Rivals of Microsoft's market-leading Web browser have attracted a flurry of interest since the company, fulfilling a regulatory requirement, started making it easier for European users of its Windows operating system to switch.
Mozilla, whose Firefox browser is the strongest competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer worldwide, said that more than 50,000 people had downloaded Firefox via a "choice screen" that has been popping up on Windows-equipped computers in Europe since the end of last month. The screen displays links to a dozen browsers, including Explorer, Firefox, Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari and Opera.
Opera Software, based in Oslo, said downloads of its browser in Belgium, France, Britain, Poland and Spain had tripled since the screen began to appear.
I can't help feeling that Microsoft could significantly improve this situation by including Bitlocker into Windows 10 Home edition.
They could make it even better if was one of the recommended actions in "Action Center" - meaning that Windows would occasionally nag you to set it up.
They are basically reusing the UI where you type in, say "myserver", Chrome takes you to a Google search for "myserver" but then puts a little bar underneath which says "Did you really mean http://myserver?"
The real problem is that security fixes are not well communicated, and that sometimes abused as a way to get users to take user-hostile changes.
I'd also argue that if Microsoft had taken steps to allow third parties (including independent developers, not just large software houses) the ability to have their applications registered on and then automatically updated through Windows Update then we probably wouldn't have had quite the situation without outdated software as we do now.
I know UWP changes things a bit but, even now, if you're not using that then every single application needs to roll their own update mechanism creating a tonne of unnecessary duplication that could have been handled by Windows Update.
...that Apple tried to avoid to begin with in iOS: Once you allow apps to run in the background, more and more apps want to do that and the bottom line is that the phone is busy all the time and sucks your battery dry and nobody knows why.
I remember the days of PocketPC where Microsoft wrestled with the same issue.
They allows pretty much everything to run in the background - which was not helped by the fact that the close button didn't actually close an app. Instead the operating system was supposed to "intelligently" manage load and the killing of apps. Not surprisingly it was rubbish at it so your PocketPC would often slow down to a crawl because of all the background apps running.
Apple learned from that mistake, Google did not.
(side note: To get around it people would install apps such as WisBar which would turn the close button into one that really did close)
That's what happens when you only fix the p1 and p2 bugs and let the other ones sit in your bug tracker forever. Eventually the "little annoyances" grow up and are overwhelming.
Amen. This is why I insist that once we hit a certain threshold of p3 defects (for a piece of functionality) that we bundle them up and treat them as a single p1.
It's not perfect by any means, but does mean that we avoid having a tonne of little annoyances lying around.
Some jerkoff signed up for an apple account with my email address.
Did they sign up using your Gmail address? I find that, of all the webmail services, Gmail seems to be the only one that has a problem with people signing up for things using an email address that they don't own. Interestingly enough, Gmail is the only service where the dots don't matter in an email address.
I suspect, but cannot prove, that there is a correlation between the two. From discussions with people who have this issue, the other people invariably use a variant of their email address with dots either added, removed or put in difference places.
I would except that my iPhone is incredibly good about not installing an update when I say "don't install this update".
You're kidding right?
You're given only two options - "install now" or "later", there is no "do not ask me again" (screen).
When you select "later", you get hit with a dark pattern that encourages you to enter your passcode to update in the early hours of the morning with a small text option "Remind me later" at the very bottom (screen). Since there is no "do not ask me again" option, this gives iOS licence to nag you a day or two later.
In addition, iOS will "helpfully" download the update to your phone even though you've constantly deferred the updates - meaning that you've lost a chunk of storage space without realizing it.
The rate at which their users install updates is certainly impressive - but it is more than helped by the way that Apple tends to ram it down your throat.
So Facebook already had the phone number, even though Mislove didn't provide it..... probably extracted from the white pages (phonebook).
I'd wager the answer is even easier simpler than that - someone else has Alan's office number in their contacts list and it was uploaded to Facebook.
FWIW this isn't anything to do with a shadow account (which is an account created by Facebook for someone who has never joined Facebook) since Alan was already on Facebook. It's more about Facebook storing additional information about a user based on data provided by other users.
The first part was a legitimate trip. The second part was the driver illegally extending the trip beyond its original destination, and charging me for it ($120 extra).
Funnily enough Uber tried to fix this issue by continuing to track the riders phone whilst the app was closed.
The theory being that if the rider and the driver parted ways, yet the driver reported taking the rider somewhere else, then Uber could easily verify if driver was trying to defraud the system.
Unfortunately people didn't like being tracked after their ride had finished and there was uproar. Apple's privacy change put the final nail in the coffin for it.
I look forward to the day I stop seeing people share the picture that claims that if you punch your PIN in backwards at an ATM then it alerts the police to the fact that you're being coerced into taking out money.
Every single person who shares that picture clearly hasn't taken 5 seconds of brain time to consider what would happen if your PIN was, say, 1221.
How many jobs can you name that fit your description of jobs that didn't exist when you were born, AND that can be performed by people of average skills and/or intelligence
At sizeable chunk of the jobs today that involve the use of the internet would easily fall into that category.
people were given the training to take advantage of the new jobs that would become available
Which jobs are these?
Many of us work in jobs today that simply didn't exist when we were born. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that there will be jobs 20 years from now that don't exist today.
I find all this hand-wringing really strange. History is littered with jobs that have been removed by automation (lift operators, street lamplighters, pinsetters) but also littered with jobs that have come about because of automation (the entire car and computer industry for starters).
TCL has burned the Alcatel brand, and threw it out.
Maybe it was better in the USA but, when I was working for a European telco back in 2002, Alcatel already had a reputation for producing low cost POS phones.
I really cannot see how TCL could have found any reputation left to burn.
The problem with WebOS wasn't WebOS but the fighting with Apple with its hacked iTunes support, back in the days where the iPod was still king, and iTunes was the best place to get music. Palm hired a bunch of Ex Apple Engineers to hack their phones to look like an iPod so it can sync with iTunes. Causing Apple to block the hack for Palm to make a new one.
Endless stories about Apple supporting features everyone else has offered for years....are Apple customers ever pleasantly surprised?
The Apple of yesteryear would take the dual SIM functionality (that everyone else has) and then add a couple of additional features (that no-one has) which would make the experience far better.
However, having seen what little effort they put into resolving the issues with notifications (they just basically copied the bare minimum from Google), I'm not convinced that they are of the add-something-special mindset any more.
Can't speak for Google or employees in the USA - but here in the UK contractors might not get the free perks, but more than make up for it in the additional money they earn.
A FTE project manager on £55k has a day rate of around £211. A bog standard contract project manager can easily earn double that. If you're a really good PM then you can earn three times that amount.
All of the contractors I know wouldn't want to give that up for some free hors d'oeuvres, free beer and the ability to go into a couple of extra offices.
Cashless means, ultimately, that no transaction happens without somebody getting to skim a little something off the top in the form of fees. You can't accept money digitally without paying somebody to provide that service. Some places even charge a "convenience fee" that is passed on to customers for paying a bill with a credit card. It's the pinnacle of racketeering.
A business that handles cash alone is still going to have associated costs - storage, reconciliation and transportation to the bank isn't free. Not to mention that a cash business runs an increased chance of employee theft.
Then there is the opportunity loss - 75% of customers prefer paying for high value items on a debit or credit card rather than carrying around wads of cash (increased risk of loss). If you don't offer card payment then that's fine, but don't be surprised when they go to someone else who does.
Finally, ever wondered why the supermarkets offer free cash-back? They are trying to get cash off their books because it's actually more expensive and time consuming to handle than digital money.
Amazon sells tablets fine with the major complaint being that they lack the Google Play store and standard Google apps. The market was there. All Google had to do was match the specs of Amazon devices and make it Google specific instead of Amazon specific.
Absolutely this.
I bought my daughter a Kindle 7 inch because she kept wanting to use my iPad and I didn't want to spend that much money on her. I put it in a childproof case along with a large microSD card and she uses it for YouTube, to play some games and watch her favourite films.
If Google had offered an alternative priced around the same (hell, I would happily pay a slight premium to avoid Amazon's "improvements") then I would have bought it in an instant.
Slashdot Mirror
When Microsoft implemented the browser ballot, the NY Times reported the following (emphasis mine):
It'll be interesting to see what happens.
I can't help feeling that Microsoft could significantly improve this situation by including Bitlocker into Windows 10 Home edition.
They could make it even better if was one of the recommended actions in "Action Center" - meaning that Windows would occasionally nag you to set it up.
Couple of questions:
It wasn't entirely clear from the summary /s
It's not much of a "warning".
They are basically reusing the UI where you type in, say "myserver", Chrome takes you to a Google search for "myserver" but then puts a little bar underneath which says "Did you really mean http://myserver?"
Suckiness (or lack thereof) is only one small part of the puzzle.
Someone could build something awesome - but if the people you want to chat to aren't on it then it'll go nowhere.
I'd also argue that if Microsoft had taken steps to allow third parties (including independent developers, not just large software houses) the ability to have their applications registered on and then automatically updated through Windows Update then we probably wouldn't have had quite the situation without outdated software as we do now.
I know UWP changes things a bit but, even now, if you're not using that then every single application needs to roll their own update mechanism creating a tonne of unnecessary duplication that could have been handled by Windows Update.
I remember the days of PocketPC where Microsoft wrestled with the same issue.
They allows pretty much everything to run in the background - which was not helped by the fact that the close button didn't actually close an app. Instead the operating system was supposed to "intelligently" manage load and the killing of apps. Not surprisingly it was rubbish at it so your PocketPC would often slow down to a crawl because of all the background apps running.
Apple learned from that mistake, Google did not.
(side note: To get around it people would install apps such as WisBar which would turn the close button into one that really did close)
Amen. This is why I insist that once we hit a certain threshold of p3 defects (for a piece of functionality) that we bundle them up and treat them as a single p1.
It's not perfect by any means, but does mean that we avoid having a tonne of little annoyances lying around.
I'm not sure I get your argument.
It sounds like you're fine with him committing securities fraud because he's CEO of a company doing cool things.
Did they sign up using your Gmail address? I find that, of all the webmail services, Gmail seems to be the only one that has a problem with people signing up for things using an email address that they don't own. Interestingly enough, Gmail is the only service where the dots don't matter in an email address.
I suspect, but cannot prove, that there is a correlation between the two. From discussions with people who have this issue, the other people invariably use a variant of their email address with dots either added, removed or put in difference places.
You're kidding right?
You're given only two options - "install now" or "later", there is no "do not ask me again" (screen).
When you select "later", you get hit with a dark pattern that encourages you to enter your passcode to update in the early hours of the morning with a small text option "Remind me later" at the very bottom (screen). Since there is no "do not ask me again" option, this gives iOS licence to nag you a day or two later.
In addition, iOS will "helpfully" download the update to your phone even though you've constantly deferred the updates - meaning that you've lost a chunk of storage space without realizing it.
The rate at which their users install updates is certainly impressive - but it is more than helped by the way that Apple tends to ram it down your throat.
I'd wager the answer is even easier simpler than that - someone else has Alan's office number in their contacts list and it was uploaded to Facebook.
FWIW this isn't anything to do with a shadow account (which is an account created by Facebook for someone who has never joined Facebook) since Alan was already on Facebook. It's more about Facebook storing additional information about a user based on data provided by other users.
IIRC they were still burning through money like it was going out of fashion.
Without Facebook (or someone else's) intervention, they were on a sure path to going bust.
Funnily enough Uber tried to fix this issue by continuing to track the riders phone whilst the app was closed.
The theory being that if the rider and the driver parted ways, yet the driver reported taking the rider somewhere else, then Uber could easily verify if driver was trying to defraud the system.
Unfortunately people didn't like being tracked after their ride had finished and there was uproar. Apple's privacy change put the final nail in the coffin for it.
I look forward to the day I stop seeing people share the picture that claims that if you punch your PIN in backwards at an ATM then it alerts the police to the fact that you're being coerced into taking out money.
Every single person who shares that picture clearly hasn't taken 5 seconds of brain time to consider what would happen if your PIN was, say, 1221.
At sizeable chunk of the jobs today that involve the use of the internet would easily fall into that category.
(I was born in the 70's)
Many of us work in jobs today that simply didn't exist when we were born. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that there will be jobs 20 years from now that don't exist today.
I find all this hand-wringing really strange. History is littered with jobs that have been removed by automation (lift operators, street lamplighters, pinsetters) but also littered with jobs that have come about because of automation (the entire car and computer industry for starters).
Maybe it was better in the USA but, when I was working for a European telco back in 2002, Alcatel already had a reputation for producing low cost POS phones.
I really cannot see how TCL could have found any reputation left to burn.
The most embarrassing thing about that whole debacle was that Apple provide an API for accessing the iTunes library which Palm could have used without being blocked.
The Apple of yesteryear would take the dual SIM functionality (that everyone else has) and then add a couple of additional features (that no-one has) which would make the experience far better.
However, having seen what little effort they put into resolving the issues with notifications (they just basically copied the bare minimum from Google), I'm not convinced that they are of the add-something-special mindset any more.
Can't speak for Google or employees in the USA - but here in the UK contractors might not get the free perks, but more than make up for it in the additional money they earn.
A FTE project manager on £55k has a day rate of around £211. A bog standard contract project manager can easily earn double that. If you're a really good PM then you can earn three times that amount.
All of the contractors I know wouldn't want to give that up for some free hors d'oeuvres, free beer and the ability to go into a couple of extra offices.
A business that handles cash alone is still going to have associated costs - storage, reconciliation and transportation to the bank isn't free. Not to mention that a cash business runs an increased chance of employee theft.
Then there is the opportunity loss - 75% of customers prefer paying for high value items on a debit or credit card rather than carrying around wads of cash (increased risk of loss). If you don't offer card payment then that's fine, but don't be surprised when they go to someone else who does.
Finally, ever wondered why the supermarkets offer free cash-back? They are trying to get cash off their books because it's actually more expensive and time consuming to handle than digital money.
She's two, so I can pretty much guarantee that she won't care as long as it plays Hey Duggee.
She can have an iPad when she's old enough to care for and appreciate the fact that it's six times more expensive than her Kindle Fire.
Absolutely this.
I bought my daughter a Kindle 7 inch because she kept wanting to use my iPad and I didn't want to spend that much money on her. I put it in a childproof case along with a large microSD card and she uses it for YouTube, to play some games and watch her favourite films.
If Google had offered an alternative priced around the same (hell, I would happily pay a slight premium to avoid Amazon's "improvements") then I would have bought it in an instant.
Google are missing a trick here.
In short, no it doesn't work anything like that.
Have a read of this, more specifically the sections titled "four party model" and "What happens when you buy something".