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Google just hit a new low by accusing Microsoft of stealing their search results. This just seems like an unbelievable link bating ploy on part of Google that might have back fired. At first I thought I had read the headline wrong. If I would think of any tech company would air their dirty laundry in a public forum I would have thought it would be on Microsoft’s part.

Here is how this tech “he said, she said” came to be. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land wrote a blog post where Google acknowledged that it ran a covert Bing sting operation that proved that Microsoft’s Bing’s search results are in some way influenced by what users search for and click on Google’s search engine. This whole secret operation ran by Google reminds me of the HP spying scandal of 2006. Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow in charge of this operation, went on to compare Microsoft Bing’s actions to copying and cheating and other mean evil stuff.

Apparently, all this came about because of misspelled search terms. As Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land describes, Google noticed that Bing’s search result for misspelled terms were similar to Google’s. Over at the official Google blog, Amit Singhal went on to describe the methodology used by Google to prove that Microsoft’s Bing uses Google search results in some capacity. To prove their hypothesis, Google gave engineers Windows’ laptops with Internet Explorer with Bing Toolbar installed and invented crazy words like hiybbprqag that when searched on Google would return completely unrelated search results. These same search results where found in Bing some time later for these made up search queries.

If this is true, this does prove to a high degree of certainty that Microsoft Bing uses, to some capacity Google search results, at least for made up search queries, or “synthetic queries” as Amit Singhal described them. This does not prove that all or 80% or 10% or any significant percent of Microsoft Bing’s results are copied verbatim from Google, as Amit would have you believe. What is also clear but downplayed behind the link bating headlines and accusations is that Bing does not scrape in any scale Google’s search results. In fact, Bing does nothing more than what Google already does. Google has a large number of tools in its arsenal where it collects online traffic and user data no matter what search engine was used. Google is monitoring and tracking the whole web with its search, analytic, ad network, browser, and mobile products and platforms

What I find amusing, is that gall and hypocrisy of Google to accuse Microsoft of monitoring the search terms and queries on search engines and the websites visited from those search results. Every time you search for a term on Google, that is recorded and associated with your account. Every time you click on search result from Google, that is recorded and associated with your account and your search term. If Google collects this data, I am think it might be fair game. Not only does Google collect this the search term and corresponding website you visit, but does the website you visit and their ad network.

I would also question the timing and the motive of publishing this now and this manner. Google has recently come under fire for the spam results taking over their search results and on how they tracks and monitors users’ online activities. It’s widely known that Google collects and uses just about every piece of information it can gather from end users in the development of their products. Google Voice is improved by having millions of users correct Google’s automated voice translations. Improved speech to text translations are then rolled out into other products and projects, such as this speak2tweet Twitter account that transcribes voice messages left on free public phone numbers and tweets them. It is also known that Android, Google’s mobile platform, is a used to improve Google’s local service and I’ve already written about how Google’s Chrome OS laptop will be used to feed even more user data into the Googleplex.

Instead of spending over a half a year on a sting operation of this size and scope they could have better spent their resources. This smells of bad PR to deflect some of the heat Google has been attracting for their spam-ridden search results and privacy issues. Google is just calling the kettle black.

The links below are additional coverage, analysis, and opinions of what one Blogger has dubbed Bing-gate.

• Why is Google so hysterically hypocritical about Bing using its public data?
• Google catches Bing copying, Microsoft says “so what?”
• What on earth are Google thinking? (re: Bing-gate)
• Wow, Microsoft And Google Are Punching Each Other In The Face Right In Front Of Us!
• The Strange Populist Outrage Against Google
• Microsoft: ‘We do not copy Google’s results’

There are many situations when you need to copy data from one database table to another one. You may want to migrate data from one database table to a new table, sometimes you need to do so to copy data to a backup table, other times to bulk load data from from different databases. To copy date between tables in a SQL Server database you can execute the following.

INSERT INTO Note (Id, Name)
SELECT Id, Name FROM Notes
WHERE name IS NOT NULL

The above state will copy date from a database table Notes to a new table Note where some condition is meet.

A typical database server instance hosts multiple databases, such as production and several test databases. You can copy data not only between tables within a database, but between databases within a database server instance. To copy between databases you need to use the fully qualified database name. For example, the following SQL snippet copies data from a tables called Notes in a database called TestDB.

INSERT INTO Note (Id, Name)
SELECT Id, Name FROM TestDB.dbo.Notes
WHERE name IS NOT NULL

History is made by rewriting history. Imagine writing an academic paper a 100 years from now about Lost, when several episodes have been lost, and using as resources and references blog posts and twitter streams. In some sense, this is how history books are written. History is rewritten from personal points of views, second hand accounts, supporting national myths, rewritten based on cultural outlooks, and geopolitical propaganda.

If you provide a free no obligation trial version why do you need my credit card information prior to me getting access to the free no obligation trial version? I been a big fan of the online cartoon Geek and Poke and I just saw that he put out a free PDF on Scribd. I wanted to download to it the pdf ebook to my collection of free PDF document and books so that I can load it onto my other devices. Even thought I have an account with Scribd and even though I myself have posted documents on Scribd I was not able to download the Geek and Poke PDF unless a signed up to their Scribd Archive paid service, a $9/monthly service or a $5/day pass. I know that Geek and Poke is worth the $10 but I would rather have the author of the PDF get the money instead of Scribd.

One reason why students and teachers fail is because teaching has been reduced to a trade, no different than a fast food industry.  Do you want fries with that?

What will be the codename of the next release of Android? They’ve had cupcake, donut, froyo, gingerbread, etc. What is next caramel apples, cotton candy, laffy taffy?

I’ve had an iPhone for such a long time that I had forgotten how horrible an experience it is to buy or upgrade a phone from a cell phone company. I recently had to upgrade a family Android G1 to a G2 at the T-Mobile store and found the whole episode painful. First I had to wait what seemed over 30 minutes before anyone even asked if I need help. Once someone was ready to help it took all of 2 minutes to decide on the phone, but about another 30 to process my purchase. After all this I ended with a different plan that I used to have, of course I didn’t notice until I got home. I explicitly asked if my plan would be the same, I was explicitly told yes, and I came to found out that I am, not surprisingly, paying more. Why don’t cell phone companies have a self help kiosk. All I really need from their employee is for them to give me the phone. I could set the phone and the plan myself.

What is the job function of a printer driver? When you hit the print button what do you want to happen? Apparently if you are HP, you want users of your printers to get attractive offers on some of their other products. Apparently, HP is using their printer drivers to send system configuration of your home or work environment back to home base to up sale you supplies, warranties, support from your print manager.

For years, Microsoft Windows has had the feature to send a crash dump to Microsoft when an application failed after prompting the user for permission. The crash dump information helps Microsoft understand the conditions that lead to the application crashing. Firefox also has a similar feature where anonymous user statistics so that they can learn from their users and improve their product. But now HP has hit a new low when they designed a phone home feature that shares statistics and usage information from your printer back with HP HQ to up sale you on supplies, warranties, and support. Effectively, HP has turned their HP printer driver to a their sales force embedded in your office.

This is a bad user experience for many reasons, including the fact that all I want is a document not a popup with HP ads, I am not the one responsible for purchasing office supplies, I dislike the accumulation of background processes that send statistics about my computer use to third-parties. It is clear to me that this is a feature that a marketing manager dreamed up and not a engineer driving solution to a problem. Since it doesn’t solve any of my problems, but their, I disabled it.

Below is the portion of the text from the HP Printer Driver dialog.

This HP Printer Driver can provide valuable information about your HP device for things like supplies, warranty, and support, as well as attractive offers. This information will not affect your normal interaction with your computer or printer, nor will it result in your receiving any additional emails from HP.

To take advantage of this feature we need your permission to transmit your printing and imaging system configuration to HP over the Internet. All information will be handled in accordance with the HP Privacy Statement.

HP Printer Driver Dialog

I’m the kind of person that wants to say yes to everything. “Can we add this new feature without a specification in a day?” “Yes” Saying yes is so easy, and a lot of of the times doing the work is easy too. But the trouble with saying yes to quickly is that not everything is thought out, finalized, or formalized accordingly. Sometimes the best answer is not yes. Many times the easiest thing is saying yes, but it’s doing something right takes time and that time should can not be speed up. A key ingredient to any recipe is time. You need to give everything the time to simmer, like wise in a software project you have to have the time to test accordingly, and to follow established processes. Sometimes saying yes is negotiating kamikaze.

I use Apple’s Mobile Me service. I got the first year subscription as a gift a little over a year ago and I recently renewed the service for another year. I don’t use the email or calendar service in Mobile Me much but one feature that is worth its price is the Find My iPhone locator feature. This feature lets you track the location of your iOS device, it lets you put an alert message on your iPhone or iPad, and it lets you ring the iPhone (even if it’s on vibrate or silence mode). I’ve used it once when I lost my phone under the couch and I couldn’t find it. It also lets you lock down or even wipe your missing iOS device of all personal and identifying data.

Apple's Mobile Me

All mobile devices, from phones, tablets, and to laptops should have a built it self destruct feature that when activated would destroy all data on a compromised device. It is my belief that a phone is a very intimate and personal device, there is so much personal data in my phone from private contact lists, to confidential business emails, to other dubious activities that I may or may not be involved in.

In addition to having the ability to destroy incriminating data from a mobile device, such as an iPhone or iPad, I want the ability to program rules into the phone. Such as if the phone has not been unlocked in over 24 hours, or if the attempted to unlocked more than three times, if it activated with a given specific code, if it is located in a known police or government building, etc.

Find My iPhone