6
Votes
If you have been paying any attention to some of the news going around, you have probably seen many news articles about how Internet Explorer users are stupid, dumb, idiots, retards, dimwits, nincompoops, etc.
Though I have to admit, the article from the Business Insider is less biased on the story, giving points as to why this isn’t necessarily something a Chrome, Opera or Firefox user should use to show their smarts:
- IE has a much larger market share meaning they are “more likely to tend toward the mean.”
- People who use Chrome, Firefox, etc. tend to be computer geeks which brings up the average of that browsers “smarter” user base.
- “Online IQ tests — or IQ tests in general — are silly.”
Well then, it’s a good thing Internet Explorer has the best phishing and malware filter (by far).
Comments
Wait what?
Why the f*ck are they poking fun at TheAverageUser™ with AverageUserStereotypes™?
“Well then, it’s a good thing Internet Explorer has the best phishing and malware filter (by far).”
At least IE9 looks leaps ahead of previous versions. :)
Maybe not dumb in general, but usually dumb when it comes to computers. There aren’t many nerds who would willingly use Internet Explorer.
Oh lord is that retarded.
“The test was offered only to visitors of a few Englishspeaking
countries namely USA, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.”
In Europe FF and IE have entirely different market shares, so that isn’t even representative.
“In addition, the results
were compared to another unreleased study of a similar nature undertaken in year 2006.”
Compare unreleased studies to make your point. Be a winner.
“It is common knowledge, that Internet Explorer Versions to 6.0 to 8.0 are highly incompatible with modern web
standards.”
Unbiased study is unbiased. IE8 highly incompatible with modern web standards. That’d be news to me, as a matter of fact.
...and did anyone notice the absolute #1 feature of the test? No?
Ok, the #2 then first: They did not say what test it was. An IQ test needs of course balancing and cannot be made the same for all social groups.
drumroll, the #1
They divide the groups by percentiles. Which means nothing, basically. If their best participant achieved a 105 and their worst a 95, then that would be also dividable in percentiles. Generally spoken, not all people are of the same likeliness to take an online IQ test, and you can be sure that anyone with an IQ < 90 is unlikely to take one. People with extraordinarily high IQs or who you’d consider really smart in general won’t take such a test either, as they consider it silly.
Without actual values assigned to it, that is a worthless indicator.
“Now that we have a statistical pattern on the continuous usage of
incompatible browsers, better steps can be taken to eradicate this nuisance.”
Good conclusion. Now we know people using outdated IEs are dumb, we can change them using IE.
Unbiased report is unbiased.
Doesn’t matter anyways, the way they printed their company name in a massive header above all slides only demonstrates too obviously how this is a mean to use tech trendster news to draw attention on them. Wouldn’t be the first time for anyone to do such.
“Maybe not dumb in general, but usually dumb when it comes to computers. There aren’t many nerds who would willingly use Internet Explorer.”
Because IE has been beaten by the tech press. I’m personally using IE9 and wouldn’t see any reason why to use an alternative web browser, but a lot against that. I know a few people (I suppose you’d call them nerds) who gave IE9 a serious chance and did take it up.
Because IE has been beaten by the tech press. I’m personally using IE9 and wouldn’t see any reason why to use an alternative web browser, but a lot against that. I know a few people (I suppose you’d call them nerds) who gave IE9 a serious chance and did take it up.
I switch browsers I use often, and I used IE9 for a good few months. I liked it and I got it setup to sync favorites (Windows Live Mesh) and spell checking (Speckie) and then the Tracking Protection works well when I want to block ads on obnoxious websites, but I did notice a couple issues.
A very annoying issue, or slowdown, is when opening multiple tabs at once… I can’t do it. I click then have to wait for the tab to open in order to open another, but Chrome doesn’t have that issue. Then there seems to be an issue with websites with fixed position background images, the page will lag horribly when I scroll. Though Chrome kind of lags on such sites as well, but not as bad.
I would switch back to IE if those were fixed (sound small, but they are biggies for me, as I open numerous tabs at once all the time), especially since Chrome seems to be a real memory hog (~430MB for 6 tabs) while IE9 only takes around 182MB (if I subtract the memory from Chrome extensions it is more like 340MB).
“I click then have to wait for the tab to open in order to open another, but Chrome doesn’t have that issue.”
How do you open these tabs? Simply clicking several links on a page?
“Then there seems to be an issue with websites with fixed position background images, the page will lag horribly when I scroll.”
Never seen that anywhere, got an example page?
“How do you open these tabs? Simply clicking several links on a page?”
I hold Ctrl and click the links I want to open.
“Never seen that anywhere, got an example page?”
Twitter is a great example.
@Ian
“I click then have to wait for the tab to open in order to open another, but Chrome doesn’t have that issue.”
This is EXACTLY the reason I switched from IE to Chrome on my Windows systems.
——
@ChrisTX
“How do you open these tabs? Simply clicking several links on a page?”
I’ll give you a concrete example. Imagine that you wanted to read the entire archive of a webcomic. Say, xkcd1. Now, open that page in both Chrome and IE. Open about 20 comics in tabs quickly (either middle-clicking or ctrl+clicking). See how fast Chrome is compared to IE.
Chrome opens tabs as fast as I can click.
IE (at least IE8, I haven’t tried that with IE9) completely freezes between clicks. I can’t even scroll while it’s frozen.
This is what Ian means.
[1] http://xkcd.com/archive/
Interesting that ThomasB sees an equivalence between “nerds” and “intelligence.”
Self-selected elites are rarely as elite as they fondly believe they are.
“Self-selected elites are rarely as elite as they fondly believe they are.”
I don’t know how true it is, but I often read that people with Asperger’s Syndrome have higher IQ than average. Perhaps that’s related?
“I hold Ctrl and click the links I want to open.”
Strange thing, I asked because I tend to do so a lot myself, and I haven’t run into that issue myself, the pages open instantly and the next tab opens before the previous one loaded.
“Twitter is a great example.”
Even more strange, it literally glides here. All I could imagine would be hardware acceleration not working properly for you.
“IE (at least IE8, I haven’t tried that with IE9) completely freezes between clicks. I can’t even scroll while it’s frozen.”
IE9 is probably the biggest new version IE has ever seen. I don’t have IE8 anymore, but I compared IE9 to the latest Chrome and they seemed equivalently fast with opening.
“I don’t know how true it is, but I often read that people with Asperger’s Syndrome have higher IQ than average. Perhaps that’s related?”
Wut, all 'nerds’ has Asperger’s?
“Interesting that ThomasB sees an equivalence between “nerds” and “intelligence.”
Self-selected elites are rarely as elite as they fondly believe they are.”
Obviously, any senior is a retard. Also, LinuxForGrandmas™.
“Strange thing, I asked because I tend to do so a lot myself, and I haven’t run into that issue myself, the pages open instantly and the next tab opens before the previous one loaded.”
It could be because my desktop is a tad bit old. The hardware acceleration works decently, but the graphics card is an ATI Radeon 4300 or something like that, and I got it a few years ago, maybe more.
I am certainly not going to hold anything against IE9 if I were to get a new computer, but IE9 requires more oomph than my computer can provide.
“Wut, all 'nerds’ has Asperger’s?”
No, but being a nerd is one of the characteristics of AS. From Wikipedia1: “Pursuit of specific and narrow areas of interest is one of the most striking features of AS.”
If I’m not mistaken, this is the definition of a nerd.
(I took at least three statistics courses and I know the above is not statistically correct, but meh)
[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Asperger%27s_Syndrome#Restricted_and_repetitive_interests_and_behavior
It’s more elementary logic than statistics, but no, you can’t really jump from a superset (“narrowly focussed individuals”) to a couple of partial sub-sets (nerds, Aspergers) which may or may not overlap, at least on this vector of measurement, assign a Wikipedia-based judgement on one partial subset (Aspergers -> tending to high IQ), ignore the many issues in associating high IQ with “intelligence, and then go back and suggest that all of this somehow supports the argument that nerds are intelligent (a blatant and blunt equivalence, in ThomasB’s terms) because they are like people with Aspergers.
And however compelling the argument might be, I don’t think it was the one that ThomasB was trying to make.
Basically he was full of sh1t.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14389430
lmao
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