Is Bing Stealing from Google?
From Zed in response to Is
Bing Good Enough to Replace Google Search?:
Charles,
Did you hear that Bing was caught by Google
using their search engine to come up with Bing results? Google did
a sting operation by setting up fake entries and then using Bing to
search for it. So it should come as no surprise that Bing is as capable
as Google, Bing is Google.
Zed
Hi Zed,
I hadn't heard that one, but I looked it up after
receiving your note.
I thought the response from a Bing exec cited in
Bing Admits Using Customer Search Data, Says Google Pulled
'Spy-Novelesque Stunt' sounded quite reasonable. If his explanation
is accurate, Bing is not Google, but is learning from Google.
Charles
New Lion-Compatible Tex-Edit Plus Beta
From Tom Bender:
Hi Charles:
I finally have a Tex-Edit Plus
beta that may be ready for prime time. It seems to run fine on both
PPC and Intel, including Mac OS versions 10.4 through 10.7+. I have
tried to minimize the formatting loss when moving between PPC and Intel
documents. (Complex docs can be ported using RTF, if needed.) The
speedup when upgrading from Rosetta to Intel-native is surprisingly
dramatic for some operations. Please let me know if you find
problems.
Sincerely,
Tom
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the heads-up about the new TE+ 4.9.9 beta.
I've downloaded it to replace the earlier beta I've been using for a
month or so now.
I agree that the Rosetta-less betas are significantly
livelier than the older versions.
It will certainly be an enabler of Lion for me, when
the time comes, although I'm still mainly using TE+ 4.9.8 in order to
sync with my two old Pismo
PowerBooks that are still in heavy production service running
Mac OS X 10.4.11
Tiger.
Charles
Programming for Windows 8
From Brian:
Heya Charles,
In the case that not all C# developers must be created equally, I've
been a Microsoft developer for over a decade and a half. I've written
you before, too, on matters Mac. While my home computing environment
and some professional mobile development is for the Apple platforms,
what puts the meat on the table for me, primarily, is Microsoft
development, which is why I'm surprised to hear a C# developer snivel
about the Windows 8 platform. The nature of his complaints, for me,
would cast some doubt on his professional credibility. Not to be mean
spirited, of course, because everyone is entitled to their opinion.
I've developed a bevvy of touch screen apps in C++, VB/VB.NET, and
C# over the years in Windows forms, and really, it's not much more
sophisticated than attaching events to what you click on, be it by
mouse or fingers on a screen. The app has traditionally not cared how
the input arrives. Similarly, having now developed more than a few apps
for iOS, I might say that while the wrapping around UI development to
be solid in Objective-C and Apple's developer tools, it's still
remarkably limited and cumbersome in places that I find C# development
to be way more elegant. And if you want to break away from the release
constraints of the App Store, you're left with developing to the local
storage limitations of HTML5.
For piddly little entertainment pieces, this is fine. For
enterprise-level, grown-up dev, though, this has serious implications
for developers that have to bridge the gap between back-office systems
and mobile. What Windows 8 demonstrates, and if Visual Studio 11's
preview is any indicator, is that Microsoft's astounding capability to
come late to market belies the fact that often, their late entry is
more than satisfactory. I look at it this way, Apple demonstrated the
creamy awesomesauce that is the GUI, but Microsoft put it on everyone's
computer. From the nerd end, the control you have over UI design with
all the things we expect with mobile-cum-desktop development is far
deeper and extensible with .NET than Objective-C.
The renewed focus on C++ is a shining light as well. I've been
hoping that Microsoft would embrace the Mono Project for the same
reasons I'm happy about this - shaving time off of projects that
require cross-platform development by allowing something as close to
single-sourcing as possible. There was a time when, for the PPC, we had
some hope that the open-source Linux focus of Silverlight, Moonlight
(born of the Mono Project), could be used to perhaps make Netflix
approachable for our rapidly dated G4s and G5s, as an interesting
aside. If the project doesn't die, it is even highly likely that with
MonoTouch, I can more easily port an app I developed for Windows 8 to
the iOS without the parallel development I would currently have to
commit to.
I can look at the VM installation I have of Windows 8 and lament how
cludgy it is compared to what I am used to. However, I can also look at
it and see that it never tried to tell me that scrolling backwards is
natural, and it doesn't fundamentally molest the way I interact with my
OS in the way that Lion has. A developer's assessment of a preview
build of an OS should never be limited to the surface layer, however. I
love Apple, but their SDK has never remotely approached
Microsoft's.
I think, love them or hate them, Microsoft has a winner with Windows
8 because Ballmer is spot-on - it's all about the developers, and
Microsoft still has the strongest base of lettered programmers out
there. I'm saddened it's taken them this many releases to bring them
back to that realization. Android had the right idea, but it never had
a real foundational hope. Microsoft can leverage everything it already
has going for it. So however they've buried the Start Menu aside, this
is a great win for MS, even if we don't know it yet.
Brian
Hi Brian,
Thanks for the comment. It's always great to hear from
someone who knows what they're talking about on these matters, and can
explain them in reasonably scrutible terms for non-programmers like
myself.
I'm inclined to agree with your assessment of Windows
8's prospects.
Charles
G4 Processor Replacement Question
From Jason:
Hey Charles,
Do you know if it is possible to put a G4 MDD Dual 867 MHz processor
into a Quicksilver
2002 - specifically a 933 MHz? They have the same bus speed - 133
MHz. Can't find anything about it online and am curious if it would
work.
Jason
Hi Jason,
This one's out of my modest level of
knowledge/expertise/experience sphere. Perhaps a Mailbag reader will be
able to shed some light.
Charles
Publisher's note: I can't answer Jason's specific
question, but I can explain the issues he'll be dealing with.
All AGP Power Mac G4s use the same CPU connection
to the motherboard, but the placement of that connector on the logic
board varies between models, and the biggest factor isn't whether the
CPU card will fit, but whether the heat sink will fit. Third-party CPU
upgrades for these Power Macs sometimes have two different ways of
mounting the heat sink to address this issue; Apple CPU cards, since
they are designed for just one Power Mac model, do not. dk
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