Re:Google update service installed without choice
on
Google Chrome, Day 2
·
· Score: 1
IMO it *could* be just lameness or laziness on part of the installer team.
In my view Google is just a really big bunch of geeks like anyone else, and they do *not* especially profile up just like any Tie-and-Suit company like Microsoft, so i think it could very well be they just slopped this one.
I know that in Germany (living here, have heard it from people dealing with government official agencies) a comparable system is being deployed as well. People are being hired to check for "incongruities" in the neighboorhood; to what full extent i don't know, but i do know that it encompasses the first listed things as well, like checking for litter, unsafe locations, etc.
I hope my ISP doesn't get the same idea. I live in germany, and the biggest cable provider here (Kabel Deutschland) is also known for very similar tactics (warning letters to users because of exceeding an unknown quota, throttling bittorrent).
The only difference is with my 30mbps connection i can download around 316GB a day. Now, i don't do that but the faster the connection the bigger the risk of exceeding some quotas..
It probably has been said before, but i'd use open source software in any case; you can probably even if you don't know the toolkit used in detail, adapt the program so that it e.g. reconnects when disconnected, and maybe simplify the user interface.
I switched on this GMail setting right after i realized the danger from reading the Defcon article; I just didn't think Google would be this careless with private data and assumed previously that in some AJAX-y way the actual GMail session data is being encrypted anyway.
If you want to say that being free is simply being unconstrained to do what you try to do, then a robot following a program is "free," so long as nothing interferes with it trying to do what it is programmed to do.
If not the actual embodiment of "free will", then exactly this is at least what makes us feel "free", except that for humans it would be "as nothing interferes with it trying to do what it wants to do". I think that for etymological and semantic reasons a distinction between "free" as in pre-determined actions or not, and "free" as in spiritually/physically/constraint-free is of not much help. I think that in an anthroposophic sense, one could say that if you believe you are free, then you are free.
The obvious reaction of people doesn't matter; what matters is how they effectively feel about something going on in the app. They might hate how the UI looks (but possibly not up to the point where they stop using it; if they would do that, it's certainly out of the way altogether), but they might still feel safer with the throbber present.
That's unfortunately nothing you can measure when just asking people, you either have to just trust you, your usability people (if it's not yourself), and/or make usability tests where you give people tasks and see how they perform them and if they feel safe performing the tasks.
For your case i could imagine giving test candidates two versions of the UI, with and without throbber, and see whether each group waits until the process has finished or doesn't maybe try to kill/exit the app in between because they believe it's hanging.
I used to work at the company which started it. It's a platform for free software developers to meet usability specialists, and so far it's coming quite good. The KDE 4 HIG was designed by us ("us" as i still used to work there at the time this was done), and the people working there are certainly bright minded people, but there's always friction at the implementation front. In my experience it's not neccessarily easy to convince a developer that a given usability decision is the right one, even if someone with a background in usability makes the proposal.
Slashdot Mirror
IMO it *could* be just lameness or laziness on part of the installer team.
In my view Google is just a really big bunch of geeks like anyone else, and they do *not* especially profile up just like any Tie-and-Suit company like Microsoft, so i think it could very well be they just slopped this one.
# Passes the Acid 2 test.
# Chrome gets a score of 78 on the Acid 3 test, which is higher than FireFox 3 at 57, Safari at 72, and Opera at 45.
http://www.seifi.org/javascript/google-chrome-first-impressions.html
Akin to not reading the article before commenting, readers of slashdot also discard programs before having even tested them.
What a backwards view.
I know that in Germany (living here, have heard it from people dealing with government official agencies) a comparable system is being deployed as well. People are being hired to check for "incongruities" in the neighboorhood; to what full extent i don't know, but i do know that it encompasses the first listed things as well, like checking for litter, unsafe locations, etc.
Doesn't sound very good to me.
I hope my ISP doesn't get the same idea. I live in germany, and the biggest cable provider here (Kabel Deutschland) is also known for very similar tactics (warning letters to users because of exceeding an unknown quota, throttling bittorrent).
The only difference is with my 30mbps connection i can download around 316GB a day. Now, i don't do that but the faster the connection the bigger the risk of exceeding some quotas..
That's ONE way to innovate ;)
It probably has been said before, but i'd use open source software in any case; you can probably even if you don't know the toolkit used in detail, adapt the program so that it e.g. reconnects when disconnected, and maybe simplify the user interface.
Well, no one said how well unmarried men compare to this ;) At least with TWO wifes, you get some diversity in the distraction.
I switched on this GMail setting right after i realized the danger from reading the Defcon article; I just didn't think Google would be this careless with private data and assumed previously that in some AJAX-y way the actual GMail session data is being encrypted anyway.
Shame on me.
If you want to say that being free is simply being unconstrained to do what you try to do, then a robot following a program is "free," so long as nothing interferes with it trying to do what it is programmed to do.
If not the actual embodiment of "free will", then exactly this is at least what makes us feel "free", except that for humans it would be "as nothing interferes with it trying to do what it wants to do". I think that for etymological and semantic reasons a distinction between "free" as in pre-determined actions or not, and "free" as in spiritually/physically/constraint-free is of not much help. I think that in an anthroposophic sense, one could say that if you believe you are free, then you are free.
Sounds stupid to me
I'd say let him do it; at least then we can have a convincing position to claim that all the Neo-Lucasian works are crap and basically non-canon.
Could this have any implications for HIV? Sickening the HIV viruses so they die off in a host's body?
Sounds just like in the movie "Gattaca"
[...]there could be a relatively massive supply of a chemical compound which is able to produce breathable oxygen[...]
so... all we need is to start the reactor?
It's just a confession of not knowing how to build a tractor beam!
The obvious reaction of people doesn't matter; what matters is how they effectively feel about something going on in the app. They might hate how the UI looks (but possibly not up to the point where they stop using it; if they would do that, it's certainly out of the way altogether), but they might still feel safer with the throbber present.
That's unfortunately nothing you can measure when just asking people, you either have to just trust you, your usability people (if it's not yourself), and/or make usability tests where you give people tasks and see how they perform them and if they feel safe performing the tasks.
For your case i could imagine giving test candidates two versions of the UI, with and without throbber, and see whether each group waits until the process has finished or doesn't maybe try to kill/exit the app in between because they believe it's hanging.
It is still being worked on. Check also this page: http://season.openusability.org/index.php/projects/2008/kde4
OpenUsability
I used to work at the company which started it. It's a platform for free software developers to meet usability specialists, and so far it's coming quite good. The KDE 4 HIG was designed by us ("us" as i still used to work there at the time this was done), and the people working there are certainly bright minded people, but there's always friction at the implementation front. In my experience it's not neccessarily easy to convince a developer that a given usability decision is the right one, even if someone with a background in usability makes the proposal.
I want Photos in HD!
Google Blogger "Hosts 2% of World's Malware" That guy surely is one sly dog
so... Imagine a cloud of these!
Today was the first in a long time that a spam email on GMail made it to my inbox; could be just randomflux but seems to correlate.