If there is no alternative, then sure use the one that causes the least hassle. However for document formats, you can hardly say its a big deal to simply do a 'save as' in another format that works on more computers rather than less.
Fails as a good government backdoor. Considering the speed governments react at, it's far too uncertain and the "blind" window would be amazing.
Your first argument was how such a mis-feature was hard to introduce in OSS software because so many people audit the code (This is patently false as security bugs are found and fixed in OSS software all the time) . I provided a every simple scenario where somebody could get a linux contributor to include a hard/impossible to detect security bug in normal, working, useful code that is only triggered under the right conditions (which ofcource are chosen such that they wont show up in normal testing and usage of the code).
Now you claim that governments because of some intrinsic qualities are incapable of such sophistication. Your argument has now shifted to the probability of whether this is possible rather than the actuality of such an event. You seem to be only interested in your own little rhetoric victory rather than discussing the original point I replied to.
Not to mention that it might tip off someone if the "bugs" are introduced by the same source every time, they just might revoke your permission to edit the source, locking you out altogether.
The record for bugs is public - and without even looking I can bet you we can find many contributors who have accidentally (in most likelihood) introduced numerous bugs in the Linux code.
there's hundred of people from various places writing and eyeballing source and commits. those people have no incentive to get backdoors in, and if there's a blacksheep, it's going to be very tricky to insert rogue code
Then please explain the reason why security bugs are found in OSS software. A backdoor is simply a security bug.
A backdoor could hide as a simple security bug in the network/service code. In fact you can even make it so that its only a bug under certain conditions. Security bugs that can be used to exploit the target machine are found and fixed in OSS software all the time and nobody suspects them of being a backdoor.
Sure, but you missed the point. _You_ may be a good programmer and design and document your code but the C language still makes it easy for other people to misuse it. You can blame the programmer, but if a different tool/language can eliminate entire classes of bugs then that's a _good_ thing. This is obvious but I think either you (1) have worked on projects with under five people or (2) have been lucky to only work with experienced C developers.
However any sane programmer creates an interface for that, and writes his data only through a safe interface he wrote once for any particular data type or store in his project.
That is OK but in the real world a team will contain programmers of various skills. If they ever have to deal with your code you have to explain your interface to your co-workers. Even then they might use it in a way that you didn't think of. If you change it you have to re-explain it. If you change jobs the next person might not understand your interface, etc. Dozens of opportunities for misuse and introducing bugs. We already know how to deal with this. The human mind is much better thinking at the algorithms level than thinking at the machine level and remembering which piece of code allocates/deallocates memory, remembering lifetimes of resources and which API permits transfer of ownership of allocated memory, which APIs make copies of memory, etc.
I have not claimed that there are no benefits to C. That would be untrue. There are specific areas I have mentioned where it is the correct language to use. Also, BTW Assembly has also advanced - High Level Assembly allows you to write code at a fairly high abstraction level - They have classes, structs, exceptions, etc. Ofcource in my experience the majority of programmers cannot produce assembly that will consistently beat an optimising compiler, but that's another topic.
Yes. To have an exploitable buffer overflow, a programmer has to make a major mistake in the most fundamental area of programming
So programs without flaws are flawless. lol.
_Anything_ that reduces flaws is a good thing. That includes superior tools/languages or hiring better programmers. Like assembly, C forces you to think of a problem at the level of manipulating bits in memory and pushing them around, manually managing resources, etc. Such thinking is stupid, wasteful, and pointless and needlessly increases development time, testing and other various time costs. Nobody should use C unless there is a very specific benefit from it - Systems programming / performance oriented software / games / embedded software / etc. i.e. a very tiny subset of all programs.
Also, what decade are you living in.. wake up.. manually managing memory resources is not in any way the fundamental area of programming. It is not even required to learn about that to be a good programmer - i.e. A person who can create reliable and efficient solutions to problems using computers.
OTOH, techies are also the same people who can exploit Google back. i.e. Install privacy addons, No-Script, Ad-Blockers etc and use Google services without giving anything "back".
With Google you take what you get. Yeah maybe you wont get the Capital-F-Freedom that Stallman or the kind F/OSS supporters want, but you get positive business news associated with Linux. Why wouldn't Linux supporters like that? You should remember how it was earlier with companies being able to fund negative press campaigns against Linux.
With Google its not all sunshine and rainbows. Its always bad when one company controls any market segment. We do need more competition in search & web advertising.
As for how are the developer tools, that are sold by the company that sells the OS, suites and database for which the tools are used to develop, extensions of that SW monopoly? Ask the Supreme Court. Ask Sun. Ask Netscape. Ask a MS developer who isn't a surrendered slave to the MS master.
You're free to cite facts or present your own opinion. I have zero interest in wasting my time clicking links. If I wanted to know what someone else thinks, I'd ask them myself. Sun or Netscape have nothing to do with C++ compilers, SQL Servers, Visual Studio or any of the other successful MS dev products.
Sun was a trademark lawsuit with MS implementing their own Java SDK that allowed users to create windows-only versions. Netscape was about MS giving away IE for free/bundling and thus undermining competition because at that time an OS was not expected to come with an internet browser (hence separate markets).
Also, I have no clue why you're citing irrelevant details. I have no interest in which lawyer spoke to whom and which employee was on sick leave or whatever else. The point I was making that IBM screwed up entirely on their own. Like any other business, initial success is dependent on a bit of luck - which MS got. The real success was due to Microsoft making products that people preferred over the competition.
I don't read every single story nor do I waste my time digging up past comments of posters. If your criticism is about off topic posts, then by all means use the moderation system to mark them as such. The poster obviously has a positive opinion about microsoft, I get that, but I don't see why that should necessarily be a bad thing or grounds for claiming that its simply astroturf.
You start with a monopoly by making a deal with IBM as it introduces its first PC, requiring all IBM PCs to run your OS (but letting you license your OS to any competitor to IBM that might arise). I don't know how you missed that - it's pretty common knowledge. In fact it was a Supreme Court decision, if there were any doubt.
Not exactly. Microsoft did not "require" anything in the deal. They had no such leverage, they were a tiny company back then. IBM just contracted MS to give them an OS. IBM then rebranded it as PC-DOS. When IBM sold their PC they sold it with the option of CP/M & PC-DOS. But because PC-DOS was cheaper by $200 and so it won out. But ofcource the main thing that fucked up IBM was when other PC manufacturers reverse engineered IBM's proprietary hardware/BIOS etc and created clones. Since PC-DOS was already popular MS could then sell their own MS-DOS brand to these other manufacturers.
MSVC tools and.NET are extensions of the MS monopoly
How? They are just tools which are not shipped with windows and any other company could have created them.
That would be useful if the single reason I used MSVC was to create code that benefits from whatever optimization that ICC does better. (I still don't believe your claims, just taking them at face value)
MSVC has better debug support via Visual Studio. It understands the memory layout of most of the C++ containers out of box. The edit and continue feature alone cuts down on a large chunk of my dev. time. The only thing I dislike about Visual Studio is the editor. It parses the code and stores it into some large database file (.sdf w/e that is) that sucks up a ton of CPU time. I wish it supported a configuration where the Visual Studio would load all of the source code in some kind of 'read-only' mode and I could use an external editor to make changes that it synced back.
I think this is just the US helping Saudi Arabia with their Iran problem. The US is attempting to mess up Irans oil commerce via sanctions. Its hard to tell if it will work because Iran has elected insane people that would rather fuck up their population than acquiesce to US demands.
Only if you explain where I said I wanted to forbid anyone from having any opinion about anything.
Thats easy, but maybe you don't understand what you have written yourself.
This obvious troll is obvious has gotten out of hand.
No, its not obvious to me at all. Also.. you use "gotten out of hand" - implying some vague notion of something that should be brought back to normalcy.
Seriously, it would be wonderful, just once, for InterestingInsightbitesCmdPony et al ad infinitum to STFU, and perhaps enter the fray once the discussion begins, rather than rushing to be the first post with all the ms tripe.
Implying that you would rather not see their posts.
Really, it would be nice to, just once, to read a discussion that isn't anchored by some preselected MS astroturf.
Again.. implying that you do not want to read their posts. And also an insulting accusation about the poster getting paid without you having or sharing any proof .
I'm curious.. how do you start with a monopoly? Is there some hidden gem that you need to acquire that makes you go from 0% market share to 90+?
SQL Server, MSVC tools,.NET, etc, are all non-monopolies and are all high quality software products.
The main problem with microsoft is that they are cowards and the middle management is filled with people that should be fired ASAP. They only look at business markets when someone else has spent capital to create a billion dollar market and thus allowing some douchebag executive at MS to get the greenlight for funding. They have world-class engineers wasting their time on stupid shit.. its quite embarrassing IMHO
{A lot of these might be specific to my phone or use-case}
I had an unlocked SGS2 (Hercules) But I sold it after using it for a couple of weeks because (1) I had to root it so that I could freeze all the carrier apps and other samsung social hub bullshit that kept sucking up resources. (not I will not put a custom rom because I have no intentions of risking expensive hardware that I paid for just to get it to work properly) (2) even after doing that the UI felt laggy (wtf.. this is a 1.5 ghz dual core !) (3) Flash sucked up battery life so it was promptly turned off (ofcource its always good to have that option when you need it) (4) There is a lack of high quality games in the android market place. I'm willing to pay a bit to get quality, but it just isnt there. (5) inconsistent 'back' key UI actions. Sometimes it quits apps sometimes it does something else. I am a technical person, so it didn't confuse me, it just annoyed me that I had to remember what the back key did in each app (6) typing was cool with swype but it was useless because most of my emails contain technical terms and words which are almost impossible without sitting and feeding the dictionary for hours. (its not even smart enough to know that linux and Linux are the same thing !!) (7) I am bored now..:)
So the key problems for me were: Apps, Reliable & Intuitive UI, reduced battery life.
I have gone back to my old Nokia E63. I simply got a new battery and can run for days on single charge. I can actually run multiple tasks on it i.e. unlike the fake multitasking of android and ios it will actually run programs in background without interrupting them. I can run a wifi tether app without rooting the phone, it does push email too and it has a nice keyboard. The only thing missing is the games.
Re:This is what happens when Microsoft controls OE
on
Dell Ditches Netbooks
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· Score: 1
Well in the case of the iPad, Apple already had apps from the iphone that ran without even needing to be recompiled. So infact they did what MS did - They leveraged their existing platform with existing successful applications and existing user-demand to create a new market segment.
Also the reason for decreased performance is *NOT* the OS. Its the pre-loaded shit that the OEMs put on it.. What they should have done is kept the stock NT kernel (which BTW can run even on a router spec SBC.) and replaced the shell with a custom UI that allowed you to install & launch regular win32 apps from their (OEM or MS) own repository. The only way an app would be accepted into this restircted set is if it is not CPU/Memory/IO intensive, doesn't install kernel components, etc.
I don't necessarily disagree with your general idea, but don't agree with your inflammatory language and tone.
"Secure Boot" is nothing new. They had that over ten years ago in their xbox game consoles. Its a simple chain of trust where the OS is loaded in a modular approach starting with the BIOS/UEFI handing off control to the next link only after cryptographically verifying their signatures. It has nothing to do with "locking" you out. Its a method to be reasonably sure that the OS is not compromised w/o hardware access (disabling secure boot is a bios option IIRC). If they wanted to lock you out from admin, they would simply not ship the OS with any way to allow you to create an admin account. Secure boot is irrelevant here.
Without resorting to paranoid delusions and conspiracies I don't see how Microsoft benefits if you don't have admin access. As it stands on windows you require admin access for dozens of important things like installing drivers, applications, system maintenance, debugging applications and many such tasks. Besides Windows would never change the existing user & process privilege model if they want to continue to be backwards compatible with previous versions. Hell they include a copy of the heap mnager from w95 just so broken programs continue to work. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff625273.aspx
Somebody can reject the belief in a god(s) without using any logic at all. There is no requirement that to be an Atheist one has to come to that belief through logic, argument or any other such "rational" systems of disproving supernatural claims.
In practical terms many Atheists happen to be Skeptics/Free Thinkers and apply logic, but it is not a requirement.
Just because all cars have four wheels an engine and a steering wheel, doesn't mean they're all the same. Learn to look beyond superficial similarities. But that would require you to obtain some form of knowledge.
Err.. Google engineers found a loophole in the bing toolbar that allowed end users to populate the bing search database. They force-fed it unique results containing random strings. How is that "MS snarfing Google Search results?" Maybe inside your head, but not in the context of reality that normal un-biased people experience.
Slashdot Mirror
If there is no alternative, then sure use the one that causes the least hassle. However for document formats, you can hardly say its a big deal to simply do a 'save as' in another format that works on more computers rather than less.
Fails as a good government backdoor. Considering the speed governments react at, it's far too uncertain and the "blind" window would be amazing.
Your first argument was how such a mis-feature was hard to introduce in OSS software because so many people audit the code (This is patently false as security bugs are found and fixed in OSS software all the time) . I provided a every simple scenario where somebody could get a linux contributor to include a hard/impossible to detect security bug in normal, working, useful code that is only triggered under the right conditions (which ofcource are chosen such that they wont show up in normal testing and usage of the code).
Now you claim that governments because of some intrinsic qualities are incapable of such sophistication. Your argument has now shifted to the probability of whether this is possible rather than the actuality of such an event. You seem to be only interested in your own little rhetoric victory rather than discussing the original point I replied to.
Not to mention that it might tip off someone if the "bugs" are introduced by the same source every time, they just might revoke your permission to edit the source, locking you out altogether.
The record for bugs is public - and without even looking I can bet you we can find many contributors who have accidentally (in most likelihood) introduced numerous bugs in the Linux code.
there's hundred of people from various places writing and eyeballing source and commits. those people have no incentive to get backdoors in, and if there's a blacksheep, it's going to be very tricky to insert rogue code
Then please explain the reason why security bugs are found in OSS software. A backdoor is simply a security bug.
A backdoor could hide as a simple security bug in the network/service code. In fact you can even make it so that its only a bug under certain conditions. Security bugs that can be used to exploit the target machine are found and fixed in OSS software all the time and nobody suspects them of being a backdoor.
What research is this? Crashing a car at 100mph?
Yeah because all the people carrying obama is hitler signs are in prison.. oh wait..
Sure, but you missed the point. _You_ may be a good programmer and design and document your code but the C language still makes it easy for other people to misuse it. You can blame the programmer, but if a different tool/language can eliminate entire classes of bugs then that's a _good_ thing. This is obvious but I think either you (1) have worked on projects with under five people or (2) have been lucky to only work with experienced C developers.
However any sane programmer creates an interface for that, and writes his data only through a safe interface he wrote once for any particular data type or store in his project.
That is OK but in the real world a team will contain programmers of various skills. If they ever have to deal with your code you have to explain your interface to your co-workers. Even then they might use it in a way that you didn't think of. If you change it you have to re-explain it. If you change jobs the next person might not understand your interface, etc. Dozens of opportunities for misuse and introducing bugs. We already know how to deal with this. The human mind is much better thinking at the algorithms level than thinking at the machine level and remembering which piece of code allocates/deallocates memory, remembering lifetimes of resources and which API permits transfer of ownership of allocated memory, which APIs make copies of memory, etc.
I have not claimed that there are no benefits to C. That would be untrue. There are specific areas I have mentioned where it is the correct language to use. Also, BTW Assembly has also advanced - High Level Assembly allows you to write code at a fairly high abstraction level - They have classes, structs, exceptions, etc. Ofcource in my experience the majority of programmers cannot produce assembly that will consistently beat an optimising compiler, but that's another topic.
Yes. To have an exploitable buffer overflow, a programmer has to make a major mistake in the most fundamental area of programming
So programs without flaws are flawless. lol.
_Anything_ that reduces flaws is a good thing. That includes superior tools/languages or hiring better programmers. Like assembly, C forces you to think of a problem at the level of manipulating bits in memory and pushing them around, manually managing resources, etc. Such thinking is stupid, wasteful, and pointless and needlessly increases development time, testing and other various time costs. Nobody should use C unless there is a very specific benefit from it - Systems programming / performance oriented software / games / embedded software / etc. i.e. a very tiny subset of all programs.
Also, what decade are you living in.. wake up .. manually managing memory resources is not in any way the fundamental area of programming. It is not even required to learn about that to be a good programmer - i.e. A person who can create reliable and efficient solutions to problems using computers.
OTOH, techies are also the same people who can exploit Google back. i.e. Install privacy addons, No-Script, Ad-Blockers etc and use Google services without giving anything "back".
With Google you take what you get. Yeah maybe you wont get the Capital-F-Freedom that Stallman or the kind F/OSS supporters want, but you get positive business news associated with Linux. Why wouldn't Linux supporters like that? You should remember how it was earlier with companies being able to fund negative press campaigns against Linux.
With Google its not all sunshine and rainbows. Its always bad when one company controls any market segment. We do need more competition in search & web advertising.
As for how are the developer tools, that are sold by the company that sells the OS, suites and database for which the tools are used to develop, extensions of that SW monopoly? Ask the Supreme Court. Ask Sun. Ask Netscape. Ask a MS developer who isn't a surrendered slave to the MS master.
You're free to cite facts or present your own opinion. I have zero interest in wasting my time clicking links. If I wanted to know what someone else thinks, I'd ask them myself. Sun or Netscape have nothing to do with C++ compilers, SQL Servers, Visual Studio or any of the other successful MS dev products.
Sun was a trademark lawsuit with MS implementing their own Java SDK that allowed users to create windows-only versions. Netscape was about MS giving away IE for free/bundling and thus undermining competition because at that time an OS was not expected to come with an internet browser (hence separate markets).
Also, I have no clue why you're citing irrelevant details. I have no interest in which lawyer spoke to whom and which employee was on sick leave or whatever else. The point I was making that IBM screwed up entirely on their own. Like any other business, initial success is dependent on a bit of luck - which MS got. The real success was due to Microsoft making products that people preferred over the competition.
I don't read every single story nor do I waste my time digging up past comments of posters. If your criticism is about off topic posts, then by all means use the moderation system to mark them as such. The poster obviously has a positive opinion about microsoft, I get that, but I don't see why that should necessarily be a bad thing or grounds for claiming that its simply astroturf.
You start with a monopoly by making a deal with IBM as it introduces its first PC, requiring all IBM PCs to run your OS (but letting you license your OS to any competitor to IBM that might arise). I don't know how you missed that - it's pretty common knowledge. In fact it was a Supreme Court decision, if there were any doubt.
Not exactly. Microsoft did not "require" anything in the deal. They had no such leverage, they were a tiny company back then. IBM just contracted MS to give them an OS. IBM then rebranded it as PC-DOS. When IBM sold their PC they sold it with the option of CP/M & PC-DOS. But because PC-DOS was cheaper by $200 and so it won out. But ofcource the main thing that fucked up IBM was when other PC manufacturers reverse engineered IBM's proprietary hardware/BIOS etc and created clones. Since PC-DOS was already popular MS could then sell their own MS-DOS brand to these other manufacturers.
MSVC tools and .NET are extensions of the MS monopoly
How? They are just tools which are not shipped with windows and any other company could have created them.
That would be useful if the single reason I used MSVC was to create code that benefits from whatever optimization that ICC does better. (I still don't believe your claims, just taking them at face value)
MSVC has better debug support via Visual Studio. It understands the memory layout of most of the C++ containers out of box. The edit and continue feature alone cuts down on a large chunk of my dev. time. The only thing I dislike about Visual Studio is the editor. It parses the code and stores it into some large database file (.sdf w/e that is) that sucks up a ton of CPU time. I wish it supported a configuration where the Visual Studio would load all of the source code in some kind of 'read-only' mode and I could use an external editor to make changes that it synced back.
I think this is just the US helping Saudi Arabia with their Iran problem. The US is attempting to mess up Irans oil commerce via sanctions. Its hard to tell if it will work because Iran has elected insane people that would rather fuck up their population than acquiesce to US demands.
Only if you explain where I said I wanted to forbid anyone from having any opinion about anything.
Thats easy, but maybe you don't understand what you have written yourself.
This obvious troll is obvious has gotten out of hand.
No, its not obvious to me at all. Also.. you use "gotten out of hand" - implying some vague notion of something that should be brought back to normalcy.
Seriously, it would be wonderful, just once, for InterestingInsightbitesCmdPony et al ad infinitum to STFU, and perhaps enter the fray once the discussion begins, rather than rushing to be the first post with all the ms tripe.
Implying that you would rather not see their posts.
Really, it would be nice to, just once, to read a discussion that isn't anchored by some preselected MS astroturf.
Again.. implying that you do not want to read their posts. And also an insulting accusation about the poster getting paid without you having or sharing any proof .
I'm curious.. how do you start with a monopoly? Is there some hidden gem that you need to acquire that makes you go from 0% market share to 90+?
SQL Server, MSVC tools, .NET, etc, are all non-monopolies and are all high quality software products.
The main problem with microsoft is that they are cowards and the middle management is filled with people that should be fired ASAP. They only look at business markets when someone else has spent capital to create a billion dollar market and thus allowing some douchebag executive at MS to get the greenlight for funding. They have world-class engineers wasting their time on stupid shit.. its quite embarrassing IMHO
Ducks, "great software" from Microsoft, google sucks, etc.
All just pure bullshit and astroturf.
Please explain why you want to forbid someone from having a positive opinion about microsoft products?
I use their compilers daily and couldn't be more happier. Its my opinion that their developer tools are superior to everything else that I've used.
{A lot of these might be specific to my phone or use-case}
I had an unlocked SGS2 (Hercules) But I sold it after using it for a couple of weeks because :)
(1) I had to root it so that I could freeze all the carrier apps and other samsung social hub bullshit that kept sucking up resources. (not I will not put a custom rom because I have no intentions of risking expensive hardware that I paid for just to get it to work properly)
(2) even after doing that the UI felt laggy (wtf.. this is a 1.5 ghz dual core !)
(3) Flash sucked up battery life so it was promptly turned off (ofcource its always good to have that option when you need it)
(4) There is a lack of high quality games in the android market place. I'm willing to pay a bit to get quality, but it just isnt there.
(5) inconsistent 'back' key UI actions. Sometimes it quits apps sometimes it does something else. I am a technical person, so it didn't confuse me, it just annoyed me that I had to remember what the back key did in each app
(6) typing was cool with swype but it was useless because most of my emails contain technical terms and words which are almost impossible without sitting and feeding the dictionary for hours. (its not even smart enough to know that linux and Linux are the same thing !!)
(7) I am bored now..
So the key problems for me were: Apps, Reliable & Intuitive UI, reduced battery life.
I have gone back to my old Nokia E63. I simply got a new battery and can run for days on single charge. I can actually run multiple tasks on it i.e. unlike the fake multitasking of android and ios it will actually run programs in background without interrupting them. I can run a wifi tether app without rooting the phone, it does push email too and it has a nice keyboard. The only thing missing is the games.
Well in the case of the iPad, Apple already had apps from the iphone that ran without even needing to be recompiled. So infact they did what MS did - They leveraged their existing platform with existing successful applications and existing user-demand to create a new market segment.
Also the reason for decreased performance is *NOT* the OS. Its the pre-loaded shit that the OEMs put on it.. What they should have done is kept the stock NT kernel (which BTW can run even on a router spec SBC.) and replaced the shell with a custom UI that allowed you to install & launch regular win32 apps from their (OEM or MS) own repository. The only way an app would be accepted into this restircted set is if it is not CPU/Memory/IO intensive, doesn't install kernel components, etc.
I don't necessarily disagree with your general idea, but don't agree with your inflammatory language and tone.
"Secure Boot" is nothing new. They had that over ten years ago in their xbox game consoles. Its a simple chain of trust where the OS is loaded in a modular approach starting with the BIOS/UEFI handing off control to the next link only after cryptographically verifying their signatures. It has nothing to do with "locking" you out. Its a method to be reasonably sure that the OS is not compromised w/o hardware access (disabling secure boot is a bios option IIRC). If they wanted to lock you out from admin, they would simply not ship the OS with any way to allow you to create an admin account. Secure boot is irrelevant here.
Without resorting to paranoid delusions and conspiracies I don't see how Microsoft benefits if you don't have admin access. As it stands on windows you require admin access for dozens of important things like installing drivers, applications, system maintenance, debugging applications and many such tasks. Besides Windows would never change the existing user & process privilege model if they want to continue to be backwards compatible with previous versions. Hell they include a copy of the heap mnager from w95 just so broken programs continue to work. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff625273.aspx
For me, at least, knowledge isn't linear, it's tree structured. The Back/Forward paradigm is totally inadequate for the task.
In reality, knowledge isn't tree structured, its a graph. The Tree paradigm is totally inadequate for the task. ;-)
Somebody can reject the belief in a god(s) without using any logic at all. There is no requirement that to be an Atheist one has to come to that belief through logic, argument or any other such "rational" systems of disproving supernatural claims.
In practical terms many Atheists happen to be Skeptics/Free Thinkers and apply logic, but it is not a requirement.
Just because all cars have four wheels an engine and a steering wheel, doesn't mean they're all the same. Learn to look beyond superficial similarities. But that would require you to obtain some form of knowledge.
Err.. Google engineers found a loophole in the bing toolbar that allowed end users to populate the bing search database. They force-fed it unique results containing random strings. How is that "MS snarfing Google Search results?" Maybe inside your head, but not in the context of reality that normal un-biased people experience.