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Comment It's the other way around (Score 2) 665

When you press Ctrl+Alt+Del on your computer, you know that the OS is the one that receives it so you know that the login screen before you was generated by the OS and not some malware that's sitting in userland.

When you 'simulate' it from a remote session, you lose that guarantee. Any malware could intercept the simulated Ctrl+Alt+Del and show you what looks like the OS login screen.

Comment That article is utter nonsense (Score 3, Informative) 287

The idfa feature has nothing to do with Apple tracking you. It has everything to do with *others* tracking you - or rather, limiting how others track you.

Prior to iOS6, third party apps would access your devices UDID and use it to track your device. There was no way for a user to disable or limit this. In iOS6, Apple shut that down and forced advertisers to use the idfa instead. The idfa is something you as a user can reset or turn off to limit how advertisers track you. The feature is a pure win for user privacy and anyone who claims otherwise is either a complete idiot or thinks his audience is.

Comment You haven't gotten the point at all (Score 1) 596

Bing is not watching the results. It is watching the clicks generated by the user. In this particular experiment, it wouldn't matter whether the particular link was 1st or 500th in Google's results - if that was the only one the users clicked, it would end up as #1 on Bing's results for the term and none of the other results would.

Comment By the click-stream data (Score 1, Informative) 596

The Bing results are not based on Google's returned results. They are based on the fake data generated by the Google engineer showing that a user searching for those search terms then visited those sites. For the purpose of this test, that site would end up on top of Bing's results even if it were the 558th link in Google's results - if that was the only one the Google engineer clicked on.

Comment Re:So the answer is yes (Score 1, Informative) 596

"The moral of this story is: if you use IE, then your information is being passed to Microsoft and being used. Even if you go to Google. "

This used to be a technical site. Now it's populated by idiots with no knowledge of technology. It's installing the Bing toolbar that sends your data to Microsoft, not using IE.

Comment Re:Response from Another VP (Score 0) 596

You missed a few steps:

Step 1:Google seeds a randomized word and associates a link for that word into their search engine.

Step 1.5: Google employee installs Bing toolbar

Step 2: Google employee searches Google for that word and up comes the random link

Step 2.5: Google employee with Bing toolbar installed generates fake user click data showing that a user searching for that randomized word then clicks on the "random" link

Step 3: Google employee searches Bing for the exact same word and up comes the same link.

The bolded steps are the only really relevant ones here. Bing is responding to falsified click-stream data (which is the only data for that randomized word) by promoting the particular link in its search results for the randomized word. The fact that Google returned that particular link in its search results is almost entirely irrelevant to anyone who's not trying to confuse you into believing Bing is "copying" Googles results.

Comment It's FBS (Score 1) 177

The division formally known as Div I-A is now called FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision). The championship game (and a few other high-profile bowl games) for this subdivision are organized by the BCS (Bowl Championship Series).

The division formally known as Div I-AA is now called FCS (Football Championship Subdivision) and it does have a real championship playoff.

Comment Use a getter function (Score 1) 735

From Scott Meyer's book:
FileSystem &tfs()
{
  static FileSystem fs;
  return fs;
}

You now get to control and log all access to your global variable and have the opportunity to change any semantics associated with it in one place instead of 5000. Please don't use global variables. Anyone who has to maintain your code will be eternally grateful for it.

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