Anyone else get these weird characters with the MS vs Google thread? I'm a Debian GNU/Linux user and have been experiencing this problem for quite some time now. See attached screenshot.
-- Adam J. Hogan [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------- | Join FSF as an Associate Member at: | | <http://member.fsf.org/join?referrer=3607> | ----------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: odd_characters.png Type: image/png Size: 10165 bytes Desc: not available Url : /pipermail/general_brlug.net/attachments/20051003/d013777c/odd_characters.png From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Oct 3 22:22:15 2005 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Justin Trobec) Date: Mon Oct 3 22:21:30 2005 Subject: Microsoft vs. Google; hopefully a reasoned debate was Re: [brlug-general] OpenDocument formats? In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> On 10/3/05, Will Hill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Getting good search results is difficult but handing out bad ones is easy. > Microsoft does not have to be a competent search engine maker to rank wintel > rags high in their results, or filter articles with the word "freedom". > > People like Google because, as the Microsoftie in charge of building the MSN > search explained in 2002 (paraphrased by Forbes): > > "Google was developing a great search engine, and how its minimalist design > and consistently relevant results-better than those delivered by MSN's > cluttered site-were attracting legions of Internet users." > > http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1050065-6,00.html > > That is the point. I'm sorry, I wasn't clear: I understand the point you THINK you were making...I was just missing how the search for linux that Joey Kelly proposed proved anything. When you do those searches, 40% of the results are exactly the same. Joey said something about MS not linking to projects, which is at best partly true because one of their page 1 results links to a site listing multiple distributions. Google, on the other hand, has at the top of their page one of those paid ads that says something along the lines of "Get the facts about Windows vs. Linux." Guess where that article's hosted...come on, guess!!!! www.microsoft.com. No shit. Of course, Google is the white-knight of intellectual freedom, and they'd never be corporate whores, never never never. The funny thing is, that article doesn't show up on the first page of Microsoft's results. Here's something else: search for "free software" on both sites. Google's first result: download.com. Not altogether unreasonable. Microsoft's first result: www.fsf.org. Yeah, so explain why it is that Microsoft, who according to you filters on the word freedom, has the FSF as their first hit, and Google who is the embodiment of freedom in a saintly corporate form has a site that features almost entirely MS platform software. > The other point is that Microsoft has been up to all of it's usual > anti-competitive tricks ever since they realized there was money in search. > Those tricks include badmouthing of the "Google is teh evil" type. I'm > working through others at John's request. Ok, great, but if you're going to say stuff like: hand-dulled results, please come forward with an actual concrete example of it. I thought that's what the search for linux on both sites would be, but it just doesn't come close to even a hint that MS is doctoring their results for the purposes of information supression. I don't really think Google is evil...I mean, the gmail address ought to be an indication of how I feel about their software. But I don't think Microsoft is evil either. They are both profit motivated corporations. We shouldn't trust either of them to feed us our information. The difference between my claims and yours is that anyone can find an abundance of information that backs up what I'm talking about. If you take note of how often you see google using their search technology to shove paid advertisements down your throat, you'll get a pretty clear picture of what they are motivated by...
