Either that, or,
the search engine is just thinking "that request is a perversion of logic... perversion. Okay!"
An odd bug in Google's search algorithms appears to be benefiting XXX-rated websites. Searches for impossible pages - such as the contradictory search term -4^(1/4) which means "Find me pages containing a 1 next to a 4, but which do not contain a 4 - return web-page results liberally sprinkled with links to online grumble …
Surely it's just the equivalent of the (already self aware, let's face it) google servers saying:
"That thing you serached for does not exist, but this is what pretty much everybody else is looking at on the internet at the moment so I presume you will want to see it too...."
Relief - Hand relief to be exact.
Positive searches use different likenesses so
1 next to 4 could equate to one next to four or fore as in solitary foreplay => hand relief
The not containing part is probably literal so -4 means just that, although it might be difficult to find any web page that doesn't have the digit 4 in it but hey it's only an example.
In short and seriously - positive searches are flexible whereas negative ones are strict thereby leading to results for impossible searches, as to why those results should be primarily porn sites, well, why not. According to knee jerk politicians and brain dead DM readers even the most innocent of searches return links to porn sites so the impossible ones might as well do so too.
In el reg these days, once upon yore I could rely on V central to provide me up to date information on my kitten vid accessibility before the mainstream press but now I find that you are days, (days!) behind them. How can the SMH (Syd Morning Horrible) publish this story before you good folk??
Standards are slipping..
Windows calc says "invalid input" when I try it. Apparently doesn't know about the 4th root of negative numbers. :-)
But, yes, that was my first thought as well and I often use Google as a primitive calculator / unit convertor when I can't be bothered to dig out a calculator.
Calc is the wrong tool for the job. For formula's you'd really want to grab Microsoft Mathematics (download link) which can easily build and parse formula's. Then you'll get -1.4142135623731 as the answer (minus the square root of 2).
For a super cheesey movie (though I think its kinda funny) check this Youtube video on what Math 4.0 can do for schools. It'll also give you a good impression as to what Math 4 actually is.
Remember your BODMAS from early schooling. Brackets, Powers(Of), Division, Multiplication, Add, Subtract. The Bing result is correct, and interprets it as - (4^(1/4)), which is a +/- real result. The other interpretation gives +/- Root2 +/- Root2 i (there are four roots, with evenly spaced arguments. By the way, I'm a little rusty too. The unary minus is interpreted as (-1) * 4 by Mathematica, so I can see the confusion here.
Only in BASIC.
In real programming languages, the "hat" is the bitwise EOR operator; or means "beginning" in a search pattern, or turns a "match any" pattern fragment (such as /p[aeiou]t/ which matches pat, pet, pit, pot or put) into "match anything but" (/[^0-9]/ matches any non-digit).
I get -4.74999..... as follows:
brackets have highest priority; (1 / 4) = 0.25
Then the unary minus gives -4
Then the exclusive or (yes, you can have fractions in binary; 0.25 decimal = 0.01 binary) gives, as near as damn it is to swearing, -4.75 (it's actually a recurring fraction; when you flip the bits and add one, you get 100.10111..... which is close enough to 100.11. In fact if you actually used an infinite number of digits, they would actually be equal; the difference between them must have an infinite number of zeros before the 1, and therefore must be equal to zero).
And in fact if you put that into Google, it does tell you -(4^(1 / 4)) = -1.41421356, having apparently decided to apply the minus last. It also returns a site titled "Free real sister sex with brother - All best porn!". So if you like incest with your maths, it's perfect.
Now if you search for "1 2" -1 you get a blank screen... but wait a minute... it flickered...
Press the search button again repeatedly and you'll still see the results for a slit second presumably before a bit of JavaScript sets the DIV for the results to "display: none".... hmmm
If I refresh fast enough I can still see the answer for the search "1 2" -2 is in fact Lilly, and Escort from Denver with a 308 ... phone number...
G ;-)
Typing the first of these search arguments into my version of LInux Chrome, with Google as default engine, produces a majority of hits as quotes from the the Bible: Jonah, Proverbs, John, Judges, 1st Peter, James, Matthew, Moses, 1st John and so on. Not a naughty bit among them.
a lot of grumble websites seem to take the search term and incorporate it in their returns. It's just for sensible searches, the real finds outweigh the rankings of the grumble sites. Try searching for something really obscure or a spelling mistake. It's really hard to googlewhack these days because of it (yes, I don't have enough to do)
More than once I've noticed a lot of websites out there respond to ANY search term you plug in even if they don't contain what you searched for and yes they tend to be for dodgy virus infected sites or sites that say YES WE HAVE "your search term", Just $5/month to access our files which contain "your search term" download now!!!!
*sigh*
Surely it's just a variation of this? yes the search should return null results, EXCEPT the dodgy sites that whore themselves to the top of the page simply echoing your search term regardless?