Rubenerd

That silly story that Internet Explorer users have lower IQs than others may have obviously been a hoax, but even comical exaggerations need a kernel of truth to them to be funny, however small such a kernel is. A microkernel, if you will.

I see your Linux, raise you a Mach

For those who haven’t seen the story, a report recently surfaced and went viral that Internet Explorer users have a lower IQ than those who use competing browsers. Opera users were graphed as being the most intelligent, and IE6 users the least.

The story had all the hallmarks of a successful viral campaign. The story exploited existing preconceptions about people who refuse to move to newer versions of IE or to more standard compliant browsers, and successfully played on the anger and frustration web designers and developers feel when having to bend over backwards to accommodate Microsoft’s browsers. All the story needed to be perfect was a couple of quotes from a mental healthcare professional working in Minnesota.

Photo of the Mayo Clinic by Nephron on Wikimedia Commons

Wasn’t Alexander Downer from Mayo?

As you probably did too, I didn’t buy the story from the start, but it did get me thinking. We all know IQ is as effective at gauging intelligence as the BMI is at calculating your health (Adolphe Quetelet would probably have endorsed Atkins), but what does browser use say about the person using it?

Since IBM handed Microsoft their monopoly in the early 1990s, and since Microsoft decided to illegally leverage their clout to drive browser competitors out of business, most internet users accessed sites through a flavour of Internet Explorer. That’s now changing, on three fronts:

1. Since Firefox (arguably) ignited the second browser wars and Microsoft realised they were no longer able to rest on their laurels and stifle the growth of online applications that posed a competitive threat to their expensive desktop software, most technically advanced users have jumped ship to Gecko and Webkit.

2. Windows, the system that Microsoft used to move people to IE, is under threat on the consumer desktop. The profitable, high end market has been secured by Apple now, and technically advanced users run flavours of [GNU/]Linux. Neither of these platforms run IE natively; at least not any more!

3. In the mobile space, the fleeting dominance Windows Mobile and Pocket Internet Explorer had is also over, and their efforts to break out of this rut are largely being ignored in the face of iOS and Android devices.

The slip is the dip

For all but the most die hard Microsoft fans, it’s pretty obvious to us what’s happening here. With the high end and tech savvy markets slipping away from them, users of Internet Explorer now mostly consists of those for whom the blue e is "the internet" because it happened to come with their cut throat priced beige box, or for those who have no choice on their business machines.

While Microsoft’s sudden change of heart with regards to standards has convinced a few to move back, for others its too little, too late. It’s hard to find a nerd now not running either Firefox or Chrome, and to a lesser extent Safari and Opera. Web stats on many high profile technical sites are all being reported as favouring these browsers. Not to put too fine a point on this, but those who claim otherwise are ignorant of this, wilfully or otherwise.

What browser a person uses now says nothing about their IQ, but its a safe bet it speaks to their technical proficiency (knowing of alternative browsers, running [GNU/]Linux) or income (Apple hardware), something advertisers might be very interested in.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe, in a post series pointlessly documenting every train I took.

T39 from Miranda to Wolli Creek

Cleanliness: Fine, but lots of uninspired tagging

This post originally appeared on the Annexe, in a post series pointlessly documenting every train I took.

Chromeadvertatmirandastation

This post originally appeared on the Annexe, in a post series pointlessly documenting every train I took.

T103 from Bardwell Park to Wolli Creek.

Cleanliness: Spotless! ^_^

The soap opera of Google Android versus Everyone Else continues.

100% phosphorous free

Frank X. Shaw on Twitter:

We offered Google the opportunity to bid with us to buy the Novell patents; they said no.

Why? BECAUSE they wanted to buy something that they could use to assert against someone else.

SO partnering with others & reducing patent liability across industry is not something they wanted to help do

And Brad Smith on Twitter:

Google says we bought Novell patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no.

I'm surprised John Gruber of all people would take these Microsoft tweets at face value; at this stage it's just Microsoft's word against Google.

Still, if it's uncovered Google declined to be a part of the patent consortium with Microsoft and Apple because they wanted all the leverage for themselves, it blows their entire altruistic defence argument out of the water.

Update

From the Official Google Blog:

If you think about it, it’s obvious why we turned down Microsoft’s offer. Microsoft’s objective has been to keep from Google and Android device-makers any patents that might be used to defend against their attacks. A joint acquisition of the Novell patents that gave all parties a license would have eliminated any protection these patents could offer to Android against attacks from Microsoft and its bidding partners.

So their logic is, only by having the patents to themselves can they defend the patent infringements in Android, and their competitors know this. This seems to just reinforce Frank X. Shaw's last tweet, this is a move to save themselves not the industry. Gives new meaning to that graphic they used in their Google IO slides.

This goes for Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, Google and everyone else: please treat us with a little respect and be candid about your motivations with all this patent nonsense. We're all getting tired of it.

Maybe I'm just bitter than I can't get a webOS phone here, and the Nokia N9 looks amazing but is doomed to failure.

This has to be one of the most patently absurd, nonsensical plans I've ever read, and I've read Ayn Rand.

The story

In a further effort to distract us from their morally bankrupt stance on the treatment of refugees, we now read on SBS News the Australian government is to implement a website to discourage boat people from coming here.

Pardon my language in this blog post.

Online videos of asylum seekers boarding planes to Malaysia will be posted on YouTube and Facebook in an effort to discourage asylum seekers making the dangerous boat journey to Australia.

Immigration department spokesperson Sandi Logan, do tell us why!

“Some of the people we are dealing with may be not overly literate so seeing people being loaded on to a plane, people being checked into a processing centre is as strong a message as you can send.”

He said asylum seekers and smugglers were “very net savvy”.

If they're looking for an even stronger message, why not blow up boats with cruise missiles launched from ships? That way you could make all the propaganda videos you want, and it would double as a Navy recruitment tool!

Sarcasm aside though…

Let me see if I understand their reasoning here. They claim these destitute, desperate people are all "very net savvy", yet they're not "overly literate". So they have nothing, they can't read, but they can get to a computer, do some text searches to uncover videos, then watch them in a reasonable time on their high speed internet connections?

Even if we were to entertain this bullshit with anything other than the scorn it deserves and assume these refugees were watching these videos, you really think they'd "scare" people compared to the horrors some of them have witnessed in their home countries? These people have seen their homes destroyed, families and loved ones killed by war and natural disasters, and are willing to risk their lives on the open sea, and you honestly think you'll change their mind with a few videos of boats?

You know what? I'm not as angry at this story as I am insulted. These numbskulls in Canberra regard us, the voting public, with such contempt that they think this farcical plan will be effective, and that we'll buy it?

I tell you what Sandi Logan, ruin the ending for the people you're working for and tell them this will not work, and advise them the funds they'll waste on it would be better spent elsewhere. Say, oh I don't know… thoroughly repudiating Howardism and implementing an ethical, compassionate, responsible program for the less than 0.1% of refugees worldwide that want a chance at a life in Australia.

We've all read the claim that Apple will repeat history and lose their iPhone/iPad dominance the same way Mac OS lost the desktop. Initially I dismissed such claims on the grounds that Android devices and the iPhone earned their market share rather than being handed it by a large install base of IBM clones, but it turns out…

Repeating itself, repeating itself

We know Android devices are being activated by the truckload:

Eric Schmidt has just announced that Android has reached 350,000 activations each day. After doing some dirty and quick math, that comes out to about 10 million per month. And in a year? 127,750,000. That number is huge, isn’t it?

Yet Apple's profit share on handsets continues to rise:

Apple’s share of profits raked in by the world’s top publicly-traded mobile phone vendors rose once again this quarter, as asymco’s Horace Dediu notes in the latest edition of his quarterly tracking reports. According to Dediu’s calculations, Apple’s share of profits among the eight companies tracked rose to 66%, up from 57% last quarter.

How could these two things be true at the same time? One word: volume.

As was played out on the desktop, Android (playing the role of Windows in History 2.0) is becoming the race-to-the-bottom stuff, iOS (playing the roll of Mac OS) takes the profitable top, and everyone else from webOS to MeeGo squabbles over what's left over (the year of the Linux desktop!).

So history is repeating itself. Repeating itself. Repeating itself!

But wait…

I'd argue though there are two small differences. On a personal level, the Android UI is to varying degrees a flagrant knock off of the iPhone (or of the BlackBerry before Schmidt saw the iPhone prototypes), but it's a better executed knock off than Windows was of the Mac OS.

Historical flamebait aside though, on a technical level it's hard to argue that we don't all benefit from the large install base of standards-based Android browsers (ignoring their support for Flash!) compared to the horror that was IE on the desktop. Microsoft was able to stall development of the web for close to a decade with their inaction (malicious or otherwise) but at least Google are good online citizens.

Links shared from del.icio.us today:

Mac Pro Farm | Flickr – Photo Sharing!

That's a lot of pro Apple kit!

(categories: macpro powermacg5 apple hardware desktops)

Hackergate – How Steven Nott tried to raise the alarm in 1999

If this site is true (and @StephenFry seems to think it is) there are some grave questions to be answered.

(categories: news politics twitter hackergate notw journalism security)

FOX News Facebook Page on 9/11 Cross Generates Death Threats Against Atheists « No God Blog

That's okay, it's politically correct to attack atheists like me.

(categories: news religion facebook)

rubenerd | Twitter Grader

Got a grade of 97.2 out of 100. Now if only I cared about these "grading" systems, I'd be impressed!

(categories: twitter)

The 23 Blogger Breeds—Which Are You?

I generally loathe these kinds of lists that seek to quash individuality and place people into easy to delineate buckets… but according to them I'm most likely a #1: The Machine. Not sure if that's good or not.

(categories: blogs)

Cirrus Logic CL-GD5446 driver – Cirrus Logic Video Drivers – k54462e.zip

Cirrus drivers here no longer work with 0.14.1 and Windows 3.1, or at least I haven't been able to get them to work.

(categories: drivers qemu windows31 windows)

Drivers for QEMU devices

Cirrus drivers here no longer work with 0.14.1 and Windows 3.1, or at least I haven't been able to get them to work.

(categories: drivers windows qemu)

TripCase – Get a Handle on Your Travel

Wish I'd had that when I was living in two different places at once!

(categories: travel iphone software)

Commercial jet crashes in Guyana – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Incredible. "A Caribbean Airlines flight with 163 people on board crashed and snapped in half as it landed, causing several injuries but no deaths."

(categories: news video aviation disaster)

To mark our first full year back in Sydney, my sister and I did exactly the same thing we did when we first arrived: go to The Rocks Aroma Festival with the world's greatest cousin Nim and her epic boyfriend Ben, and drink far too much coffee!

Compared to last years event:

The weather was warmer

Or perhaps it just seemed warmer given Elke and I are acclimatised now! That said though, the weather was beautiful, absolutely perfect.

There was… less coffee

The Aroma Festival was technically supposed to be about Coffee, Chocolate, Tea, Spices, but last year there seemed to be more of the first, less of the last three. This year we must have wandered around for at least half an hour in the huge crowds before coming across the first coffee shop!

The coffee was better

As we all recalled, last year Nim, Ben and I had several cups of coffee which were less than stellar, and one from a stall which will remain nameless that tasted like burnt plastic! This year we had our favourites, but all were really good!

My personal favourite: Forsyth Coffee. Best taste, friendliest service, and most creative logo! ^_^

There were more people

Last year's event got pretty crowded around lunchtime, but despite making it to the event earlier this year, we often times felt ourselves squeezed on all sides, battling the flow of crowds that were often moving in the opposite direction! In a way such a turnout was fantastic as it ensures the future of the festival is secure… but we could have lived with fewer people in some of the lines ;).

Conclusions

I have university terribly early tomorrow morning, so I wish I could speak more about it. Suffice to say, had a great time with some great company, and can't wait till next year!

I'll admit I felt upset being torn away from me de facto home, but Sydney has grown on me, and events like this make me happy :).

To finish, a terribly unflattering photo taken of me having my fourth cup, by Elke!

So let me get this straight, because honest taxpayers like Neal O'Carroll have been so generous in shouldering the burden imposed by the bankers that got them into this economic mess… the bankers are getting an investment.

(Photo was taken by me during our Europe trip in 2010. Random street in Dublin during a snow storm, with a bank ATM to the side. Kinda made sense given the subject matter!)

At least it’s not Moodys

(Reuters) – Positive news from Ireland is prompting a growing number of investors to look at the troubled euro zone economy, said billionaire Wilbur Ross, who this week invested 300 million euros in its largest lender.

Billionaires know all! After all, it wasn't billionaires that got us into this mess.

Ross said the deal was fueled by positive news from Ireland [..] These include the government’s announcement it was ahead of target to bring its budget deficit under control, lack of protest against a harsh austerity program, and the European Union’s decision this month to ease the terms of an 85-billion-euro international bailout.

Harsh would be the understatement of the century. Well to be fair this century is only 10% or so over, so perhaps more like the understatement of last century.

The power of accurate observation…

In any event, nothing says fair like giving the people at the helm a bailout, then demanding the middle class repay it in the form of reduced services and higher taxes. I looked up the word "austerity" in the thesaurus, and the word "fair" was right there.

Oh but wait, we haven't got to the truly fabulous bit yet!

A key development was a euro zone deal that eases the terms of Ireland’s bailout and positive comments from the International Monetary Fund that Ireland’s program is on track, assuring investors that Ireland had virtually guaranteed funding through 2013.

Ah, the IMF. So the economic hit men got what they wanted. Does that mean they can take their plundered riches and leave my Irish friends alone now?

Ending on a positive note

Although Ireland is mid-way through an unprecedented eight-year cycle of austerity, social unrest is almost non-existent and unlike Greece and Portugal, Ireland is expected to return to growth this year because of a vibrant export sector and the flexibility of its economy.

So there you have it. As long as the Irish can continue to be as creative and resourceful as they've always been, their economy will eventually pick up again from the mess the bankers got them into, and said bankers will be there to profit from them once more.

Have a Guinness on me guys and girls!