Comment Re:What a surprise (Score 1) 268
I believe I disagree with part of your post rather strongly, it would appear to be due to definitional issues:
Two plus two equals four and thankfully people recognize this, but it would be equally true even if the vast majority of people mistakenly think it equals five.
Not really. Because we define "four" to be the name given to what two plus two equals, which is simply stating that it's the sequential unitary count coming after one two three...
By that definition, if the majority of people suddenly decided to call what we now call "four", "five" instead, well, then the new definition of what two plus two equals WOULD be five, because after all, that's simply what the majority of people have decided to label that number, and if the majority decided to label it differently, then by definition of language, they'd have the new correct usage, and everyone else using the old definition would be wrong, at least in the new context.
Of course the same idea applies if the language being spoken isn't English, or the base is changed. In Spanish (according to babelfish), dos (2) mas (+) dos (2) iguales (=) cuatro (4), it doesn't "iguales" either four
So it
So, I'll be content with pointing out that you say that like all preferences are equally valid. In this case, they are not. The approach of learning how to tell the search engine what you want without needless second-guessing recognizes the reality of using something that, however sophisticated, is still a machine. The other approach fails to do so, placing it at a disadvantage when it comes to delivering useful results. Whether that disadvantage can be overcome so that Bing ends up as useful as Google is an interesting question, the answer to which remains to be seen.
It could be argued that the second-guessing, as you put it, is
To use an analogy from personal experience, I once learned the process of extracting a root by manual calculation. That was decades ago (grade school, in the late 70s or early 80s), and occasionally I try half-heartedly to look it up, as on some level it
Never-the-less, with a square root button now having been on dollar-store calculators for approaching a decade now, and sub-20-buck calculators since the 80s at least (that being when I first needed it, I've no idea when it would have been introduced on "scientific" calculators at say the $100 level, or how common it might have been on $20 calculators earlier), and Nth root extractions possible on computers and $20 calculators everywhere now, there's little real practical value in actually knowing how to do that manually, for the average person or even thru intermediate level geek, today.
Similarly, command line computing is really not absolutely necessary today, as millions and millions get by with icon based interfaces all the way down to the cellphone level.
There's not that many folks around skilled in the art of using a buggy whip any more, either.
In the same way, the automatic "second-guessing" and preprocessing that we geek types tend to do to our search queries before entry, often so naturally that we don't even realize we're doing it, could and likely will become unnecessary as time goes on. You say the computer doing that second-guessing is unnecessary and only gets in the way. Actually, you and I agree, at the level you and I tend to use the computer, at least, but for us, getting a precisely adjusted query starts well before we begin actually typing. At some point, however, those presently very useful skills aren't going to be so necessary any more, and we'll be the ones not properly adapted to our computing environment if we don't change with them, because by that point the assumptions will be that the query
So from my viewpoint, as with what we call the result of two plus two, it's all a matter of cultural context and perspective. We see bing's second guessing as unnecessary, because we've already preprocessed the query and gone thru several iterations in our head before we ever start typing, at which point the query is already refined enough that those second-guesses tend to be more irritating diversions than helpful. But that's not the case for many users, and on that point, it would seem we agree.
Meanwhile, I'm quite happy if the ad susceptible "programmable zombies" that need that level of machine based second guessing because they're uncomfortable with or unable to do the necessary preprocessing analysis themselves, have somewhere else to go. It means google can narrow its focus a bit, making it more effective for those of us who can do that bit of preprocessing and prefer to do it ourselves, thus making the process when we do submit the query more efficient, as there's less "marshalling" to be done across that maddeningly slow computer/human interface.
(FWIW, as a confirmed kde power user and heavy customizer, that's pretty much the same attitude I take on the "there's only one 'correct' way to do it, the one the gnome devs chose" approach -- let the folks who want others to make those decisions for them, and the devs that want to make the decisions for them, have at it, it keeps them away from kde, where they'd otherwise be attempting serious damage to the "if it can be configured, let's ensure we've exposed a method to configure it" approach kde is often accused of having, but which us heavy customizers so enjoy. There's room in the FLOSS free world for both groups!
And, really, same for TV vs the Internet. Let the eggplant-brains sit on their couch and absorb all that programming from the idiot box. Consider how much worse "Eternal September" would have been had all the TVs ceased to work at the same time! Meanwhile, there's enough such folks that apparently actually
But regardless, I think it's safe to say it's unlikely to happen in any case, because as long as humans are humans, there'll be a significant group of them that prefer to let someone ELSE do that thinking and producing and etc, and don't mind at all being programmed by it as a result, even if that programming includes programming to buy what they'd otherwise not find valuable enough to spend their money on, which is, after all, the big reason advertising exists as it does today. (There's a small segment that's actually informational, letting folks know about that new restaurant that just opened down the street, etc, but that's a
