Posts by Petrea Mitchell

So how do they reconcile...

...their ad-selling program with their ad-wiping capabilities? Or does Apple only mean to make the Web readable, and not its wonderful, magical, etc. newpaper-reading app? Or if you buy ads from Apple, does that mean your ad is deemed non-annoying by Safari? And if you can read free Web news (or even Web news behind a paywall) with all the annoying stuff removed, aren't even the fanbois going to decide the Web browser offers a superior reading experience?

What is it with all the truck-bashing?

First Jobs says his tablet is a car replacing trucks, now Ballmer says the Windows tablets will be like cars shoving aside the truck of the iPad. And all this in the US, which really loves its trucks.

Overton window

The "Overton window" sounds like a misunderstanding of the decoy effect, which works like this: You have option A to one side, and option B to the other, then add option C which is out on the fringe beyond B. By its existence, C makes B look more attractive.

But B (which in this case would be legal P2P or some other happy medium where work can be shared and creators get paid with equal ease) has to be established as an option first; you can't jump straight to C and then expect B to materialize.

F#???

How the heck does F# follow C#? This makes no sense!!

...Everyone knows the next one after C# is supposed to be G#.

Kudos

I really did believe this for a minute.

Adjustment captured in progress?

I think what this picture shows is that Google is tired of getting complaints about its database being inaccurate-- now when it finds a discrepancy, it adjusts the material world to match the virtual one. That house probably used to be on a completely different street...

Don't panic

This would be an excellent time to talk about the limitations of fMRI.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/50295/title/Trawling_the_brain

You're thinking too small

Flip-top islands? Mountain hideaways? Pfaugh! Any ordinary paranoid hyperbilliontrillionaire can get one of those. We all know Steve Jobs wants only the absolute best and to have everyone know about it.

So when that second moon appears, please do not be alarmed.

(No, of course he wouldn't have the existing one. All that dust, with black turtlenecks? What are you thinking???)

A complete narrative...

1, 3, 6, and 9 are what's on their minds. 2 and 8 is them attempting to put it into practice. 4, 5, and 10 because they're a tad paranoid, and like saving money in other ways beside getting free books.

7... okay, having trouble with this one. Maybe a noble but misguided attempt to figure out what goes on in women's minds.

Google's ballot screen

It's the browser ballot screen again, except I'm guessing Chrome is always listed first and IE is always the furthest to the right.

I also figure most people will look long enough for the familiar IE icon to catch their eye, but it takes only a small fraction clicking on Chrome instead for "The YouTube upgrade broke my Internet" to be the IT headache of the next few weeks.

Should be interesting to see how much this changes Chrome's share over the next while...

Confused Yank seeks explanation

I've heard before that "The Happiness Patrol" was supposed to be a commentary on the Thatcher years. I've never quite grasped how the Thatcher described by her critics maps onto a sparkly dictatoress who wants to turn everyone into Cyndi Lauper or possibly the Spice Girls. Help?

No good explaining the book to me, though-- all I can really remember about it is it was terrible.

Oh, it could get worse

Wanna guess what the top Google result for "facebook login" is right this instant? C'mon, guess!

That's right, it's *this* story. And sure, it says "News results for facebook login" nearby, but the key point is that it's the first search result on the page. (Yes, I am in part blaming Google for this, because it could do a way better job with separating the different link categories.)

Next time a UI expert tells you that most people can't tell the difference between the address bar and the Google search box, or that they think Google and Facebook are the Internet, please believe them!

ObMicrosoft

Flailing around trying to duplicate every popular service in existence on its own infrastructure? Does that sound like another large computer company we've all heard of, when it was at a similar age?

What's under the hat?

I'll guess that Apple is already working on direct neural interfaces.

You'll only be allowed to think about Apple-approved ropics, though, so none of that for me, thanks...

Two-hour boot could be tolerable...

...if it was for something you could get monumental uptime from.

Steve with horns because it's the closest thing you've got to the BSD daemon.

Some say...

...that he compresses himself when startled, and that he knows the fastest Fourier transform in existence. All we know is...

Giant iPhone == possible problems

I'm looking at early photos of Steve Jobs holding the iPad delicately by its edges and thinking: If you're supposed to carry this around the house, *how*?? The Kindle and friends may look ugly to Apple designers, but at least they have obvious places you can grab on to them. If this is supposed to replace the newspaper, how's it going to handle getting cereal and orange juice spilled on it at the breakfast table? Or being shoved into a briefcase, since you can't fold it up to protect the screen? If your kids are supposed to use this, how many times will it survive being dropped on the floor?

Well, if you really want broken by design...

...I'm looking at the first photos of Steve Jobs's presentation, and it looks like there's no good way to grab hold of the thing. I suppose he thinks the Kindle, Nook, et al. look ugly, but there's a solid design reason for not having the screen go all the way to the edge.

Note to self

If a TSA screener ever asks me, "Where did you get this?" my reflexive response is now going to be, "The question is, where did *you* get it?"

But will it ever work outside the UK?

I for one would welcome our new overlords if I could pay money for this box to watch my favorite BBC shows when they air in the UK, rather than having to wait a year or two for the carrier pigeons with the videotapes to make it across the Atlantic.

A number of challenges?

That sounds exciting! That sounds like... like... like maybe I've been watching a certain TV show too much, actually.

Race-horse-duct-taped-to-a-scud-missile fast?

I suppose, on second thought, that if you burn the fuel fast enough it'll still be fast, but that horse is going to be hell on the stability control.

Mine's the boring one with the copy of Principia Mathematica in the pocket.

@Peter Mc Aulay

"[T]urning the planet into soup etc. is definitely out of the question. We need about 18 orders of magnitude more energy for that."

And just HOW do you coincidentally happen to have just precise knowledge about planetary liquification, Mr. McAulay? Hmm?

Not entirely new...

I can't find a decent map of exactly where the crack is, but it sounds like what they're really talking about is an addition to the existing rift zone which is already busy separating the Arabian Peninsula from Africa. (And which also formed the Rift Valley in eastern Africa.) The "new ocean" is already forming in the Red Sea.

As for observing ocean-floor processes on land, that's the neat thing about the Afar region-- it's an area of oceanic crust that's been pushed up above sea level, so a great place to study what happens at oceanic rifts without all that tedious mucking about in submersibles...

They still have styli?

I'm still using a really ancient Palm device because I haven't been able to find something up-to-date that still uses a stylus. Yet this survey strongly implies that there are still a significant enough number of stylus-based devices out there to ask about them. Someone tell me what those are?

Gandalf is already legal...

...along with many of Tolkien's minor characters, since he pinched them from obscure corners of Norse and Germanic myth.

No way!

I refuse to call it a "beholder" until it's capable of something like projecting illusions, putting people to sleep, or cancelling out magic at close range.

Mine's the one with the first-edition Monster Manual in the pocket.

$10 for Torchwood, huh?

If the BBC actually develops a substantial base of people buying Torchwood views at $10/episode, I will admit that it is actually a terrific show and I should be watching it, instead of pretending it and the whole DW revival don't exist like I do now.

OTOH, if the global iPlayer carries uncut Top Gear episodes, at a reasonable price, within a reasonable interval of when they first air in the UK, I'll be the first on my block to sign up.

The problem with removing the barcode...

...is that this will quickly become recognized evidence that you have something to hide and are therefore a criminal.

Now, if you were to print out a brand new label with a barcode of a known non-stolen phone...

Firearms vehicle?

Another confused foreigner here, wondering what a firearms vehicle is and why it needs to be so carefully protected. I mean, it sounds like something which is perfectly capable of taking care of itself should a terrorist happen to show up...

This poll was obviously rigged...

...by the people who say they can't make any sense of "Warriors' Gate". Best. Story. Ever!

I do agree "Logopolis" (rather like the idea of trying to fix the universe) and "The Aztecs" (what's this rumor about all the female companions before Ace being wimps, huh?) belong up there as well.

My soft spot is for the reunion shows, so "Mawdryn Undead", "Battlefield", and all the multi-Doctor stories would be on my list...

Airborne Psychological Operations Group?

So the only permanent psy-ops unit has to be in the air to do its thinking?

I guess now we know what the helicopters are really for...

Not all the authors support it...

...or even all the authors' associations, like this one for example:

http://www.sfwa.org/2009/08/sfwa-statement-on-proposed-google-book-settlement/

Associated with online services?

If that's the worry, I'd expect people to be more biased toward Chrome, seeing the Google logo and not realizing that they're selecting the Google browser instead of the Google that's their portal on the Web, and then getting annoyed later because they were expecting a browser like IE.

In fact, there's a lot of room to worry about how most people aren't even clear on what a browser is to begin with. The only way to know how well this whole "browser ballot" will work would be to run some proper usability testing before the final remedy is decided on, but I don't suppose the court has any way to order that sort of thing?

Now, there *will* for sure be a bias toward whatever the first option is, which gives IE a small but definite edge. Seems only fair, given that MS is going to get all the angry complaints from people who don't understand what they're doing, pick something other than IE, and get surprised that their internet doesn't work the way they're used to.

Suspicious-looking object fround to be suspicious

I have to think back some ways for the last time I read a story where someone spotted a strange-looking object, called the police, and it actually turned out to be dangerous, instead of being a prop, a toy, an ad, someone's lunch, etc...

No he wasn't

I said it there, so I'll say it here. The debate so far has gone roughly like this:

Nielsen: "Here is a suggestion based on actual data from studies my colleagues I have been performing on actual users and software."

Dissenters: "I disagree based on my subjective personal experience." Or "I disagree based on what feels like common sense."

Ironically, Nielsen's column this week is on how to explain to people that usability is a real subject on which trained professionals can have expertise.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/respect.html

Is it just me...

...or did anyone else read that as "Dalek VM" at first?

I still miss the dead vulture

I'd show my fury properly by posting with the "I’m so furious that I am removing El Reg from my bookmarks" icon, if only it were correct... d'oh!!

What it really seems to show...

...is that users are still scanning Web pages in the F-shaped pattern already well-known in the design/usability community. There's just a small difference in what Bing and Google place under that F-shaped area.