andrewducker | Delicious LiveJournal Links for 2-23-2010

How Does Homeopathy Work? A simple explanation.

(tags: healthcare homeopathy skepticism)
Microsoft release their new "Choose what browser you want to run" page.

I like the way that the options change order randomly each time.

(tags: browsers microsoft windows)

From:

princealbert.livejournal.com

I like the way that the options change order randomly each time.

You obviously didn't scroll right and refresh the page.

It seems like the browsers are grouped on popularity. The groups just happen to be the same size as the width of the frame. Refreshing changes the order with the group only.

For instance Flock will never appear in the front window...

From:

andrewducker

I did scroll right - but while I feel that people should have the option of the major browsers, outside of the top five I don't really care - and if people are that into unusual browsers then they're the kind of techie person who's gone looking in the first place.

From:

a-pawson.livejournal.com

Interesting. After Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE & Opera, I had never heard of those other browsers.

From:

andrewducker

I'm deducting three geek points.

I'd heard of Flock, and I used K-Meleon before Firefox appeared.

SlimBrowser, Maxthon, Avant and Maxthon are all Internet Explorer with a different shell around them.

Flock is Firefoz with stuff on top. K-Meleon is Firefox with stuff taken out.

From:

momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com

K-Meleon annoys me by being one of those wacky misspelt names that I associate with US businesses. It was months before the penny dropped and I realized the intention is for it to be 'Chameleon'; when clearly it is named Kay Melly-on, presumably in tribute to jazz musician George Melly.

From:

andrewducker

Did it also take you a while to spot the joke in "Central Perk"?

From:

momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com

I spotted it a fair while before Phoebe did, which isn't saying much. But that's different!

From:

darkoshi

Oh, chameleon; I didn't realize that was what the name was based on. I thought it was a strange name, which happened to make me think of melons.

From:

momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com

My point exactly!

I think the thing with all these wacky names is that they are geared to a US accent, or at least an understanding of the rules. Apache Solr, for instance, is just 'Soller' to me (at a push), and never 'Solar' -- probably works on the postvocalic 'r' those hick statesians use...

From:

andrewducker

I guess I'm used to shortened words from years of 8-character file names. I happily fill in vowels and search for appropriate words.

From:

andrewhickey.livejournal.com

I don't know most of them (because I'm a GNU/Linux user) but Flock is what AOL recommend to ex-Netscape users - essentially a skinned version of Firefox with some 'social networking' extensions built in...

From:

momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com

I hadn't even noticed the scrollbar...

Maxthon, whatever that is, can't use the spacebar and has a broken download page. And has pictures of iPads on their site but can't tell me if it's for OS X or Windows. The number of bad sites that can't even do the basics of marketing is astounding.

From:

matgb

Exactly. And Sleipnoir proudly states that it uses Trident, the IE engine, meaning that it's the most compatible for websites.

Hmm, has there been an IE that passes the acid test yet?

From:

missedith01.livejournal.com

Homeopathy can have a placebo effect. So does that mean it works?

From:

andrewducker

That's not homeopathy working - because a glass of water would have the same effect. So you could claim that "water works" or "a glass of diet coke works". I'd say that something has to work better than the placebo effect for it to actually be defined as working.

From:

missedith01.livejournal.com

But a person who believes in homeopathy would not have the same belief in a glass of water or a glass of coke. So they would not have the same effect.

I'd say that something has to work better than the placebo effect for it to actually be defined as working.

I don't disagree. But the placebo effect is fascinating.

From:

andrewducker

It is fascinating (as is the associated nocebo response). But we shouldn't be lying to people for their own good.

From:

princealbert.livejournal.com

No.
For a start in a peer reviewed test you would have to compare it to the results from a placebo.

Then you have the problem that by legitimising a placebo as a drug, you can't actually prescribe a placebo when its really needed. (Rare - but physicians do have to prove that someone isn't just reacting with a short-term placebo effect with every treatment given, and obviously by the numbers of people taking these commercial placebos this does happen.)

And then there's the issue of millions of pounds of NHS/tax being spent on charlatans, quacks, water and sugar pills every year. Nevermind the fact if homeopathy finally gets discredited then academia could stop wasting time proving it still doesn't work and we may actually get some medicine research done in those man hours.

From:

andrewducker

*agrees on all points*

From:

missedith01.livejournal.com

Oh sure, it would not survive the rigours of evidence-based medicine. If that's what we mean by "works" it certainly does not.

I'm against NHS money being spent on it as well, apart from anything else it involves conniving and deception, also we have limited resources and should spend them more wisely.

From:

momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com

Most of my friends now seem to know what a browser is. I remember as recently as 2005 that wasn't the case -- people who used the internet went blank when you said 'Internet explorer' or 'web browser'. But I still think there's an army of users out there who still have no idea and who will just look at this screen and go 'gaaaaa'? Especially as, how are you meant to decide? They all say 'I am REALLY good'. If I hadn't used all of them, I would be utterly confounded by the choice presented to me. I can see this is what MS had to do to satisfy the EU, but I can't help but think it's going to be wasted -- or worse -- on most people.

And Opera is still shit.

From:

andrewducker

Well, if people don't know and don't care then we'll end up with 20% market share for each of the top five. Win!

Not a fan of Opera on the desktop - but it's tbe best browser on my phone.

From:

momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com

It kind of goes against the idea that computers should 'just work' though -- that users shouldn't be faced with choices that are not relevant to them.

From:

andrewducker

I'm all for giving people basic functionality - but MS deliberately attempted to squeeze other browsers out of the market, and was found guilty of abusing their monopoly to do so. This goes some way to redressing the balance.

Obviously it would be better if they just issued all new copies of Windows with Firefox rather than IE, but I don't think they were going to go for that :->

From:

a-pawson.livejournal.com

Is it really about the browser though? Unless I am missing something, Microsoft have little to gain financially from people using IE. It is essentially given away free - as are most other browsers. The value presumably lies in the ability to default all IE searches to Bing, to maximise the ad revenues they then get from people clicking on adwords or paid search results.

Firefox and Chrome both select Google as the default search engine on installation, something I am surprosed Microsoft have not pointed out and objected to.

From:

andrewducker

This is the end(ish) of a 15 year battle. Microsoft was terrified that the web/internet would make the operating system irrelevant, because everything would happen online. Internet Explorer was part of the strategy for keeping people on Windows, because by including more features than anyone else you could make sure that developers would code applications to match your browser rather than anyone else's.

You can still see some of the side-effects from this with large companies that are having problems migrating their web browsers away from IE6, because they have internal (or unsupported bought in) apps that were coded for a browser rather than general standards.

From:

simont

That's a lovely idea in principle, but rather falls down as soon as you have companies who have a vested interest in people making an 'irrelevant' choice a particular way. I doubt you could get computers to 'just work' in that way unless you had all software produced (or approved to stringent criteria) by a centralised authority and called by perfectly generic names instead of brands. And that would have its own set of unacceptable disadvantages too, of course.

From:

momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com

You seem to be describing Apple! ;)

From:

simont

That hadn't actually occurred to me while I was writing that description, but it did occur to me shortly afterwards :-)

From:

momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com

*strokes his just-works iMac*

From:

marrog.livejournal.com

Me at work:

Person On Phone: So I'm trying to [x thing while building a webpage in our CMS] and it's throwing up [x error]. Can you tell me what I do? How do I log this bug?
Me: Are you using Internet Explorer?
POP: Yes. I know I'm supposed to use Firefox, bu- [beeeeeeeeeeeeeep...]

(Sorry, somewhat OT, but I'm at work and get to constnantly tell university workers to stop using IE to edit their webpages. It's kind of fun!)

Edited Date: 2010-02-23 03:04 pm (UTC)

From:

momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com

Well at least they know what they're using!

What are their reasons for using IE though?

From:

marrog.livejournal.com

Usually it's just that they don't understand why Firefox would be better, and it looks different which is scary, so they just don't bother. It's on the managed desktop and everything.

This of course being only one of the myriad problems with the principally lovely idea of having a CMS user friendly enough that every administrator in the institution can theoretically be taught to use it.

Edited Date: 2010-02-23 03:09 pm (UTC)