The reason why it's ok for chrome and not for FF is because in Chrome, the version number Ian't part of the branding. People don't know what version of chrome they have, it's just chrome. Websites don't support Chrome 12 or whatever, just chrome. With Chrome, you don't need admin access to install or update, so even at work, people update. When was the last time you saw a Chrome version presser anywhere on the internet?

FF is changing versions like they don't matter, but treating them like they still do.

He's talking usability cache misses.

With competent UI:
Need to do a thing. Do I know how to do it? Nope. Can I guess how to do it? Nope. Go to internet. Do it.
Need to do another thing. Do I know how to do it? Nope. Can I guess how to do it? Probably, yes. Do it.

Need to do a thing. Do I know how to do it? Nope. Can I guess how to do it? Nope. Go to Internet & Man pages.
Need to do another thing. Do I know how to do it? Nope. Can I guess how to do it? Almost certainly not. Back to the Internet & Man pages.

Each new feature in a CLI environment often requires a new tool, which requires a new learning curve, whereas in a competently designed UI, once you've learned the paradigm/layout, you can start guessing and generally be right.

Of course, there's an awful lot of incompetent UIs out there, where you try to guess, and get it wrong, every time. Then they're no better than CLIs.

(Of course, I'm playing devil's advocate here; I have Xubuntu on all my machines and use bash for just about everything.)

would you say they intend to build some sort of "web" "OS"? Perhaps? Maybe there just might be one for sale somewhere... that might carry along with it the patent for the smartphone?

Yes, but when you know someone is from Eastern Europe but you don't know if they are Polish or Ukrainian or what, you can just say "Eastern European", which is a useful grouping.

Just because the First Nations didn't have a word for this doesn't negate the need for such a word. We'd use a translation for "The Land" or "The World", except they all spoke different languages so it's not easy to do that either.

Yes, but this is just a translation to English. This happens for every country; the Chinese call America "Mei Guo", or "Pretty Kingdom", and its people "Mei Guo Ren". English speakers refer to those people from Deutschland as "Germans". A translation is acceptable. The problem is this translation, "Indian" refers to "people of the Indus"; it refers to Indians. It's very specific. Sorry for the rant, it just really annoys me when I say that someone is Indian and someone else asks me "Oh, what tribe?" and then I have to specify, "No. Indian. From India."

I'm Indian; they're Native Americans. My country is named India (unfortunately, no one in English remembers that it's also Bharat); Theirs is named America, because they didn't have a name which they all agreed upon for their entire continent. I'm not a "South Asian Indian", not an "Eastern Asian". I'm Indian.

Someone in college once told me that Native Americans actually do prefer to be called "Indians" as the PC term. I think they're wrong to argue for it, and I'm not sure why they wouldn't prefer "First Peoples" or "First Nations" anyway, as is sometimes used in Canada.

I don't know that it's too late. I've found that for Events, I need to use facebook in conjunction with GMail, but otherwise, i mostly use Facebook just to get people to join my Google Hangouts. I'd be on GPlus only if it weren't for their lack of support for Apps Accounts.

I think they may yet pick up steam. I think what we're seeing is an initial surge and then inevitable drop back to a stable base, from which they can build "real" users at a more sustainable pace.

They should commit to following a schedule so that requested features can become standards faster--and then left alone.

Something like:

Every 12 months, a draft is released with new features that were written up into the standard over the last 9 months. This constitutes a feature freeze.
At that time, the entire draft is read and each feature voted on. Some features may be tossed back for revisions or suggestions.

Within 3 months after the initial draft vote, these features may be resubmitted with changes and reconsidered for inclusion.
3 months after release, the draft, with all accepted features and none else, is finalized.

This way each final version will really have a bunch of "improvements" over the last version, and one or two major "new" features. But given 5 years, we'd have standardized more new features than they have in 10.

Perhaps they should do a longer timescale than a year, so that browsers will be able to develop the necessary things to support the latest standard while it's still a standard...

(note: i realize this is very similar to the timed release patterns of many large open source projects--I just think the concept of enforcing incremental, iterative improvement is a good one.)

My routers have been named after different cities. My first wireless router before college was called Sydney. When it died, we brought up Melbourne. When I moved to college I decided to go on with the naming scheme, but change countries, so then Tokyo, Kyoto, and when I moved off-campus, Beijing. Now that I've graduated college, Beijing's name changed to Paris, and then we bought a new router called Madrid.

My transient drives (until recently, when i lose pen drives only a little more hesitantly than pens) were named after female characters from Neil Gaiman books, so Door, Coraline, Eostre, Death, Anathema, Yvaine, etc.

My desktops and laptops have taken a few different naming schemes, but they used to be translations of things to do with writing, so Author, Pen, Word, Paper. Then I went greek myth when I got a Mac: Siren. When I got my newest machine it had a large circular blaring blue light on the front, so of course it became Cyclops.

For completely unknown reasons, my Eee is named Cygnus.