bkhl

Current status: Core search is working. Adding new blogs weekly as I index them.

I guess this is a reason why it does not have recent blogs from some of the sites. Otherwise, it's definitely something I'd use

This person (jackg) either does not know or realize that a great software engineer can use any platform, language, and tool to do whatever she needs to achieve. I'm also not a big fan of his own choices of "trendy" technologies. This post almost seems like trolling IMO.

I'm not sure if I can totally agree with the author. I understand his pain, but email isn't the most secured place. If your email is being "watched" by someone else, then that someone else can access other web services that you own WITHOUT requiring to type passwords! I know that it is very rare to have your email being watched, but in security, even the most rare case should be taken into consideration. It's a trade off between user experience and security. This is something you find very often in software engineering.

Can you elaborate more on why Rails might be a better option than ASP.NET MVC for creating "the next hipmunk"?

probably talent acquisition?

It's too early to say anything about Office on Windows 8. What Microsoft showed today was Windows 8, not Office. I'm sure Microsoft will has something for Office on Windows 8 with touch interface in mind. So far, I haven't seen any good office productivity applications on touch interface. I hope Microsoft impresses me.

Good to know that OPD has arrested the bastard. :)

They probably want to align versions for Windows and Windows Phone. It looks much nicer when you say Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.

What we need to focus here is this...despite the decrease in PC sales, Microsoft managed to grow. They did not just grow a little, but they grew tremendously. 30%? that's a huge number for a company like Microsoft. Nonetheless, Apple has reached another huge milestone in their history.

"a lot of the shady business & licensing practices that Microsoft engages in"

Um... you are wrong. These companies are all suing each other, and Apple is known for creating patents for every little thing they do in iOS.

I don't know... $0.50 (Bing) vs. $0.00 (Google). What is better for me when I can still find whatever I need to find in both?

I've been using Bing since I found the Bing Rewards (http://www.bing.com/rewards), which gives you a point per 2 searches and lets you redeem the points for something later on. I have not found myself going back to Google, yet.

I really hope that I'm not using anything you created on the web. I would hate to be a customer of a service whose owner think 150,000 users are insignificant.

Those blogs were posted in 2003 and 2006. We are in year 2011. 5 years in tech industry is like 20 years in other industries. Just sayin'

I'm pretty sure they aren't making as much money as they want, though. If they make some deal out of Youtube, it would be win-win. Plus, another win for users (as long as it's free or cost at a decent price).

I'm so ready to cancel my cable tv.

Awesome. However, you said this is a "startup". How are you going to monetize this besides the obvious (ads)?

As a lot of people said already, this is very creepy. Yet, there will be tons of users who would use this...

By the way, can you get notifications on multiple people? (now, that's really creepy)

Pretty cool. Why not have another column for comments instead of making users to click? Maybe put this as an option for users to select, because I'm sure there are a lot of people who are using widescreen monitors and are not fully utilizing it. I'm suggesting this as an option, because there are other batch of people who uses vertical mode.

I doubt that Google ever tried to hire only MS/PhDs. I went through interviews and got an offer when I was only a BSCS student. I also know a lot of people who don't have MS/PhDs and work at Google.

On your 2nd point, I totally agree with you that self-taught programmers should actually get a degree in CS or any related major. Although the programming classes might bore them out, there will be courses and professors who will take them to somewhere they would have never known before. This is just my generalization and, of course, will not apply to everyone ;)

SO probably doesn't want too many unregistered users floating around. Also, one of success metrics for an Q&A site is the number of registered users. So, it does make sense to force users to go through almost painless process of registering before they really start engaging in the site.

I went through 8 interviews (over the course of 8 months) before I got an offer from Google. By the time Google gave me the offer, I already accepted an offer from the other company. I told the HR of Google that their process sucks (of course, I said it indirectly) and she agreed with me. I'm glad to hear that Google is finally making changes here.

Same here. I agree that IE6&7 were bad, but I didn't have to "hack around" for IE8 and IE9. Of course, if you do need to hack around, then you are probably not doing what is considered as "standard". A lot of things that we, early adapters, talk about (e.g. HTML5) aren't standard, yet.

This modern browser crap is getting old. I have no problem browsing internet with both IE9, Chrome, and Firefox.

I doubt that's the case. When Microsoft needs something to be done, they would do it. If you discard all the technical mind and just think with a typical business mind, calculating the resources and cost to develop the new IE9 on XP, which is 10 years old, you wouldn't really invest your resource, time, and money to develop IE9 on XP. Plus, if IE9 is supported on XP, it will give "hope" and "hint" that Microsoft still cares about Windows XP.

Chrome, unlike IE, jumped into browser war really late. What this means is that they need to support as many platform as possible to gain every possible percent of the usage metrics. In the end, the percentage number of the usage metrics is the key indicator of success.

Honestly, I don't understand why so many people are frustrated about what defines the modern browsers. If you are not happy about a product, you don't have to use it. If you don't use it, the manufacturer will know that something is wrong.

Plus, the word, modern, is so vague. As Microsoft did, it can mean totally different things to different people. HTML5 isn't standard, yet. There is very little number of websites that fully utilize the capabilities of HTML5.

Now, go grab a cup of coffee and do something more productive :)

It's not that they "can't" but they "aren't". It's probably because Microsoft wants XP users to see all the new stuffs Microsoft is making for Windows 7. Microsoft is hoping that those users to change or try the newer OS. After all, IE9 is just an enabler to Microsoft's core businesses (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-we-are-focusin...)

I clearly see where he is coming from and I also believe that the metric Hitwise used is just BS...BUT! the more Matt becomes sensitive about Bing, the more pageviews Bing would get. I bet Bing got quite unexpected PR recently due to Matt's accusation (I don't want to talk about the issue since my opinion is mine). I'm curious to see metrics for Feb. ;)

I think I didn't miss anything. That line just tells me that he is too lazy to re-install his apps.

Upgrade path from XP to 7? Even if there is one, his hardware won't last long with Windows 7, because I'm sure he hasn't upgraded his hardwares for last decade (too lazy to even re-install apps, what more can you ask?)

I remember I had to reinstall all my apps on Mac OSX and saw no one complain. I don't understand why all these XP users complaining about not being having a way to upgrade to Windows 7 from XP.

Just say it, you just don't want to pay for Windows 7. But after all, you get what you paid for.

"XP is fast and "stable", well documented, everything runs on it. I've yet to see a good reason to "upgrade" to something else that won't even fit on a CD."

This just sounds like you still haven't used Windows 7. Well, if you don't try, you wouldn't know how good it is. Windows 7 is indeed fast and stable. Stability can mean different for different aspects, but Windows 7 gets updated constantly whereas XP is still open to a lot of vulnerabilities.

but there are cases when I do want to see some emails to flow in for awhile until I really realize that the account is trashed.

All your comments are coming from your assumption that Microsoft is trying to monopolize in something - in this case, search. Hence, your comments (although you will disagree) are biased and irrational. Microsoft isn't trying to monopolize in anything nowadays. In fact, they can't, so they aren't even trying.

From a search engine user's point of view, I believe this whole fiasco is ridiculous. First, it's ridiculous because Google is handling this situation very immaturely. Matt Cutts should not have confronted the VP of Bing in a way he did. Second, if I were the user of the Bing Toolbar, I gave permission to the Bing Toolbar to use my behaviors to polish my search results. I have no problem with that. Lastly, the experiments they did has more to do with "guessing what user wanted" than "what PageRank does".

I've used Bing fairly often past 6 months because of too many spams Google search results were giving back. Now that Google has fixed (or still working on) the spam problem, I'm starting to use Google again. However, what I noticed from the past 6 months is that Google search isn't so much better than Bing. This Bing Toolbar fiasco only applies to synthetic queries that I would never make.

Is Bing cheating? I don't think so. To me, they are just using another signal from user's permission. However, the definition of cheating will be different for everyone else.