It really works well. Given all of the security problems with MS-Windows, if Microsoft calls something 'insecure', it will cause all sorts of CxOs to quake in their boots at the thought.

Just like the way that MS complaints about RPM compatibilities would trigger flashbacks to DLL hell,
or warnings about 'hardware (driver) hell' for Linux would cause panic attacks for specialists who sometimes spent days getting a proper mix of Windows drivers for machines they were building for customers.

etc., etc., etc....

If you're an MS hater, you're not going to be buying Nokia phones because they're moving to MS Windows. If you're an MS lover, you're not going to buy Nokia phones (yet) because they don't yet have Windows on them. If you're MS agnostic, you're not going to buy Nokia phones because the current crop is going to be orphaned a year down the road (actually -- they've already been effectively orphaned).

No matter how you slice it, Nokia comes up a loser until at least the end of the year.

Japan is the country which gave us the word "Kamikaze". Nobel self-sacrifice in the name of the greater good is a long honoured tradition there -- much more so than here.

You might be able to charge (and sue) the dentist for your time. You booked the appointment, took time off of work traveled to the dentist (if (s)he's not nearby), and the -- all of a sudden -- you're told "Sign away your free speech rights, or all of this preparation is for naught!" It's a complete hardball tactic. It's designed to pressure you into signing something you'd probably have walked away from if you knew before you made the appointment.

Well, it may now turn out that, beyond the direct antibiotic effect of sugar an honey, the sugars in both have the added effect of intensifying the effectiveness of the hospital antibiotics in the patient's system. It could make for an interesting research project for a graduate student somewhere.

For those of you who've never seen Mary Poppins, and, thus, don't completely understand the reference..

Natalie Portman immersed in honey would get my attention, well enough. .. and as she moved through the world, you would see the guys dragging along behind her.

Well, I'd laugh at that quote -- specifically, the presumptions it implies.

I could have sworn, the first time I read it that they'd been bought by the founders of Facebook, and my first reaction was 'There goes the neighborhood.' I'm much happier now that I've read it properly.

Normally, when one speaks of tracking click-through, one would expect to have a modified link on a page that, essentially, notifies the source server of the page that they're clicking on a link and then getting redirected to the final destination page (normally an ad, but not necessarily).

What Microsoft is claiming that they're doing here, however is having IE phone home with what a user is doing on a completely unaffiliated page. This, then, raises the question of where else are they tracking what I'm doing? Are they tracking what stories I'm reading on slashdot? are they telling the CIA/MOSAD/KGB when I use a proxy to read Al Jezera? This raises a huge slew of privacy questions about what parts of my browsing history are being tracked in one central place, if I were to use IE as my browser.

Even secure links and proxies become irrelevant if the surveillance is being done from within the browser.

It's not actually clear, from the discussion, whether or not a user had to follow any of the links from the Google search result, or if Microsoft was simply scraping the top Google search result off of the page and making it their own top 'search' result.

Another thing to note is that, apparently, most search users won't go past the first link, so -- if bing is quietly presenting Google's top result as bing's own top result (as opposed to second, third or last on the page), then they are -- for the most part -- really stealing Google's results because the non-Google results will be irrelevant to most searchers. ... just window dressing.

Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as "the wrongful appropriation, close imitation, or purloining and publication, of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions, and the representation of them as one's own original work." (wikipedia)

I think that the wikipedia definition pretty much says it. If Bing had put their purloined searches up as "Google top result", with a convenient link back to the Google page they scraped the result from -- then there'd be not be much to snark about. The problem with what they've done is they make it look as if they've independently come to the same conclusion as Google -- and, by implication, that the rest of 'their' results are equally relevant).

That is so incredibly WRONG. Shutting down a site is a form of censorship and should only be allowed with the moderation of the courts. Allowing the courts the ability to lift a ban could easily result in a case like we saw recently in Russia where a site is taken down without just cause and, because of various legal shenanigans it takes months (or even years) before a court order reversing the shutdown is issued.

If prosecutors have a clear case of violation, then let them get a court order (preferably with knowledge of the victim so that they can respond). That way overzealous prosecutors don't cause a chilling effect.

And the nasty thing is that -- despite the fact that txt messages are almost free for cell providers, they recently went to parliament to try and justify raisng the prices because it was 'so costly to provide'. Almost makes me sick.

There is, at the same time, a recent article on the CBC website saying that Mounties are asking people (especially youths) to please not text messages to 911.