Show Your Approval

The evolution of creatures over time can be quite a drastic, grand thing.

Take a fish somehow evolving into a creature with land-capabilities, from originally merely being able to at best flop around on shore to later being capable of traveling across wide expanses of land, where there might not be water for miles.

Take the animals who gain camouflage to survive better in their environment, like a chameleon. Or the animals who gain incredible speed, like a cheetah, or a falcon. Or animals who stay small, and are able to hide away in places that many predators can’t quite reach, like say a good ‘ol bunny.

The evolution of spell check is not one of those stories.
In fact, at times it makes one wonder whether there’s been any evolution at all in recent years…

Hence, we get to the reason this post exists.
This is what happens when you attempt to type “pre-approved” in Firefox:


That third one sounds like a very interesting, and simultaneously very scary concept.

Overly Attached Skype.

Skype. We need to talk. This isn’t about me, (and this isn’t easy for me to say) but this is about you. You see, we’ve known each other for a long time. I know I haven’t been spending as much time with you as I used to. But, that doesn’t mean you have to go and get upset.

You were… a bit clingy since we first met. Always starting up and getting in my face every time I got on the computer. Sometimes, I just need to be left alone. We got that fixed though, and everything was good for a while.

 

You always greet me with a highly (annoying) optimistic noise! And my, the sorrow I sense in you when I have to leave you.

But that’s the thing, I can never leave you. Not because I love you (I know this is harsh), but because YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT A LITTLE WHITE ‘X’ IN A RED BOX IN THE RIGHT HAND CORNER IS SUPPOSED TO MEAN CLOSE. Like as if you died. Or something like that.

Any other program: Firefox, Chrome, Minecraft, Minesweeper, Paint, they all know an ‘x’ means ‘close’. But you? Nope. You just hide in your corner, all minimized so the world won’t see you. But we can, Skype, we can. We know you are there. If I had wanted to minimize you, I would have clicked the small ‘dash’ box.

Then I have to go and drag you out of the task bar (or right click you) and choose quit Skype. And so that is why, I must quit you. We can’t go on together. Not until you change.

TLDR: Skype! Y U No Quit!?

The Other Web Browser

This is a screen that comes up if you have Firefox open while installing Google Chrome:


This, being a Firefox junkie, and knowing how heated browser debates can get with the right people (or a certain other blogger on this site), is how I read it:


Some flame wars die hard.

The Quiz That Could Not Lie

Every day in my Business Law class, we have a take-home quiz – in other words, our homework assignments for the class.

Using those old Scantron forms, we… well, yeah, it’s not very unique. It’s a section of true-or-false questions, ordered from the beginning of the chapter to the end, and a section of multiple choice questions, ordered from the beginning of the chapter to the end.

I, like what some others might do in the same scenario, tend to answer the first set as I read through the chapter, with the multiple choice section largely serving as review. Sometimes I read the chapter through first, and then answer everything, and that actually works fairly well for me sometimes. But this was not one of those cases.

I start answering the first set of questions as I read the chapter:


Okay, first question true. Nothing abnormal.


Two in a row – not too uncommon.

Three? That’s a bit unusual. But it happens…

Uhhhhhhhh…

…Yes, every single answer in the first section of the quiz was true. All 21 questions.


I did have my doubts about number 12, but in the end, I decided it was true as well. That, and, well… EVERY SINGLE OTHER QUESTION WAS TRUE. It’s *possible* that just one could be false… but yeah. 
…And that’d be lame, too!

Thankfully (or maybe not?), they started to change up a bit after the first section:


…but it still doesn’t really allow the quiz to shake the appearance that it decided all of a sudden to feel bad about all the false statements it was making on a daily basis, and made the decision to change its ways.

Or something like that.

What’s Wrong with ‘Bing it on’? (or the bias of the study)

 

    Recently you may be seeing commercials for Bing, doing their challenge. They claim that people actually prefer Bing’s results over Google’s. So I decided to try this myself and see.

    I ended up picking Google 4 out of 5 times. Maybe it was just familiarity. Maybe it was because I was able to see through their tricks. What I noticed (and this is smart on Bing’s part) is that they tend to put their ‘images’ higher up on the list. People like pictures.

    But the real kicker is what they don’t show you. During the ‘Bing it on’ challenge, they remove the ads. This is actually a big deal. What I have found is that Bing has a lot of ads.

    See? No ads shown. But when I searched them individually…

 

    No ads for Google this time. I did have a search result with 1 ad before this. But check that out! 4 things under the ‘ad’ section on Bing! This was pretty consistent. Bing would have 3-5 ads for most searches, while Google has 2 at most (from what I saw).

    I would wager that showing ads would influence outcomes. Especially when I would think a lot of people don’t like ads.

    Finally, just a note; the ‘Bing it on’ doesn’t account for Google’s habit of changing up results based on recent searches. While doing this test, I searched ‘Japan’ then ‘Mp3’.

    Through Google I got a few results that were ‘Japan-Mp3’ related. However this did not happen in the challenge.

    Now that I can spot the difference, I want that guy to come around to my area so I can win an Xbox…

Scavenger Hunt!!!

Well, it’s been a couple of weeks since any of us have posted on here. And for that fact, I would like to apologize to our many fans.

http://dramaticpicnictable.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-letter-to-our-fans.html

               

             Well, I’ve decided that I’m going to do a little scavenger hunt-like thing. (Other Authors can’t play on this one, sorry guys, this one’s for the fans). I’ve added something to one of the other posts, first one to find it wins. The prize for winning the scavenger hunt is two of my favorite songs. I will gift them to you from iTunes, so best of luck to all of our fans!

Let this mark the moment I turned into a vigilante.

 

There is this website I’ve seen commercials about, http://www.reputation.com/

And from what I understand, they ‘boost your online image’. It always sounded more like you pay to get their staff to search your stuff and ‘Like’ it or something. But whatever. I’ve decided they need to do this for video games.

http://usability.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/facebook-like1-e1335907460287.jpg

          (Finally getting paid to ‘Like’ stuff. The way it should be.)

So I play Call of Duty: MW3. It is just recreational, not obsessive. Anyway. I noticed something the other day. Apparently you can check your gamer profile, and it has your typical profile stuff, but it also has a reputation portion. It said that 100% of the people who have rated me, have avoided me. This made me sad. And then I saw that I had only been rated by one person. Okay that isn’t too bad then…

Until I saw what it was for. I was avoided because of ‘Language’.

Why is this a problem? Because I don’t use profanities! I don’t even use a mic!

Heck, I’ll hunt down EVERYONE who does that. I’ll be like Batman! Only, a bit less…

That just made me upset. Who goes around leaving false reviews?!

And then I remembered, I was playing Call of Duty.