Microsoft isn't patent troll. They do actual research and spend billions a year on Microsoft Research. No one else in the industry has such an good R&D department. Patent trolls don't do research, they just bully companies. Microsoft is within all their rights to ask for payments on their patents, because they actually do lots of research.
Why would it be extortion or why would there be bribes involved? Microsoft owns the patents based on years of R&D (Microsoft Research is the largest R&D center on the industry) and they legally ask for companies to pay to use their patented technology.
Considering that people search for Bing on Google, yes, people do choose to use Bing. It's not a small number - there's close 10 million searches per month for Bing related queries on Google alone.
You can check search query data here. Remember to change to [exact] search on match types so that it shows real search amount for specific queries.
I looked at exact match data (ie. [bing] ), not broad. There really is 7.5 million searches for "bing". If you look at broad search (so that it includes things like Bing Crosby), then there's 16.6 million searches.
I have as a test put an unprotected Windows box on the 'net to see what happened. Usually it's about 1/2 hr before it's port scanned and an hour before it's been rooted. That's it - that's your window of security.
Why are you calling me a moron when answering an AC? Besides, Microsoft hardly did anything evil. Both Apple and Google are being much more evil now a days. Gee, your OS comes with a browser so you don't need to ftp to some address you don't even know to get a browser. Outrageous!
I'm by no means anti-MS (Windows 7 is the only OS on both of my home PCs these days), but I'd take issue with the blanket statement that "Windows is also secure now a days".
I went through endless fun thanks to the parents just before Christmas. They fell for one of those fake-DHL-shipping-notice spam e-mails (as they were actually expecting a Christmas-related DHL delivery) and, with a single click, landed their (3 month old, Norton-"protected", UAC-enabled) PC with one of the most vicious and persistent pieces of malware I've ever seen.
So in reality, it isn't Windows problem, it's user problem. Unless you run walled garden like iOS on your PC, there will always be malware that will try to trick user, regardless of OS. It works in Windows, it works in OSX and it works in Linux.
"Personally I don't run any antivirus......and I haven't had a single malware in like 10 years"
How can you know that for sure?
I don't have any problems, and I do check my network traffic from time to time with Wireshark just because legit programs send awful amount of all kinds of data to internet too.
There are perfectly good free antivirus programs now, if you want to run one. Most of them are actually better than the non-free antivirus programs. Microsoft Security Essentials is a free antivirus that is many times better than Symantec's and others. On top of that it is lightweight and fast, compared to the bloated crap that Norton is. It works on slower machines too, detects more viruses and doesn't break stuff.
On 8 June 2011, PC Advisor listed Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 in its article Five of the Best Free Security Suites, which included Avast! 6 Free Edition, Comodo Antivirus 5.4, AVG Antivirus 2011 and BitDefender Total Security 2012 Beta.
So choose from those. Personally I don't run any antivirus as I don't download random executables from the internet nor surf to random porn sites or download from torrent sites. Windows is also secure now a days, and I haven't had a single malware in like 10 years.
I wondered that too. And the funny thing is, if it's the case, it might work -- I didn't know that DuckDuckGo was powered by Bing and, now that I do, it changes the way I feel about them.
Wow, so just because you only now realized that they use MS technology their search engine is suddenly worse? Talk about hating just for the purpose of hating.
And you get mention of Bing when you search something and scroll down. There's this:
I think the only thing keeping Yahoo in the Search market are the various software packages that try to push the Yahoo Toolbar during install, and ISPs that use it as the their default Homepage during setup.
Google is changing that though, as they're been heavily pushing Chrome with software installs, OEM's and ISPs. So instead of Yahoo toolbar or Bonzi Buddy, you now get Chrome when you install some software. How delightful.
Yeah, that's not paranoid at all. There's a much higher change that users would change to Google instead of Bing, and since Microsoft gets paid for the Yahoo deal, why would they deliberately shoot themselves in to leg?
Yes, Google needs competition but Bing isn't it. Sad for MS but true.
At this point there won't be anyone else than can compete with Google either. Now a days search engines rely heavily on datamining and especially keyword data supplied by users when searching. It's also the reason why Google datamines so much. With their market share they get significantly more data than Bing, especially long tail keywords and keywords people search less often.
Google also relies on looking which result users choose and if they return back from that site. If user chooses a particular search, it means the user thinks it's relevant and could be good. But if he quickly returns back from the site, it means he didn't find the information he was looking for from that results. That is also data that Google gets much more just because they have so much more users.
So all in all, if it wasn't for Microsoft, we would only have Google. No one else can compete with them at this point. Interestingly, Google is failing in Russia, China and South Korea where local companies got the market share before Google, and they can't really do much about it. Google tried to play dirty tricks in Russia by disabling the initial search engine choice dialog and defaulting to Google instead of Yandex, but they were quickly called of it and had to stop that practice.
That's a great feature in Bing, actually. Especially if looking for more adult material. Another thing is that Google has really crapped their design lately. It relies heavily on javascript and they've gone and hidden the cached link in the side panel that opens when you hover it. It's slow and clumsy. Same thing happened to their image search. It's sad because Google always took pride in providing clear, useful interface, but not anymore. I guess they get more ad clicks by frustrating users who use the normal search.
Where Google is losing you can count on them pushing the open label in order to build momentum & destroy the asymmetrical information advantages of existing market leaders. But where Google leads non-transparency is the norm.
- At the same time Google is trying to push social sites to offer transparent data, they decided to block some Google search referral data (unless you are paying for the clicks, then you get that data).
- When planning some of the features behind Google+ one of their employees wrote a book about the social circles concept with Google's blessings. Then, after he wrote the book, Google revoked permission to publish it!
- Android is open but internal Google emails revealed that carriers were getting wise to Google using compatibility as a club.
- The Panda update was needed to rid the web of garbage content. And yet Google is pre-paying Demand Media to post videos on YouTube. Since the Panda update downstream Google traffic to YouTube has more than doubled & YouTube is serving over a trillion streams per year!
- In spite of not having permission to do so, Google has been scanning books for nearly a decade now. Yet whenever Google goes to court they try to get the court documents sealed so that their statements couldn't be used against them.
If you only had to manage competing against other market competitors & staying inside Google's editorial guidelines then investment isn't that difficult, but if you have to stay within Google's guidelines in the short term yet try to build a business that is sustainable even after Google enters & destroys the market it is far more difficult.
A Self-serving Bias You Can Count On When Google enters a market it might buy out a competitor, buy out a supplier, bundle, use predatory pricing, grant themselves superior search placement, adjust the relevancy algorithms and/or editorial guidelines, violate IP, scrape 3rd party content, work with sketchy advertisers & publishers to undermine competing business models, or any combination of the above.
They are rarely transparent with their interests when they enter a market. Almost everything is labeled as "a beta" and "just a test." They promise to "act appropriately" & you may not be aware of the steamroller until you are under it.
A Google spokesman said "applications that are installed without clear disclosure, that are hard to remove and that modify users' experiences in unexpected ways are bad for users and the Web as a whole."
I tend to disagree. Reddit has a strong arm of users who vouch for the "reddiquitte" and defend those who are backing opinion with tangible facts. Its rare that you see a well written post that gets downvoted into hiding so long as it doesn't flame others or use emotionally charged wording. Sure it wont necessarily reach top comment status but it is still visible.
This is my experience as well. It also leads to discussions on Reddit being more interesting and both sides on the argument can voice their opinion. I've been using Reddit for a few years and I still haven't seen a single instance of where moderation was abused. Obviously bad and troll comments are on the - side, and they're always some one liners with stupid comments. If you present your opinion well, it will be upmodded, and everyone is free to discuss it. Compare that to slashdot where any comment that doesn't go by the groupthink gets modded down, and you can clearly see why this site has been going downhill for a long time.
The problem with Slashdot is the huge amount of groupthink and related moderation. Slashdot has a HUGE problem with downmodding any non-popular opinion (within slashdot crowd). Reddit addresses that, while Slashdot does not. For example, look at any comment that even points out that piracy might not be right, open source programs might not be that good or that Microsoft could sometimes be right. They are instantly downmodded, based on groupthink and not even wanting to hear dissenting opinions.
Wasn't the usual talk on Slashdot always how government should go after those botnet owners? Yes it was, even suggesting that they should just bomb their location, no questions asked. Seems like a good thing then. I hope Microsoft expands it to all other internet crimes, like stalking, copyright infringement and counterfeit goods!
Why should I be the one submitting patch there? Slashdot has full-time editors and coder(s) working on the site. They turn in a hefty sum of cash every month too, especially considering their advertisement rates. Slashdot makes enough money to improve this site by themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft isn't patent troll. They do actual research and spend billions a year on Microsoft Research. No one else in the industry has such an good R&D department. Patent trolls don't do research, they just bully companies. Microsoft is within all their rights to ask for payments on their patents, because they actually do lots of research.
Why would it be extortion or why would there be bribes involved? Microsoft owns the patents based on years of R&D (Microsoft Research is the largest R&D center on the industry) and they legally ask for companies to pay to use their patented technology.
Considering that people search for Bing on Google , yes, people do choose to use Bing. It's not a small number - there's close 10 million searches per month for Bing related queries on Google alone.
You can check search query data here. Remember to change to [exact] search on match types so that it shows real search amount for specific queries.
[bing] 7,480,000
[bing maps] 1,000,000
[bing.com] 450,000
[bing translator] 201,000
[www.bing.com] 135,000
[bing games] 135,000
[bing travel] 110,000
[bing images] 90,500
[bing map] 74,000
[bing search] 60,500
[bing video] 27,100
[www.bing] 27,100
[live search] 22,200
[bing videos] 18,100
[bing toolbar] 12,100
[bing rewards] 12,100
etc....
As opposed to Google being default search provider in Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari and tons of other browsers?
I looked at exact match data (ie. [bing] ), not broad. There really is 7.5 million searches for "bing". If you look at broad search (so that it includes things like Bing Crosby), then there's 16.6 million searches.
Other bing related searches:
[bing maps] 1,000,000
[bing.com] 450,000
[bing translator] 201,000
[www.bing.com] 135,000
[bing games] 135,000
[bing travel] 110,000
[bing images] 90,500
[bing map] 74,000
[bing search] 60,500
[bing video] 27,100
[www.bing] 27,100
[live search] 22,200
[bing videos] 18,100
[bing toolbar] 12,100
[bing rewards] 12,100
etc....
And these are search requests per month, with these exact terms, on Google. People are obviously searching for and wanting to use Bing.
I have as a test put an unprotected Windows box on the 'net to see what happened. Usually it's about 1/2 hr before it's port scanned and an hour before it's been rooted. That's it - that's your window of security.
Windows 98 box?
Why are you calling me a moron when answering an AC? Besides, Microsoft hardly did anything evil. Both Apple and Google are being much more evil now a days. Gee, your OS comes with a browser so you don't need to ftp to some address you don't even know to get a browser. Outrageous!
I'm by no means anti-MS (Windows 7 is the only OS on both of my home PCs these days), but I'd take issue with the blanket statement that "Windows is also secure now a days".
I went through endless fun thanks to the parents just before Christmas. They fell for one of those fake-DHL-shipping-notice spam e-mails (as they were actually expecting a Christmas-related DHL delivery) and, with a single click, landed their (3 month old, Norton-"protected", UAC-enabled) PC with one of the most vicious and persistent pieces of malware I've ever seen.
So in reality, it isn't Windows problem, it's user problem. Unless you run walled garden like iOS on your PC, there will always be malware that will try to trick user, regardless of OS. It works in Windows, it works in OSX and it works in Linux.
"Personally I don't run any antivirus... ...and I haven't had a single malware in like 10 years"
How can you know that for sure?
I don't have any problems, and I do check my network traffic from time to time with Wireshark just because legit programs send awful amount of all kinds of data to internet too.
There are perfectly good free antivirus programs now, if you want to run one. Most of them are actually better than the non-free antivirus programs. Microsoft Security Essentials is a free antivirus that is many times better than Symantec's and others. On top of that it is lightweight and fast, compared to the bloated crap that Norton is. It works on slower machines too, detects more viruses and doesn't break stuff.
On 8 June 2011, PC Advisor listed Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 in its article Five of the Best Free Security Suites, which included Avast! 6 Free Edition, Comodo Antivirus 5.4, AVG Antivirus 2011 and BitDefender Total Security 2012 Beta.
So choose from those. Personally I don't run any antivirus as I don't download random executables from the internet nor surf to random porn sites or download from torrent sites. Windows is also secure now a days, and I haven't had a single malware in like 10 years.
I wondered that too. And the funny thing is, if it's the case, it might work -- I didn't know that DuckDuckGo was powered by Bing and, now that I do, it changes the way I feel about them.
Wow, so just because you only now realized that they use MS technology their search engine is suddenly worse? Talk about hating just for the purpose of hating.
And you get mention of Bing when you search something and scroll down. There's this:
results by Bing
built with Yahoo
What does this mean?
How much would you like to put? There is also 7,5 million monthly searches in Google for 'bing'.
I think the only thing keeping Yahoo in the Search market are the various software packages that try to push the Yahoo Toolbar during install, and ISPs that use it as the their default Homepage during setup.
Google is changing that though, as they're been heavily pushing Chrome with software installs, OEM's and ISPs. So instead of Yahoo toolbar or Bonzi Buddy, you now get Chrome when you install some software. How delightful.
Yeah, that's not paranoid at all. There's a much higher change that users would change to Google instead of Bing, and since Microsoft gets paid for the Yahoo deal, why would they deliberately shoot themselves in to leg?
Yes, Google needs competition but Bing isn't it. Sad for MS but true.
At this point there won't be anyone else than can compete with Google either. Now a days search engines rely heavily on datamining and especially keyword data supplied by users when searching. It's also the reason why Google datamines so much. With their market share they get significantly more data than Bing, especially long tail keywords and keywords people search less often.
Google also relies on looking which result users choose and if they return back from that site. If user chooses a particular search, it means the user thinks it's relevant and could be good. But if he quickly returns back from the site, it means he didn't find the information he was looking for from that results. That is also data that Google gets much more just because they have so much more users.
So all in all, if it wasn't for Microsoft, we would only have Google. No one else can compete with them at this point. Interestingly, Google is failing in Russia, China and South Korea where local companies got the market share before Google, and they can't really do much about it. Google tried to play dirty tricks in Russia by disabling the initial search engine choice dialog and defaulting to Google instead of Yandex, but they were quickly called of it and had to stop that practice.
So use http://search.yahoo.com/
That's a great feature in Bing, actually. Especially if looking for more adult material. Another thing is that Google has really crapped their design lately. It relies heavily on javascript and they've gone and hidden the cached link in the side panel that opens when you hover it. It's slow and clumsy. Same thing happened to their image search. It's sad because Google always took pride in providing clear, useful interface, but not anymore. I guess they get more ad clicks by frustrating users who use the normal search.
How is this different
How is this different from when Google uses open source? There's a great article about the supposed openness by Google here
Some good points from it:
Where Google is losing you can count on them pushing the open label in order to build momentum & destroy the asymmetrical information advantages of existing market leaders. But where Google leads non-transparency is the norm.
- At the same time Google is trying to push social sites to offer transparent data, they decided to block some Google search referral data (unless you are paying for the clicks, then you get that data).
- When planning some of the features behind Google+ one of their employees wrote a book about the social circles concept with Google's blessings. Then, after he wrote the book, Google revoked permission to publish it!
- Android is open but internal Google emails revealed that carriers were getting wise to Google using compatibility as a club.
- The Panda update was needed to rid the web of garbage content. And yet Google is pre-paying Demand Media to post videos on YouTube. Since the Panda update downstream Google traffic to YouTube has more than doubled & YouTube is serving over a trillion streams per year!
- In spite of not having permission to do so, Google has been scanning books for nearly a decade now. Yet whenever Google goes to court they try to get the court documents sealed so that their statements couldn't be used against them.
If you only had to manage competing against other market competitors & staying inside Google's editorial guidelines then investment isn't that difficult, but if you have to stay within Google's guidelines in the short term yet try to build a business that is sustainable even after Google enters & destroys the market it is far more difficult.
A Self-serving Bias You Can Count On
When Google enters a market it might buy out a competitor, buy out a supplier, bundle, use predatory pricing, grant themselves superior search placement, adjust the relevancy algorithms and/or editorial guidelines, violate IP, scrape 3rd party content, work with sketchy advertisers & publishers to undermine competing business models, or any combination of the above.
They are rarely transparent with their interests when they enter a market. Almost everything is labeled as "a beta" and "just a test." They promise to "act appropriately" & you may not be aware of the steamroller until you are under it.
Google can bundle themselves into markets, but when others do the same it is a big no no:
A Google spokesman said "applications that are installed without clear disclosure, that are hard to remove and that modify users' experiences in unexpected ways are bad for users and the Web as a whole."
Google's founding research highlighted how bad ad-driven search engines were & then Google's core revenue engine of paid search was built on their violation of Overture's patent. They keep
I tend to disagree. Reddit has a strong arm of users who vouch for the "reddiquitte" and defend those who are backing opinion with tangible facts. Its rare that you see a well written post that gets downvoted into hiding so long as it doesn't flame others or use emotionally charged wording. Sure it wont necessarily reach top comment status but it is still visible.
This is my experience as well. It also leads to discussions on Reddit being more interesting and both sides on the argument can voice their opinion. I've been using Reddit for a few years and I still haven't seen a single instance of where moderation was abused. Obviously bad and troll comments are on the - side, and they're always some one liners with stupid comments. If you present your opinion well, it will be upmodded, and everyone is free to discuss it. Compare that to slashdot where any comment that doesn't go by the groupthink gets modded down, and you can clearly see why this site has been going downhill for a long time.
For a long time Slashdotters have suggested cutting off internet for anyone who has botnet or malware on their computer. Why are you resisting?
The problem with Slashdot is the huge amount of groupthink and related moderation. Slashdot has a HUGE problem with downmodding any non-popular opinion (within slashdot crowd). Reddit addresses that, while Slashdot does not. For example, look at any comment that even points out that piracy might not be right, open source programs might not be that good or that Microsoft could sometimes be right. They are instantly downmodded, based on groupthink and not even wanting to hear dissenting opinions.
You really cannot see sarcastic comment thrown at you, can you? And how it relates to botnets, well gee, maybe read the summary
Microsoft has proven that it can take down huge, global botnets like Kelihos, Rustock and Waldec.
Wasn't the usual talk on Slashdot always how government should go after those botnet owners? Yes it was, even suggesting that they should just bomb their location, no questions asked. Seems like a good thing then. I hope Microsoft expands it to all other internet crimes, like stalking, copyright infringement and counterfeit goods!
Besides, Slashcode is open source and used by many sites, not just Slashdot.
Apart from Slashdot Japan, by who, exactly?
Why should I be the one submitting patch there? Slashdot has full-time editors and coder(s) working on the site. They turn in a hefty sum of cash every month too, especially considering their advertisement rates. Slashdot makes enough money to improve this site by themselves.