“DSL.sk did a test of the ‘ballot’ screen at www.browserchoice.eu, used in Microsoft Windows 7 to prompt the user to install a browser. It was a Microsoft concession to the EU, to provide a randomized ballot screen for users to select a browser. However, the DSL.sk test suggested that the ordering of the browsers was far from random. […] Maybe there was cogent technical analysis of this issue posted someplace, but if there was, I could not find it. So I’m providing my own analysis here, a little statistics and a little algorithms 101. I’ll tell you what went wrong, and how Microsoft can fix it. In the end it is a rookie mistake in the code, but it is an interesting mistake that we can learn from, so I’ll examine it in some depth.”
It’s in incedibly dumb idea to beging with and randomizing the list isn’t going to make it smarter.
No matter what MS does its still bad to some people.
If I.E. comes first they are favoring their own browser, if some other browser comes first they are bombed of not doing a good job…
I just wish people would come hard on Apple as they do on Microsoft. Apple is far worse vendor-lock-in-you-eat-what-I-put-in-the-plate kind of thing and somehow people look at them and say “oh shiny!”.
Ok, this whole argument has gotten so silly. Personally, I think what Microsoft has done here is way more than sufficient than what people expect. Its a browser screen, it doesnt matter if IE is first, last or in the middle. I think the people that complained, Opera Software in the first pace are nothing but whiney children who just want to blame someone for their failing business. I cant wait until the day Opera software goes bankrupt. s for this browser ballot, just shut up about it, choose the browser and who gives two rats a$$es which one is first or last and dont give me that line of crap that it gives IE the unfair advantage, it doesnt.
I found this at slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1566166&cid=31308258
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The top hit on Google… (Score:5, Interesting)
by jmtpi (17834) on Sun Feb 28, ’10 11:54 AM
A Google search on:
“javascript array sort”
gives exactly the bogus answer that Microsoft used in the top hit [ http://www.javascriptkit.com/javatutors/arraysort.shtml ]. [javascriptkit.com]
Unfortunately for Microsoft, a bing search gives the same top hit.
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Here’s the relevant provided sample code:
http://www.javascriptkit.com/javatutors/arraysort.shtml
“Shuffling (randomizing) the order of an array
To randomize the order of the elements within an array, what we need is the body of our sortfunction to return a number that is randomly <0, 0, or >0, irrespective to the relationship between “a” and “b”. The below will do the trick:
//Randomize the order of the array:
var myarray=[25, 8, “George”, “John”]
myarray.sort(function() {return 0.5 – Math.random()}) //Array elements now scrambled”
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In other words, this flawed algorithm is provided by a well respected javascript tutorial site. Since it’s the top hit on Google (and Bing) there’s a decent chance that lots of web pages are using this algorithm. Kind of amusing (as long as nothing mission critical relies on it).
Edited 2010-03-01 22:45 UTC
Implementing a Knuth (or Fisher-Yates) shuffle isn’t exactly hard. I wonder why the javascript coder had to resort to copying someone else’s crappy implementation.
At least it has no real consequences. Hope they’ll fix it.