Google's "exact" search is not exact at all

When using the Log4perl module from CPAN I ran into an issue where I encountered logged data containing "[undef]:[undef]" in it. Assuming I was not the first one having this problem I started my web browser and searched for the literal string using Google. To my surprise it didn't return the results I was expecting, as you can see in the screenshots in this post. A bit more tweaking the search parameters led me to a link that had the exact string, but it Google preferred other sites that didn't have the EXACT text. When I opened the page where you can add more parameters it suddenly showed that when I express an exact string of "[undef]:[undef]" it removes the non-alphanumeric characters. Google, this is NOT what I define as EXACT SEARCH, and makes searching for specific strings a major pain in the ass. Can you please change the exact search back to what it was supposed to do, like Google Codesearch?

Example using Codesearch: http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=%22[undef]%22

Example using Google Search: http://www.google.com/search?&q=%22[undef]%22

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Microsoft Live Mess

Today I received an email from Microsoft that Microsoft Live Mesh beta will be discontinued, and that I will need to install the new Live Mesh.

Ms_live_mess

To deliver a better product for all our customers, we combined several services into a new product called Windows Live Mesh. Windows Live Mesh has several performance and reliability improvements compared to the Live Mesh beta, and with Windows Live Mesh, you can also sync your program settings for Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office.

"The King is dead, long live the new King"?

Couldn't they just announce that the beta stage has ended and you need to update the Live Mesh software to continue using it? So I followed the link to the website, where I am greeted with the dialog that the new Live Mesh will only work on Windows Vista or Windows 7, but not Windows XP. I'm still using Windows XP, so pretty soon Live Mesh will become unusable for me. *sigh*

Note: Windows Live Mesh is available only for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Mac OS X version 10.5 or later.

Ms_live_mess_no_xp

Lucky enough they refer in the mail to another service Microsoft offers, called SkyDrive, so I went to look there. I have 5gb free space of the 5gb total that Skydrive.

Ms_skydrive_5g

Here's another page viewing my Skydrive properties. Now I suddenly have 25gb available for storage, of which I've used approximately 5gb!

Ms_skydrive_25g

What's not mentioned in the email I've received is that there is a web interface to Windows Live Mesh as well that I could use to download the files instead of having to resort to using a Windows Vista or 7 machine with Live Essentials (which are not so essential for me).

Ms_live_mesh_5gb

Things were so much easier when Foldershare was still a separate entity and not part of the Microsoft mammoth... *sigh*