You seem to be blending several definitions of sharing. If I share my opinion with you, does that mean that you now share my opinion? Or do you just know what my opinion is? If it is the former, let me share my opinion about the act of giving money to me...
There is a widely held sentiment that Macs are virus (et al) proof. What people need to get out of this story is not that OSX is bad, but that the mere fact that you are running OSX isn't an automatic aegis against attack. Certainly Mac users have less to fear from hackers, but they should not blithely assume they are completely immune, and should still take some basic precautions. And as has been said so often before, if enough bright people make serious efforts to crack into a Mac OS, it's likely someone will eventually succeed.
I posted the gist of this elsewhere, but it bears repeating here. Certainly life can creep into the most hostile of environments. If you start in a nurturing environment, and give it millions of years, organisms will be born that can survive increasingly inimical conditions. However, there is a vast difference between life moving from friendly environments into harsh ones, and life actually beginning/developing in said harsh environments.
As you pointed out, we have a limited data set. I would argue slightly more than 1, since as far as we can tell it is
Earth:yes
Moon/Mars:almost certainly no
other solar system planets:quite likely no
However, there are certain things that are widely believed as important to the development of life, like water existing in a liquid state. I am not a biologist, but I understand enough of that field to agree that the chances of finding life on that planet are essentially zero. Not absolutely zero, but so slim a chance that our efforts to find life would be better focused elsewhere.
There has been conjecture that part of the reason that the earth has what near-surface heat it does is because of the (relatively) massive moon that exerts tidal forces on the crust. Without that, the warm subsurface layers would be very deep indeed. And since this new planet orbits a red dwarf at something approximating the orbital distance that Earth does from our sun, albedo and greenhouse effects would have quite a hurdle to overcome.
Life impossible there? Certainly not. But I'd bet money against it. Admittedly, we can see all around us that life finds a way to creep into hostile environments. But it is likely that for life to begin, the environment needs to be a little more cooperative. Even proponents of panspermia have to admit that if something came from **out there**, it found a fertile home here and doesn't seem to have taken hold anywhere else we can yet observe.
That could depend on how bad your site might look with an unsupported browser. If you present some users with a site that has elements out of place, AJAX depencencies that don't work, etc., those users may think your site (and by extension your business) is flaky. If you direct them to download Firefox or use IE or whatever, and only let them actually see an attractive, interactive website, you might be better off. Note today's story about users judging a website in 50 milliseconds.
But I fully agree with Mancat that your site should not block browsers that it does work with. And if you do block browsers, it should be based on funcional tests, not User-Agent parsing.
Note that the link you posted points out that the results are skewed by their audience of "people with an interest for web technologies." I glanced at the access logs for the commercial website I work at and 90% of hits were from Internet explorer, 98% of those were IE6. Various members of the extended Mozilla family took up most of the remaining 10%. Granted, some of those IE hits were from other browsers that just present an IE User-Agent.
FWIW, we aim our site to be fully functional and test with IE5+, Firefox and Safari. Most stuff works in Opera, but we don't write anything specific for it. Our site on other browsers is functionally impaired and ugly at best.
I agree with A Beautiful Mind. The pr0n spam I get (at least that small percentage that I actually go into my Spam bucket to see) doesn't actually contain pr0n, just ad asking if I want to see it. Of course I might be wrong - they often come with attached.jpg files that I never open. I do perceive that there is a difference between an email asking if I want to see/download pr0n, and an email that actually contains it. Even though I personally don't care to receive either and I agree that there should be a convenient way to stop both.
The only people who would potentially risk actual harm would be someone who played a track a week before the CD was released, or someone who burned 20 copies of a CD over a weekend. However, I agree that you have to draw a line somewhere on what is legitimate market research and what is invasion of privacy. It's kinda like email - I personally don't care if the CIA wants to read every piece of email I receive or write, but I can understand people who are doing nothing wrong but still don't want that to happen.
Point taken. From reading the article, I was given the apparently mistaken impression that the recommendations were selected by some automated system.
"Wal-Mart said last night that the system was malfunctioning but did not explain why or how."
didn't sound to me like a description of a manual process.
Admittedly, I gave up before reading every post, so my apologies if someone has already made this point. I think you may be giving the recommendation algorithms a little too much credit in thinking that it is equating the social commentary of the two movies. This is the connection I saw when I first read this article: Planet of the Apes: a movie with a lot of apes King Kong: a movie about a big ape and with "King" in the title that has probably been searched a lot recently Martin Luther King: movies where the word "King" appears in the title, recommended even though it has nothing to do with apes.
But then again, I'm an Occam's Razor and "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" type of guy.
If your parties are anything like mine, a bathroom with no lights might be a little scary during the party, but will be absolutely horrifying the next day.
Then there's the episode where Badr digs a hole in the backyard.... Marge: I wonder why he's digging a hole. Omar: He's probably looking for our weapons of mass destruction stash. Marge: We don't have a weapons of mass destruction stash. Omar: (Eyes shifting left and right) Uhhh, yeah...
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You seem to be blending several definitions of sharing. If I share my opinion with you, does that mean that you now share my opinion? Or do you just know what my opinion is? If it is the former, let me share my opinion about the act of giving money to me...
Huh? How is a fancy fur coat going to make you safe?
If they would make a device that gave you an electric shock every time you reached for a candy bar, it would help prevent tooth decay AND obesity.
Luckily, I don't have OCD. But I am paranoid, so how did you know my fly was open???
At least you're honest. Try reading the article. The car wasn't stolen; just the media.
There is a widely held sentiment that Macs are virus (et al) proof. What people need to get out of this story is not that OSX is bad, but that the mere fact that you are running OSX isn't an automatic aegis against attack. Certainly Mac users have less to fear from hackers, but they should not blithely assume they are completely immune, and should still take some basic precautions.
And as has been said so often before, if enough bright people make serious efforts to crack into a Mac OS, it's likely someone will eventually succeed.
I posted the gist of this elsewhere, but it bears repeating here. Certainly life can creep into the most hostile of environments. If you start in a nurturing environment, and give it millions of years, organisms will be born that can survive increasingly inimical conditions. However, there is a vast difference between life moving from friendly environments into harsh ones, and life actually beginning/developing in said harsh environments. As you pointed out, we have a limited data set. I would argue slightly more than 1, since as far as we can tell it is Earth:yes Moon/Mars:almost certainly no other solar system planets:quite likely no However, there are certain things that are widely believed as important to the development of life, like water existing in a liquid state. I am not a biologist, but I understand enough of that field to agree that the chances of finding life on that planet are essentially zero. Not absolutely zero, but so slim a chance that our efforts to find life would be better focused elsewhere.
There has been conjecture that part of the reason that the earth has what near-surface heat it does is because of the (relatively) massive moon that exerts tidal forces on the crust. Without that, the warm subsurface layers would be very deep indeed. And since this new planet orbits a red dwarf at something approximating the orbital distance that Earth does from our sun, albedo and greenhouse effects would have quite a hurdle to overcome.
Life impossible there? Certainly not. But I'd bet money against it. Admittedly, we can see all around us that life finds a way to creep into hostile environments. But it is likely that for life to begin, the environment needs to be a little more cooperative. Even proponents of panspermia have to admit that if something came from **out there**, it found a fertile home here and doesn't seem to have taken hold anywhere else we can yet observe.
Remember that, by definition, half of all people on this planet are of below-average intelligence.
All except what many argue to be the most important and most frequently overlooked type of security: physical security.
That could depend on how bad your site might look with an unsupported browser. If you present some users with a site that has elements out of place, AJAX depencencies that don't work, etc., those users may think your site (and by extension your business) is flaky. If you direct them to download Firefox or use IE or whatever, and only let them actually see an attractive, interactive website, you might be better off. Note today's story about users judging a website in 50 milliseconds. But I fully agree with Mancat that your site should not block browsers that it does work with. And if you do block browsers, it should be based on funcional tests, not User-Agent parsing.
Note that the link you posted points out that the results are skewed by their audience of "people with an interest for web technologies." I glanced at the access logs for the commercial website I work at and 90% of hits were from Internet explorer, 98% of those were IE6. Various members of the extended Mozilla family took up most of the remaining 10%. Granted, some of those IE hits were from other browsers that just present an IE User-Agent.
FWIW, we aim our site to be fully functional and test with IE5+, Firefox and Safari. Most stuff works in Opera, but we don't write anything specific for it. Our site on other browsers is functionally impaired and ugly at best.
I agree with A Beautiful Mind. The pr0n spam I get (at least that small percentage that I actually go into my Spam bucket to see) doesn't actually contain pr0n, just ad asking if I want to see it. Of course I might be wrong - they often come with attached .jpg files that I never open. I do perceive that there is a difference between an email asking if I want to see/download pr0n, and an email that actually contains it. Even though I personally don't care to receive either and I agree that there should be a convenient way to stop both.
The only people who would potentially risk actual harm would be someone who played a track a week before the CD was released, or someone who burned 20 copies of a CD over a weekend. However, I agree that you have to draw a line somewhere on what is legitimate market research and what is invasion of privacy. It's kinda like email - I personally don't care if the CIA wants to read every piece of email I receive or write, but I can understand people who are doing nothing wrong but still don't want that to happen.
Point taken. From reading the article, I was given the apparently mistaken impression that the recommendations were selected by some automated system. "Wal-Mart said last night that the system was malfunctioning but did not explain why or how." didn't sound to me like a description of a manual process.
Admittedly, I gave up before reading every post, so my apologies if someone has already made this point. I think you may be giving the recommendation algorithms a little too much credit in thinking that it is equating the social commentary of the two movies. This is the connection I saw when I first read this article:
Planet of the Apes: a movie with a lot of apes
King Kong: a movie about a big ape and with "King" in the title that has probably been searched a lot recently
Martin Luther King: movies where the word "King" appears in the title, recommended even though it has nothing to do with apes.
But then again, I'm an Occam's Razor and "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" type of guy.
Let's just say I'm not NOT licking toads.
Alas, Windows is an automatic, and most people can't drive a stick.
If your parties are anything like mine, a bathroom with no lights might be a little scary during the party, but will be absolutely horrifying the next day.
Then there's the episode where Badr digs a hole in the backyard....
Marge: I wonder why he's digging a hole.
Omar: He's probably looking for our weapons of mass destruction stash.
Marge: We don't have a weapons of mass destruction stash.
Omar: (Eyes shifting left and right) Uhhh, yeah...
Can't use this one, because it leads to recursion. Sometimes B.O.O.B.S actually make stars.
D'oh! I meant crumulent.
When did they pass the law of conservation of momentum on Mars? Damn bureaucrats!
I don't know, it looked like a perfectly crumpulent paper to me.
Dog and alligator? Ridiculous! That is as impossible as mixing, say, rabbit and jellyfish DNA. Oh, wait, that did happen. Google GFP Bunny.