I can’t honestly say I’m surprised, but I can say I’m dismayed as I’ve heard good things about Bing…

However, Microsoft has been found to be skewing results in it’s Bing Decision Engine, which now provides search for Yahoo as well and provides 20% of the search market.

Bing Search Tainted by Pro-Microsoft Results

In the examples given, a search for “Why is Windows so expensive?” turned up results for asking why Macs are so expensive.  Similarly, when asked if Microsoft is evil, it would link to articles where Google was portrayed as evil.  Google queries – including asking if Google was evil – did their job and returned appropriate results.

Microsoft has cleaned up these certain examples, but what worries me is Microsoft’s tampering with the results which may be as of yet unnoticed.  Could they hide a PR faux-pas?  Could they hide news of more bugs?

I had been tempted to try Bing as I’ve heard some good things about it (mostly “It’s better than Live Search”, but I’d have to give it a fair shake before knocking it) but this has trampled this temptation.  Too bad Microsoft.

So I was going to save this first one for tommorow, but then the second one popped up and I just *needed* to post:

via Slashdot:  Wells Fargo Bank Sues Itself

To quote the Slashdot article:

Extreme economic problems require extreme solutions, and Wells Fargo Bank has come up with a good one. They have decided to sue themselves. Wells Fargo holds the first and second mortgages on a condominium that is going into foreclosure. As holder of the first, they are suing all other lien holders, including the holder of the second, which is Wells Fargo. It gets better. The company has hired a lawyer to defend itself against its own lawsuit. The defense lawyer even filed this answer to the complaint, “Defendant admits that it is the owner and holder of a mortgage encumbering the subject real property. All other allegations of the complaint are denied.” On the website The Consumer Warning Network, Angie Moreschi wrote: “We’ve apparently reached the perfect storm for complete and utter idiocy by some banks trying to foreclose on homes.”

…

…

I think that really speaks for itself.

In other news, the Guinness Book of World Records has levied a Cease and Desist against Failblog.org’s particular usage of a negative entry on the Guinness Book of World Records website.  Basically, it says that the record for the most people killed in a terrorist attack belongs to the attacks on the USA that occured on 11/9/01.  However, due to an oversight on part of the maintainer or CMS, on the side there is something featured on every other page that is completely inappropriate:  Break This Record.  Now, you might laugh, but this is really horrible.  I mean, this is something you do not want people to try to beat, same with any other of the violence-related posts.

So what does Guinness do?

Cease & Desist

I pretty much agree with the response.  Yes, this is bad PR.  So fix it (and I believe they have).  People who look at it will realize that it was done automagically and that no one would actually be that… insensitive, silly, incompetent… to post that by hand.  In order to save  your reputation on the Internet you just gave a publically published C&D to one of the internet’s most popular sites.  Good job.

Just when you think that Microsoft shoveling money into a hole was the lowest that Microsoft’s marketing department could go, think again.

Here’s their new “Get the Facts” campaign, where the “Facts” only resemble “Facts” in Stalinist Russia.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/get-the-facts/browser-comparison.aspx

Okey dokey then.  Seriously?

Let’s do a step-by-step rebuttle, shall we?

Security:  Bunk.  Let’s “Get the Facts” from ArsTechnica.  Chrome is the last one standing, undefeated because of its sandboxing feature.  Safari4 fell first, then IE8, then Firefox3.whatever.  The number for IE exploits is significantly higher and they go much longer without being fixed.

Privacy:  Microsoft forgot to mention that Google Chrome and Firefox both have very good privacy features.  Infact, Chrome was first.

Ease-of-use:  This is purely subjective, but I’ll say that Chrome has that one down pat because of its simplicity and integration with search (which can be changed, not just Google).

Web Standards:  This is the thing that comedy is made of.  Honestly…  Chrome and Firefox 3.5 still both beat IE.  There’s a reason that web developers don’t use IE.  Because we spend as much time making things work in IE that work in good browsers as we do creating the codebase.

Developer Tools:  I’d say Open Sourcitude is a very big developer tool.  So are these things called extensions, which are huge in Firefox and coming for Chrome.  Of course it wins?  Because IE has worked sooooo well in the past.  And it only works, of course, on Microsoft operating systems.

Reliability:  Sure, IE *might* have both, but it also needs to use it more.  Chrome was the one that came up with multithreaded browsing, and Firefox 3.5 has both.  Even if IE has both, Chrome and Firefox still need them less.

Customizability:  It’s a tie?  IE doesn’t have themes.  Or Extensions.  And those “features” that you have to install extensions for in Firefox:  that’s the point.  Because it makes Firefox faster.  Add to that the fact that Firefox 3.5 beats IE8 feature-to-feature, and this is completely ridiculous.  And if all those features are “built in”, it’s not customizable.  Gotcha.

Compatibility:  There’s two ways to look at this – one is that it’s only compatible because Microsoft threw standards to the wind and *they’re* the ones that force developers to engage in coding voodoo.  The other is that it’s junk because modern sites are all developed for Firefox as well, and I’ve never seen problems with Chrome.  The only one that really has compatibility issues is Opera, which is because it’s so strict.

Manageability:  There are tools to manage Firefox at an enterprise scale, they just aren’t built in.  Because most people don’t need them.  That makes the browser slow.  And I’d doubt how well they work…

Performance:  This is junk.  Now, I can’t seem to find the benchmarks, but in benchmarks comparing Firefox 3.5 Beta, Google Chrome 2, Safari 4, Opera9.6 and IE8, IE8 was the loser.  It’s not a tie.  IE is significantly slower than the others.

They got away with this by running the “stable” versions of Chrome and Firefox.  That’s because IE is much much newer than these.  However, the latest testing releases of Chrome and Firefox, both very stable, blow IE away.

Microsoft:  How many people are you trying to offend by lying to your customers?  This is desperate and not befitting of a company that does make some good software (Office2007 fan here).  But you are playing dirty.  And still losing.  IE is the only browser that is actually, actively *hated*.  Think about that and how you’re contributing to that.  And stop trying to explain the existence of IE by lying about it:  build a better browser.

Microsoft’s marketing department has reached new lows.

I mean, really new lows.

You had best read it for yourself from Microsoft Australia.  You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.

http://www.microsoft.com/australia/ie8/competition/

Yes, Microsoft has decided to “hide” $10,000 on a website and post clues, but only people who download and use their Internet Explorer 8 browser will be able to participate.

Anyone thinking of the money hole right now?

Is this desperate?  Is this pathetic?  Is this pathetically desperate?  Check check and check.  Microsoft would, of course, be the only browser maker to actually shovel money at their browser.  I mean, Google is supposedly taking the unorthodox step of advertising its browser on TV, but that’s completely different from throwing money to anyone who will catch it.

But wait:  there’s more!

Let’s look at the ad copy (which is, in true Microsoft web-standards-adherence fashion, an image):

“We’ve buried $10,00 on the internet and if you’re the first one to find it you get to keep it.”

The hook

“But you’ll never find it using that browser.  (So get rid of it, or get lost.)”

The line

“If you want a serious shot at the ten grand, upgrade your browser to Windows Internet Explorer 8 now.  Then follow @tengrand_IE8 on Twitter for daily clues that point you to the buried loot”
The sinker.

Excuse me, upgrade my browser?  The only upgrading I’m doing is to Firefox 3.5.  How can you call it an upgrade with undeniably worse security, significantly slower, and iffy-at-best standards adherence?

To quote @dpogue: …”oh my! I… didn’t think Microsoft was capable of stooping *that* low o.o”

Neither did I. I mean, I knew Microsoft always won at the web browser/OS game of limbo (limbo limbo limbo! How low can you go?!?) but I never thought they’d actually throw money at people.

Besides, it’s not enough. I’d need at least $100,000 CAD to make me switch (for the record, the prize is about $9,000 CAD or $8,000 USD)

Even better:  at the bottom, it says “It’s not as stupid as it sounds”.  Yes, yes it is.  At least that crossed the mind of someone at Microsoft.  Otherwise I’d have serious doubts as to the future of Humanity.  The ironic part is that there will be the inevitable Firefox extension that will allow Open Source fans to participate.

Today marked the release of Crossover 8, an implementation of WINE (WINE Is Not an Emulator), for Linux and Mac OS X.  WINE is unique in that it allows the use of MS Windows applications on Linux and Mac without virtualization, which involves running a full version of the Windows OS to use the applications.  Crossover is a set of improvements and streamlinings (if that’s not a word it should be) that make running Windows applications on Linux and Mac a whole lot simpler.

It’s not that hard to understand.  Really.  Look at their website…

If that sounds snarky it’s because it is, though it is not aimed at you my dear reader.

No, it’s aimed at PC World.

I subscribe to Crossover for Linux.  I bought it at 7.1.  The subscription model at Crossover means that if a new version comes out within x months I get the new version for free.  So I grabbed the new one from my account.  I love Crossover; it helps me run Photoshop and MS Word 2007 reliably.  It’s the only money I’ve spent on Linux applications and it’s totally worth it.  It’s a great company and they make it easy to find out about their products and they answer questions promptly (disclosure:  when I asked some questions about Crossover I had them answered and then was offered Crossover Pro (which is better support, longer upgrade duration, and Crossover Games included) for roughly the same price as Crossover.  I’ve had nothing but good experiences with the organization).

But PC World doesn’t manage to find any of this stuff out. Continue reading

http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/15/158216

Summary:  Lady *somehow* buys an Ubuntu computer from Dell by accident (as is repeated throughout comments, this is impossible.  The website makes sure you know it’s not Windows on every page).  She then quits two semesters at technical college because she can’t work the computer.

And it’s not even like she has to configure it or install software or anything.  It’s already set up and working perfectly. Continue reading