Home Messages Index
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Author IndexDate IndexThread Index

[News] [Rival] Rob Weir on Microsoft's Broken Ballot

  • Subject: [News] [Rival] Rob Weir on Microsoft's Broken Ballot
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:06:16 +0000
  • Followup-to: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • User-agent: KNode/4.3.1
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

The New & Improved Microsoft Shuffle

,----[ Quote ]
| First, Iâd like to thanks those who 
| commented on that post, or sent me notes, 
| offering additional analysis.  I think we 
| nailed this one.  Within a few days of my 
| report Microsoft updated their Javascript 
| on the browserchoice.eu website, fixing 
| the error.  But more on that in a minute.
| 
| [...]
| 
| In the end I donât think it is reasonable 
| to expect every programmer to be memorize 
| the Fisher-Yates algorithm. These things 
| belong in our standard libraries.  But 
| what I would expect every programmer to 
| know is:
| 
|    1. That the problem here is one that 
|    requires a ârandom shuffleâ.  If you 
|    donât know what it is called, then it 
|    will be difficult to lookup the known 
|    approaches.  So this is partially a 
|    vocabulary problem. We, as programmers, 
|    have a shared vocabulary which we use 
|    to describe data structures and 
|    algorithms; binary searches, priorities 
|    heaps, tries, and dozens of other 
|    concepts.  I donât blame anyone for not 
|    memorizing algorithms, but I would 
|    expect a 
|    programmer to know what types of 
|    algorithms apply to their work.
| 
|    2. How to research which algorithm to 
|    use in a specific context, including 
|    where to find reliable information, and 
|    how to evaluate the classic trade-offs 
|    of time and space.
|    3. That where randomized outputs are 
|    needed, that this should be 
|    statistically tested.  I would not 
|    expect the average programmer to know 
|    how to do a chi-square test, or even to 
|    know what one is.  But I would expect a 
|    mature programmer to know either find 
|    this out or seek help.
`----


http://www.robweir.com/blog/2010/03/new-microsoft-shuffle.html

Some Browsers In Microsoft Ballot Are Mere IE Shells Says Expert

,----[ Quote ]
| After a complaint was filed with the 
| European Commission by Opera Software 
| company, Microsoft was forced to present 
| its European users of Internet Explorer 
| web browser with a ballot box that allows 
| them a chance to replace IE with Firefox, 
| Opera, Safari or any other browser on the 
| list. 
`----

http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/article/2010/3/4/some-browsers-microsoft-ballot-are-mere-ie-shells-says-expert/

The Bizarre Cathedral - 68

http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/bizarre_cathedral_68

Chrome eats away at Internet Explorer

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/17883/1/


Recent:

Doing the Microsoft Shuffle: Algorithm Fail in Browser Ballot

,----[ Quote ]
| The story first hit in last week on the
| Slovakian tech site DSL.sk.  Since I am not
| linguistically equipped to follow the
| Slovakian tech scene, I didnât hear about the
| story until it was brought up in English on
| TechCrunch.  The gist of these reports is
| this: DSL.sk did a test of the âballotâ
| screen at www.browserchoice.eu, used in
| Microsoft Windows 7 to prompt the user to
| install a browser.  It was a Microsoft
| concession to the EU, to provide a randomized
| ballot screen for users to select a browser.
| However, the DSL.sk test suggested that the
| ordering of the browsers was far from random.
|
| But this wasnât a simple case of Internet
| Explorer showing up more in the first
| position.  The non-randomness was pronounced,
| but more complicated.  For example, Chrome
| was more likely to show up in one of the
| first 3 positions.  And Internet Explorer
| showed up 50% of the time in the last
| position.  This has lead to various theories,
| made on the likely mistaken theory that this
| is an intentional non-randomness.  Does
| Microsoft have secret research showing that
| the 5th position is actually chosen more
| often?  Is the Internet Explorer random
| number generator not random?  There were also
| comments asserting that the tests proved
| nothing, and the results were just chance,
| and others saying that the results are
| expected to be non-random because computers
| can only make pseudo-random numbers, not
| genuinely random numbers.
`----

http://www.robweir.com/blog/2010/02/microsoft-random-browser-ballot.html


How Random Is Microsoftâs Random Browser Choice Screen In Europe?

,----[ Quote ]
| More than once out of every four hits, the
| page would show Google Chrome on the far
| left, and Internet Explorer would only make
| it to the first spot in 13,8% of page loads
| (scoring well below all four other
| browsers). In fact, in over 50% of all page
| hits, Internet Explorer would come out to
| the far right spot of the five browser
| choices shown on the screen.
`----

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/22/microsoft-ballot-screen/
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAkuUzBgACgkQU4xAY3RXLo4+iACfSjNFrNjRyXY0wORmj/p5vTId
ZHAAoLCvymkgznr0diQkGg9kJFvVCeRF
=2GWA
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Author IndexDate IndexThread Index