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Schooling Microsoft On Random Browser Selection
Rob Weir got wind that a Slovakian tech site had been discussing the non-randomness of Microsoft's intended-to-be-random browser choice screen, which went into effect on European Windows 7 systems last week. He did some testing and found that indeed the order in which the five browser choices appear on the selection screen is far from random — though probably not intentionally slanted. He then proceeds to give Microsoft a lesson in random-shuffle algorithms. "This computational problem has been known since the earliest days of computing. There are 5 well-known approaches: 3 good solutions, 1 acceptable solution that is slower than necessary and 1 bad approach that doesn’t really work. Microsoft appears to have picked the bad approach. But I do not believe there is some nefarious intent to this bug. It is more in the nature of a 'naive algorithm,' like the bubble sort, that inexperienced programmers inevitably will fall upon when solving a given problem. I bet if we gave this same problem to 100 freshmen computer science majors, at least 1 of them would make the same mistake. But with education and experience, one learns about these things. And one of the things one learns early on is to reach for Knuth. ... The lesson here is that getting randomness on a computer cannot be left to chance. You cannot just throw Math.random() at a problem and stir the pot and expect good results."
Hmm, there's a nice shuffle implementation in Java that Microsoft could use... Oh, wait...
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Exactly, as there is always a chance for you to get a better browser due to a stray alpha particle.
Ezekiel 23:20
Safari will almost always (almost 50% of the time) be put in the bottom two elements [out of five].
And how well did you do in statistics class?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
You are missing the point. As the author of the article pointed out, this technique can cause an infinite loop.
> ...the manager ignored it...
Or he decided that it was so important that he had to do it himself.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.