I forgot to mention in the first post, that it's more than just Firefox growing. Safari and Opera may be relatively small, but they're gaining as well. And there are quite a few other modern browsers around. You can expect several of them to grow over the next couple of years, probably at IE's expense.
So even aiming for just IE+Firefox support isn't enough to be sure that you're not still turning people away. Fortunately, many of the lesser-known browsers share the same rendering engine (or a variation thereof) with Firefox or Safari, making it easier to keep compatible. You basically have to target the standards and test in Gecko, IE, Opera and KHTML/Webkit.
Browser marketshare varies widely according to audience. And by audience I mean not just people's interests, but their geographic location. Opera is used more in Europe than North America. Firefox is used more by visitors to techie sites than by visitors to entertainment sites. I've got one site where Firefox accounts for 20% of visitors, second to IE at 70%, and another where Firefox is #1 at 44% and IE is #2 at 40%.
Firefox, the second-most-used browser, seems to have a marketshare of 10-20% depending on where you look. So you'll probably be blocking at least 10% of potential users, if not more, by restricting your site to IE users only. And that percentage continues to grow.
Keep in mind also that IE is only available on Windows (not counting emulation, which is of limited use). The Mac version has been discontinued. Unless you want to block all Mac users, you'd better provide at least Safari or Firefox compatibility.
Also, any site that already restricts browser access is going to have skewed results, because the potential audience using other browsers has either cloaked their browser to look like the supported one, or has gone somewhere else.
Since you say this is a new application, you'll want to get statistics from a similar product that works cross-platform.
Pulling IE from the product line was probably an attempt to put a stumbling block in Apple's path - no web browser.
Not likely. Safari was already in public beta by the time Microsoft formally discontinued IE for Mac (though it was already abandonware), and was well-established as the Mac OS X browser of choice by the time Microsoft pulled the plug.
IE/Mac's last major update, aside from security fixes, was in 2001. Safari was announced in January 2003. Six months later, Safari 1.0 hit the net and Microsoft declared they would stop updating IE/Mac. IE enjoyed another year and a half of support (during which time before Microsoft finally declared it dead and stopped offering it for download at the end of 2005.
By then, IE/Mac was essentially irrelevant to the Mac's viability.
Standard Oil for sure. But they've been replaced by Exxon-Mobil.
Well, considering that Exxon was once known as Esso, a name derived from the initials SO (having been one of the companies resulting from the breakup of Standard Oil)...
I recently redesigned a website and removed all the old Netscape 4 compatibility cruft. I still wanted the site to work in older browsers, though, so I reinstalled Netscape 4.8 to test it.
On reinstalling 4.8, I was reminded of the main problem AOL had with trying to promote Netscape the Browser: They couldn't resist turning it into an advertisement delivery platform. It installed "Get AOL!" icons on the desktop, came preloaded with a full set of links to partner sites on the bookmark toolbar, and even put a link to AOL on the IE links toolbar. Netscape 6 went even further, prompting the principle, "The personal toolbar is the personal toolbar, not the whorebar" in the Firefox Manifesto.
So on reading that the main selling point of Netscape 9 compared to Firefox is integration with the new Netscape website, it seems like more of the same stuff that drove people away.
Site integration in a browser needs to be unobtrusive, configurable, or both. Flock is somewhat better, because most features let you choose between at least two services. Their blog tools are even better, based on open APIs.
The Firefox/Opera/IE search field is a better example: There's only one site-integration item on the default toolbar, it's trivial to select another preset provider, and it's easy to add alternate services. Even Opera's context-menu encyclopedia/dictionary lookup, though it isn't configurable, is still unobtrusive.
Extensions are even better, because you don't (necessarily) have to convince the user to switch browsers. I can't believe I'm saying this, but if Netscape wants to provide browser tools that integrate with their website, I think it's time for Netscape to just create a pair of extensions, one for Firefox and one for IE, and retire the Netscape browser.
I have to wonder where this guy came up with the arrogance to believe that she couldn't possibly reach anyone higher than him.
I take it no one writes letters of complaint to the presidents of companies anymore?
My grandfather does this (or at least used to) whenever he feels he's been treated badly by a company's customer service. He often gets an apology, sometimes a partial refund or a coupon. Not that there's anything to refund in this case, but unless the head of customer service is also the head of the company, there's always someone higher up.
'I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.'
I suspect this will go down about as well as George W. Bush's statement to "Bring 'em on!"
On one hand, I hope it won't. More exploits means more boxes being exploited, and the victims are the end-users, not the people who claimed Vista was (relatively) impenetrable. On the other hand, it's hard to fight Schadenfreude.
Since I remembered Wallace & Gromit opening at #1 and staying in the top 5 for about a month, I did the same kind of math you did, using IMDB figures. Even looking at the domestic figures, W&G pulled in $56 million -- that's $26 more than the movie's budget. I doubt they spent $50 million advertising a $30 million movie, so I really have to wonder where the money went. Factor in the overseas gross and it looks like a healthy success.
My best guess is that they charged the Flushed Away losses against Wallace and Gromit to make them look like two flops instead of one success and a flop.
Ah, the 12-hour clock! Like inches, feet, yards and miles, something we can't quite bring ourselves to give up.
I probably have the Latin(?) spellings wrong, but here's what they mean:
AM = ante-meridian = before noon PM = post-meridian = after noon
12:01 AM, therefore, is one minute after 12, and before noon. So, one minute after midnight.
Exact noon and midnight can't properly be said to be "before" or "after" noon -- on'e spot-on and the other's equidistant between two noons. But consider that one second after midnight is 12:00:01 AM, and one second after noon is 12:00:01 PM. It's more consistent for 12:00 AM to be midnight and 12:00 PM to be noon.
00:01 would be correct in a 24-hour clock, but not in a 12-hour clock. After all, there's no hour 0 on a clock face.
The movies have done quite well so far. #5 is being released this year, leaving only two more books to adapt.
I can't imagine that the studio would stop making the films until they either run out of source material or stop making scads of money.
I have seen interviews in which some of the actors have talked about leaving the series, though. And considering the leads have basically spent their entire adolescence making these movies, that's somewhat understandable. In this case, the role(s) would almost certainly be recast -- unless movie #5 flops.
At one point in the article, Schneier comments on email encryption:
"Over the years, no one used encryption" in email, he says. "It had nothing to do with the technology," but instead the ease of use, he says.
This is a good example, because encryption is in common use on the web. To the end user, using a website over an SSL or TLS connection is no different from using one in the clear. It's almost too easy, which is why browsers have lock icons, color changes, and "You are leaving a secure site!" messages.
Of course, the problem is slightly different, since HTTPS is all about protecting a client-server connection from eavesdropping, not protecting the data itself. Once the data reaches the server, the server is entirely capable of doing something boneheaded with it like saving it in plain text in index.html. Similarly, data sent to the client can easily be printed out and left face up on the car seat.
Client-server connections are easy to deal with, because the only people that need to manage them are the software developers and the admins managing the server. Similarly, it's trivial for an end-user to send/retrieve mail using a TLS-encrypted SMTP, POP3, or IMAP connection.
Email is harder, because it's fundamentally peer-to-peer (layered through a series of client-server interactions), which means the end users actually have to manage a digital identity.
Um... yeah. Mr. Miserable Failure? We're going to have to ask you to move your desk down into the basement, mmmkay? And if you get a chance, while you're down there, you could squash some bugs in the code, that'd be great.
It's worth noting that California is still dealing with fallout from the 2000-2001 electricity crisis. The deregulated electricity market was vulnerable to gaming, resulting in skyrocketing prices and insufficient supply. Suppliers were scheduling deliberate blackouts in order to avoid overloading the power grid.
Think about that: California, a state with an economy comparable to some first-world nations, was going without electricity on a regular basis.
Fallout included the collapse of Enron, and the 2003 recall of governor Gray Davis, and subsequent election of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Southern California Edison continues to run a "Flex Your Power" campaign encouraging people to conserve electricity. In my latest bill, I got a flyer offering something like $200 in savings if I agreed to let SCE turn off my air conditioner temporarily during peak demand this summer (no, I'm not sure how they intend to do that). As it is, I only use the AC when absolutely necessary, so I'm probably saving more by not using it than I would by letting them shut it off -- but seriously, how often do you see a company begging you to buy less from them?
I admit it, I to have purposefully signed up for commercial emails that I later got tired of receiving. Instead of unsubscribing which was difficult I simply hit the Spam button on gmail.
When I first read your post, I thought to myself, "Great, another user messing up the effectiveness of the filters by blurring the line between legit mail and spam." Then I re-read it, and saw the phrase, "unsubscribing which was difficult," and realized you had a point.
IIRC, current law requires a "working" unsubscribe link. I don't think it says anything about making it easy. Best practices, however, do recommend making it easy to unsubscribe.
I find it very interesting that many of the technical mailing lists I'm on are actually easier to use than most marketing lists I've encountered. Mailman-managed lists, for instance: List-Unsubscribe is in the header, so a client could hypothetically include an "Unsubscribe" button. And the only information you need to provide to unsubscribe is your email address.
Common wisdom would have it that lists aimed at a less technical audience would be easier to use, but the opposite seems to be true.
What about the emails from legit sites where you intentionally checked the stupid little box that tells them you don't want your inbox littered with there newsletters, special offers, etc. - but they send it anyway?!
Then that's spam. If you said "Don't send me mail" and they send you mail, there's no ambiguity.
I have a Dell at home, bought in mid-2005. I honestly cannot remember whether it has a floppy drive or not. If it does, it's entirely possible I've never used it.
Apple stopped shipping floppy drives even earlier. Not just the iMacs, but going back to the PowerMac G3 tower in 1999. At the time I remember thinking it was insane...but we never got around to picking up that USB floppy drive for my wife's G4.
Except collecting the IP addresses then using them for marketing purposes is not necessary
How are they using the IP address for marketing purposes? They're using the number of IP addresses. No one can take the information they've released and determine that a computer at x.x.x.x is running Fedora. (And the information they have, they would have had anyway -- just like Slashdot knows the IP address you posted from.) As the GP said, it's no different from a website processing its server logs and reporting that it had X unique visitors during period Y.
Come to think of it, since yum fetches data over HTTP, it is a website processing its server logs and reporting the number of unique visitors.
The ACS anomaly comes just two months before the instrument's projected five-year warranty expired, Hubble managers said. Spacewalking astronauts installed the camera on March 7, 2002 during NASA's STS-109 mission aboard the Columbia orbiter.
In all seriousness, though, it's worth noting that this camera is comparatively new (installed 12 years after launch) and that it's failed more or less on schedule. Too bad NASA doesn't plan on sending a mission until next year. Also worth noting is that it's not the only instrument on the telescope... though it is the one that takes the purty pictures that garner mainstream attention.
If you want a server, don't use a bleeding-edge distro. Use a stable one like Debian, RHEL/CentOS, etc. If you want something up to date, then use something like Gentoo or Ubuntu or Fedora.
Is it just me, or is this an obvious conclusion?
Re:Was it a benefit? Don't know, never heard of it
on
SpamArchive.org No More?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Considering this is the first time I've heard of it, probably not as much as it should have been. Did it help SpamAssassin
According to Justin Mason, it didn't help SpamAssassin much, at least where testing the effectiveness of rules was concerned. The main problems were that (1) the data was too anonymized to be able to properly test header checks and (2) submissions weren't verified, meaning someone would have to go through the archive and check to make sure there wasn't any legit mail that had accidentally been dropped into the wrong folder. (And, of course, unless you're the original recipient, you can't be absolutely certain whether something was solicited or not.)
Slashdot Mirror
I forgot to mention in the first post, that it's more than just Firefox growing. Safari and Opera may be relatively small, but they're gaining as well. And there are quite a few other modern browsers around. You can expect several of them to grow over the next couple of years, probably at IE's expense.
So even aiming for just IE+Firefox support isn't enough to be sure that you're not still turning people away. Fortunately, many of the lesser-known browsers share the same rendering engine (or a variation thereof) with Firefox or Safari, making it easier to keep compatible. You basically have to target the standards and test in Gecko, IE, Opera and KHTML/Webkit.
Browser marketshare varies widely according to audience. And by audience I mean not just people's interests, but their geographic location. Opera is used more in Europe than North America. Firefox is used more by visitors to techie sites than by visitors to entertainment sites. I've got one site where Firefox accounts for 20% of visitors, second to IE at 70%, and another where Firefox is #1 at 44% and IE is #2 at 40%.
Firefox, the second-most-used browser, seems to have a marketshare of 10-20% depending on where you look. So you'll probably be blocking at least 10% of potential users, if not more, by restricting your site to IE users only. And that percentage continues to grow.
Keep in mind also that IE is only available on Windows (not counting emulation, which is of limited use). The Mac version has been discontinued. Unless you want to block all Mac users, you'd better provide at least Safari or Firefox compatibility.
Also, any site that already restricts browser access is going to have skewed results, because the potential audience using other browsers has either cloaked their browser to look like the supported one, or has gone somewhere else.
Since you say this is a new application, you'll want to get statistics from a similar product that works cross-platform.
Not likely. Safari was already in public beta by the time Microsoft formally discontinued IE for Mac (though it was already abandonware), and was well-established as the Mac OS X browser of choice by the time Microsoft pulled the plug.
IE/Mac's last major update, aside from security fixes, was in 2001. Safari was announced in January 2003. Six months later, Safari 1.0 hit the net and Microsoft declared they would stop updating IE/Mac. IE enjoyed another year and a half of support (during which time before Microsoft finally declared it dead and stopped offering it for download at the end of 2005.
By then, IE/Mac was essentially irrelevant to the Mac's viability.
Well, considering that Exxon was once known as Esso, a name derived from the initials SO (having been one of the companies resulting from the breakup of Standard Oil)...
I recently redesigned a website and removed all the old Netscape 4 compatibility cruft. I still wanted the site to work in older browsers, though, so I reinstalled Netscape 4.8 to test it.
On reinstalling 4.8, I was reminded of the main problem AOL had with trying to promote Netscape the Browser: They couldn't resist turning it into an advertisement delivery platform. It installed "Get AOL!" icons on the desktop, came preloaded with a full set of links to partner sites on the bookmark toolbar, and even put a link to AOL on the IE links toolbar. Netscape 6 went even further, prompting the principle, "The personal toolbar is the personal toolbar, not the whorebar" in the Firefox Manifesto.
So on reading that the main selling point of Netscape 9 compared to Firefox is integration with the new Netscape website, it seems like more of the same stuff that drove people away.
Site integration in a browser needs to be unobtrusive, configurable, or both. Flock is somewhat better, because most features let you choose between at least two services. Their blog tools are even better, based on open APIs.
The Firefox/Opera/IE search field is a better example: There's only one site-integration item on the default toolbar, it's trivial to select another preset provider, and it's easy to add alternate services. Even Opera's context-menu encyclopedia/dictionary lookup, though it isn't configurable, is still unobtrusive.
Extensions are even better, because you don't (necessarily) have to convince the user to switch browsers. I can't believe I'm saying this, but if Netscape wants to provide browser tools that integrate with their website, I think it's time for Netscape to just create a pair of extensions, one for Firefox and one for IE, and retire the Netscape browser.
Hmm, I wonder where you might be able to find such a browser that supports modern technology...
...where the company services the customers.
I have to wonder where this guy came up with the arrogance to believe that she couldn't possibly reach anyone higher than him.
I take it no one writes letters of complaint to the presidents of companies anymore?
My grandfather does this (or at least used to) whenever he feels he's been treated badly by a company's customer service. He often gets an apology, sometimes a partial refund or a coupon. Not that there's anything to refund in this case, but unless the head of customer service is also the head of the company, there's always someone higher up.
I suspect this will go down about as well as George W. Bush's statement to "Bring 'em on!"
On one hand, I hope it won't. More exploits means more boxes being exploited, and the victims are the end-users, not the people who claimed Vista was (relatively) impenetrable. On the other hand, it's hard to fight Schadenfreude.
Nope, it's 11 days. Patch Tuesday is always the second Tuesday of the month, and that's not until the 13th.
According to the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday, Dreamworks actually reported a $25-million loss on Wallace & Gromit . (If that link locks you out, the relevant quotes are in the next one.)
Since I remembered Wallace & Gromit opening at #1 and staying in the top 5 for about a month, I did the same kind of math you did, using IMDB figures. Even looking at the domestic figures, W&G pulled in $56 million -- that's $26 more than the movie's budget. I doubt they spent $50 million advertising a $30 million movie, so I really have to wonder where the money went. Factor in the overseas gross and it looks like a healthy success.
My best guess is that they charged the Flushed Away losses against Wallace and Gromit to make them look like two flops instead of one success and a flop.
Ah, the 12-hour clock! Like inches, feet, yards and miles, something we can't quite bring ourselves to give up.
I probably have the Latin(?) spellings wrong, but here's what they mean:
AM = ante-meridian = before noon
PM = post-meridian = after noon
12:01 AM, therefore, is one minute after 12, and before noon. So, one minute after midnight.
Exact noon and midnight can't properly be said to be "before" or "after" noon -- on'e spot-on and the other's equidistant between two noons. But consider that one second after midnight is 12:00:01 AM, and one second after noon is 12:00:01 PM. It's more consistent for 12:00 AM to be midnight and 12:00 PM to be noon.
00:01 would be correct in a 24-hour clock, but not in a 12-hour clock. After all, there's no hour 0 on a clock face.
The movies have done quite well so far. #5 is being released this year, leaving only two more books to adapt.
I can't imagine that the studio would stop making the films until they either run out of source material or stop making scads of money.
I have seen interviews in which some of the actors have talked about leaving the series, though. And considering the leads have basically spent their entire adolescence making these movies, that's somewhat understandable. In this case, the role(s) would almost certainly be recast -- unless movie #5 flops.
At one point in the article, Schneier comments on email encryption:
This is a good example, because encryption is in common use on the web. To the end user, using a website over an SSL or TLS connection is no different from using one in the clear. It's almost too easy, which is why browsers have lock icons, color changes, and "You are leaving a secure site!" messages.
Of course, the problem is slightly different, since HTTPS is all about protecting a client-server connection from eavesdropping, not protecting the data itself. Once the data reaches the server, the server is entirely capable of doing something boneheaded with it like saving it in plain text in index.html. Similarly, data sent to the client can easily be printed out and left face up on the car seat.
Client-server connections are easy to deal with, because the only people that need to manage them are the software developers and the admins managing the server. Similarly, it's trivial for an end-user to send/retrieve mail using a TLS-encrypted SMTP, POP3, or IMAP connection.
Email is harder, because it's fundamentally peer-to-peer (layered through a series of client-server interactions), which means the end users actually have to manage a digital identity.
Um... yeah. Mr. Miserable Failure? We're going to have to ask you to move your desk down into the basement, mmmkay? And if you get a chance, while you're down there, you could squash some bugs in the code, that'd be great.
It's worth noting that California is still dealing with fallout from the 2000-2001 electricity crisis. The deregulated electricity market was vulnerable to gaming, resulting in skyrocketing prices and insufficient supply. Suppliers were scheduling deliberate blackouts in order to avoid overloading the power grid.
Think about that: California, a state with an economy comparable to some first-world nations, was going without electricity on a regular basis.
Fallout included the collapse of Enron, and the 2003 recall of governor Gray Davis, and subsequent election of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Southern California Edison continues to run a "Flex Your Power" campaign encouraging people to conserve electricity. In my latest bill, I got a flyer offering something like $200 in savings if I agreed to let SCE turn off my air conditioner temporarily during peak demand this summer (no, I'm not sure how they intend to do that). As it is, I only use the AC when absolutely necessary, so I'm probably saving more by not using it than I would by letting them shut it off -- but seriously, how often do you see a company begging you to buy less from them?
When I first read your post, I thought to myself, "Great, another user messing up the effectiveness of the filters by blurring the line between legit mail and spam." Then I re-read it, and saw the phrase, "unsubscribing which was difficult," and realized you had a point.
IIRC, current law requires a "working" unsubscribe link. I don't think it says anything about making it easy. Best practices, however, do recommend making it easy to unsubscribe.
I find it very interesting that many of the technical mailing lists I'm on are actually easier to use than most marketing lists I've encountered. Mailman-managed lists, for instance: List-Unsubscribe is in the header, so a client could hypothetically include an "Unsubscribe" button. And the only information you need to provide to unsubscribe is your email address.
Common wisdom would have it that lists aimed at a less technical audience would be easier to use, but the opposite seems to be true.
Then that's spam. If you said "Don't send me mail" and they send you mail, there's no ambiguity.
Wow... Imagine a Beowulf cluster of AJAX!
I have a Dell at home, bought in mid-2005. I honestly cannot remember whether it has a floppy drive or not. If it does, it's entirely possible I've never used it.
Apple stopped shipping floppy drives even earlier. Not just the iMacs, but going back to the PowerMac G3 tower in 1999. At the time I remember thinking it was insane...but we never got around to picking up that USB floppy drive for my wife's G4.
How are they using the IP address for marketing purposes? They're using the number of IP addresses. No one can take the information they've released and determine that a computer at x.x.x.x is running Fedora. (And the information they have, they would have had anyway -- just like Slashdot knows the IP address you posted from.) As the GP said, it's no different from a website processing its server logs and reporting that it had X unique visitors during period Y.
Come to think of it, since yum fetches data over HTTP, it is a website processing its server logs and reporting the number of unique visitors.
FTA:
In all seriousness, though, it's worth noting that this camera is comparatively new (installed 12 years after launch) and that it's failed more or less on schedule. Too bad NASA doesn't plan on sending a mission until next year. Also worth noting is that it's not the only instrument on the telescope... though it is the one that takes the purty pictures that garner mainstream attention.
If you want a server, don't use a bleeding-edge distro. Use a stable one like Debian, RHEL/CentOS, etc. If you want something up to date, then use something like Gentoo or Ubuntu or Fedora.
Is it just me, or is this an obvious conclusion?
According to Justin Mason, it didn't help SpamAssassin much, at least where testing the effectiveness of rules was concerned. The main problems were that (1) the data was too anonymized to be able to properly test header checks and (2) submissions weren't verified, meaning someone would have to go through the archive and check to make sure there wasn't any legit mail that had accidentally been dropped into the wrong folder. (And, of course, unless you're the original recipient, you can't be absolutely certain whether something was solicited or not.)
Yes, but imagine how much less coffee you'll have to drink when you dunk your two-coffee-cups-equivalent donut in your coffee!
That's three cups worth of caffeine in only one cup of liquid! Just think of the time you'll save on bathroom breaks!
First global warming winnowed down the diversity of species.
Later, global cooling wiped out the ones that were left.
From what they can tell, the Chicxulub impact occured too early to have triggered the global cooling.