Sunday, January 28, 2007
Google vs. Windows Live
Has anybody seen the latest ads for Windows Live search, Microsoft's latest attempt to compete with Google? One of the ads features a woman searching for someone to move her cats with the search term “cat movers”. I ran the search on Windows Live search and Google.
When I ran the search, Windows Live returned a stock listing of Caterpillar, Inc. (from Google Finance, no less) as its first unsponsored link, a top-level directory type spam page as its second, and a search site to find movers as its first ad-link.
Google returned an article about moving cats as its first link, an article about a cat's psyche(!) on moving day as its second, and a pet mover as its first ad-link.
(Results subject to change).
When I ran the search, Windows Live returned a stock listing of Caterpillar, Inc. (from Google Finance, no less) as its first unsponsored link, a top-level directory type spam page as its second, and a search site to find movers as its first ad-link.
Google returned an article about moving cats as its first link, an article about a cat's psyche(!) on moving day as its second, and a pet mover as its first ad-link.
(Results subject to change).
Labels: Google, Microsoft, search, Windows
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Getting re-booted in the behind
I went to one of my machines at work and found this message popping up from the system tray in this everything's-all-right-with-the-world green background color:
OK, so, the message didn't say precisely that. But, it gets the basic idea right. Apparently, there are a lot of web pages dedicated to turning off this “feature” and its associated nag screen. Is that an idiotic default setting or what?
By the way, for a number of years, Debian and its derived GNU/Linux distributions have been able to update application programs, libraries, servers, etc. on a system (with the exception of the kernel) in-place, with no reboot required. Why is it that I have to reboot a Windows machine once a week?
Microsoft Windows has automatically installed a critical update to your computer and has rebooted your system. This update was so important that whatever work you were doing on your machine had to be stopped. We were nice enough to ask you whether you wanted to reboot at 3AM. You were in front of your computer, weren't you? We even gave you a full ten minutes to answer. You should thank us. We own you.
OK, so, the message didn't say precisely that. But, it gets the basic idea right. Apparently, there are a lot of web pages dedicated to turning off this “feature” and its associated nag screen. Is that an idiotic default setting or what?
By the way, for a number of years, Debian and its derived GNU/Linux distributions have been able to update application programs, libraries, servers, etc. on a system (with the exception of the kernel) in-place, with no reboot required. Why is it that I have to reboot a Windows machine once a week?
Labels: automatic update, Microsoft, reboot, Windows
