burning onion, garlic, and tire rubber left on the stove to char, and that seems pretty accurate.
My dog got sprayed once, directly in the face, and he ran into the house and we had to give him a bath for hours. The smell was just a stronger version of what you normally smell when a skunk has sprayed "somewhere" nearby. It wasn't horrendous at all (I've posted already that I find it pleasant and peppery). Just more of the same.
I agree with you. Fingernails on chalkboard never bothered me and they still don't. I have excellent audio reception btw so it's not a question of being tone-deaf. I hear the sounds but my skin doesn't crawl up.
On a related note, I moved from a place with no skunks to a place teeming with them. To the locals, the odour is unbearable and they have like a flight-response to it. Personally, I don't abhor the smell; It's akin to "burning rubber". When my mother visited, it reminded her of the smell of "roasting coffee". We weren't raised to despise that smell, and we don't when confronted to it. That being said, I never have been sprayed or anything like that. I am talking about the far-off whiff you get in you're downwind from a skunk.
JigJag
I kind of enjoy the smell of skunk. It's very peppery. Never been sprayed, though, I'm sure that's a bit different. Manure (the bagged stuff) smells good too. But a lump of cow shit is still a nasty lump of cow shit.
Did they test with people who haven't been culturally informed that fingernails on a chalkboard should sound annoying?
From chalk to communism, there are so many, "Why do people find blah disagreeable?" which seem to come down to, "Because that's what mother and the TV say."
Exactly. I've never had a problem with fingernails on a chalkboard. Or a knife on a plate.
But I do have a problem with wet wood (like a popsicle stick) touching my front teeth.
I am not a scientist nor a statistician, but I am fairly certain more than one person has died in an automobile accident. In fact some died in accidents that were the result of poor car design. How would this be any different?
You prove to be a fucking useless, ignorant git with every post you make.
What's different is that "driver error" is the fault for 99.99% of all other automobile fatalities. Mechanical, electrical, or software failure is far, far, far less common, and when it does happen, there are typically warning signs and fail safes in place.
The most major manufacturers do for automated driving is that auto parallel park system, and there are big ol' disclaimers about you having to maintain control and what not. The system works, but it does it at about 1 or 2 MPH and requires you to set it up in a cherry spot and tell it to go, while maintaining control.
Automated driving, in traffic, with other cars, driven by bots and people, and in inclimate weather, etc. etc., is an infinitely more complex problem and the first time one of these crashes into something it's going to be legal chaos. Manufacturers are going to approach this very fucking slowly and carefully. Ages of development, small pilot programs, endless disclaimers and liability waivers, fail safes out the ass, blackbox logging of everything, always ensuring the driver can override the car manually, etc.
Would someone with a 5 digit UID please show up and tell this guy he's fucking stupid? By his own logic he'd have to agree.
There's no need for that. You already came in and shut him the fuck up - Anonymous Coward doesn't need a low UID, because Anonymous Coward doesn't even have one.
No need to resort to hurtful language. Fact is users with the Bing toolbar searched on Google and the results from Google showed up on Bing, period.
Fact is that's not a fact. Period. Users with the Bing toolbar searched, and had their search queries and their ultimate destinations fed to Bing, which weighted them extremely weakly, causing only a very small fraction of massively clickfrauded, single-result queries to successfully poison Bing. Bing never sees the search results from Google or any other site. The fact that a user clicked on something after doing a search is a strong indication that the url was included in some sort of search results, but it's not always the case, and it does not mean Bing sees anything other than the search terms and the url. They don't see meta data, they don't see the description Google puts out, they don't see any url for a result that wasn't clicked on, they don't see the ranking of the result that was clicked on, etc.
Bing sees [search query] [click on url]. That's it. Google does the same fucking thing.
Search results were never sent to Bing. Search terms were sent to Bing through the toolbar, as well as the page you clicked on. If you searched for "X" and ultimately clicked on something that had nothing to do with X, or wasn't even a part of the search results, Bing would record that just the same. They're not scanning though search results, they're scanning for "Looking for X" and "Decided to click on Y", regardless of where that Y came from. Bing is using users's decisions of what to click on. The fact that the user may have gone out to Google, Yahoo, Redtube, Tube8, Empornium, TNAFlix, whatever as part of their own process is irrelevant - Bing doesn't know or care.
A bigger cut of less searches is not the sort of deal you want to make.
The Mozilla Foundation does not understand their target market I think. Such a deal will cost them users. Users that will switch to Chrome.
What a fucking toolbag you are. A bigger cut of less searches? In what way is this less searches?
People who have FF now and don't want to switch to FF with Bing as the default won't be doing any less searches. People who have FF now and switch to FF with Bing won't be doing any less searches (unless you Believe Bing provides better results and results in less search attempts).
You have to intentionally go out and get this version of FF. The number of searches performed won't be impacted. For some small segment of users who go out and get this version (I'd imagine it it to be measured in the tens), Mozilla gets more $ per search.
MS gave Mozilla money. Mozilla wanted a card to play when they renegotiate with Google.
Why does Mozilla go out of their way to ignore their users? Why do they go out of their way to mess with these projects that don't actually fix any of the serious problems that users point out time and time again, for years and years?
Chrome isn't any better with the developers holier than though attitudes. There have been feature requests that have been very highly voted for they they just keep turning down even though it would be a simple toggle on and off feature that could default to off. One such example is type ahead search which removes the need to press ctrl-f to search inline text. It is possible for some sites to have issues with, but I find it very useful, there is an extension for Chrome which worked about 20% of the time. Firefox has actually made great strides in 7.0 for memory usage, and I still have never seen this reported performance issues people have complained about.
Firefox has its issues, but I moved to Chrome after all the crashes in Firefox that started in the 6.0 release continued in 7.0.1. However, Chrome was very limited especially in regards to Ad Block Plus and Noscript. Ad Block on Chrome downloads everything and then hides elements, so a hacked payload image is still on your machine, Notscript was no where near the level of functionality of Noscript and this is due to Chrome not exposing critical parts in an API that would make this very useful extension work.
I wish Firefox would move to a multi threaded application like Chrome so that a crashed tab doesn't kill everything, but after about three weeks using only Chrome I gave up. Uninstalled Firefox and killed every trace of data from application data directories before a clean install and reinstall of all of my extensions and the crashes have stopped.
If you don't like the UI changes to Firefox, Chrome also isn't a solution as most of those features are just mirroring Chrome. One saving grace of Chrome was its excellent web developer tools. Firebug on Firefox has been slowly become unusable, but Chrome's built in tools are better and work perfectly.
100% correct. The built in web developer tools in FF are useless, as is Firebug (because it fucking crashes all to hell when it doesn't work, and runs like molasses when it does work). But I don't think this is a saving grace for Chrome. Look at IE's web developer tools. They're damned capable, and you get the benefit of "Well, I'm in IE anyway, may as well make sure everything renders properly.". And IE9 does a damn fine job of rendering 99.99% of stuff correctly.
What a fuckshit you are. This "issue" was put to bed ages ago.
Google was engaging in a massive and extended search poisoning scheme against Bing. Their results? They were able to get a few % success rate after untold numbers of insertions through the use of the Bing toolbar, which they downloaded intentionally. They also agreed to let it track search queries + clicks.
The Bing toolbar tracks search query + what you click on afterward. If they happen to track a search query sent to Google, or to Bing, or to Yahoo, so what? The USER is voluntarily submitting that data. Bing is not copying, or even seeing, Google search results. It sees search query + site you went to.
Absolutely pathetic on the part of google. Their success rate was extremely low even when the search terms had 0 hits. Bing has figured out a good way to minimize the impact of user clicks (to prevent gaming). This is something Google has been entirely unable to do. User clicks got gamed, so they stopped tracking and weighing them. The Page Rank up/down got gamed, so they removed that. +1 is getting gamed, just like Facebook Likes, but it looks like they don't give a shit.
Some shitchomper at Google threw a hissy fit and wrote a blog post after they failed to poison Bing. And MS called them on it.
Google was doing blackbox testing to figure out some of Bing's metrics. Google was unable to figure anything out, so they tried massive poisoning. Google was unable to even do that right, and when they finally had a handful of successes, they jumped to the conclusion that Bing MUST be copying Google. How else could it be so good? MS said "Nope. Bing toolbar sends search query and page you ultimate go to to Bing, with user's permission. Google is wrong."
Slashdot Mirror
Well, they want to see your raw abilities, not your development environments abilities.
"raw abilities" my ass. No one codes that way anymore. Shit would never get done if you had to hire someone who actually knew a language and environment completely.
Working in language x, environment y, trying to do z? Regardless of whether you've never even seen x, y, or z, or if you're the fucking inventor of all 3, you're going to point your web browser at the google machine to look shit up at some point.
I haven't touched C/C++ in ages. I've never touched Ruby. If I was asked to blindly code shit on a board/piece of paper, I'd probably just scratch my nuts then leave. If I was asked to actually work with them I'd jump into the existing code and environment (if any), start poking around, look up some reference material, and be on my way to getting shit done.
There's a reason computer science focuses on concepts and algorithms more than individual languages and environments.
Must Every.Single.Article. relating to Apple get trolled by Android fanbois and vice versa? Is this really worth your time, to argue inane points about some preferred phone OS you use? 90% of the comments on this article are worthless drivel. Sometimes I think the quality of /. commenting is going down hill in a big way, but then I see other sites forums with the same issues on the iOS/Android flame war. Are your lives really that shallow?
Perhaps /. should do away with AC commenting. Sure you could still do it with a throwaway account but that effort would cut a lot of noise out of the system.
The submissions and summaries are 99% of the problem, not the comments.
A lot of people point at their computer and call it a hard drive. You're OK with that, too?
And sometimes then mean actual clips that ammo goes into before being fed into a gun.
Many semi-automatic and manual rifles are clip-fed.
A clip aligns ammunition in a specific orientation for feeding, but does not actually encase ammunition.
A magazine encases ammunition during firing.
The coolest thing you own is probably your ice maker.
The ice it produces may be cold, but such machinery typically gets fairly hot.
Is it an iPad? Because people won't buy it unless it's an iPad.
Microsoft got into the console market because they wanted to maintain and increase the number of developers hooked on DirectX.
End of story. Everything else was a "So, where do we go now" afterthought.
Oh please. Do you expect me to believe that it was originally envisioned as the DriectXBox? Or that they didn't really have any other plan beyond buying off the shelf components and slapping them together in an ugly case? That the billions in losses that even today still haven't been made up weren't part of some grand scheme?
"may explain why the laws of physics in our corner of the universe seem to be finely tuned to support life"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropomorphic_principle
The universe is not tuned for life. We are tuned for the universe.
Life is tuned against the universe.
Life is the struggle against entropy.
Sounds like your teacher had you pegged.
But he still doesn't know what to do with those tossed salads and scrambled eggs.
Really? Cosmonaut?
It's Confidant
Prepare for downcount.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38UVs8onKKw
This sort of feature is incredibly interesting, but how well does it really work for things that might not be already known by a normal person? I mean, it is pretty simple to know to say "find the nearest locksmith" if you are locked out; I highly doubt *anyone* responsible for locking themselves and their belongings up does not know that a locksmith is the go-to resource for such things. What if I said "i need to find a cheap glockenspiel" or "I just lost my wallet" or how about "i need to break up with my girlfriend"?
Siri, I think I might be retarded.
You are an idiot.
By extending your logic only trained pilots should ever fly in a plane; only mechanics should ever drive a car, only engineers should ever operate machinery, only physicists should ever use electricity.
Technology should empower people. That is its sole purpose. Apple groks this. They don't make computers or gadgets for geeks to tinker with, they make tools for average people to use in their everyday life.
You're a moron.
Only trained pilots should fly.
Only licensed drivers should drive.
Only trained mechanics should perform non-routine service on vehicles.
Only engineers should operate trains.
Only engineers (the other kind) should design things involving complicated mechanics (again, the other kind of mechanics).
Only physicists should put theory into practice when we're looking to the fringes of what we know about physics to provide us with new physical principles to exploit for energy/weapons/communications/whatever.
Apple makes shiny toys for simple people.
It's like Duplo vs Lego. http://duplo.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx
Tricycle vs bicycle.
Power Wheels vs actual car.
You have to be an expert to design and build the good stuff.
You don't have to be an expert to use any of the good stuff, just competent.
If you're incompetent, you can use the safety scissors and the easy bake oven.
Duh!
Seriously.
Don't know how they got the U S of A mixed up with Europe.
Who sets the 'trusted' signers?
You do. Or, you should.
Trust that is automated or extendable is stupid.
But it's easier and faster so that's what we have.
When was the last time someone flew some planes into a few of the tallest buildings in your country in the middle of your most densely populated city? I'm as opposed to the TSA as the next guy but it's important to put what Americans "put up with" in context. I think it's pretty well understood by most people who take the time to consider such things that it's largely security theater.
No, context is not important. Giving up freedom for security is badnewsbears every time.
Every time.
Anything important (bank accounts, real estate, pensions, insurance) will be handled properly and legally when you provide a copy of the death certificate and, in some cases, a copy of the will.
Ebay auctions? Email accounts? Who gives a fuck?
If you want to be nice tell ebay/google/yahoo/ms/whoever that he's dead and an auto-responder stating that fact would be helpful.
People who've never lived in areas with a lot of skunks seldom appreciate just how potent and horrendous fresh spray is. It doesn't smell anything like the odor of a far off skunk. I had a cat that got skunked once and did the exact same thing. I've heard fresh skunk spray described as an acrid mix of burning onion, garlic, and tire rubber left on the stove to char, and that seems pretty accurate.
My dog got sprayed once, directly in the face, and he ran into the house and we had to give him a bath for hours.
The smell was just a stronger version of what you normally smell when a skunk has sprayed "somewhere" nearby.
It wasn't horrendous at all (I've posted already that I find it pleasant and peppery). Just more of the same.
I agree with you. Fingernails on chalkboard never bothered me and they still don't. I have excellent audio reception btw so it's not a question of being tone-deaf. I hear the sounds but my skin doesn't crawl up.
On a related note, I moved from a place with no skunks to a place teeming with them. To the locals, the odour is unbearable and they have like a flight-response to it. Personally, I don't abhor the smell; It's akin to "burning rubber". When my mother visited, it reminded her of the smell of "roasting coffee". We weren't raised to despise that smell, and we don't when confronted to it. That being said, I never have been sprayed or anything like that. I am talking about the far-off whiff you get in you're downwind from a skunk.
JigJag
I kind of enjoy the smell of skunk. It's very peppery. Never been sprayed, though, I'm sure that's a bit different.
Manure (the bagged stuff) smells good too. But a lump of cow shit is still a nasty lump of cow shit.
Did they test with people who haven't been culturally informed that fingernails on a chalkboard should sound annoying?
From chalk to communism, there are so many, "Why do people find blah disagreeable?" which seem to come down to, "Because that's what mother and the TV say."
Exactly.
I've never had a problem with fingernails on a chalkboard.
Or a knife on a plate.
But I do have a problem with wet wood (like a popsicle stick) touching my front teeth.
I am not a scientist nor a statistician, but I am fairly certain more than one person has died in an automobile accident. In fact some died in accidents that were the result of poor car design.
How would this be any different?
You prove to be a fucking useless, ignorant git with every post you make.
What's different is that "driver error" is the fault for 99.99% of all other automobile fatalities.
Mechanical, electrical, or software failure is far, far, far less common, and when it does happen, there are typically warning signs and fail safes in place.
The most major manufacturers do for automated driving is that auto parallel park system, and there are big ol' disclaimers about you having to maintain control and what not. The system works, but it does it at about 1 or 2 MPH and requires you to set it up in a cherry spot and tell it to go, while maintaining control.
Automated driving, in traffic, with other cars, driven by bots and people, and in inclimate weather, etc. etc., is an infinitely more complex problem and the first time one of these crashes into something it's going to be legal chaos. Manufacturers are going to approach this very fucking slowly and carefully. Ages of development, small pilot programs, endless disclaimers and liability waivers, fail safes out the ass, blackbox logging of everything, always ensuring the driver can override the car manually, etc.
Hash chain.
Just like Bitcoin.
I know you are a 7 digit...
Would someone with a 5 digit UID please show up and tell this guy he's fucking stupid? By his own logic he'd have to agree.
There's no need for that.
You already came in and shut him the fuck up - Anonymous Coward doesn't need a low UID, because Anonymous Coward doesn't even have one.
No need to resort to hurtful language. Fact is users with the Bing toolbar searched on Google and the results from Google showed up on Bing, period.
Fact is that's not a fact. Period.
Users with the Bing toolbar searched, and had their search queries and their ultimate destinations fed to Bing, which weighted them extremely weakly, causing only a very small fraction of massively clickfrauded, single-result queries to successfully poison Bing. Bing never sees the search results from Google or any other site. The fact that a user clicked on something after doing a search is a strong indication that the url was included in some sort of search results, but it's not always the case, and it does not mean Bing sees anything other than the search terms and the url. They don't see meta data, they don't see the description Google puts out, they don't see any url for a result that wasn't clicked on, they don't see the ranking of the result that was clicked on, etc.
Bing sees [search query] [click on url]. That's it. Google does the same fucking thing.
Search results were never sent to Bing. Search terms were sent to Bing through the toolbar, as well as the page you clicked on. If you searched for "X" and ultimately clicked on something that had nothing to do with X, or wasn't even a part of the search results, Bing would record that just the same. They're not scanning though search results, they're scanning for "Looking for X" and "Decided to click on Y", regardless of where that Y came from. Bing is using users's decisions of what to click on. The fact that the user may have gone out to Google, Yahoo, Redtube, Tube8, Empornium, TNAFlix, whatever as part of their own process is irrelevant - Bing doesn't know or care.
A bigger cut of less searches is not the sort of deal you want to make.
The Mozilla Foundation does not understand their target market I think. Such a deal will cost them users. Users that will switch to Chrome.
What a fucking toolbag you are.
A bigger cut of less searches? In what way is this less searches?
People who have FF now and don't want to switch to FF with Bing as the default won't be doing any less searches.
People who have FF now and switch to FF with Bing won't be doing any less searches (unless you Believe Bing provides better results and results in less search attempts).
You have to intentionally go out and get this version of FF. The number of searches performed won't be impacted. For some small segment of users who go out and get this version (I'd imagine it it to be measured in the tens), Mozilla gets more $ per search.
MS gave Mozilla money.
Mozilla wanted a card to play when they renegotiate with Google.
That's all it is.
Chrome isn't any better with the developers holier than though attitudes. There have been feature requests that have been very highly voted for they they just keep turning down even though it would be a simple toggle on and off feature that could default to off. One such example is type ahead search which removes the need to press ctrl-f to search inline text. It is possible for some sites to have issues with, but I find it very useful, there is an extension for Chrome which worked about 20% of the time. Firefox has actually made great strides in 7.0 for memory usage, and I still have never seen this reported performance issues people have complained about.
Firefox has its issues, but I moved to Chrome after all the crashes in Firefox that started in the 6.0 release continued in 7.0.1. However, Chrome was very limited especially in regards to Ad Block Plus and Noscript. Ad Block on Chrome downloads everything and then hides elements, so a hacked payload image is still on your machine, Notscript was no where near the level of functionality of Noscript and this is due to Chrome not exposing critical parts in an API that would make this very useful extension work.
I wish Firefox would move to a multi threaded application like Chrome so that a crashed tab doesn't kill everything, but after about three weeks using only Chrome I gave up. Uninstalled Firefox and killed every trace of data from application data directories before a clean install and reinstall of all of my extensions and the crashes have stopped.
If you don't like the UI changes to Firefox, Chrome also isn't a solution as most of those features are just mirroring Chrome. One saving grace of Chrome was its excellent web developer tools. Firebug on Firefox has been slowly become unusable, but Chrome's built in tools are better and work perfectly.
100% correct.
The built in web developer tools in FF are useless, as is Firebug (because it fucking crashes all to hell when it doesn't work, and runs like molasses when it does work). But I don't think this is a saving grace for Chrome. Look at IE's web developer tools. They're damned capable, and you get the benefit of "Well, I'm in IE anyway, may as well make sure everything renders properly.". And IE9 does a damn fine job of rendering 99.99% of stuff correctly.
What a fuckshit you are.
This "issue" was put to bed ages ago.
Google was engaging in a massive and extended search poisoning scheme against Bing.
Their results? They were able to get a few % success rate after untold numbers of insertions through the use of the Bing toolbar, which they downloaded intentionally. They also agreed to let it track search queries + clicks.
The Bing toolbar tracks search query + what you click on afterward. If they happen to track a search query sent to Google, or to Bing, or to Yahoo, so what? The USER is voluntarily submitting that data. Bing is not copying, or even seeing, Google search results. It sees search query + site you went to.
Absolutely pathetic on the part of google. Their success rate was extremely low even when the search terms had 0 hits.
Bing has figured out a good way to minimize the impact of user clicks (to prevent gaming). This is something Google has been entirely unable to do.
User clicks got gamed, so they stopped tracking and weighing them. The Page Rank up/down got gamed, so they removed that. +1 is getting gamed, just like Facebook Likes, but it looks like they don't give a shit.
Some shitchomper at Google threw a hissy fit and wrote a blog post after they failed to poison Bing. And MS called them on it.
Google was doing blackbox testing to figure out some of Bing's metrics.
Google was unable to figure anything out, so they tried massive poisoning.
Google was unable to even do that right, and when they finally had a handful of successes, they jumped to the conclusion that Bing MUST be copying Google. How else could it be so good?
MS said "Nope. Bing toolbar sends search query and page you ultimate go to to Bing, with user's permission. Google is wrong."