Well, the video's author had the following conclusions -
1) That MSFT should be commended that there is a lot of backwards compatibility for over 20 years of operating systems as evidenced by Doom2, program managers, file structures remaining in tact.
2) That versions of XP, Vista and 7 were a little disappointing that they applied their own theme and color scheme and those settings weren't carried over between versions. Prior versions did in fact keep theme settings.
3) That the upgrade path and process has changed significantly over 20 years (obviously) and while it may have gotten longer (in time spent), it seems to have gotten easier for the end user.
Now, I don't know if I agree with any of the conclusions and I don't know if any of those conclusions are substantive, but that's what I got out of the 10 minute video.
Uhh not quite with sportsbooks. In fact, this makes 2 of the last 4 Super Bowls where most books lost money. Don't believe me? ESPN's Vegas Insider Chad Millman is reporting that Vegas lost money this year. The problem with your logic is you assume that the linemakers are making correct lines in anticipating the action. However, just like the Giants/Pats SB, Vegas made the line so "soft" they couldn't adjust the line to even out the wagering. Your reasoning that they will just change the line as the money flows in is fatally flawed because with big money events like the Super Bowl, creating a big "middle" is death to Vegas and the Sharps will hammer both sides of the lines and potentially break the book. This year, there was too much money on the Packers and the Over and once the 2pt conversion was successful, Vegas was done for.
All week long bookmakers such as the LV Hilton were reporting that they didn't want to move the line from 2.5 to 3, but were forced to and then had to play with the juice (-130 for +3 Steelers) and that there was no way they were ever going to 3.5 to create the middle. And as for 2007, you can thank all that New York money that flowed into Vegas at +450 Giants Money Line for causing the red numbers in 2007.
The fact you got modded up just goes to show how far the Microsoft bias runs here.
If it were illegal or cheating, you would have had video of the lawyers running to the courthouse. If any of you don't think that this was just a well-timed PR attack against Bing by Google, I have some swamp land in Florida I will sell you. All you have to do is watch the video of the search conference to know Google's agenda - try and discredit Bing by any means necessary. Once Cutts got the floor to speak, the moderator's question was ignored and Google/Cutts went on the offensive. They even recruited Danny Sullivan to the party beforehand to release the story (which btw, he's written a follow-up and if he backpedaled any faster he could be a cornerback in the NFL).
Once again, here are the facts of what happened since none of you even cared to read the analysis it seems - 1) Google manually manipulated their search results - something they claim never to do. 2) They then sent a group of Google engineers home to use Internet Explorer after opting-in and turning on Suggested Sites and started searching for very long tailed terms in Google and clicking on the results they wanted (btw, if 20 friends and I did this for some sites I own to improve its search ranking position, Google would penalize our site for this exact behavior). 3) Only 7-9% of the longest of long tail queries (gibberish) were showing the same top result on Bing as Google when there was no way Bing should be returning any results. There were other results returned by Bing for some terms outside of the top result that didn't match. Google has no explanation as to why the other 91-93% of honeypot terms didn't produce affirmative results for Bing showing the same result. 4) Bing admits yes, we take user click and search data, harvest it and use it as a ranking factor - 1 of 1000s. (Btw, the Google Toolbar does the same exact thing people).
You people need to wake up already. If you don't see what Google is turning into, I'm sorry you're a lost cause. I can't even begin to believe that people are arguing that after you opt-in, run a coordinated SERP clicking operation, manually change your search results after you say you never have done so and have many products that do similar information harvesting that you're so blind to see the other side of this.
If Google were serious about this behavior by Bing, they would have focused on the "stealing" of trade technology - mainly their spell checking function. To me, that's the only issue that's even worthwhile of a serious debate here. One could argue that the longest of long tails are misspellings and if Google is offering up the correct results to users even after the user misspells a word that Bing is piggybacking that technology regardless of users opting-in to have their click behaviors harvested.
Google does not own the exclusive rights to my click behavior and they need to stop talking and acting as if they do.
Microsoft got tired of people asking when they were going to fully support HTML 4...
Except replace Microsoft with Google and replace HTML 4 with "we're going to support what we want, when we want and not have to comply to any one set of stringent rules". It helps to RTFA instead of rehashing the same old about the futility of IE's standards compliance.
How can robotic action teach us about human relations? Humans are so much more complicated than capacitors, circuits and processing units that there is very little that one could find that would allow us to understand human behavior.
If you look hard enough at anything, you will find what you are looking for.
Remember a scooner is a sailboat and there is no Easter Bunny.
Imagine to be singled out Jenny McCarthy style for the use of a patent that they have let "slide" for several years before starting this litigation.
What I want to know is - who were the other 16 ISPs they supposedly contacted? AOL? @Home? AT&T? And if so, did these other ISPs pay their royalties?
What about Microsoft? With all the XML built into its.net initiative (which obviously contains hyperlinks), will they go after Microsoft legally?
No.
Reason - they'd lose. They are trying to go after the ISP that has had a history of losing legal battles. They go after the ISP without the legal resources to combat something like this, set the legal precedent that they need to win against the tougher opposition.
It's pretty sad that they don't have the spine to go after the big fish, but they pry on the small one.
I'm not sure why this is such a huge factor since most spyware is not discovered by virus scanners. I just see this as an opportunity for people to look at proggies such as Ad-Aware to deal with these "straggler" backdoor programs purposely eliminated from virii protection.
Well said, fb. In that case, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I do have a question though - even with Time Warner's enormous market cap, could AOL feasibly/realistically pull off a deal (possibly just a partnership instead of an actual merger?)
I ask that question becuase I'm seeking an answer to where AOL is going with all this. They need to make a move soon because even after a deal is signed there will be a delay of some sort until the two technologies are merged efficiently. Anyone offer some hints?
Hey fishbone, Fair enough. However, where so YOU think they will go next keeping in mind that an acquisition of those "types" of companies is an ideal next step?
You are very corect on the market cap issue, but I was merely trying to point out what type of company they should go after as well as offering some actual names.
AOL has a increasingly strong grip on many of the most useful utilities out there. It has one of the two best browsers, one of the two best instant messagers, and now the definitive leader in mp3 players.
What is next? Well, one reader suggested WinZip? Although funny, I'm not so sure that AOL will spend that type of money on WinZip.
However, I say that the next target is either Time Warner or Verio. This is where AOL hurts badly. They need this type of affiliation to succeed in the coming years. Perhaps, a government mandate prevents such a move from occuring now, but I definitely forsee this one in the future (say March 2000?).
And one last whine, please Winamp, no ads! Otherwise, I'll have to code my own (and that won't be pretty).
Slashdot Mirror
So ... this doesn't exactly do anything to dispel the rumor that you're really Steve Jobs now does it? J/k.
Best of luck and I wish I still had my my original UID which was much lower than this one.
Well, the video's author had the following conclusions -
1) That MSFT should be commended that there is a lot of backwards compatibility for over 20 years of operating systems as evidenced by Doom2, program managers, file structures remaining in tact.
2) That versions of XP, Vista and 7 were a little disappointing that they applied their own theme and color scheme and those settings weren't carried over between versions. Prior versions did in fact keep theme settings.
3) That the upgrade path and process has changed significantly over 20 years (obviously) and while it may have gotten longer (in time spent), it seems to have gotten easier for the end user.
Now, I don't know if I agree with any of the conclusions and I don't know if any of those conclusions are substantive, but that's what I got out of the 10 minute video.
The house always wins.
Uhh not quite with sportsbooks. In fact, this makes 2 of the last 4 Super Bowls where most books lost money. Don't believe me? ESPN's Vegas Insider Chad Millman is reporting that Vegas lost money this year. The problem with your logic is you assume that the linemakers are making correct lines in anticipating the action. However, just like the Giants/Pats SB, Vegas made the line so "soft" they couldn't adjust the line to even out the wagering. Your reasoning that they will just change the line as the money flows in is fatally flawed because with big money events like the Super Bowl, creating a big "middle" is death to Vegas and the Sharps will hammer both sides of the lines and potentially break the book. This year, there was too much money on the Packers and the Over and once the 2pt conversion was successful, Vegas was done for.
All week long bookmakers such as the LV Hilton were reporting that they didn't want to move the line from 2.5 to 3, but were forced to and then had to play with the juice (-130 for +3 Steelers) and that there was no way they were ever going to 3.5 to create the middle. And as for 2007, you can thank all that New York money that flowed into Vegas at +450 Giants Money Line for causing the red numbers in 2007.
The fact you got modded up just goes to show how far the Microsoft bias runs here.
If it were illegal or cheating, you would have had video of the lawyers running to the courthouse. If any of you don't think that this was just a well-timed PR attack against Bing by Google, I have some swamp land in Florida I will sell you. All you have to do is watch the video of the search conference to know Google's agenda - try and discredit Bing by any means necessary. Once Cutts got the floor to speak, the moderator's question was ignored and Google/Cutts went on the offensive. They even recruited Danny Sullivan to the party beforehand to release the story (which btw, he's written a follow-up and if he backpedaled any faster he could be a cornerback in the NFL).
Once again, here are the facts of what happened since none of you even cared to read the analysis it seems -
1) Google manually manipulated their search results - something they claim never to do.
2) They then sent a group of Google engineers home to use Internet Explorer after opting-in and turning on Suggested Sites and started searching for very long tailed terms in Google and clicking on the results they wanted (btw, if 20 friends and I did this for some sites I own to improve its search ranking position, Google would penalize our site for this exact behavior).
3) Only 7-9% of the longest of long tail queries (gibberish) were showing the same top result on Bing as Google when there was no way Bing should be returning any results. There were other results returned by Bing for some terms outside of the top result that didn't match. Google has no explanation as to why the other 91-93% of honeypot terms didn't produce affirmative results for Bing showing the same result.
4) Bing admits yes, we take user click and search data, harvest it and use it as a ranking factor - 1 of 1000s. (Btw, the Google Toolbar does the same exact thing people).
You people need to wake up already. If you don't see what Google is turning into, I'm sorry you're a lost cause. I can't even begin to believe that people are arguing that after you opt-in, run a coordinated SERP clicking operation, manually change your search results after you say you never have done so and have many products that do similar information harvesting that you're so blind to see the other side of this.
If Google were serious about this behavior by Bing, they would have focused on the "stealing" of trade technology - mainly their spell checking function. To me, that's the only issue that's even worthwhile of a serious debate here. One could argue that the longest of long tails are misspellings and if Google is offering up the correct results to users even after the user misspells a word that Bing is piggybacking that technology regardless of users opting-in to have their click behaviors harvested.
Google does not own the exclusive rights to my click behavior and they need to stop talking and acting as if they do.
Microsoft got tired of people asking when they were going to fully support HTML 4...
Except replace Microsoft with Google and replace HTML 4 with "we're going to support what we want, when we want and not have to comply to any one set of stringent rules". It helps to RTFA instead of rehashing the same old about the futility of IE's standards compliance.
How can robotic action teach us about human relations? Humans are so much more complicated than capacitors, circuits and processing units that there is very little that one could find that would allow us to understand human behavior.
If you look hard enough at anything, you will find what you are looking for.
Remember a scooner is a sailboat and there is no Easter Bunny.
Imagine to be singled out Jenny McCarthy style for the use of a patent that they have let "slide" for several years before starting this litigation.
.net initiative (which obviously contains hyperlinks), will they go after Microsoft legally?
What I want to know is - who were the other 16 ISPs they supposedly contacted? AOL? @Home? AT&T? And if so, did these other ISPs pay their royalties?
What about Microsoft? With all the XML built into its
No.
Reason - they'd lose. They are trying to go after the ISP that has had a history of losing legal battles. They go after the ISP without the legal resources to combat something like this, set the legal precedent that they need to win against the tougher opposition.
It's pretty sad that they don't have the spine to go after the big fish, but they pry on the small one.
I'm not sure why this is such a huge factor since most spyware is not discovered by virus scanners. I just see this as an opportunity for people to look at proggies such as Ad-Aware to deal with these "straggler" backdoor programs purposely eliminated from virii protection.
Well said, fb. In that case, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I do have a question though - even with Time Warner's enormous market cap, could AOL feasibly/realistically pull off a deal (possibly just a partnership instead of an actual merger?)
I ask that question becuase I'm seeking an answer to where AOL is going with all this. They need to make a move soon because even after a deal is signed there will be a delay of some sort until the two technologies are merged efficiently. Anyone offer some hints?
Hey fishbone, Fair enough. However, where so YOU think they will go next keeping in mind that an acquisition of those "types" of companies is an ideal next step?
You are very corect on the market cap issue, but I was merely trying to point out what type of company they should go after as well as offering some actual names.
What companies do you think will fall next? -rob
AOL has a increasingly strong grip on many of the most useful utilities out there. It has one of the two best browsers, one of the two best instant messagers, and now the definitive leader in mp3 players.
What is next? Well, one reader suggested WinZip? Although funny, I'm not so sure that AOL will spend that type of money on WinZip.
However, I say that the next target is either Time Warner or Verio. This is where AOL hurts badly. They need this type of affiliation to succeed in the coming years. Perhaps, a government mandate prevents such a move from occuring now, but I definitely forsee this one in the future (say March 2000?).
And one last whine, please Winamp, no ads! Otherwise, I'll have to code my own (and that won't be pretty).