We already have in all but name. The "Miranda" warning is along the lines of "You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence." In other words, if you stay quiet and then provide a perfectly reasonable explanation later, or even if you tell us everything now but you get one small detail wrong which you later correct, the prosecution is allowed to infer that you're lying.
Unless he's like me and actually has to type the password to remember it. It seems, poor as my memory is, I can still learn some incredibly complicated passwords so long as I'm allowed to type them and don't have to recite them - the action of pressing specific keys in a pattern seems to help lock the password in my head.
If "they all suck", then it's probably more like "non-compliant websites suck".
That or GP's standards are very high. I've encountered some of the same problems, especially with FF locking up (if I have a lot of tabs open, which I do, always, and try to load something new I'll often get the "not responding" message for a few seconds before it unlocks for instance), even so I wouldn't say they suck. Could be better, but they do what I want reasonably well, and when they fail they try and fix the issue (by giving me a list of previously running tabs with the option of restoring them all or just the ones I'm sure are safe for instance). There's definitely room for improvement, but compared to where browsers were five years ago I think things have moved on a fair bit.
You can work this out with some degree of success based on factors such as return visits. If you're only seeing 5% usage for FF for instance, and most users never return, you can see that it's likely you could net some new users by making the site work better in FF. Alternatively if you have 5% FF users but they're the same users constantly returning, you'll not get much benefit from a site redesign around FF. Of course, the best approach is always to build the site for standards compliant browsers and then add the fixes for IE on top and serve them just to IE (so the "fixes" don't break anything in the good browsers).
We run a pretty big consumer website (for one of the big thrift stores, so as you can imagine it certainly doesn't reflect an unusually high percentage of business users) with around 200,000 unique visitors per month and IE usage there is currently 59%. We also run another big site with a higher mix of business users, and that one is currently at 65%. I'd say that, while the stats might be a little lower than expected, they're not that far away. I'd be interested to know if there's a difference between the US and Europe since the EU ruled MS had to give new users a choice of browser, or if both sides of the pond were naturally trending downwards.
Across all of our portfolio of websites, we see the percentage of people without JavaScript as being below 2%, and since a portion of those are probably bots/search engine spiders, it's unlikely to be of much statistical significance (obviously sites with a higher tech following such as/. might have notably more users without JavaScript, but our portfolio tends to reflect a pretty mainstream userbase).
I suspect the use of the term "permanent" in this sense means that it's not a stop-gap until a real organ is found. Quite often human life can be artificially maintained for a period of time, after which it becomes less effective until the patient eventually dies unless a real alternative is found. "Permanent" in this sense might mean that, although the heart will need to be replaced after 25 years, it and its replacements could sustain a human life indefinitely (in the same way that a new wonder drug which staves off death by some condition could be called a permanent solution, even though the pills actually only last for a few hours and more have to be taken periodically).
Well, two things - firstly the point of Skype is generally that you're available and logged in. If everyone used it as you're suggesting, you'd never be able to call someone without pre-arranging it. Whether that makes sense in the context of Skype on a mobile, we'll have to wait and see, it's early days. Secondly, most Android apps behave this way, in fact I think I've yet to encounter an in-app "quit" option, unless it's buried in the settings menu, so if this is not customer friendly, it's an accusation against a large number of Android apps rather than foul play on behalf of Skype.
I was lucky enough to get onto an unlimited data package right before O2 dropped them, hopefully they'll grandfather that in for as long as I'm with them, although I also have unlimited nationwide calls so it's not a big bonus to have Skype (would be if I called abroad a lot, though), but yes, it looks like capped packages or pay per meg will be the norm going forward.
I see it in the marketplace in the UK - "Free *Skype-to-Skype calls over 3G or WiFi." Haven't tried downloading it as I'm not currently in a WiFi spot and my data connection is rubbish at work, but it looks like the genuine article.
You're right of course, but this is more about access to content - with a console I can buy a second hand game dirt cheap, can't do that with digital content on a phone behind a walled garden. Likewise I can loan my game to a friend, can't do that with digital content on a phone. Of course, they'd trying to kill this even on consoles with various DLC tricks (putting a big chunk of the game in DLC that's free with purchase, so it's stripped out of second hand copies so you either buy new or give them the money they lost on the new sale, for instance), so rather than focus on the hardware this story should probably be about how consumer choice and freedom in terms of software is going down the toilet.
I've tried this with a couple of titles, and while it's a nice feature, it seemed to me that it was needlessly slow, forcing a lot of re-downloading that wouldn't be necessary if the code was optimised for this kind of play (for instance, in Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, if I and my opponent want to play the same map with the same army over and over, don't make us return to the menu screen and have to download the whole map and both armies again when they're already in memory, just have a "play again" option at the end of the round). I did wonder if this was done cynically to make owning two copies a better experience. Still better than nothing and gives a taste of the full two cart experience, and if other games handle this better then I take it back (this is based on my limited experience on that and another title I can't remember right now).
The difference is that most people don't see the downsides in digital music - for the average person they don't care that it's not as warm as vinyl, or that it lacks the fidelity or range of CD. That's where gaming differs. A phone as a gaming devices offers the portability of a PMP, but it comes with some massive disadvantages (tiny screen, crappy processor, currently no decent multiplayer model) that the user would have to swallow. I don't doubt more people will start gaming on their mobiles, but we need some serious technical advances before that meant the death of consoles (something like the technology in Halting State - incredibly powerful mobile devices capable of rendering true virtual worlds which in turn are viewed through a device akin to a pair of spectacles and not much heavier, giving a truly portable and immersive experience and coupled with massive cell bandwidth to allow for realistic multiplayer. I don't think we're even close to this in the near future (again, without that massive technical breakthrough I mentioned).
Google know what the search term is, but they won't know where it's come from, since the whole point of the proxy is to make it appear that the proxy server is the origin.
I'm kind of with you. While I value my privacy, I'm starting to not care so passionately about trying to alert others to the importance of privacy and to at least understand what information they're giving up. Like you, I'm probably not in Google's target demographic. I don't impulse buy anything, and any purchases I do make I research thoroughly, so I'm more than happy for them to try and find a pattern that they think will sell me stuff if it means I get to enjoy a bunch of great services for free. If they ever start collecting or using my personal data for anything other than trying to sell me crap I'll make the effort to go off the radar again, but right now I've got a good balance of enjoying the benefits of other people being consumer sheep without the disadvantages of following the herd.
It seems a lot of people use Google as a portal to their favourite sites. So if they are interested in buying some new shoes, or a holiday, they will return to Google each time and type in their query and then visit the preferred sites each time rather than, as you or I might, doing this once and thereafter visiting the sites direct/bookmarking said sites. I guess this is along the lines of what they mean. For instance, imagine some guy likes to slack off and browse for cheap DVDs on friday afternoons at work - if they can identify a regular pattern, and even perhaps tie it back to his GMail account, they can sell this info to a company who then fires off an email about their massive DVD sale at friday lunch time and can be almost certain he'll hit their site up first.
I don't understand how that works if there are multiple people watching the screen (as in the TV situation), although I can see obvious benefits where you can be reasonably sure there's only one viewer (i.e. PC gaming).
I'll be interested to see how these are displayed in stores. If there are serious issues with viewing angles outside a limited area, I wonder if store displays will be gamed to force customers into the optimal position. At home my usual spot is at a right angle to the TV, I don't mind as I rarely watch it so it's good enough, but I wonder if this angle would be sufficiently offset to ruin the 3D effect on one of these sets and, perhaps more importantly, if you are outside the optimal viewining position, what does that mean to the viewing experience, can I still watch in 2D or will I get lots of weird artifacts that make it unusable.
That makes no sense. How much does a good script cost as opposed to an awful script? I can't imagine we're talking tens of millions more to secure a story worth telling and script writers capable of adding polish. The real problem is that scripts mostly don't sell cinema tickets. There's some value in getting repeat custom if the customer enjoys the experience of course, and a good script will contribute a lot here, but most studios don't see that value at all (they just worry about why cinema numbers are dropping even though they're throwing expensive actors at everything).
Not to mention I can wear 3D glasses over my normal glasses. If I could wear contacts, I wouldn't wear normal glasses, and 3D contacts would be useless for anyone who already wears contacts, or who can't put things in their eyes. Other than that it's also completely obvious, I had the same thought myself over 20 years ago when 3D glasses were red and blue and made out of cardboard - that's the kind of thing they should never grant a patent on because I'm sure millions have had exactly the same idea, but of course they do grant them regardless.
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On the plus side, it should make life in IT support more interesting if you can just have users who regularly forget their passwords jailed.
We already have in all but name. The "Miranda" warning is along the lines of "You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence." In other words, if you stay quiet and then provide a perfectly reasonable explanation later, or even if you tell us everything now but you get one small detail wrong which you later correct, the prosecution is allowed to infer that you're lying.
Unless he's like me and actually has to type the password to remember it. It seems, poor as my memory is, I can still learn some incredibly complicated passwords so long as I'm allowed to type them and don't have to recite them - the action of pressing specific keys in a pattern seems to help lock the password in my head.
The CIA with mod points, now that is scary.
If "they all suck", then it's probably more like "non-compliant websites suck".
That or GP's standards are very high. I've encountered some of the same problems, especially with FF locking up (if I have a lot of tabs open, which I do, always, and try to load something new I'll often get the "not responding" message for a few seconds before it unlocks for instance), even so I wouldn't say they suck. Could be better, but they do what I want reasonably well, and when they fail they try and fix the issue (by giving me a list of previously running tabs with the option of restoring them all or just the ones I'm sure are safe for instance). There's definitely room for improvement, but compared to where browsers were five years ago I think things have moved on a fair bit.
You can work this out with some degree of success based on factors such as return visits. If you're only seeing 5% usage for FF for instance, and most users never return, you can see that it's likely you could net some new users by making the site work better in FF. Alternatively if you have 5% FF users but they're the same users constantly returning, you'll not get much benefit from a site redesign around FF. Of course, the best approach is always to build the site for standards compliant browsers and then add the fixes for IE on top and serve them just to IE (so the "fixes" don't break anything in the good browsers).
We run a pretty big consumer website (for one of the big thrift stores, so as you can imagine it certainly doesn't reflect an unusually high percentage of business users) with around 200,000 unique visitors per month and IE usage there is currently 59%. We also run another big site with a higher mix of business users, and that one is currently at 65%. I'd say that, while the stats might be a little lower than expected, they're not that far away. I'd be interested to know if there's a difference between the US and Europe since the EU ruled MS had to give new users a choice of browser, or if both sides of the pond were naturally trending downwards.
Across all of our portfolio of websites, we see the percentage of people without JavaScript as being below 2%, and since a portion of those are probably bots/search engine spiders, it's unlikely to be of much statistical significance (obviously sites with a higher tech following such as /. might have notably more users without JavaScript, but our portfolio tends to reflect a pretty mainstream userbase).
Both damning, but neither help in the short term with the issue of how we dump IE and get on with building a better web.
There is no holy browser...
Maybe not, but for a long time IE has been the holey browser.
I suspect the use of the term "permanent" in this sense means that it's not a stop-gap until a real organ is found. Quite often human life can be artificially maintained for a period of time, after which it becomes less effective until the patient eventually dies unless a real alternative is found. "Permanent" in this sense might mean that, although the heart will need to be replaced after 25 years, it and its replacements could sustain a human life indefinitely (in the same way that a new wonder drug which staves off death by some condition could be called a permanent solution, even though the pills actually only last for a few hours and more have to be taken periodically).
Well, two things - firstly the point of Skype is generally that you're available and logged in. If everyone used it as you're suggesting, you'd never be able to call someone without pre-arranging it. Whether that makes sense in the context of Skype on a mobile, we'll have to wait and see, it's early days. Secondly, most Android apps behave this way, in fact I think I've yet to encounter an in-app "quit" option, unless it's buried in the settings menu, so if this is not customer friendly, it's an accusation against a large number of Android apps rather than foul play on behalf of Skype.
I was lucky enough to get onto an unlimited data package right before O2 dropped them, hopefully they'll grandfather that in for as long as I'm with them, although I also have unlimited nationwide calls so it's not a big bonus to have Skype (would be if I called abroad a lot, though), but yes, it looks like capped packages or pay per meg will be the norm going forward.
I see it in the marketplace in the UK - "Free *Skype-to-Skype calls over 3G or WiFi." Haven't tried downloading it as I'm not currently in a WiFi spot and my data connection is rubbish at work, but it looks like the genuine article.
Not to mention the convenience of not having to switch off your gaming console because you have a call coming through or want to send a text message.
You're right of course, but this is more about access to content - with a console I can buy a second hand game dirt cheap, can't do that with digital content on a phone behind a walled garden. Likewise I can loan my game to a friend, can't do that with digital content on a phone. Of course, they'd trying to kill this even on consoles with various DLC tricks (putting a big chunk of the game in DLC that's free with purchase, so it's stripped out of second hand copies so you either buy new or give them the money they lost on the new sale, for instance), so rather than focus on the hardware this story should probably be about how consumer choice and freedom in terms of software is going down the toilet.
I've tried this with a couple of titles, and while it's a nice feature, it seemed to me that it was needlessly slow, forcing a lot of re-downloading that wouldn't be necessary if the code was optimised for this kind of play (for instance, in Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, if I and my opponent want to play the same map with the same army over and over, don't make us return to the menu screen and have to download the whole map and both armies again when they're already in memory, just have a "play again" option at the end of the round). I did wonder if this was done cynically to make owning two copies a better experience. Still better than nothing and gives a taste of the full two cart experience, and if other games handle this better then I take it back (this is based on my limited experience on that and another title I can't remember right now).
The difference is that most people don't see the downsides in digital music - for the average person they don't care that it's not as warm as vinyl, or that it lacks the fidelity or range of CD. That's where gaming differs. A phone as a gaming devices offers the portability of a PMP, but it comes with some massive disadvantages (tiny screen, crappy processor, currently no decent multiplayer model) that the user would have to swallow. I don't doubt more people will start gaming on their mobiles, but we need some serious technical advances before that meant the death of consoles (something like the technology in Halting State - incredibly powerful mobile devices capable of rendering true virtual worlds which in turn are viewed through a device akin to a pair of spectacles and not much heavier, giving a truly portable and immersive experience and coupled with massive cell bandwidth to allow for realistic multiplayer. I don't think we're even close to this in the near future (again, without that massive technical breakthrough I mentioned).
Google know what the search term is, but they won't know where it's come from, since the whole point of the proxy is to make it appear that the proxy server is the origin.
I'm kind of with you. While I value my privacy, I'm starting to not care so passionately about trying to alert others to the importance of privacy and to at least understand what information they're giving up. Like you, I'm probably not in Google's target demographic. I don't impulse buy anything, and any purchases I do make I research thoroughly, so I'm more than happy for them to try and find a pattern that they think will sell me stuff if it means I get to enjoy a bunch of great services for free. If they ever start collecting or using my personal data for anything other than trying to sell me crap I'll make the effort to go off the radar again, but right now I've got a good balance of enjoying the benefits of other people being consumer sheep without the disadvantages of following the herd.
It seems a lot of people use Google as a portal to their favourite sites. So if they are interested in buying some new shoes, or a holiday, they will return to Google each time and type in their query and then visit the preferred sites each time rather than, as you or I might, doing this once and thereafter visiting the sites direct/bookmarking said sites. I guess this is along the lines of what they mean. For instance, imagine some guy likes to slack off and browse for cheap DVDs on friday afternoons at work - if they can identify a regular pattern, and even perhaps tie it back to his GMail account, they can sell this info to a company who then fires off an email about their massive DVD sale at friday lunch time and can be almost certain he'll hit their site up first.
I don't understand how that works if there are multiple people watching the screen (as in the TV situation), although I can see obvious benefits where you can be reasonably sure there's only one viewer (i.e. PC gaming).
I'll be interested to see how these are displayed in stores. If there are serious issues with viewing angles outside a limited area, I wonder if store displays will be gamed to force customers into the optimal position. At home my usual spot is at a right angle to the TV, I don't mind as I rarely watch it so it's good enough, but I wonder if this angle would be sufficiently offset to ruin the 3D effect on one of these sets and, perhaps more importantly, if you are outside the optimal viewining position, what does that mean to the viewing experience, can I still watch in 2D or will I get lots of weird artifacts that make it unusable.
That makes no sense. How much does a good script cost as opposed to an awful script? I can't imagine we're talking tens of millions more to secure a story worth telling and script writers capable of adding polish. The real problem is that scripts mostly don't sell cinema tickets. There's some value in getting repeat custom if the customer enjoys the experience of course, and a good script will contribute a lot here, but most studios don't see that value at all (they just worry about why cinema numbers are dropping even though they're throwing expensive actors at everything).
Not to mention I can wear 3D glasses over my normal glasses. If I could wear contacts, I wouldn't wear normal glasses, and 3D contacts would be useless for anyone who already wears contacts, or who can't put things in their eyes. Other than that it's also completely obvious, I had the same thought myself over 20 years ago when 3D glasses were red and blue and made out of cardboard - that's the kind of thing they should never grant a patent on because I'm sure millions have had exactly the same idea, but of course they do grant them regardless.