Mother’s Day Weekend Tech Support!
It’s Mother’s Day weekend, and I’m sure many of you are traveling to spend time with loved ones. In addition to whatever wonderful things you’ve already planned, may I suggest a little tech support? A few minutes of effort can go a long way!
Try:
- Updating your mom’s operating system
- Updating her browser
- Updating and running a virus scan
Those few things are almost effortless, and can go a long way towards protecting your mother’s machine from all manner of badness.
Practice safe computing by lending a helping hand!
Listen to Eric Schmidt at Princeton
Google Chairman is speaking at the Turing Centennial Celebration at Princeton University.
Listen to him live, here.
Two New Piracy Warnings To Punish Legit Customers
You know what’s awesome? Punishing your paying customers for buying instead of pirating material.
We’ve seen it before with intrusive DRM, and now DVD buyers are getting another dose.
The US Government is mandating that two unskippable anti-piracy warnings appear at the start of movies. These warnings will stay on-screen for 10 seconds each.
Why’s This A So Dumb You Ask?
Because if someone is ripping the movie, they can edit these stupid warnings out! Never-mind if the warning makes sense… The people who are supposed to receive the message won’t (and if they did, they still wouldn’t care). While those of us who do buy DVDs will now be subject to a 20 second threat that doesn’t pertain to us.
I feel like I’m back in elementary school, and the teacher is scolding the whole class for something that a few of my classmates did.
To hell with Hollywood. It’s bad business to make it hard for people to buy your product, and it’s pathetic to punish, chastise, and threaten your paying customers.
(Via Ars Technica)
Google, Please Make This UI Improvement
Dear Google,
As a user of many (but not all) Google Apps, I have a very important request.
Please give us users some control over the apps that are listed in the Google bar (I’m not sure what you’ve named it).
I’m an avid user of Google Reader; I consumer virtually all web content with it. With that in mind, I was pretty peeved when Reader was removed from the top bar. I get that many people don’t use it, but I do. A lot.
Here are some solutions that would make me very happy, and I’m betting would further endear you to many of your users.
Two Options to Fix The Problem
User Control
Give users control of all or some of the links in that bar.
It’s a simple thing to do, and that level of personalization would absolutely improve the Google user-experience.
Dynamic Generation
Google, I know that you know what Google Apps I’m using. You know that I know that.
Why not adjust that bar based on usage?
Either solution would make me a very happy geek.
Cheers,
The Geek Whisperer
Google – Features As Easter Eggs
Am I the only person who feels like Google drops features into their application like they’re easter eggs?
I recently clicked this arrow in Gmail, and discovered an incredible feature that I don’t think they informed users of (could be wrong).
As it turns out, that’s where they hid the advanced search options. Spoiler Alert – They’re great!
When was this added? I have no idea. It could have been there since the New Gmail Beta, and I missed it.
They do seem to add and change functionality on the fly. I’m cool with it, but I’d like to know that these features exist.
Perhaps Google can put a “something new” call-out on the page, or just draw attention to some of the more obscure features.
Do you know any of Google’s hidden features?
Why I Don’t Review With Scores or Numbers
All of my product, movie, concert, game and music reviews are written long-form, and never have any numerical rating associated with them.
They almost did. I had this clever idea to have a 5 star scale and have the rating system be glasses. Each pair of glasses would equal a star, and a monocle would equal half a star. However I sacked the idea.
It would have looked better than this.
Why did I change my mind?
Joe was one of my undergraduate professors, and learning from him was one of those rare life-changing teacher experiences. But I digress.
Why 1 – 5 Scales Suck
His classes were unconventional in a lot of ways, but the most significant example was his strong opposition to generic scale rating systems. This didn’t make him popular in the social sciences because 1 – 5 rating systems are pretty much the standard means for measuring any human experience in psychology, sociology, political science, and communication.
He illustrated this very simply in what turned out to be the most memorable five minutes I had in two decades of school.
Joe began a class by instructing us to take out a piece of paper, and create four 1 – 5 scales on it. Then he asked the following four questions and had us answer on those scales:
- How big is the Moon?
- How big is the Sun?
- How big is a penny?
- How big is a dime?
The answers were pretty much along these lines:
- How big is the Moon? – 5
- How big is the Sun? – 5
- How big is a penny? – 1
- How big is a dime? – 1
- How big is the Moon? – 4
- How big is the Sun? – 5
- How big is a penny? – 2
- How big is a dime? – 1
The problem was immediately apparent to everyone with a pulse. According to this research, students perceptions are that the Moon and Sun are the same size, while pennies and dimes are the same size. The kicker being that the Moon and the Sun are five times larger than pennies and dimes.
His point was that these methods of measurement are meaningless because the ratings have no context, and there’s no opportunity for logical mathematical comparison. So he (and a few others) created a system of measure that was based on comparison. It’s complex, and I’m not going to get into it here.
Why 1 – 100 Scales Suck
So you might be asking yourself, why not use a 1 – 100 scale?
It still has no comparison value, but mostly I don’t know the difference between an 83 and an 84 in terms of quality. Whenever I see ratings like 93, I find myself completely baffled by how someone came up with that number. Sometimes I reach the bottom of a review and see some strange number and I actually laugh as I imagine my eighth grade algebra teacher yelling, “Show your damn work!”
The bottom-line
I don’t know how to boil my complex thoughts about something into an arbitrary number. Plus, if I write a number it devalues all of the rest of the thought and nuance that went into the review.
Read a review, don’t read a review. Numerical rating systems distort reality. I won’t be using them.
The House Made CISPA Worse, Then Passed It (Goodbye 4th Amendment)
The House of Representatives added an amendment to their Cybersecurity bill CISPA, and then passed it 248-168. Those 248 people need to take a high school civics course are get a refresher on the Bill of Rights.
The bill will annihilate our 4th Amendment rights on the Internet by creating a loophole whereby the authorities can pretty much establish cause to search any files you’re sharing with another web service – Email, Google Docs, Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter, banking, medical databases, websites, Google Search, you name it, if it isn’t hosted on your own server, you’re screwed.
Previously, CISPA allowed the government to use information for “cybersecurity” or “national security” purposes. Those purposes have not been limited or removed. Instead, three more valid uses have been added: investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crime, protection of individuals, and protection of children. Cybersecurity crime is defined as any crime involving network disruption or hacking, plus any violation of the CFAA.
Basically this means CISPA can no longer be called a cybersecurity bill at all. The government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a “cybersecurity crime”. Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all. Moreover, the government could do whatever it wants with the data as long as it can claim that someone was in danger of bodily harm, or that children were somehow threatened—again, notwithstanding absolutely any other law that would normally limit the government’s power.
CISPA is now a completely unsupportable bill that rewrites (and effectively eliminates) all privacy laws for any situation that involves a computer. Far from the defense against malevolent foreign entities that the bill was described as by its authors, it is now an explicit attack on the freedoms of every American.
I’m choosing to believe that 248 of our Representatives are just incredibly stupid, because otherwise they are evil. This is one of the most oppressive bills I’ve ever heard of. Bunch of savages.
Hopefully Obama comes through with a Veto, and it holds up.
(Via Techdirt)
