Frankly, I don't think it's worth an independent study.
I mean, come on, the sample size was *one* (in the experiment group, and one in the control group). If that doesn't scream "statistically insignificant", I don't know what would.
If they want anyone else to take their research seriously enough to consider reproducing it, *they're* going to have to take it seriously enough to conduct it with a larger sample population. If they themselves can't be bothered to actually run the experiment for real, why would anyone else?
> I'm thinking the 11 year cycle was empiricaly determined
The eleven-year cycle is immediately obvious if you look at the data, because we have been collecting data for many times that long, so the pattern is very evident.
But the eleven-year cycle is the *short* cycle of solar activity. There may very likely be longer cycles, but they're less obvious, because we haven't been collecting data for long enough to repeat the longer cycle(s) as many times as the short cycle.
We do know that what is currently happening has happened before, but we don't know why, or how often, or whether it occurs in any kind of regular (predictable) cycle. We've really only observed this *once* before, so it's very hard to extrapolate meaningfully.
> I look for low density and a lack of diversity in restaurants.
You laugh, but low population density has a lot of advantages (lower cost of living, lower crime rates, the ability to actually get to know most of the people in town...), and those of us who prefer our own cooking often don't give a fig about the restaurants near where we live. Personally, I only go to restaurants when I'm too far away from home to get there at mealtimes. I've never been to most of the restaurants near my house. I have NEVER had restaurant food that I thought was as good as homemade.
I consider the ideal size of a city to be just barely large enough to support a reasonable range of the kinds of local businesses that you need to visit with any frequency (hardware store, grocery, that sort of thing), so you don't keep constantly finding yourself having to drive to another (larger) city for things. So, somewhere around 5-10 thousand people, give or take. Preferably with both woods and Amish farms in the immediate vicinity.
My stats *per page visit* say that IE8 climbed past IE6 in the third quarter of 2009, then climbed past IE7 as well in the fourth quarter. IE7 is now losing share faster than IE6, and it looks like they may switch places later this year, if the trend continues. As of April, IE8 is the only version of IE that's ahead of (all versions combined of) Firefox. Safari (all versions combined) is ahead of IE6 and will probably be ahead of IE7 later this year.
Granted, these stats are based on one website only, but I believe what I'm seeing is fairly typical.
But as I said, these numbers are for page visits, NOT for individual users. Users who spend a lot of time on the internet are *substantially* more likely to be using a newer browser. I am fairly sure that the per-user numbers, if they could be accurately measured, would look different: IE6 numbers would be higher, and non-IE numbers would be lower.
I mean, my per-page-load numbers also suggest that Mac OS X gets several times as much use as Windows 98, but I am CERTAIN that Windows 98 has a larger number of total users among our patrons. They just don't spend as much time on the web.
Windows 98 users, at this point, are people whose only computer is pushing ten years old, possibly older. The computer is NOT a major part of their lives. In most cases they got it secondhand, often for free, often from relatives, e.g., from their kids. Typically they turn it on for a few minutes a couple of times a week, sometimes less. Mac users, on the other hand, are people who go out of their way to buy the kind of computer they want because it's significant to them.
Similarly, users who put up with IE6 are not the people who spend eighteen hours a day online.
Wait, do you mean *on the job* freedom of speech, or only when you go home?
If the former, that would certainly change the nature of *my* job in fundamental ways.
I work at a public library. At work (and in the presence of the public), I'm not supposed to express an opinion on basically *anything* (well, anything of substance; I can talk about the weather). Religion, politics, history, education, science, you name it. This goes to extremes in my line of work. When a patron asks me for books on how the fall of Rome resulted in the creation of angels (yes, this is a real example), I'm supposed to try to help them find books on that, without comment. In practice this means books on angels and books on the history of Rome. I know very well that the books on the history of Rome won't say anything about the creation of angels and the books on angels won't say anything about the fall of Rome, but I cannot *tell* the patron this. I have to keep a straight face while I help them find the books.
So my job would be pretty radically different if on-the-job free speech were legally mandatory.
> This also happens to be exactly why I keep my Facebook free of anyone from work.
I try to minimize *any* contact with my coworkers outside of work, for several reasons.
In the first place, spending non-work time in contact with my coworkers would risk the development of personal friendships with some of them more than others, which would create a conflict of interests, opening up the door for unintentional favoritism, compromising my ability to perform my job duties objectively and putting me in a difficult position ethically. I realize it's not officially against (most employers') policy to be friends with a coworker (to *date* coworkers, of course, is almost universally frowned upon, but mere friendships are usually tolerated), but it's still not a good idea.
Additionally, I already spend an entire shift with these people five days a week. Frankly, that's significantly more time than I spend with my closest friends. Isn't that enough?
> So does this tell us how to travel faster than light?
Oh, that's easy. You just redefine your reference frame to match the inertial reference frame of the photons, so then the light is stationary, and you are moving roughly at c.
Of course this technique does have some limitations, e.g., most of your surroundings necessarily go with you.
> Okay I have learned to live with things like putting "Portugal, Europe" instead of just Portugal
I haven't. People who don't know where Portugal is (and yeah, I know some people like that) are unlikely to gain significant additional insight by the addition of the word "Europe". You'd have to have slept through every history and geography class you ever had starting in third grade. Such people don't know enough about Europe to attach any real meaning to it as a location.
I mean, there are some countries I could maybe see this for. "Kiribati, in the south Pacific", for instance, is arguably worth qualifying. "Guyana, South America" I could maybe understand.
But Portugal? Come on. You might as well say "Japan, Asia" and "Canada, North America". It's stupid.
> but was there a reason that "Memorial Day weekend" seemed more appropriate than an actual date?
Meh. If Americans are supposed to know where Portugal is (and I think we should), it also seems reasonable to me that English-speaking people in Europe should know when Memorial Day weekend is. Americans are MUCH more likely to take this for granted than, say, the location of most US states. I wouldn't complain if a British news site aimed mostly at a British audience said something was on Boxing Day without giving the date. Even if I don't *know* the date of the holiday in question, it's easy enough to look up. I don't think it's necessary to dumb things down quite that much.
> I worked at McDonald's, and we got one 30 minute break no matter how many hours we worked.
Interesting. That's a violation of McDonald's policy. You were supposed to get one thirty minute break for each multiple of five hours that your shift exceeded. So, if you work less than five hours, they don't have to give you a break; work more than ten, and they're supposed to give you two breaks.
Those are the rules for adults. Minors aren't allowed to work more than eight hours in a day, so they're never supposed to need a second break.
> they could offer their manufacturers and workers a lot better working conditions
They could, and arguably should.
But that wouldn't necessarily reduce the suicide rate. In fact, statistically, wealthier people and those living in countries with better working conditions are *more* likely to attempt suicide, all else being equal. (I'm not saying wealth and good conditions cause suicide, just that they don't seem to prevent it.)
GPL, LGPL, BSD, MIT, X11, Artistic, MPL, Apache, Sun, GPL3, CC share-alike, CC attribution, CC non-commercial share-alike, public domain, 4-clause BSD, 2-clause BSD. That's sixteen right there, and I bet they're all in the top twenty and include at least nine of the top ten. How far off am I, and which four did I miss?
> We don't call them 'third world countries' anymore. We call > them 'developing nations'. The former is so Cold War...
The latter is a cruel joke. I know it's considered (in the Western world) to be politically correct, but for the life of me I can't figure out why. It's much more condescending, more insulting, laced with sarcastic implications. The worst part is the bitter irony: if a country starts *actually* developing to any meaningful extent (like, say, South Korea) people quickly stop calling it a "developing country". That puts a really unpleasant spotlight on the disingenuous nature of the thing.
> Remember that your average American criminal isn't that > dangerous. For most of them, the most you can expect is to > be a victim of having to smell pot smoke, or seeing junkies.
You've changed the subject.
Upthread we were talking about actually going to prison. I believe your exact words were "throw you in jail to rot".
Now you're talking about the kinds of crimes that generally result in little games like the court ordering the offender to appear in court several times, taking away his driver's license for a few weeks, making him go to rehab meetings and such, fines, and other minor inconveniences. It is theoretically possible to go to jail for possession of marijuana, in the same sense that it is theoretically possible (for a typical person) to meet and fall in love with an eccentric billionaire and only find out they're rich after the wedding, but it is unlikely in the extreme.
> I have a feeling that I am not alone in preferring getting robbed > to sitting 20 years in jail for a crime I didn't commit
Twenty years for petty theft? Now you're just being silly. That's a murder sentence, or aggravated armed robbery at the very least.
I suppose you *could* get a twenty-year sentence for non-violent theft, theoretically, if you try to steal every Mercedes in Manhattan, lead the police on a high-speed chase, refuse to plea bargain, decline council, then flip off the jury and swear at the judge, but even then you'd probably make parole after five or maybe ten. The prisons are crowded. They don't like to keep non-violent criminals.
> After all the government never, never arrests > innocent people and throws them in jail to rot.
Wrong argument.
I can actually live with an *occasional* (accidental) instance of an innocent person going to jail, as long as it's greatly (and I do mean greatly) outnumbered by the actual criminals they arrest and convict by the same means. I mean, no system is perfect. If one conviction in a thousand sends an innocent person to prison, that's unfortunate (and something you try to avoid), but it's clearly better for society as a whole than letting 300 of the thousand go loose. Statistically, you're many times more likely to be a victim of one of the criminals who was let go than to be thrown in jail for something you didn't do.
Additionally, you seem on the face of it to be arguing that if law enforcement has access to more information they will be more likely to put the wrong person in jail on average. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Perhaps I have misunderstood your argument.
The larger problem with a backdoor feature intended for use by law enforcement is that, in practice, they (law enforcement) aren't the only ones who end up using it, or even the primary ones who end up using it. Anything the police can do, criminals can do also, and they will.
Consequently, I'm in favor of mobile devices with remote wipe features that work as advertised, and I'm NOT in favor of including backdoors "for the police". Such a feature would be very likely to have unintended consequences that would have nothing to do with law enforcement. It's just a bad idea. Well-intentioned maybe, but still a bad idea. I'm sorry that this means the Secret Service has a harder time doing their job, really I am (because I'd prefer for their job to be done well), but that's still how it has to be. People's devices get stolen, and they need the ability to (re)secure the data.
> They're concerned with counterfeiters and threats to dignitaries > and the President. If having the information off the phone helps > them capture counterfeiters and helps to uncover terroristic > plots against US dignitaries, fine by me.
I could maybe live with that, IF there were some way for a reasonable and intelligent person to be confident that a feature intended to allow the Secret Service to retrieve data for the purpose saving the President or stopping counterfeiters could not be used by anyone else for any other purpose.
They *theoretically* could, but only if they were completely immune to boredom. There's nothing more mind-numbingly dull than reading other people's mail.
I think that's basically Microsoft's point. Windows XP is in extended support now, which basically means security updates for whatever issues Microsoft deems important. SP3, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty much *is* one of those updates (or incorporates a number of them, however you want to look at it). People who aren't willing to install SP3 don't appear to be very interested in taking advantage of the support that Microsoft is providing. So why would Microsoft feel obligated to continue putting special effort into supporting them, separately from everyone else?
I'm not a big Microsoft fanatic, but this seems logical to me. SP3 has been out for a while now, plenty of time for IT departments to do whatever testing and whatnot they need to do. So at this point, hey, SP3 (and the updates that follow it) are the support that's available (for Windows XP). Take it or leave it.
If you don't like XP SP3, you could always upgrade to Seven.
(And, of course, if you don't like ANY of Microsoft's options, there are always also the other options; Microsoft understandably feels little compulsion to remind you of those, but you basically have to live in a cave with no internet connection to avoid hearing about them at all.)
Ordinarily, I would say using a service located in the US would be at least as good as using one located in Germany.
But in this case, Google happens to be in the US, so if the interface you use to access Google is *not* in the US (Germany, for instance, is not in the US), that means it's in a distinct jurisdiction. Consequently, if anybody nefarious wanted to do dastardly things that require finding out what you're searching for, they'd have to operate in at least two countries. So that would be at least a little bit harder for them, at least potentially. Of course, it also matters where *you* are. If *you* are in Germany, then that pretty much negates the advantage of using a Germany-based service. OTOH, if you are in the US, the Germany-based service is even more advantageous.
That all probably sounds a bit paranoid, but to the sort of person who wants an SSL-protected web search interface, such things might seem relevant. Personally the only thing I really care about SSL for is secure shell (SSH), but YMMV.
Now, if they want to do perf improvements to try to equal Chrome's Javascript benchmark speeds or something, I have no objection. I don't *care*, but I don't object either.
But please don't emulate the Chrome UI. It sucks. Bad.
> I mean, what next, A Ribbon?
Please, no.
> Its bad enough that they have a huge round back button
The exact appearance of the back button actually isn't important to me. As long as the back button is in the right place (directly under the File menu, thank you very much) and *does* what it's supposed to do, I'm happy with it.
I eventually gave in and downgraded to Firefox 2, when it became clear that certain data-loss and stability bugs in the 3.x series were not going to be fixed any time soon. Performance isn't as snappy, but I don't really care that much. I don't have to worry that I'm going to lose tabs if something goes wrong. That's worth a lot to me. And the UI is actually *better*. All the recent UI changes have been for the worse, as far as I'm concerned. In fact, the only thing I really miss from 2.x is text-shadow support, and that's an underlying Gecko improvement.
Now for 4.x they're talking about emulating Chrome, which I tried out briefly and found very much not to my liking, from a UI standpoint. I think the Firefox team have lost their way.
> The problem, however, is that the vast majority of the population lives in urban centers.
It depends what you count as an "urban center".
The urban-versus-rural stats you get for the US from things like the census can be misleading, because they consider all municipalities to be urban, no matter how small the town is. So for instance people who live in Mount Gilead, Ohio, are counted as "urban", even though the high school has "drive your tractor to school day" every year, if you know what I'm talking about. If you live in a municipality, you're "urban", on paper.
Most of the population of the US lives in small and medium-sized cities, with populations ranging from a few hundred to fifty thousand or so. (Most of the *rest* live in big cities and/or suburbs thereof. A small percentage live outside any municipality.)
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, I don't think it's worth an independent study.
I mean, come on, the sample size was *one* (in the experiment group, and one in the control group). If that doesn't scream "statistically insignificant", I don't know what would.
If they want anyone else to take their research seriously enough to consider reproducing it, *they're* going to have to take it seriously enough to conduct it with a larger sample population. If they themselves can't be bothered to actually run the experiment for real, why would anyone else?
> I'm thinking the 11 year cycle was empiricaly determined
The eleven-year cycle is immediately obvious if you look at the data, because we have been collecting data for many times that long, so the pattern is very evident.
But the eleven-year cycle is the *short* cycle of solar activity. There may very likely be longer cycles, but they're less obvious, because we haven't been collecting data for long enough to repeat the longer cycle(s) as many times as the short cycle.
We do know that what is currently happening has happened before, but we don't know why, or how often, or whether it occurs in any kind of regular (predictable) cycle. We've really only observed this *once* before, so it's very hard to extrapolate meaningfully.
> I look for low density and a lack of diversity in restaurants.
You laugh, but low population density has a lot of advantages (lower cost of living, lower crime rates, the ability to actually get to know most of the people in town...), and those of us who prefer our own cooking often don't give a fig about the restaurants near where we live. Personally, I only go to restaurants when I'm too far away from home to get there at mealtimes. I've never been to most of the restaurants near my house. I have NEVER had restaurant food that I thought was as good as homemade.
I consider the ideal size of a city to be just barely large enough to support a reasonable range of the kinds of local businesses that you need to visit with any frequency (hardware store, grocery, that sort of thing), so you don't keep constantly finding yourself having to drive to another (larger) city for things. So, somewhere around 5-10 thousand people, give or take. Preferably with both woods and Amish farms in the immediate vicinity.
I think it depends how you measure.
My stats *per page visit* say that IE8 climbed past IE6 in the third quarter of 2009, then climbed past IE7 as well in the fourth quarter. IE7 is now losing share faster than IE6, and it looks like they may switch places later this year, if the trend continues. As of April, IE8 is the only version of IE that's ahead of (all versions combined of) Firefox. Safari (all versions combined) is ahead of IE6 and will probably be ahead of IE7 later this year.
Granted, these stats are based on one website only, but I believe what I'm seeing is fairly typical.
But as I said, these numbers are for page visits, NOT for individual users. Users who spend a lot of time on the internet are *substantially* more likely to be using a newer browser. I am fairly sure that the per-user numbers, if they could be accurately measured, would look different: IE6 numbers would be higher, and non-IE numbers would be lower.
I mean, my per-page-load numbers also suggest that Mac OS X gets several times as much use as Windows 98, but I am CERTAIN that Windows 98 has a larger number of total users among our patrons. They just don't spend as much time on the web.
Windows 98 users, at this point, are people whose only computer is pushing ten years old, possibly older. The computer is NOT a major part of their lives. In most cases they got it secondhand, often for free, often from relatives, e.g., from their kids. Typically they turn it on for a few minutes a couple of times a week, sometimes less. Mac users, on the other hand, are people who go out of their way to buy the kind of computer they want because it's significant to them.
Similarly, users who put up with IE6 are not the people who spend eighteen hours a day online.
Wait, do you mean *on the job* freedom of speech, or only when you go home?
If the former, that would certainly change the nature of *my* job in fundamental ways.
I work at a public library. At work (and in the presence of the public), I'm not supposed to express an opinion on basically *anything* (well, anything of substance; I can talk about the weather). Religion, politics, history, education, science, you name it. This goes to extremes in my line of work. When a patron asks me for books on how the fall of Rome resulted in the creation of angels (yes, this is a real example), I'm supposed to try to help them find books on that, without comment. In practice this means books on angels and books on the history of Rome. I know very well that the books on the history of Rome won't say anything about the creation of angels and the books on angels won't say anything about the fall of Rome, but I cannot *tell* the patron this. I have to keep a straight face while I help them find the books.
So my job would be pretty radically different if on-the-job free speech were legally mandatory.
> This also happens to be exactly why I keep my Facebook free of anyone from work.
I try to minimize *any* contact with my coworkers outside of work, for several reasons.
In the first place, spending non-work time in contact with my coworkers would risk the development of personal friendships with some of them more than others, which would create a conflict of interests, opening up the door for unintentional favoritism, compromising my ability to perform my job duties objectively and putting me in a difficult position ethically. I realize it's not officially against (most employers') policy to be friends with a coworker (to *date* coworkers, of course, is almost universally frowned upon, but mere friendships are usually tolerated), but it's still not a good idea.
Additionally, I already spend an entire shift with these people five days a week. Frankly, that's significantly more time than I spend with my closest friends. Isn't that enough?
> So does this tell us how to travel faster than light?
Oh, that's easy. You just redefine your reference frame to match the inertial reference frame of the photons, so then the light is stationary, and you are moving roughly at c.
Of course this technique does have some limitations, e.g., most of your surroundings necessarily go with you.
What you need to do is decouple the heisenberg compensators and allow them to realign at random.
> Okay I have learned to live with things like putting "Portugal, Europe" instead of just Portugal
I haven't. People who don't know where Portugal is (and yeah, I know some people like that) are unlikely to gain significant additional insight by the addition of the word "Europe". You'd have to have slept through every history and geography class you ever had starting in third grade. Such people don't know enough about Europe to attach any real meaning to it as a location.
I mean, there are some countries I could maybe see this for. "Kiribati, in the south Pacific", for instance, is arguably worth qualifying. "Guyana, South America" I could maybe understand.
But Portugal? Come on. You might as well say "Japan, Asia" and "Canada, North America". It's stupid.
> but was there a reason that "Memorial Day weekend" seemed more appropriate than an actual date?
Meh. If Americans are supposed to know where Portugal is (and I think we should), it also seems reasonable to me that English-speaking people in Europe should know when Memorial Day weekend is. Americans are MUCH more likely to take this for granted than, say, the location of most US states. I wouldn't complain if a British news site aimed mostly at a British audience said something was on Boxing Day without giving the date. Even if I don't *know* the date of the holiday in question, it's easy enough to look up. I don't think it's necessary to dumb things down quite that much.
> I worked at McDonald's, and we got one 30 minute break no matter how many hours we worked.
Interesting. That's a violation of McDonald's policy. You were supposed to get one thirty minute break for each multiple of five hours that your shift exceeded. So, if you work less than five hours, they don't have to give you a break; work more than ten, and they're supposed to give you two breaks.
Those are the rules for adults. Minors aren't allowed to work more than eight hours in a day, so they're never supposed to need a second break.
> nobody ever comes into McDonald's asking for a flying cheeseburger
In fast food, dealing with the public isn't the bad part of the job. Not that it doesn't have any problems at all, but it's really not the main issue.
Being around fast food workers all the time is what gets to you after a while.
> they could offer their manufacturers and workers a lot better working conditions
They could, and arguably should.
But that wouldn't necessarily reduce the suicide rate. In fact, statistically, wealthier people and those living in countries with better working conditions are *more* likely to attempt suicide, all else being equal. (I'm not saying wealth and good conditions cause suicide, just that they don't seem to prevent it.)
Let's see how many of those top 20 I can guess...
GPL, LGPL, BSD, MIT, X11, Artistic, MPL, Apache, Sun, GPL3, CC share-alike, CC attribution, CC non-commercial share-alike, public domain, 4-clause BSD, 2-clause BSD. That's sixteen right there, and I bet they're all in the top twenty and include at least nine of the top ten. How far off am I, and which four did I miss?
> We don't call them 'third world countries' anymore. We call
> them 'developing nations'. The former is so Cold War...
The latter is a cruel joke. I know it's considered (in the Western world) to be politically correct, but for the life of me I can't figure out why. It's much more condescending, more insulting, laced with sarcastic implications. The worst part is the bitter irony: if a country starts *actually* developing to any meaningful extent (like, say, South Korea) people quickly stop calling it a "developing country". That puts a really unpleasant spotlight on the disingenuous nature of the thing.
> Remember that your average American criminal isn't that
> dangerous. For most of them, the most you can expect is to
> be a victim of having to smell pot smoke, or seeing junkies.
You've changed the subject.
Upthread we were talking about actually going to prison. I believe your exact words were "throw you in jail to rot".
Now you're talking about the kinds of crimes that generally result in little games like the court ordering the offender to appear in court several times, taking away his driver's license for a few weeks, making him go to rehab meetings and such, fines, and other minor inconveniences. It is theoretically possible to go to jail for possession of marijuana, in the same sense that it is theoretically possible (for a typical person) to meet and fall in love with an eccentric billionaire and only find out they're rich after the wedding, but it is unlikely in the extreme.
> I have a feeling that I am not alone in preferring getting robbed
> to sitting 20 years in jail for a crime I didn't commit
Twenty years for petty theft? Now you're just being silly. That's a murder sentence, or aggravated armed robbery at the very least.
I suppose you *could* get a twenty-year sentence for non-violent theft, theoretically, if you try to steal every Mercedes in Manhattan, lead the police on a high-speed chase, refuse to plea bargain, decline council, then flip off the jury and swear at the judge, but even then you'd probably make parole after five or maybe ten. The prisons are crowded. They don't like to keep non-violent criminals.
> After all the government never, never arrests
> innocent people and throws them in jail to rot.
Wrong argument.
I can actually live with an *occasional* (accidental) instance of an innocent person going to jail, as long as it's greatly (and I do mean greatly) outnumbered by the actual criminals they arrest and convict by the same means. I mean, no system is perfect. If one conviction in a thousand sends an innocent person to prison, that's unfortunate (and something you try to avoid), but it's clearly better for society as a whole than letting 300 of the thousand go loose. Statistically, you're many times more likely to be a victim of one of the criminals who was let go than to be thrown in jail for something you didn't do.
Additionally, you seem on the face of it to be arguing that if law enforcement has access to more information they will be more likely to put the wrong person in jail on average. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Perhaps I have misunderstood your argument.
The larger problem with a backdoor feature intended for use by law enforcement is that, in practice, they (law enforcement) aren't the only ones who end up using it, or even the primary ones who end up using it. Anything the police can do, criminals can do also, and they will.
Consequently, I'm in favor of mobile devices with remote wipe features that work as advertised, and I'm NOT in favor of including backdoors "for the police". Such a feature would be very likely to have unintended consequences that would have nothing to do with law enforcement. It's just a bad idea. Well-intentioned maybe, but still a bad idea. I'm sorry that this means the Secret Service has a harder time doing their job, really I am (because I'd prefer for their job to be done well), but that's still how it has to be. People's devices get stolen, and they need the ability to (re)secure the data.
> They're concerned with counterfeiters and threats to dignitaries
> and the President. If having the information off the phone helps
> them capture counterfeiters and helps to uncover terroristic
> plots against US dignitaries, fine by me.
I could maybe live with that, IF there were some way for a reasonable and intelligent person to be confident that a feature intended to allow the Secret Service to retrieve data for the purpose saving the President or stopping counterfeiters could not be used by anyone else for any other purpose.
> Your free flight to a remote dark room is on its way.
You are six years old, weak and helpless. You cannot hurt me. There are four lights.
> Oh, and postmen read your postcards too.
They *theoretically* could, but only if they were completely immune to boredom. There's nothing more mind-numbingly dull than reading other people's mail.
I think that's basically Microsoft's point. Windows XP is in extended support now, which basically means security updates for whatever issues Microsoft deems important. SP3, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty much *is* one of those updates (or incorporates a number of them, however you want to look at it). People who aren't willing to install SP3 don't appear to be very interested in taking advantage of the support that Microsoft is providing. So why would Microsoft feel obligated to continue putting special effort into supporting them, separately from everyone else?
I'm not a big Microsoft fanatic, but this seems logical to me. SP3 has been out for a while now, plenty of time for IT departments to do whatever testing and whatnot they need to do. So at this point, hey, SP3 (and the updates that follow it) are the support that's available (for Windows XP). Take it or leave it.
If you don't like XP SP3, you could always upgrade to Seven.
(And, of course, if you don't like ANY of Microsoft's options, there are always also the other options; Microsoft understandably feels little compulsion to remind you of those, but you basically have to live in a cave with no internet connection to avoid hearing about them at all.)
> This whole thing screams selection bias.
How is that different from phone polls?
> What's the benefit of being in Germany?
Ordinarily, I would say using a service located in the US would be at least as good as using one located in Germany.
But in this case, Google happens to be in the US, so if the interface you use to access Google is *not* in the US (Germany, for instance, is not in the US), that means it's in a distinct jurisdiction. Consequently, if anybody nefarious wanted to do dastardly things that require finding out what you're searching for, they'd have to operate in at least two countries. So that would be at least a little bit harder for them, at least potentially. Of course, it also matters where *you* are. If *you* are in Germany, then that pretty much negates the advantage of using a Germany-based service. OTOH, if you are in the US, the Germany-based service is even more advantageous.
That all probably sounds a bit paranoid, but to the sort of person who wants an SSL-protected web search interface, such things might seem relevant. Personally the only thing I really care about SSL for is secure shell (SSH), but YMMV.
> Amen. If you want a Chrome UI, use Chrome.
Yeah. But I *don't* want Chrome.
Now, if they want to do perf improvements to try to equal Chrome's Javascript benchmark speeds or something, I have no objection. I don't *care*, but I don't object either.
But please don't emulate the Chrome UI. It sucks. Bad.
> I mean, what next, A Ribbon?
Please, no.
> Its bad enough that they have a huge round back button
The exact appearance of the back button actually isn't important to me. As long as the back button is in the right place (directly under the File menu, thank you very much) and *does* what it's supposed to do, I'm happy with it.
Indeed.
I eventually gave in and downgraded to Firefox 2, when it became clear that certain data-loss and stability bugs in the 3.x series were not going to be fixed any time soon. Performance isn't as snappy, but I don't really care that much. I don't have to worry that I'm going to lose tabs if something goes wrong. That's worth a lot to me. And the UI is actually *better*. All the recent UI changes have been for the worse, as far as I'm concerned. In fact, the only thing I really miss from 2.x is text-shadow support, and that's an underlying Gecko improvement.
Now for 4.x they're talking about emulating Chrome, which I tried out briefly and found very much not to my liking, from a UI standpoint. I think the Firefox team have lost their way.
> The problem, however, is that the vast majority of the population lives in urban centers.
It depends what you count as an "urban center".
The urban-versus-rural stats you get for the US from things like the census can be misleading, because they consider all municipalities to be urban, no matter how small the town is. So for instance people who live in Mount Gilead, Ohio, are counted as "urban", even though the high school has "drive your tractor to school day" every year, if you know what I'm talking about. If you live in a municipality, you're "urban", on paper.
Most of the population of the US lives in small and medium-sized cities, with populations ranging from a few hundred to fifty thousand or so. (Most of the *rest* live in big cities and/or suburbs thereof. A small percentage live outside any municipality.)